Luftwaffe

The Luftwaffe was the German Air Force, 1933-45.

1930s

In 1925 the Soviet Union allowed the German government set up the top-secret Lipetsk Aviation School, inside Russia, to train pilots and navigators in violation of the Versailles Treaty of 1919, which ordered that Germany could never have an air force. The school closed in 1933 when secrecy was no longer needed to defy Versailles.

The Spanish Civil War (1936-38) was the most intensive experience of combat for the Luftwaffe before World War II. Germany sent its "Kondor Legion" to test out its "blitzkrieg" doctrine using the Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive-bomber. In addition they completely redesigned their air superiority fighter tactics, and discovered new techniques for high-speed dogfight tactics and tactical air support for ground forces. The Spanish Civil War had a tremendous impact on all aspects of Luftwaffe combat doctrine, giving it technique, doctrine and self confidence that Britain and France lacked.

In the 1930s imaginative Nazis saw strategic bombardment by air as a powerful tool. Air warfare was seen as a growing threat to Germany, especially in British hands, so the Luftwaffe became a means of national mobilization and redemption. Nazi Germany believed that air warfare would allow the country to rebuild itself in a racial compact. During World War II, are warfare became a means for rejuvenating authority domestically and increasing influence abroad. However, Germany never built long-range bombers; only the British and Americans did so.

Aircraft

Wartime production

Production in the early years of the war was small, primarily because Luftwaffe did not see a need for a vast armada. At one point General Jeschonneck, chief of the air staff, opposed a suggested increase in fighter plane production with the remark that he wouldn't know what to do with a monthly production of more than 360 fighters. By late 1943 doom was in the air and plans called for a steadily increasing output of fighters. By 1944 Allied bombers targeted aircraft factories, but they were widely dispersed. The main way to stop the Luftwaffe was to cut off its gasoline by bombing refineries and synthetic oil plants, and for the Soviets to capture the Romanian oil fields.

Luftwaffe Field Marshal Erhard Milch and airplane designer Ernst Heinkel built a huge factory at Budzyn, Poland, called the "Ultra Project" designed to use Jews as slave laborers to build warplanes. It lasted 18 months but turned out neither an aircraft nor a single aircraft part.

War in the West

Stopping the bombers

The climax in air war came in February 1944, when the Luftwaffe made a powerful effort to sweep American day bombers from the skies. The battle raged for a week. It was fought over Regensburg, Merseburg, Schweinfurt, and other critical industrial centers. The German fighter force was severely crippled, and American attacks escalated. In the late spring of 1944, synthetic fuel plants and crude oil refineries became the prime targets for Allied bombers, which reduced production between May and October 1944 to 5% of the former monthly output.

Allied medium bombers and fighter-bombers struck Luftwaffe airfields in diversionary attacks so timed as to reduce the concentration of fighters that threatened the bomber formations. Diversionary fighter sweeps further dislocated the Luftwaffe. As the range of P-47 and P-51 fighters was increased through the installation of additional fuel tanks, they were employed more and more to escort bombers to targets deep in Germany. In response the Luftwaffe withdraw fighters from the East to meet the threat from the West. This was an important factor in enabling the Soviet air forces to maintain air superiority on their front.

Increasingly the Luftwaffe concentrated on ground-based anti-aircraft operations, which involved hundreds of thousands of women soldiers. Surplus airmen and ground crews were reorganized into infantry units (under Luftwaffe command.)

War in the East

On the first day of the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, the Soviet air force (VVS) lost 336 aircraft in aerial combat to only 40 German losses. Much more threatening was the loss, within a few days of 800 Soviet aircraft destroyed on the ground in the course of Luftwaffe bombing raids on airfields. This was the first ever instance of one air force achieving a significant victory over another by pre-emptive strikes against its air bases. The Luftwaffe had attempted this in Poland in 1939 and in France in 1940 without much luck. The successful attacks on Soviet air bases, the superiority of the Luftwaffe pilots in air-to-air combat, and the loss of hundreds of damaged but repairable aircraft that had to be abandoned on airfields about to be over-run by advancing German ground troops together meant that, by the end of the first week of the German invasion, the VVS was nearly defunct as a combat organization.

