Who Really Destroyed the Luftwaffe?

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In this discussion almost no account is made of the loses on the eastern front, if you are serious about history and not just serious about supporting your own military please take into account the losses of the LW on the eastern front.

Russian fighter production almost matched the LW, by the end of the war russian fighters were a match for the LW to pretend that Russia had no effect in the air war in WWII is completely re writing history

The raids on Rumanian refineries may have had an effect on Nazi oil supplies but not quite as much as the Red army overrunning Rumania for example
 
Errr, hang on
I don't think lack of discussion on the Eastern Front warrants any questionable remarks about our historical diligence, nobody is 'pretending that the Soviet Union had no effect in the air war in WWII' and to surmise that we're 'rewriting history' as a result is laughable.

Soviet fighter production matched German fighter production when? Bearing in mind that the VVS practically ceased to exist 48 hours after Barbarossa kicked off along with access to production facilities?

The air war in the east was a different beast to that in the ETO, the Germans certainly thought so, transferring units out of the Soviet Union to counter the 8th AF. There was virtually no strategic air element to the Soviets thrust into Germany, they steamrollered the Wehrmacht out of the east on the ground, supported by tactical aerial ground support vehicles. One of the defining differences, in my opinion, is that even in retreat, the Luftwaffe could still pick the odd fight on their own terms whereas strategic bombing in the west, the initiative was held solely by the Allies - 'we're bombing target x so you better send something up and defend it'.

All you have highlighted in your last statement is that strategic bombing functions as an asset or production incapacitator, it takes boots on the ground to provide area denial.

Feel free to discuss your views on why you think it was the Soviets who killed the Luftwaffe.
 
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One needs to look on this site, http://don-caldwell.we.bs/jg26/thtrlosses.htm

It gives the Lw losses from Sept '43 to Oct '44 on the east and West Fronts.

1. During the period in question, a constant 21-24% of the Luftwaffe's day fighters were based in the East - but only 12-14% of the Luftwaffe day fighter "losses" occurred in this theater.

2. During this period, a constant 75-78% of the day fighters were based in the West. The turnover was enormous: 14,720 aircraft were "lost", while operational strength averaged 1364.

3. During this period, 2294 day fighters were "lost" in the East; the ratio of western "losses" to eastern "losses" was thus 14,720/2294 = 6.4 to one.

4. During this period, a constant 43-46% of all of the Luftwaffe's operational aircraft were based in the East. It should be noted that these included entire categories (for example, battlefield recce, battle planes, dive bombers) that were used exclusively in the East, because they couldn't survive in the West..

5. During this period, a total of 8600 operational aircraft were "lost" in the East, while 27,060 were "lost" in the West; the ratio of western "losses" to eastern "losses" was thus 27,060/8600 = 3.41 to one.
 
al49 said:
Hi,
I personally think that Luftwaffe (as well as the whole Germany) was defeated by one single man: Adolf Hitler.


Alberto
Click to expand...

Yes, he made two fatal mistakes. One, he invaded a country with unlimited manpower, and, two, declared war on a country with unlimited materiel.
 

Hi Milosh

The war in the East ought not be judged on the numbers of fighters lost. Shooting down German fighters was identified after the debacle in 1941 as the least productive and least important role for the VVS. The VVS was not wiped out in 1941, although its strength and capability was sorely tested.

The eastern fron was a hard front to operate in, because of the extreme weather, the doggedness of the Soviets, and the primitive facilities onhand. This is the only way to explain why, after just two months fighting in 1941, the LW was down to less than 1000 operational aircraft, out of a force availability of over 3000. According to Hayward (The Luftwaffe in the East, and the defeat at Stalingrad) from 1942, the Germans were lucky to have 70% operational rates and rarely could count on more than 50% in Summer, and 30% in winter. Attritional rates (losses to noncombat causes) were about 3 to 4 times that in the west.

