RAF vs Luftwaffe pilot training 1940. (1 Viewer)

[Shortround6]

Norway hadn't helped either.
But rational analysis of German capability seems to have been a bit lacking at the time. Especially considering how much of a disaster most estimates of German vs French capabilities had been. Germans seemed unstoppable after the French campaign.

German superiority being a better excuse than French/allies ineptness.

 

[stona]

Re Losses in Holland:

The incomplete General-Quatiermeister der Luftwaffe returns admit to the loss of 220 transports.

Many others think this is too low.

"Colonel Morzik commanded 430 transport planes at the beginning of the offensive. On the evening of 10th May 280 are lying burned out between the coast and the German border"
Werner Haupt in 'Sieg ohne Lorbeer'.

"Apart from the men who were killed, the loss of transport formations was the most serious: two thirds of the 430 Ju 52s committed didn't return from the Netherlands or were so heavily damaged that they had to be considered as lost. Shot down, destroyed and burnt they are lying on the heavily contested landing zones of Holland. The loss is even more tragic, because the planes have been supplied for the greater part by the schools for aircraft captains of the air force and were flown by instructors who really should be looking after training."
Cajus Bekker in 'Angriffshohe 4000 -Ein Kriegstagebuch der deutschen Luftwaffe'


Cheers

Steve

 

[parsifal]

Losses were higher than that, but I am of the opinion that many of those "losses " were recoveravle. How many crash landed but were returned after the Dutch surrendered? The maths doesn't add up otherwise.

 

[Shortround6]

I believe that quite a number of Ju 52s were recovered from both Norway and the Low Countries, but many of them required rebuilding at the factories and not Luftwaffe maintenance shops.
The total losses do number in the hundreds however.

 

[stona]

I have seen pictures of the remains of German transports at Ockenburg, Ypenburg and Valkenburg on the main road south of Delft, in the dunes near Katwijk-at-Sea and north of the Wassenaarse Slag, from a little project I was involved in several years ago.
Some aircraft are clearly recoverable, for example bogged down on Valkenburg airfield,others are clearly completely destroyed (like those burning at Ockenburg or in the sand dunes, or very substantially damaged along the roadside.
As far as repair goes, at this time anything but a lightly damaged aircraft was going to have to be disassembled and returned, usually by rail, to the manufacturer. In the pictures I have seen there are not many aircraft that were going to go anywhere under their own power.
Luftwaffe losses were very substantial, and certainly influenced future planning of airborne operations. Kesselring said that the Luftwaffe never recovered from the loss of transport aircraft, his Chief of Staff, Spiedel, wrote that the effects were felt for years. All this achieved by Dutch forces no larger and sometimes numerically inferior to the assaulting forces.

Major Werner Pissin wrote in 'Der Einsatz der Luftlandetruppen im Westen 1940'.

"The high losses in men and material that made the landings around The Hague a failure, warned Army Command against a too ambitious design during later intended operations like Seelowe, Malta and Gibraltar."

They went for it again in Crete and that was nearly a debacle, some historians from both sides argue that it should have been.

General Graf von Sponneck was honest in his 'Erfahrungsbericht' (after action report).

"The experiences have shown that airlandings on airfields or in the immediate neighbourhood of important targets or large towns can only be executed at the cost of very high losses, even if they are successful."

When reading subsequent accounts, reports and memoirs from the German side, of those involved a sad litany of excuses is made. One, Horst von Metzsch even claimed the landings were opposed by three Dutch Divisions. Student, typically, saw the entire operation as a German victory. For a break down of the actual opposition and a good account of these operations, I would recommend Lieutenant Colonel E H Brongers 'The Battle For The Hague 1940'.

A neutral view was expressed in 1984 by a Swiss military history paper

"In his memoirs General Student boasts that the airlandings in The Netherlands had been successful in all aspects. Based on present knowledge from different sources this opinion must now be revised and in any case brought back into its right proportions. The airborne operation around The Hague displays a countless number of faults. From the operational point of view they were unsatisfactory and strategically they didn't achieve the intended result; if they had been a success the destruction of Rotterdam wouldn't have been necessary. We must come to the conclusion that the strategic surprise - armoured breakthrough in the south with an attack from the air from the direction of the sea - was brilliant as an idea, but that the repetition of the 'Oslo model' failed. In matters like communications, aerial reconnaissance, logistics and combating enemy artillery we diagnose a failure."

Junkers had delivered 1023 Ju 52s by the end of June 1940. The 430 committed to the Dutch assault must represent about 50% of the total number available. These aircraft were ubiquitous, used in every theatre as the transport workhorse of the Luftwaffe. To lose such a substantial number, sometimes along with a highly qualified crew, in such short order was a serious blow to the Luftwaffe's transport capability.

Cheers

Steve