RAF vs Luftwaffe pilot training 1940.

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The number is from Boog's "Die deutsche Luftwaffenführung 1935-1945: Führungsprobleme, Spitzengliederung, Generalstabsausbildung".
His primary reference was Kriepe and Koster's "Die fliegerische Ausbildung in der deutschen Luftwaffe".
This, in its translated form as "Technical Training Within the German Luftwaffe" is the US document which I referred to and quoted from above. I have read the entire, large, document over the years but have never seen figures specific to 1940. The fact that Boog didn't give any either makes me feel that they are probably not available.
The US version is unpublished and available on microfilm from the Air Force Historical Research Agency (which was based at Maxwell AFB and may still be). I have a photographed and scanned version which is just about readable, but I don't remember where it came from.
Cheers
Steve
 
The Luftwaffe operated an Air Sea Rescue Service (Seenotdienst der Luftwaffe) to attempt to save aircrew lost in the Channel/North Sea. The British did not. The British also considered German floatplanes, clearly marked with red crosses in accordance with international law, and unarmed, valid targets. The excuse for this was that the Germans were using these aircraft to report the position of British shipping, a charge vehemently and consistently denied by the Luftwaffe.

On 9th July 1940 an He 59 B-2 of Seenotflug Kdo. 1 alighted on the sea as soon as it was attacked by Spitfires. It was subsequently taken under tow by the Walmer Lifeboat and beached. The aircraft was unarmed and according to the RAF's own report, painted white all over with red crosses and carried the civil registration D-ASUO. The aircraft was noted as carrying stretchers, a rubber dinghy, oxygen apparatus and other medical supplies. All five crew were registered with the Red Cross in Geneva. The captured Germans were keen to explain their role and a log belonging to another aircraft found on board even detailed the rescue of an RAF airman (Sqn. Ldr. Doran of No. 110 Squadron) and the retrieval and attempted resuscitation of his drowned observer. The Germans were under the impression that a mistake had been made when they were attacked. Unfortunately they were the ones mistaken, and British policy was to regard these aircraft as combatants.

This was a very grey area, but the British were certainly skirting the darker side of the grey scale in this case. With hindsight I find the policy difficult to justify, but then I would also be guilty of presentism. I was not there in 1940 and the people who made the decisions at the time would certainly have felt that they were justified.

Cheers

Steve
 
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The issue of attacking rescue aircraft also came up in regard to shooting pilots who had bailed out. Dowding's policy is discussed here. The Most Dangerous Enemy

In a discussion of shooting at parachutes, I saw an analysis that Dowding consulted the "Rules of War" and concluded that it WAS legal to shoot at crew who would be able to return to service. It was NOT legal to shoot at those who would become prisoners. In other words, you can shoot at pilots only over their home territory. This would be consistent with shooting at German rescue aircraft.

As others have commented, the Luftwaffe was adamant that their pilots were attacked in parachutes many times. Allied pilots never admitted to it.
 
I saw a programme with a USAF pilot saying he did, because he had seen the German pilot shoot at an American on a parachute earlier, I was surprised, not that he did it but that he admitted it. I have no doubt that it happened, I don't make any judgement because I wasn't there. Enemy pilots were killed by mobs of civilians on both sides, pilots "kills" are lauded today and Aces are revered, to make a huge distinction between the pilot in a plane and on a parachute is splitting hairs in my opinion.
 
There had been so many breaches of the International rules of war by both sides by this stage of the war, moreso by the germans than the allies though I might add, as to make the breaching of yet one more convention on the operation of war somewhat academic. Both sides only observed the rules so to speak from an early stage in the war, where it suited them. clearly the survival and rescue of LW aircrew was a one sided issue....there were not that many FC pilots going down over german controlled territory. in the coming year, control of the skies over the channel was to be an issue hotly contested and often forgotten. it was to be a contest ultimately won by the RAF (or so they thought, until "Cerberus") by which time this whole issue had diminished in significance greatly. by then the waters of the channel were again under almost total RN and RAF control, indeed many of the Channel/Nth Sea and Atlantic ports except those that had been fortified, or outside fighter range were no longer of much use to the Germans. this was probably the only claim to success for the RAF in 1941 that carries any validity.
 
Reegor said:
As others have commented, the Luftwaffe was adamant that their pilots were attacked in parachutes many times. Allied pilots never admitted to it.
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All sides claimed that they had been attacked in parachutes from time to time, and it undoubtedly happened on occasion.

I have always subscribed to the view that this was a self regulating phenomena, and relatively uncommon. If one side started to attack men in parachutes as a matter of course the other would surely respond in kind. Any pilot attacking one day might easily find himself the attacked on a later day, hence the self regulation.

I would say in the hundreds of combat reports I have read I can't recall a single admission of an attack on a man in a parachute, it was obviously considered unacceptable. I can recall at least one admission of an intentional attack on a pilot as he struggled to bail out, and several of attacks on pilots who had made a forced landing and were escaping their downed aircraft, including men down in the Channel.

It is also relatively rare to find accounts in combat reports claiming to have witnessed attacks on men in parachutes, and in this case there would be no moral impediment to making such a report.