Finally, recent research seems to suggest that the supposed massacres of VVS pilots are largely spurious. Certainly the exchange rate was bad, but not so bad as to be considered catastrophic
 
Don't forget MTO
LW losses in MTO were clearly higher than in Eastern Front in Oct 42 (324 vs 200 ), Nov 42 (595 vs 224 ), Apr 43 (572 vs 238 ), July 43 (711 vs 558 ) and in Sept 43 (503 vs 338 ) and almost same in Dec 42, in Mar, May, June, Oct and Nov 43.

Juha
 
Wouldnt it be fair to say that the cream of Luftwaffe aircrew had been lost by the time the Mighty 8th got into gear over Germany in 44. Not meaning in anyway to denigrate the USAAF and its aircrews but the quality of the Luftwaffe had been badly degraded by other airforces by then.

In my opinion its possible to say that the 8th finished the job started by others but it wasnt responsible for the whole job.
 

Those are fair statements
 
Gentlemen,

It seems that several of you believe that as the war actually unfolded historically, the engagements of the bombing campaign were the 'straw that broke the camels back', but that the same result would have resulted tactically eventually. That sounds perfectly reasonable, but what of the anti-oil bombing. It's my understanding that lack of oil was a large factor in training standards in the GAF going down.
 

The ability to effectively destroy critical targets deep in Germany required precision bombing, good visibility and good fighter escort. In my opinion the RAF could possibly have achieved the same result at night but, my opinion also theorizes that many more sorties would have been required to match results achieved by good daylight bombing.

The net of the discussion is that the USAAF could not sustain the losses incurred between August 1943 (both 8th AF at Schweinfurt/Regensburg AND 12th AF at Ploesti) and October 1943. To continue deep raids the USAAF needed an escort fighter capable of escorting the bombers over their respective targets along a line from Posnan to Vienna.

Speer said daylight attacks on the Oil/Chemical refineries were THE key strategic initiatives by USAAF and RAF.

Ergo, to bomb deep into Germany, with accuracy possible by precision bombing, with acceptable losses - required the destruction of the Luftwaffe day fighter capability to inflict heavy casualties.

One may now quibble over terminology regarding 'destroyed', seriously hurt, crippled, rendered impotent, etc, etc.
 
Hi Parsifal
in terms of the thread title, I thought Milosh's post was spot on and if the resurgent VVS weren't shooting at Luftwaffe fighters then, once again wrt the thread title, it wasn't the Soviet Union that destroyed the Luftwaffe.

The VVS may not have been wiped out, but in attempting to guarantee air cover for the retreating Soviet ground forces, they gave the Luftwaffe an unprecedented freedom of movement in deciding how they would deploy their own assets.

The VVS is very difficult organisation to paint a picture of in terms of order of battle. Information is available on strengths at Barbarossa's kick-off and also for the period from June to December 1941. The information is reasonably accurate at divisional level with information such as total numbers and types of aircraft in the military districts. It becomes more hit and miss at regimental level, with information on strengths varying considerably. In some cases the information is almost non-existent.

Trying to piece the picture together of the VVS pre-Barbarossa is a bit of a jigsaw puzzle with alot of missing pieces, it requires a great deal of cross-referencing to build only a reasonably accurate picture of the entire VVS on 22nd June 1941.

Figures for serviceable aircraft should be treated with caution. The terms 'serviceable' and 'operational' consistently blur in available material. The other aspect is the political situation in the Soviet Union at the time of the invasion. Certain death followed any and every officer in the VVS that hadn't already been purged by Stalin, who showed either:

- a defeatist attitude
- excessive initiative in fixing the serviceability issues of grounded aircraft

VVS reports for June 1941 show an average of 80-95% serviceability and could therefore be considered operational. There is little reason to doubt that these figures were based on overly optimistic VVS commander assessments, in the period prior to the invasion, from officers who wished to avoid the defeatist label. For a start, the figures are higher than most Luftwaffe units where the latter were generally equipped with much newer aircraft and had just achieved a very high state of readiness in preparation for the invasion. Additionally, most Luftwaffe units were well supported by experienced and well trained ground crews who maintained a high serviceability rate - a resource sorely lacking in VVS units at this time.

