Defeat of the Luftwaffe

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The book 'The Last Year of the Luftwaffe: May 1944 - May 1945' makes an interesting read.
In many respects the LW entered 1944 with some good cause for optimism given the new planes about to enter service looking at the map Germany still controlled a lot of territory.

But I agree, German arms, including the LW, were not just beaten but utterly smashed to pieces, as total and comprehensive defeat as could be imagined.

As Tante Ju says rightly this was first and foremost a defeat on the ground (but not forgetting the sea and air too).
 
drgondog said:
We need to disagree here. The Wermacht was paralyzed at Normandy with respect to mobility in daylight
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That's a great exaggeration. Not all German army movements happened at night.

I might add that the withdrawal of thosands of 88mm and 120mm artillary from the front to be redeployed around critical industrial assets, plus the re-deployment of troops to man them,
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No such thing happened. In fact, the number of light and heavy Flak batteries on the Eastern Front in 1944 increased by more than 100% compared with 1943. There was no "troop re-deployment" to man the Flak guns in Germany (also, FYI, by 1944 40% of the Flak arm consisted of auxiliaries -young, women, former POW-). And there was not 120mm Flak gun.
in plus the massive re-deployment of desparately needed armor from the East in fall of 1944- to launch the surprise attack in the Ardennes
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Again, completely wrong: no Panzer unit was withdraw from the East to launch the "WACHT AM RHEIN" and "NORDWIND" offensives.
 

You are correct - it was twin 128mm flak batteries. As to 'Flak Batteries' in the context of the East - they were deployed as anti-tank batteries but the deployment of critical additional AAA capability of the 88's (and 128mm) were to the key cities and industrial areas to the detriment of deployment to the East where they were most needed to stop Soviet armor. More below from Speer.

The Wermacht Strategic Reserve, destined to oppose the Soviet winter Offensive was stripped and comprised the bulk of the attacking forces after moving west. Quibble about whether withdrawing from the East Front or taking the Strategic Reserves to back up the east front is meaningful.

As to the effect of the Allied air strikes from the West, relative to reducing capability of deploying flak batteries and/or additional manpower to the East:

From Albert Speer, pg 278 "Inside the Third Reich'
"Our heaviest expense was in fact the elaborate defensive measures. In the Reich and in the western theatres of war were the barrels of ten thousand antiaircraft guns were pointed toward the sky. The same guns could have well been employed in Russia against tanks and other ground targets. Had it not benn for the air front over Germany, our defensivestrength against Russian tanks would have been doubled, as far as equipment was concerned. Moreover the antiaircraft force tied down hundreds of thousands of young soldiers. A third of the optical industry was producing gunsights for the flak batteries. About half of the electronics industry was engaged in producing radar and communication networks for defense against bombing. Simply because of this, in spite of the high level of the German electronics and communication and optical industries, the supply of our frontline troops with modern equipment remained far behind that of the Western armies."

On page 406
"In July (1944) I had written Hitler that by September all tactical movements would necessarily come to a standstill for lack of fuel. Now this prediction was confirmed."
"When I visted the commander of the training company informed me that his student pilots could only have flight practice for an hour every week."
"Meanwhile the Army, to, had become virtually immobile because of the fuel shortage".
"General Jodl, of course, knew even better than I did how great the emergency was. In order to free the seventeen thousand tons-forming the production of two and a half days- for the Ardennes offensive, he had to withold fuel from other Army groups on November 10, 1944"


"In the meanwhile the attacks on the hydrogeneration plants had directly affected the entire chemical industry.. actually from October, 1944 our explosives consisted of 20 percent rock salt, which affected their effectiveness correspondingly"

On the effect to mobility at Normandy. pg 355, relative to throwing the OKW reserve in France against the Anglo-American beachead on June 6-7
"The two armored divisions were delayed. By daylight of the 7th their deployment was held up by enemy bombers, and even before they made contact with the enemy they suffered severe losses in men and material"

On the cumulative effect of Western airpower on German industry, pg 414.

"On November 11 a new note of alarm entered my frequent memoranda on shutdowns in the fuel industry. For more than six weeks traffic to and from the Ruhr area had been blocked. It is self evident, given the whole nature of the Reich's econmoic structure that cessation of production in the Rhine-Westphalian industrial area is intolerable for successful conduct of the war. The most important armaments plants are reported on the verge of going under"
"
 
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Yeah, those words work better. Although what happen in Falaise had a lot more to do with the German forces being outflanked and eventually encircled by ground Allied forces than the effects of Air Power.