In August and September 1942 the Luftwaffe had the opportunity and planes to deliver a major blow against the Soviet economy by attacking the Caucasus oil centers that provided nearly all of the Soviet supplies. Instead, Hitler diverted his airpower against Stalingrad, By October 1942, when Hitler finally ordered air attacks against the oil centers, but the Germans no longer had the bomber strength and advanced forward bases to carry out major operations against them. The raids were too little and too late and proved incapable of crippling Soviet oil production.

After 1942 the Soviets completely restructured their air force around mobile air armies. By 1942-3 Soviet air power challenged the Luftwaffe for air supremacy in the Stalingrad, Kuban, and Kursk campaigns. Frontal aviation's 17 air armies were complemented by a long-range air army in 1944, by which time the Soviets had air superiority, though it lacked long range bombers.

Failure of Cooperation

Germany's Kriegsmarine (navy) and Luftwaffe failed to cooperate throughout most of the war because of interbranch jealousy, limited strategic vision, poor leadership in the Luftwaffe, and the personality defects of Göring. This failure, coupled with the strategic shift eastward after mid-1941 and the lack of an offensive oriented air branch of the Kriegsmarine, meant that Germany was never able to fulfill its potential effectiveness in naval operations designed to restrict Britain's operational and material resource base.

In sharp contrast to the smooth cooperation of the Allies, the Luftwaffe ignored opportunities for strategic and economic cooperation with the air forces of its allies Italy, Finland, Romania, and Hungary. Instead of using factories in France, the Netherlands and Czechoslovakia to build new air fleets, it removed the machinery and shut the factories. Field marshal Erhard Milch and aircraft designer Ernst Heinkel built a gigantic plant at Budzyn, Poland, using Jewish slave labor; in 18 months it turned out neither an aircraft nor a single aircraft part.

Bibliography

• British Air Ministry. Rise and Fall of the German Air Force (1948, 1969), excellent official British history
• Claasen, Adam R. A.Hitler's Northern War: The Luftwaffe's Ill-Fated Campaign, 1940-1945. (2001). 338 pp.
• Corum, James S. and Muller, Richard R. The Luftwaffe's Way of War: German Air Force Doctrine, 1911-1945. (1998). 295 pp.
• Harvey, A.D. "The Soviet Air Force versus the Luftwaffe: History Today. 52#1 (January 2002) pp 48+ in EBSCO and online edition
• Griehl, Manfred. Luftwaffe over America: The Secret Plans to Bomb the United States in World War II. (2004). 256 pp.
• Hayward, Joel. Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitler's Defeat in the East, 1942-1943 (2001) excerpt and text search
• Murray, Williamson. Luftwaffe: Strategy for Defeat, 1933-1945 (1985), the standard scholarly history excerpt and text search
• Overy, Richard J. The Air War, 1939-1945 (1981), sophisticated interpretation of all major powers
• Overy, Richard. Goering (1984) excerpt and text search
• Overy, Richard. The Battle of Britain: The Myth and the Reality (2002) excerpt and text search
• Spick, Mike. Luftwaffe Fighter Aces: the Jagdflieger and their Combat Tactics and Techniques (1996);

Primary Sources

• Galland, Adolf. The First and the Last: German Fighter Forces in World War II (1955)
• Orange, Vincent. "The German Air Force Is Already 'The Most Powerful in Europe': Two Royal Air Force Officers Report on a Visit to Germany, 6-15 October 1936." Journal of Military History 2006 70(4): 1011-1028. Issn: 0899-3718 Fulltext: Ebsco

See also

• Battle of Britain
• World War II, air war