On top of this, the Soviets didn't decommission older aircraft on the arrival of newer types, they just kept them on strength; many VVS units flew a/c whose heyday was the 1920-30 period.

From general accounts of the numbers of VVS aircraft that were involved in combat, it seems that the serviceability rates quoted by the VVS were optimistic to the point of being exaggerated and misleading. This is also evidenced by the number of captured VVS aircraft on airfields that were overrun, that were not destroyed in attacks but were abandoned because the ground crews could not get them serviceable in order to fly them out.

VVS-Leningrad had on strength 1,319 fighter aircraft of which only 223 were the latest and most modern VVS fighters ie MiG-3s, LaGG-3s and Yak-1s. This district largely escaped the brunt of Barbarossa, Leningrad obviously being of some strategic importance to the Soviets but facing them was only a small Luftflotte 5 and the Ilmavoimat which totalled something in the region of over 200 single-engined fighters. Not sure of the exact figure.

Despite not being exposed to the initial onslaught of the invasion, VVS-KA Northern Front still lost over 370 a/c in the month immediately following the invasion. VVS-KA Northern Front managed to contribute 700-800 combat a/c to VVS-Northwestern Zone which could be added to their surviving 100-odd a/c.

I don't know the types or serviceability of VVS-KA's contribution once in theatre but if I had to guess..

Figures for the first day of Barbarossa are in the region of 2,000 combat aircraft lost by the VVS and around 4,000 for the first week. The Luftwaffe had air superiority over all 3 sectors of the front and would keep it until the end of the same year whilst what remained of the VVS covered the retreating Soviet ground forces.

I would venture that the VVS were more than sorely tested.
 
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Colin 1,

Excellent, informative post. Thanks. It's a shame that in many cases, precise information seems to be lacking for the VVS.

drgondog,

It probably is more accurate to say that the GAF was rendered impotent and not destroyed. They continued to fly right to the end.
 
Another thing that I think also helped, was the Germans fixation(?) with giant, sometimes useless machines! How many Ju 52 can they have done instead for the Me 321/323, those huge guns like Thor, Odin etc, made the He 177 into a proper 4 engined bomber from the beginning instead for that with two coupled engines etc., etc...
 
the lack of the LW in 1945 stemmed from the orders down to be sent to the Ost front for the final Battles of Berlin on 15 January 1945. there were very few gruppen left in Reich for day time defense ops as the jagdgruppen could not even put equivalent of full strength staffels in the air due to lack of fuels, pilots and A/c were not in short supply, needed fuel/oil reserves were. As I stated earlier the US/British combined bombing efforts had done there job from air to ground
 

The 8th AF destroyed the bulk of the LW simply by the fact they hunted them deep into Germany. The LW still had a lot of good pilots. And they could refit and rearm at will untill there was no place to run.

The RAF couldn't do it with the fighters they had on hand. And the successes in the Med and Russia were peripheral.
 
When I saw: "Mustangs over Berlin ..... ". Not to misrepresent the importance of Mosquitos or Lancasters over Berlin, but Mustangs over Berlin symbolized the final tightening of the air superiority screws. And they were USAAF Mustangs.

MM
 
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Honestly I think it was a combination of all those factors. The war against Russia, Britain and the USA at once. Russia was slowly winning ground covering its own forces. The USA and Britain were bombing all hell out the German Factories, Airfields, Towns and Refineries. The Luftwaffe were having problems gathering enough fuel to run their aircraft. In addition what fuel they did have was being used to keep fighters and tanks supplied to fight. Therefore there was no margin for problems there. German production of fighters was already suffering at this stage. The Me-109 was still being used as a front-line fighter despite the fact that it was less than good compared with other German fighters such as the FW-190 and the TA-152 that were coming on line at that stage. Me-109 production was kept up despite its problems because the Germans needed to pump out the fighters fast. Jet Fighters were fast but they had too many problems to really be effective as front-line stoppers for bombers.