Well, in the case of the 12.8cm gun it could never be withdraw from the front, since it was never deployed on it (until the front came to them, or course). And I'd say that was useless as an AT gun (too big).
And, no, even in the East, the flak batteries functioned mostly as... Flak batteries, also supported by the fact of the increased deployment of searchlights batteries on that front (0 in 1942, 43 by 1944).
Believe or not, the Germans also had to defend things against air attack in the East too.

I don't know about that "Strategic Reserve" that you mention, but the armor assembled to the attack came mostly from the refitting of the units that were already in the West, and you specifically said "re-deployment of desparately needed armor from the East", which as I said, is wrong.

As for the rest, I don't deny the effects of having a large part of the German forces deployed against the Western Armies and Air Forces (the opposite works too, right?), but just wanted to point out some inaccuracies, to put it mildly.
 
single 12.8cm were mounted on railcars and delivered to the appropriate spots in the Ruhrgebiet and then removed as needed for camo or to other possible target sectors, the zwilling was a stationary mounting on the heavy flak towers of Berlin, Hamburg and Wien.

88 and 105s on the Ost front provided a dual role configuration in the LW as well as the armored panzern div's in their respective Flak Abteilungs with the 8.8cm gun.
 
I've seen the flak towers mentioned many times always was amused at the thought that peace-time apparantly saw the Hamburg tower converted into a nightclub.
Someone once said something similar to 'let our revenge be the laughter of the children' which sprang to mind.
 
Understanding German flak movements is complex and incomplete so its hard to make dogmatic comments either way. For a reasonable on line resource for the regular units I would recomm4end the following


Flak units

Samuuel Mitcham - The German army Order of Battle WWII, Dorsetr Press - 1985

Ian Hogg - The German Army order of Battle 1944, Hippocrene Books 1975

Westermann EB, Flak - Geran AA defences 1914-45, Kansas University Press 2003

In 1939 through to 1942, the German flak batteries were separately manged, one part by the army with mostly light flak units and generally attached to field divisions. There was a second force, under LW control, employing about 1.2 million men and organised into 24 Flak Divisions. The paramilitary contribution at this time was quite small

According to Westermann, German flak efficiency reached its peak in 1942, with the general introduction of radar guidance, and fully trained flak crews. Average ammunition expenditure per kill against strat egic bombers was about 4000 rpk. Average gun failures was about 30 per month for several million barrels.

From 1942 to the end of 1943 ther was some shifting ofregular flak units to the frontlines....about 8 divisions. On the eastern front at the time of Kursk ther were four flak divisions that I know of. Operations on the eastern front were hazardous, since the LW flak units were usually deployed as front line anti tank and anti -personnel units. They suffered heavy casualties in this capacity. further, in the crisis of 1944, some units of the regular flak units were returned to Germany.

From 1942, through to 1944, ther was an exponent5ial growth in paramilitary flak units. Over a million men were employed in this role. More than 80% of german ordinance production (by dollar investment) was flak production, and more than 70% of this was allocated to the home defence flak formations. The Germans got a generally poor return for this investment. Gone were the trained crews....it nbow took an average of 16000 shell to kill each bomber, and gun failures went off the chart....over 300 accidents per month in 1944.

Using half trained militias to man the flak batteries was a false economy for the germans....it finished up lessning the effectiveness of their flak park, did affect production as well and made the flak arm a generally uneconomic proposition. IMO the germans would have been better off taking a few of those 1 million part timers...putting the majority back into full time employment, and training a further 300000 or so as full timers (from the million part timers....combining that with the 300000 regulars redeployed back to Germany historically. that would have given the Germans 600000 properly trained flak personnel, as opposed to 1 million half trained, and 300000 trained guys. They would have been better off with fully trained guys, and lettering the remainder sit out the raids in the air raid shelters. The draft into the flak arm by the home guard etc was only ever seen as a proper ganda stunt mostly to pander to Hitlers mania for all things that go bang in the night
 

8,8cm Flak was integral to TOE of Panzer Division since war begun in 1939. They were never meant to be primarly ground weapons, but used on occasion with great success because of some properties that were advantagous (good ballistics). It was an anti aircraft gun, after all.

12,8cm Flak was never deployed on front, they were rare, their high altitude performance was complete unneccsary.

