Adolf Galland, a fearless, cigar-chomping flyer, was the youngest major general in German history. He learned to fly a glider in the post-Versailles days when the Germans were forbidden an air force.

Sixty-three years ago today, James Finnegan, a young Army fighter pilot flying his P-47 over Nazi-occupied Europe, found himself in one of the most storied dogfights of World War II, and at the end of ...