Indeed the German mistake was that when they went against Britain, there really was not a very good heavy bomber that could really drop enough bombs from a single aircraft to really make that sort of trip really worthwhile.

We know the Germans had the idea of the He-177 Grief on the drawing board that could have been a really effective bomber if designed properly but that was really where it stayed to a large extent. What was designed was not really what Germany needed at that time. The Americans at this stage did have the B-17 and only later started using B-29s and later developing a really heavy bomber in the B-36 Peacemaker.
 
in terms of the thread title, I thought Milosh's post was spot on and if the resurgent VVS weren't shooting at Luftwaffe fighters then, once again wrt the thread title, it wasn't the Soviet Union that destroyed the Luftwaffe.

It was a good post, but there are some important issues with the numbers. The source of this research, it should be noted was an east german defector dating back to the 70's with a real axe to grind against the Soviets. His numbers have since been pretty much totally discredited. Having said that, the VVS cannot be credited with the lions share of Luftwaffe fighter combat losses. The combat attrition being suffered by the JGs on the western front far outweighed those on the eastern front. But what tips the balance was the other losses being suffered in the east.....non-combat losses, bomber losses, transport losses, you name it. Just looking at attirional losses momentarily, in the west, average monthly non-combat losses in the LW on western front were consistently about 7% throughout the first half of the war, but still managed to heavily outweigh combat losses. Thats based on analyses by Foreman and Murray, that shows conclusively that non-combat related loses were far more serious than combat losses.

But the noncombat attirional losses in the westpaled in significance compared to those suffered in the East. During the summer months it hovered around the 16-21% per month mark, in poor weather, particulalry when the ground forces were being put under pressure, LW accident rates could reach as high as 50% per month. This is what made the eastern front almost as deadly to the LW as it was to the ground formations...the near constant state of emergency, coupled with the poor logistics, and extremely primitive conditions made it a virtual deathtrap for the LW. On top of that, once the Soviets regained the initiative, ther were the losses to unserviceable aircraft unable evacuate ahead of the Soviet spearheds.


The VVS may not have been wiped out, but in attempting to guarantee air cover for the retreating Soviet ground forces, they gave the Luftwaffe an unprecedented freedom of movement in deciding how they would deploy their own assets.

In the context of 1941 and most of 1942, this is quite true, except that LW loss rate continued to be very heavy, not so much because of Soviet success in the air, but moreso because the LW, fromn the very beginning was forced to act as a mobile fire brigade, supporting the hard pressed ground formations, trying to compensate for the lack of proper artillery support in the forward areas, and later to support the the thinning infantry formations by providing the necessary firepower to them. These were as a rule not controlled, measured activities. more often then not they were desperate affairs, flown in the most appalling weather conditions, in machines no longer really fit to fly. The dire situations on the ground demanded desperate expedients by the Luftwaffe, and they paid for that in elevated attirional loss rates. I suggest you read Hayward, who quotes and paraphrases LF-4s war diary extensively.


The VVS is very difficult organisation to paint a picture of in terms of order of battle. Information is available on strengths at Barbarossa's kick-off and also for the period from June to December 1941. The information is reasonably accurate at divisional level with information such as total numbers and types of aircraft in the military districts. It becomes more hit and miss at regimental level, with information on strengths varying considerably. In some cases the information is almost non-existent.

Pretty much agree, except that Russian sources in the last few years have been freed up considerably. Hayward and Sweeting both have pretty good information on which to base their analyses, as do several Russian authors. Ther is no doubt that by western standards, the information is a bit hit and miss, but ther is enough out there to pretty much debunk the immediate post war accounts on which much of your theories appear to be based. These accounts almost exclusively drew upon German sources, which were put together by the US military following interrogations prior to 1952. As post action de-briefings, they were pretty thorough but like all airforces, the claims of kills are almost certainloy overblown. In the absence of any real Soviet counter information, these claims were accepted in the west, more or less in their entirety. Small wonder that so much innaccuracy has crept into the western idea of the fighting on the eastern front.
 