BTW, the 8,8cm Flak was quite cheap compared to building thousends of bombers. One FlaK 18 costed 33 000 RM, whereas a Bf 109 ca. 45 000, and a He 111 around 250 000. I suppose a viermot in German, like He 177, would cost at least 500-600 000 RM, now please compare that to cost of gun. For every heavy bomber price, you could build 20(!) heavy Flak...

Also there seem to be hardly increasing preference to Luftwaffe (mainly guns at home defence, but also some guns in frontline were directed under LW) to Heer. Receivence of Flak guns, by Heer and total production (% of total production Heer units received)

1941 : 126 / 1872 (6,7 %) - total production worth: 61 M RM,-
1942 : 176 / 2876 (6,1 %) - total production worth: 95 M RM,-
1943 : 296 / 4416 (6,7 %) - total production worth: 145 M RM,-
1944 : 549 / 5933 (9,2% ) - total production worth: 195 M RM,-

So, regardless of what Speer laments, truth is that Army received 50% greater share and almost twice the number of Flak guns in 1944, than in 1943... and as for costs, even at peak all 8,8 cm Flak gun production (to be fair, the cost is a bit higher because 10,5cm and 12,8cm guns were also produced) cost as much as a single of the Bismarck class ship (196 RM).

German Army bottleneck was never weapons, anyway. It was manpower, and fuel.. weapons they had more than enough.


Wien flaktower, on of them is converted to storage of modern art. I think its all well, because its safe, and modern art is so ugly anyway its better if locked away.

BTW it looks really weird in its surroundings. Huge (and I mean HUGE) concreate building in the midst of really nice park, with nice classical buildings around it.. then, this monstrosity. People who have house there must love that if they look out of window they just see an inductructable concrete wall.
 
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Hello Tante Ju
thanks for the interesting info on how many of AA guns was allocated for Heer.


That wasn't so, but during early in the war PzDivs usually had LW Flak.Abt. attached to them later GHQ Heeres Fla.Abt., during early part of 42 the 11 PzDivs (out of 25) which have had these semi-permanently attached Flak.Abt:en, usually these divs were those taking part in Oper. Blau had these Flak.Abt:en permanently assigned to their Arty Rgts as IVth battalion. But because the result was the (mis)use of the Flak guns as field arty in 1943 there AA battalions revereted back to being GHQ troops.

Tante Ju said:
German Army bottleneck was never weapons, anyway. It was manpower, and fuel.. weapons they had more than enough.
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I disagree, just looking for combat divs material states clearly shows permanent lack of heavy weapons, which got progressively worse after winter 41-42, many batteries lost their 4th gun, A/T battalions usually had clearly fewer A/T guns than they should, PzDivs were chronically short of tanks etc.

Juha
 

First thanks for the note on Pz Div table, I did a quick check and found that 88s were issued to 1942 Pz Div Gliederung, but did not know it was only apply to Fall Blau troops.

Here however things get a bit complicated, since LW was responsible for operating heavy Flak, in units that nominally under central GHQ command, in practice they could be often find permanent attached to division with important task..

As for permanent lack of heavy weapons, it depends on how close you look at the picture. Big picture or microscoping.. I agree that typical for EF front division was not to have its Sollstaerke, actual Iststaerke was random array of weapons, usually well below Sollstaerke.. but I disagree you conclusion - it was a result of the heavy combat on the EF, in heavy combat, constant heavy losses you will never find a unit that matches the paper TOE. It was equally true for Russians.. they had severe manpower shortage by 1944, desperately filled by drafting re-liberated populace, mobilization of women etc.

Equipment in actual divisions never seem to reach paper levels, expect before offensives, when units were refilled, but did not stay such state for long. Same story of German side, when a Pz Div appeared on the front back from refill at Hinterland, they had all their shiny toys.. for a week or so. But this is IMHO normal if you are in combat. US troops looked very nice when landed in Normandy, but by Ardennes, look how some divisions looked like, tattered, much of the equipment lost or not working.. yet I doubt US had lack of heavy weapons, but replacements did not happen instant.

I stand that German production was more than enough. Planes, tanks.. thats why numbers kept increasing despite very heavy losses isnt it, how else, if there was lack of equipment? For example in late 1944 there were enough surplus Panthers to create some all-new Panther Brigades (which however didnt work well at all - the idea was to create modern "firefigter" units - but fresh units from scratch didnt have experience, and fared badly). Or for example SS Pz divisions like LSSAH, filled up before Normandy, lost nearly all equipment; filled up again for Ardennes, again lost near all equipment; filled up AGAIN for Balaton offensive, even extended into a Panzer Army, again lost all equipment. In 9 months the unit was complete reequipped 3 times, this doesnt sound like to me as lack of equipment. Again if you look at production numbers, it simply isnt case - Jentz has good figures for Panzern, for example.

