How Nazi Germany doomed the Luftwaffe...

When Charles Lindbergh visited Germany several times in 1937-38, he was impressed with the Luftwaffe's aircraft & advised a US commission the US should build more & better military aircraft. His advice wasn't heeded much til the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor & the superiority of the Japanese planes was seen.

But Hitler planted the seed of doom for the Luftwaffe by making Hermann Goering its head. While Goering had been an excellent WW1 flier with 22 victories & winning the Blue Max. But as a commander of an air force, he was vastly unqualified. He knew nothing of strategy, believed "his" Luftwaffe could do anything an air force was capable of, including supplying land forces, & some of his appointments into high office in the Luftwaffe were disastrous.

Perhaps his worst move was making Ernst Udet as head of equipment production. Udet had been a brilliant WW1 pilot with 62 victories & a squadron commander, but he knew nothing about aircraft production & development, & hated administrative duties. He cancelled a Heinkel Co. turbojet in 1937 that would've been WW2's best aircraft, at least at the war's start. He cancelled a heavy bomber being made by the Junkers Co. as unnecessary. He almost cancelled Messerschmitt's jet, delaying its manufacture til it was too late for it to really affect the war's outcome. He allowed all german aircraft production to become clogged with bureaucratic paper work, left parts manufacture haphazard, & was poor at procuring raw materials for plane-making. Thus, aircraft production fell far behind that of Britain. (Udet killed himself in 1941, but the damage by then was irreversible.)

And Goering tried several projects that didn't work. In the Battle of Britain against the RAF, he began with the right strategy - Bomb the radar towers & bases, and the sector airfields that vectored the RAF fighters onto the german formations. But he became dissatisfied because the destruction of radar facilities wasn't going fast enough to suit him, & his attacks of Fighter Command weren't going fast enough to please him, either. Unknown to Goering, his attacks were quite-effective, & Fighter Command was in peril. But he abandoned his war against Fighter Command for other British targets, giving the British the respite they needed to strengthen Fighter Command to make effective resistance.

Goering's attempts to prevent the Dunkirk evacuation failed, as did his attempt to fully supply the German forces in Russia from the air. And his failure to put people in charge of production to keep the Luftwaffe adequately supplied with planes, fuel, & parts led to its being overwhelmed.

 

Goering was in complete agreement. He didn't know how effective his war against the RAF actually was. he was going on the number of planes the RAF still had & not the loss of its combat-ready pilots, which was acute, with only some 130 experienced pilots left. Another 2 weex of attax against the radar facilities & sector airfields would've crippled the RAF Fighter Command to the point it couldn't defend Britain. But the british wisely concealed this from the Germans as much as possible.

Goering had started his onslaught correctly, sending in swarms of fighters to engage the RAF fighters & pave the way for the bombers that followed, a tactic employed successfully by Britain & later the USA against both Germany & Japan. But Goering abandoned this, ordering the fighters to fly close escort for the Stukas & other bombers, thus making it easy for the British to intercept them.

Another factor was the Luftwaffe's "Intelligence Officer", one 'Beppo' Schmid, who had never visited Britain before the war, knew nothing about the British aircraft, & formulated his "intelligence reports" outta thin air. He told Goering the RAF was collapsing, which was the opposite of the truth, & convinced both him & Hitler that there was no use fighting directly against the RAF any more, as it was almost-finished. he was Goering's close friend, & thus Goering took him at his word, while most other Luftwaffe leaders considered him a fool & an idiot.

OTOH, the British had Max Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, as Minister of Aircraft Production. This extremely-talented businessman organized the British aircraft makers into assembly lines, made sure to supply all the raw materials they needed, created a Chain Home Command to repair or salvage damaged aircraft & return them so service ASAP if possible, & organized many parts makers, fuel suppliers, & research facilities so that the RAF generally had an ample supply of the best available aircraft, with models being improved all the time. Thus, Britain vastly outpaced Germany in aircraft making.

 

My descriptions are based upon an extensive study of history from several sources, including what my dad had picked up from British pilots & captured German ones. I hope you're able to come up with that book & a link to it !

