Murray is only considered one of the foremost experts in the world on the Luftwaffe
By whom...?
I would certainly not call someone so who
a, had done zero research in Germany and had appearantly very little understanding or willingness to understand how the Luftwaffe would operate during the war, instead he dispays the typical Anglo-Saxon reasoning that
since we did it this way, and they did it in another way, they must be wrong. We`ve seen this nonsene with the four-engined bomber thing how many times exactly..?
Well HELLO THERE, they were not the ones flying from Britain to Germany over France, so where is exactly the same pressing need?
b, uses demagogue arguements like
'the Luftwaffe lost the equivalents of two air forces by 1942' etc., then going into how this eroded the quality, somehow forgetting about the fact that all the other air forces went through this as well. An equivalent of the RAF`s Fighter Command was, for example, wiped out during the mere four months in the Battle of Britain - but of course it received replacements, and maintained the numbers. Yet somehow, Murray speaks of losses that if it would be some kind of demagogue 'proof' of the loss of quality, and naturally, it only effected the Luftwaffe... bah!
From what I`ve seen, Murray is very popular in certain circles, because he lends authority to bashing agendas.
He is supported by Hayward in his work, "The Luftwaffe and Hitlers defeat in the East", in which he also shows the The Luftwaffe as having a problem with logistics.
Having problems with logistics (which is fairly normal IMHO in any army of the size on campaign), and being run by retards is not quite the same thing.
Hayward reports that the operational readiness rate for the Luftwaffe reached a peak in June 1942, on the southern front, of 70%, but this had plunged to less than 31% by the time of Stalingrad. By March it had staged a partial recovery to 45%, and some further improvement again by the time of Kursk (IIRC it had climbed to something over 50%),
Hayward apparently picks certain periods of low serviceability rates, at certain times and certain locations to support his conception, instead of providing an overall picture how serviceability went through the war.
Cherry picking, however, is not convincing. To make some use of such figures, we would need to at least how many of these were non-operational because of
a, lack of spares
b, lack of maintenance personnel capacity
c, lack of transportation capacity
d, what was the duration of serviceability (ie. unserviceable for the duration of a night is fairly normal, the crew simply needs time to make the repairs)
e, what was the cause, heavy enemy action that naturally creates bottlenecks in the servicing chain or natural wear?
Without knowledge of the reasons, especially if we do not know the duration of serviceability and the cause, no valid conclusions can be drawn.
Guesses can be made with a high probability of error.
From there on, the readiness rate continued to drop, until by the end of the war, almost the entire Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front had become non-operational (not due to spares, mostly to the fuel situation by then).
That`s a remarkable funny fiction, in view of the reported sorties flew over the Eastern front by Luftwaffe`s non-operational phantom planes. IIRC 10 000 or so
fighter sorties were flown in the East in February 1945 alone. Over Berlin in April, a very high number of sorties (a few thousend
a day, from memory) were flown.
I guess *IF*
Hayward makes such a blatantly stupid claim that towards the wars end the Luftwaffe was non-operational on the East, I guess his book can go straight onto the lower shelf of the 'Fiction' shelf in remote book stores.
Ellis reports that by the end of June 1941, the readiness rate of the frontline aircraft had fallen to about 1000 A/C, or around 44%
Oh well I can cherry pick low serviceability rates too.
For example, Typhoon Squadrons can be showed at a service rate of 5 to 10 (five to ten) percent in late 1944 at 1-2-3 serviceable Typhoons per Squadron.
Do you think it was lack of spares, too...?
Finally there are some interviews of actual veterans, the following of which is an example
The interview has been made possible by the kind assistance and enthusiasm of his son, Uwe Wiedemann, who relayed my questions to his father and conducted the actual interview.
The subject, Hans Wiedemann, served in the Luftwaffe, primarily with 4./ Ln.Rgt. Afrika, III./Stuka Geschw. 3 and Stab StG3. He also served for a time with Stuka Geschwader 2.
[...]
- Was the supply of fuel and spare parts a major problem?
- Supply of spare parts and fuel really was a major problem!
I don`t think I need to detail why I find this a lame sweaty attempt. Keywords: lack of source, lack of details, lack of insight onto the whole picture we are discussion (the Luftwaffe, not the well-being 4th Staffel of Stukageschwader 3 in Africa).
Yet I still have to wonder how the Luftwaffe, despite your claims, maneged to keep up on avarage 60-70% servicibility with its fighter units late in the war, despite the railways, roads being regularly attack by medium bombers and fighter bombers, the airfields strafed by escorts and bombed by heavies.
Producing whole units instead of producing adequate spares...
PROVE first there were no adequate spares before you try to present it as a fact.
is a most innefficient way of maintaining readiness. aircraft, like any complex machine, will have certain pieces of equipment that fail more regularly than others. usually these areas of systemic failure will occur in the engine. Producing an entire airframe, so that you can have a spare engine is a most innefficient way of repairing an airframe. The best and most production efficient way to manage this problem is to maintain a relatively high reserve of engines (so as to return the airframe to service quickly), and then further, to maintain a higher than average stock of engine parts that are shown the most likley to fail. Say, for example the crankshafts are shown to need replacement after say 50 hours, but that the average engine life is 500 hours. It would make sense to produce 10 crankshafts for every one engine, rather than produce 10 separate engines, or worse, produce 10 complete airframes , just so the crankshaft can be replaced every 50 hours. Effectively, under the latter scenario, you will have 10 airframes sitting around, doing nothing, in order to keep just one airframe flying.
That is all well, but what does it have to do with the subject?
That is hardly good management, and very likely to lead to a low operational readiness rate.
And yet, this is precisely how the Luftwaffe was managed throughout most of the war.
Oh I see now. You describe a fiction, born a few minutes ago in your mind, and then say that this is how exactly it happened 60 years ago. No supportive evidence, nothing.
Because you want it to have been happening that way, because you argued earlier it did, then it must have happened that way.
Is that it?
PROVE first there was low operational readiness rate through the war before you try to present it as a fact.
of evidence offered.
Produce the evidence. This means numbers on spares, verifiable sources behind your claims.
Are all of these people unreliable as well???
You do know the analogue between opinions and a-holes, that everyone has them, these people included? The problem being, until proven, it just that, an opinion. So prove them. The burden of proof is on you, you make the claims here.