Also looking at Milosh numbers of tanks, ironic it seems that in January 1945 German had the most Panzer and SPA ever - something like 13 000 in total on all fronts, more than twice and half than they had in 1941.. numbers kept steady increasing to wars end, so I have difficulty of believing a lack of heavy weapons. But maintaining these weapons become progressive more difficult. Fighting was much more intense, losses were constant, and transportation wrecked by both worsening of railway and fuel situation.

Overall looking at USSBS fuel graphs (consumption - production) it seems to me the real limit for German to field even more tanks was really fuel. Same reason, often mentioned (truly) as weakness of German army, weak motorization, has probably same reason. If you produce 100 fuel, and 100 unit of trucks, and current tanks and trucks already consume 98 unit of fuel, whats good for you if you pruduce 200 fuel and 200 trucks? They cant go anywhere without fuel supplies equally increased.. so probably the level of motorization in German army was maximum in relation to fuel availabilty. Just an observation.
 
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Tante Ju said:
Here however things get a bit complicated, since LW was responsible for operating heavy Flak, in units that nominally under central GHQ command, in practice they could be often find permanent attached to division with important task.
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Yes, it was usual that PzDiv had a Flak.Abt. semi-permanently attached, but not all of them had that all time when they were at front.


IMHO not so, it was fairly normal after 41/42 winter that field arty batteries had only 3 guns, that 25%-50% less than in the field batteries of most other combatants had. 4.PzD for ex had most of 42 only one PzCoy worth of tanks while it wasn't constantly exposed to heavy fighting, those PzDivs fighting in South had got most of replacement tanks in Spring/early Summer 42 and continued to get most of replacement tanks to late 42. Only in early 43, after collapse of southern part of the front and Soviets advancing fast towards Kursk when 4th PzD was hastly sent to there it got one or two StuG. Abtailung(en) for attachment and 28 Marder SP A/T guns as reinforcements. Germany simply lacked permanent tank parks were one could get immediate replacements, compare what happened to 11th Armoured Div (UK) after first day of Goodwood, crews of knocked out tanks had went to rear to collect replacement tanks and drove them forward during the night. German and in lesser extent Soviet units tended to fight with fewer and fewer tanks until they were withrawn to rear for re-equiptment and rest just because they didn't have sufficient number of reserve equipment to keep up with attrition. This was just the reason why German PzDivs desperately tried to patch up their tanks locally. They had learned that if they sent their tank to rear for proper repairs the odds were they would not see it again or get a replacement either. There was too great risk that the repaired tank would be sent to another div which the GHQ thought needed replacements more desperately or to a new unit because Hitler thought that more units was better, no matter of their actual strength.

Tante Ju said:
It was equally true for Russians.. they had severe manpower shortage by 1944, desperately filled by drafting re-liberated populace, mobilization of women etc..
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I agree with that, Soviet manpower resources were not endless, in fact they had about twice the population of Germany in 1941.


Now the PzBrigs were created around PzAbt:en from existing PzDivs which had been sent to Germany to be converted to Panther Abt:en of those divs. Now the creation of those PzBigs meant that those PzDivs were left with only one Pz.Abt. equipped with PzIVs. IMHO that sort rob Paul so you can give to Peter only shows how desperatively short of tanks Germany was. You are right that in the absolute numbers the Panzer arm became stronger but TOEs became more and more unrealistic because units were constantly underequipped and so the proportion of the tail became bigger and bigger when compared to the fighting elements. That ws very uneconomical. In the end Germans decided that they could equip their Panzer divs with only one tank battalion and so born the TOE of 1945 PzD. That didn't mean that Germans tought that 1:4 was optimal relationship with tanks:infantry only that that was best they could try to achieve.

The scarity of fuel was a fact, but IMHO Germans didn't solve their problem in best way, fewer divs with fewer less important vehicles and with more firepower and tanks would have been IMHO better optio for resources available. The tendency of create new formations and re-create the destroyed ones when there wasn't enough equipment for the existing ones was very stupid. Hitler was the main culprit for this but not the only one, for ex. Guderian, the inspector of Panzertruppe, wanted to re-create the Pz formations lost in Stalingrad even if several existing PzDivs were badly underequipped.