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH...

goering also contributed largely to the German 6th Army's defeat at Stalingrad. When their supply lines were cut, he convinced Hitler that he could keep them, and the Luftwaffe units supporting them, supplied by air. He didn't have nearly enough transport planes to deliver more than a tenth of the MINIMUM supplies some 300K men needed to fight-and live. For awhile, it was possible that other German units could've worked in conjunction with the 6th Army to have opened a corridor thru the Russians to enable them to fight on & perhaps win, but Goering's vanity made it impossible.

The supporting Luftwaffe units were ill-supplied as well, but they could send their planes to pick up some supplies. however, when the 6th Army fell, they had to pack up & retreat. (The Russian air units were becoming stronger, with modern aircraft & their famed, highly-skilled flock of female pilots.)

 

S'more of Goering's petulance & harmful interference with the Luftwaffe...


Jagdgeschwader 53 was one of Germany's oldest & most-respected fighter squadrons, distinguishing itself in the Battle of Britain & became the home unit of many of Germany's greatest WW2 aces. It was nicknamed the "Ace Of Spades"squadron, with an ace of spades symbol painted on its planes.

But in 1940, Goering found that the wife of its commander, Major Hans-Jurgen Erdmann von Cramon-Taubadel, had some Jewish ancestry, & Goering removed him from command, relegating him to staff duties for the rest of the war, & made the unit remove its ace of spades symbols & replace them with red bands. In protest, the unit painted over the swastikas on their tail fins. (Later, Goering allowed them to replace the ace of spades symbol.) Goering then sent the unit to the Eastern front soon as the attack on Russia began. While they ran up impressive kill totals against the Russians, they would've served Germany much-better by being present to defend it against bomber attacks from Britain.

Major Cramon-Taubedel & his wife survived the war, living til 1985, she til 1988.

 

Hitler's demon left him as France fell. On his own, he was like a 4 yr. old playing "Battleship". His first mistake was not letting his forces take Dunkirk & force the BEF to surrender. Then, he let the incompetent Goering run the "Battle of Britain". The attack on the USSR was a COLOSSAL mistake. Russians have a history of not being too enthused about invading other nations without good reason, but they'll fight to the death for Russia itself if it's attacked. And Hitler's attack was as sneaky as the Japanese attack on us. Thus, the Russians were fully aroused, as we were.

I could write all day about Axis goofs in all theatres, but in this thread, I'll mostly stick to Goering's.

 

Now, why did Hitler choose someone as incompetent as Goering to head the Luftwaffe, especially during Hitler's success years? Because Goering had shown a flair for business. Once appointed, he built the Luftwaffe into a mighty force. But he was like the American general, McClellan, who made the Army of the Potomac into a mighty force, but couldn't competently lead it in battle. Like Goering after him told Hitler, he told Lincoln, "I can do it all", but it turns out he couldn't do anything as General-In-Chief.

While McClellan was paralytically cautious, Goering was over-confident & boastful. But it took his failure to supply the 6th Army at Stalingrad for Hitler to drop him as his "Golden Boy".

BTW, Goering had the Volkswagen factory built at Hitler's request, but only 630 cars were made there during the war, as the factory was converted to war items production. A town was built to house the workers, named "Strength Through Joy City"; after the war it was renamed Wolfsburg, after a nearby castle. That's its name today, & the main VW HQ is still there.

 

The Me 262 was invented before the war, but constant interference by Hitler & Goering kept the company from ironing out its bugs sooner. Also, its first Jumo engines weren't too reliable, used espensive fuel at double the rate of piston engines, was made of scarce strategic materials, & had an operational life of only 35 hours. Finally, most of those probs were overcome, & the first production models flew in 1942. But when Hitler saw a test flight, he decided it could be made into a bomber, & thus, fighter production was scaled back to attempt to make a jet bomber.

Finally, late in 1944, the 262 was placed into service, but it still had many shortcomings that needed to be corrected. It had a short airborne time & limited range. It was not adequately armed. It still had unreliable engines.

Still, it was more than a match for any Allied aircraft, & claimed some 542 victories in its short combat span. The Allies' only counter was to catch them on the ground, or during takeoff or landing, or to sneak up on them in flight, which was hard to do because of their much-greater cruising speed.

The war could've gone much-differently had the 262 been allowed to go into production much-earlier than it did, with most of its problems worked out.("Willi" Messerschmitt, who lived til 1958, left a strong company behind. Most "medevac" copters & many other civilian copters in the USA are Messerschmitts.)