Reply Part II

Trying to piece the picture together of the VVS pre-Barbarossa is a bit of a jigsaw puzzle with alot of missing pieces, it requires a great deal of cross-referencing to build only a reasonably accurate picture of the entire VVS on 22nd June 1941.

Agreed

VVS reports for June 1941 show an average of 80-95% serviceability and could therefore be considered operational. There is little reason to doubt that these figures were based on overly optimistic VVS commander assessments, in the period prior to the invasion, from officers who wished to avoid the defeatist label. For a start, the figures are higher than most Luftwaffe units where the latter were generally equipped with much newer aircraft and had just achieved a very high state of readiness in preparation for the invasion. Additionally, most Luftwaffe units were well supported by experienced and well trained ground crews who maintained a high serviceability rate - a resource sorely lacking in VVS units at this time.

Sorry but whilst some of the points here are true enough, most of it is sheer fantasy. Its true that the LW was newer, highly experienced, and with a high operational rate at the beginning of the battle, however replacements of both men and materiel were virtually non-existent. This made the force highly susceptible to attirional losses, and cursed the LW with low operational rates after just the first few weeks of the campaign. This sad situation continued for the rest of the war on the eastern front. Hayward reports that the highest operational rate of the war after 1941 was in June 1942, for LF-4, when an operational rate of 73% was achieved. By the time of the Stalingrad encirclement, operational rates were down to less than 40%

The Germans had great difficulty firstly in getting reserves of pilots, engines, and other spare parts to begin with.....then they had the added problem of getting those commodities to the front. For example, prior to Typhoon, AGC needed as its basic supply requirements, something like 18 trains per day (or maybe per week....I forget). They were getting something like 2. The Luftwaffe was in exactly the same mess. Moreover, as the Germans advanced deeper and deeper into enemy territory, not only was their logistics situation stretched further and further, the facitlies on which they relied were increasingly primitive, thanks to the effects of the scorched earth policies, and just the inherent lack of facilties in the first place.

There is no doubt in my view about the low operational rates in the Soviet Air Force at the beginning of the war. Their operational strength was about 4000 aircraft, the numbers of "operational" operational aircraft was much lower than that. However, the Soviets also easily had the largest reserves of machines and pilots in the world at that time. They had over 16000 airframes in reserve, and I forget how many pilots, but a lot..... They needed all of them, because by years end they had pretty much lost the lot. However having huge reserves meant that operational rates could be kept relatively high, as is pointed out by Nagorski and Sweeting.

Assisting in this process was that whereas the germans were operating on extended lines on rough strips mostly, with few or no support facilities, the Soviets were falling back toward their urban centres and supply sources, the battle for Moscow was fought by the Soviets operating from well constructed concrete runways and huge supporting elements. When they moved forward from these facilities, Soviet operational rates plummetted. This happened repeatedly in the war, which explains why they were so meticulous before their offensives to get airfielss constructed and the supply system working as well as they could get it.

On top of this, the Soviets didn't decommission older aircraft on the arrival of newer types, they just kept them on strength; many VVS units flew a/c whose heyday was the 1920-30 period.

Which did have the advantage in the winter of keepnig operational rates high. Soviet aircraft were known for their simplicity and generally rugged construction. This meant that whereas German types ceased to be flyable in poor conditions, Soviet aircraft kept flying. There is of course a limit to how far this point can be taken, but its a factor often overlooked, so worth mentioning IMO.