Juha
 
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That's incorrect, most Pz.Brigaden were created around newly formed Abteinlungen, and only the 111-113 Brigaden were assigned existing Pz.Abt., not in process to convert to Panther, but actually recently formed, and in no case the divisions that were supposed to receive those Abt. were left only with the Pz.IV Abt.
They received other Panther Abt., I./Pz.Reg 24 for the 116.Pz, and I./Pz.Reg 6 for the Pz.Lehr, as their "original" Panther Abt. were not ready by the time they have to move to Normandy.
 
Hoju2k said:
That's incorrect, most Pz.Brigaden were created around newly formed Abteinlungen, and only the 111-113 Brigaden were assigned existing Pz.Abt.
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I checked and yes You are right. Thanks for correction.


In this I disagree, only I./PzR 130, which was assigned to PzBrig 113, seems to be a new battalion.

I./PzR 16 was assigned to PzBrig 111. It was the former Pz.Abt 116, the Pz.Abt of the famous 16.Inf.Div.(mot) and originally it was created as I./PzR 1, created on 1 Oct 35, difficult to get older lineage for a panzer abt in WM.

I./PzR 29was assigned to PzBrig 112, PzR 29 was created on 1 Oct 1940 and was assigned to 12. PzD on 10 Jan 1941 so the battalion wasn't a new one. 12.PzD was sent from AG Nord to AG Mitte in late June 44 in an effort to try to avert the catastrophe looming there. It fought very well but surely missed its Panther Abt, it had only 35 PzIV(lg)s and 9 PzIII(lg)s under its control when it was committed to try to open an escape route to those units trying to break out from Bobruisk. And did it ever got its Panther battalion?

When 116. PzD got I./PzR 24 that means that the 24. PzD didn't got it. IIRC 24th never got its Panther battalion.

When PzD Lehr got I./PzR 6 that meant that 3.PzD had to fought its hard battles in the East without its Panther battalion during Summer and Autumn 44.

So it was still robbing Paul to give Peter.

Juha
 
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Tante Ju said:
Wien flaktower, on of them is converted to storage of modern art. I think its all well, because its safe, and modern art is so ugly anyway its better if locked away.
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The 8.8cm calibre was a common calibre and covered a multitude of guns. The most well known was the FLAK 37 8.8cm anti-aircraft gun. This gun was less powerfull than its US 90mm cunterpart or the British 3.7 inch 34 pounder. However it was also much lighter, had optics capabile of engaging ground targets and could also depress sufficiently to engage ground targets. It was mobile enough to travel with the troops as it was much lighter. The gun was of course of great use in dealing with difficult targets such as the Matilda or T-34 tank when the typical 5.0cm PAK guns were barely adaquete. However latter 7.5cm german AT guns could deal with the T-34 and Sherman almost as well and had higher mobillity and profile to boot.

The more sophisticated and heavier 10.5cm and 12.8cm guns featured automatic fuze setting mechanisms and auto-loaders. The FLAK 37 8.8cm simply hit the sweet spot even though its power against aircraft fell of after 20,000ft. (more than enough for defending against the medium and light bombers that would be attacking troops). The KWK 36 L56 of the Tiger 1 was essentially a different gun of about the same power. The 8.8cm FLAK 37 was to be replaced with the very much more powerfull 8.8cm FLAK 41 which could engage aircraft such as Oboe carrying mosquitos to 40,000ft or smash through 200mm of armour. It was much heavier than the FLAK 37 but still considerably lighter than its US and UK equivalents due to the use of clever engineering and techniques such as firing on the recuperation to keep vibration down. It featuered power loading and auto fuze setting. I had much lower profile than the FLAK 37 and was thus easier to hide and use as an AT gun. A few were deployed to Nth Africa however problems occured when steel cartridges replaced brass ones as they expanded an get caught at the seam of the multi piece barrel sleeve. They ended up being withdrawn to the Riech untill the gun could be re-engineered. The 10.5cm guns was less mobile and the 12.8cm gun less mobile still but their power was not necessary to protect troops as stratospheric high altutude attacks on troops would be excedingly rare.

Also appearing was the 8.8cm PAK 43 a powerfull purpose built AT gun of similar power to the FLAK 41 but of different design and manufacture. The KWK 43 L71 of the Tiger II was again a slightly differrent gun though I believe ammunition was compatible.

Clearly however a lot of munitions was spent on air defense that could better have been used to deal with Soviet tanks.
 
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