Enemy Ace: War in Heaven

"The Jet Age & Dachau"

Cover Date June 2001
Issue #2
Pages 48
Type Original Story
Cover Price $5.95
Featured Character Hans von Hammer

Synopsis

Set in 1945 during the final months of World War II. Supplies and fuel are entirely depleted, and Hans's starving squadron is reduced to desperate measures just to eat. Given command of a wing of scarlet-painted Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighters, Hans is forced to bail out of his flaming jet during a chaotic aerial clash. His parachute drifts him directly inside the gates of Dachau Concentration Camp. Confronted face-to-face with the industrial scale of the Holocaust, Hans is absolutely shattered to realize the horrific crimes perpetrated by the nation he spent his life fighting for. He and his remaining pilots stage a localized military mutiny, locking away their Gestapo commanders to formally surrender their base to arriving American tank divisions.

Collector Notes

The visual tone shifts intentionally from issue one: where Chris Weston's issue was claustrophobic and mud-heavy, Russ Heath's art is clean, sleek, and spartan, mirroring the cold mechanical transition into the high-altitude Jet Age. The Dachau sequence is among the most morally demanding pages in the Enemy Ace canon, forcing von Hammer to confront the full weight of what his lifetime of service enabled. Heath, who had drawn war comics since the 1950s, brings a lived-in authority to the material that makes it devastating.

Creative Team

Writer Garth Ennis
Penciler Russ Heath
Inker Russ Heath
Letterer Bill Oakley