From general accounts of the numbers of VVS aircraft that were involved in combat, it seems that the serviceability rates quoted by the VVS were optimistic to the point of being exaggerated and misleading. This is also evidenced by the number of captured VVS aircraft on airfields that were overrun, that were not destroyed in attacks but were abandoned because the ground crews could not get them serviceable in order to fly them out.


Care to name a source for this......in fact the modus operandi of the German forces was that they tended to encirdle Soviet forces rather than "overrun" them. Given Stalins "no retreat" orders, it becomes understandable why so many aircraft were captured more or less intact. On top of that the Soviets for weeks suffered a kind of paralysis in their command structures, which led to numerous muddles, mix-up and sheer stuff ups. Not that this gets out of the fact that large numbers of aircraft were captured intact, but it simply debunks the idea that large numbers of these A/C were unserviceable. No doubt a proportion of themn were U/S, but not all....

VVS-Leningrad had on strength 1,319 fighter aircraft of which only 223 were the latest and most modern VVS fighters ie MiG-3S, LaGG-3s and Yak-1s. This district largely escaped the brunt of Barbarossa, Leningrad obviously being of some strategic importance to the Soviets but facing them was only a small Luftflotte 5 and the Ilmavoimat which totalled something in the region of over 200 single-engined fighters. Not sure of the exact figure.

Err, how can you say that, the Leningrad Special Military District extended all the way tp the Estonian border. Moreover the Baltic MD, which was the the fronline formation, drew nearly all of its units from the LMD, with many of those units since identified as being still part of the LMD. AGN was on their back within days, with most of the battles fought by AGN undertaken in the approaches to Leningrad itself. Many of the formations nominally attached to the L eningrad MD were in action more or less from the very beginning of the war. And this fails to take into account the losses suffered at the hands of the FAF.

Despite not being exposed to the initial onslaught of the invasion, VVS-KA Northern Front still lost over 370 a/c in the month immediately following the invasion. VVS-KA Northern Front managed to contribute 700-800 combat a/c to VVS-Northwestern Zone which could be added to their surviving 100-odd a/c.

See explanation above. Simply wrong and untrue

I don't know the types or serviceability of VVS-KA's contribution once in theatre but if I had to guess..

Figures for the first day of Barbarossa are in the region of 2,000 combat aircraft lost by the VVS and around 4,000 for the first week. The Luftwaffe had air superiority over all 3 sectors of the front and would keep it until the end of the same year whilst what remained of the VVS covered the retreating Soviet ground forces.


In fact Soviet losses on the first day are quite well known. They amounted to just over 1100 aircraft, to which a further 800 were lost in the first week. By the end of the year Soviet aircraft losses are believed to be a staggering 16000 a/c. German losses in that same period, to all causes (not just the highly selective and in fact innaccurate numbers quoted in Miloshes earlier post) were well over 2000 aircraft. Its true that the LW maintained air superiority throughout the summer of 1941, across the entire front, but in 1942 they did not. Similar to the measure adopted for the Heer, in fact what they were forced to do was to strip out units from the two northern groups, and call on their allies, so as to gain local superiority on the critical southern sector. This is clearly shown in Haywards account Of LF-4s prepration for Fall Blau. The Germans tried to repeat this trick over Kursk in the following year, but failed

I would venture that the VVS were more than sorely tested.

I can agree with that, but as were the LW, and ultimately the VVS survived, and won, whilst the LW did not survive, and lost. There can be no escaping that basic fundamental
 
Hello Syscom
maybe Med and Russia were peripheral but the LW size AF could not keep its qualitative standards when it was loosing 600-824 combat a/c per month in June – Aug 42, 538-524 a/c in Sept – Oct and 819-774 a/c in Nov-Dec 42 in those peripherals. In Jan-Nov 43Monthly losses in those peripherals dropped under 500 per month only in June 43 (484) and in Nov 43 (376) but were over 1000 in July 43 (1269) and over 800 in Apr (810) and Sept 43 (841). Only in Nov 43 were LW losses in West and in Air Defence Reich higher than those in those peripheral.

Juha
 
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