Cheers

Steve
 

I completely agree, but the British must have known they were on thin ice. They justified the practice by claiming that the Luftwaffe rescue aircraft were being used as spotters. I wonder if the Germans complained to the Red Cross about it? It is quite possible and might explain the British attempts at justification.
Both sides used the international and neutral press to make their cases, and at this time the British were mounting a concerted campaign in the US press to influence US public opinion.
Cheers
Steve
 
Why waste bullets when flying close to the parachute would have the parachute canopy collapse.
 
Milosh said:
Why waste bullets when flying close to the parachute would have the parachute canopy collapse.
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I am in no way suggesting thet the Luftwaffe was the only air force to engage in such attacks, but here are a couple of instances in which RAF pilots from No. 605 Squadron, in parachutes, were attacked. One was keen to emphasise that the wound he received was not from this attack, but earlier, before he abandoned his aircraft.

Sgt. W M F Moffat.

"I abandoned the aircraft but was knocked out doing so. On regaining consciousness I opened the parachute at approximately 3,000 feet. I saw about twelve to fourteen Me 109s reforming above me, when four peeled off from the left of their formation and dived on me in line astern. The first three dived past me very close but the last opened fire whilst I was facing it. All his fire went through my rigging lines and envelope, tearing the envelope considerably so that I landed heavily, breaking my left leg."

F/Lt. G W B Austin.

"Whilst returning from an offensive patrol over Arras on 22nd May,1940, I was forced to abandon my Hurricane aircraft after being attacked by Me 109s, the reason being that my aircraft was on fire, having received a burst of machine gun fire through the gravity tank.
I was wounded in the leg BEFORE abandoning the aircraft.
As I was descending by parachute I heard a machine fairly close, but could not see anything as my face was covered with blood.
I was NOT hit during the parachute descent.
Two soldiers in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment said that they had watched the Me 109 circle round me after my parachute had opened, and heard him fire his guns during my descent."

Neither man has any reason to make this up. Austin in particular seems unwilling to admit that the German airman had in fact fired on him, the capitals are in his original report.

Moffat is in no doubt what happened.

Incidents like this may well have opened the debate about what was and what wasn't lawful concerning men in parachutes.

Cheers

Steve
 
By the same token I read an account of a German He111 (offshore from Scotland as I remember). It had one engine shot up and had lowered its undercarriage in surrender. While being escorted by some RAF planes, another flight came and shot it down and crashed. The pilots who were escorting the bomber were far from impressed, and in terms of waging war a captured LW plane and its crew in 1939/40 was worth more than a written report that one had been shot down.
 
On 15th August 1940 Uffz Otto Rezeppa and the rest of the crew of a Ju 88 made a forced landing following attacks by British fighters. One of the crew (Wilhelm Rimek) was killed and Rezeppa wounded in the right leg. He was taken to a hospital in Chichester where he met a British pilot, wounded in the shoulder, who he suspected might be the one who had shot down him down. According to Rezeppa this RAF pilot remarked that Rezeppa was lucky as he would now survive the war, whilst he was not sure that he would.

It is difficult to surrender an aircraft in the air. I have read several accounts in which when a bomber stopped returning fire the RAF fighters also stopped. If the bomber then clearly showed signs of landing they would allow it to do so. I have no doubt that if the bomber attempted an escape the attacks would have resumed.
In the case above Rezeppa attempted to indicate his aircraft's surrender by waving his handkerchief at one of the attacking Hurricanes. We'll never know if his signal was seen, but they were allowed to land.

A lot of bad things happen in war, but above was a meeting of two young men who should have been contesting a football, not trying to kill each other in the skies of Sussex. It's a lesson so often forgotten one wonders if anyone actually reads history anymore.

Cheers

Steve
 
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I think it was John Keegan wrote* that surrenders were frequently not honored for small groups of soldiers during operations.

*It may have been Gwynn Dwyer. I've forgotten the source.
 
Re; Shooting men in parachutes.

I was looking at some of the orders around the expected (by some) German invasion in 1940. There was much panic spread about the possibility of invading parachute troops (as paratroops were commonly called). The under-secretary at the War Office, Lord De La Warr, told parliament that the Germans could land as many as 100,000 of them, though from where he plucked that number we'll never know!
Anyway, one report read:

"Information from Norway shows that German parachute troops, when descending, hold their arms above their heads as if surrendering. The parachutist, however, holds a grenade in each hand. To counter this strategy parachutists, if they exceed six in number, are to be treated as hostile and if possible shot in the air."

My bold.

Now the report of paratroops descending clutching grenades is obvious nonsense, but, by implication, a small number, or single parachutist, as might be expected from a downed bomber or fighter, were not automatically to be considered hostile. The implication is that such men should not be shot in the air, though it didn't stop troops and members of the LDV blazing away at anyone, friend or foe, floating down over the English countryside.
 
stona said:
The under-secretary at the War Office, Lord De La Warr, told parliament that the Germans could land as many as 100,000 of them, though from where he plucked that number we'll never know!
Click to expand...

Right at that time there was a leaked/intercepted order to a Vienna firm for 125,000 parachutes that created quite a stir amongst at least a few British officials.

I'm reminded of the media kerfuffle surrounding a leaked Pentagon order for 16,000 body bags prior to Desert Storm ...
 
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Maybe that's where he got the idea!
Lord knows what they were supposed to jump from, specially after the substantial losses of Ju 52s in the shambolic parachute assaults in Holland.
The British would have been comforted to know that most now agree that the Luftwaffe lost something like 280 transports during these assaults. At the time they had no way of knowing.
Cheers
Steve
 
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