On mid 1944, Germany was in chaos, and its defense lines were extremely close to it... Göring promised Hitler that he would make 1000 new aircraft to pound the allies, this of course never happened. But if it had, do you think Hitler would stand a chance on the eastern front(this front was the destination of this planes...)

At early 1944, Göring re-fitted his squadrons in the east and achieved a very impressive success by equipping his Air Fleets with some 2.500 planes - not very sure about the number...

But still, they just couldn't fight 9.000 planes of the Red Air Force... And I don't think the German Industry could manufacture a greater quantity. And we're talking about the period when production peaked.

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"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

The red air force was concentrated in berlin, but look at Guderian, he could perfectly make an attak pincer with his stuka, but anyway I'm not talking about Stuka or Meschis, I'm talking about Köliblitz, wich actually, was somekind of flying saucer

By mid 1943 the problem the Germans had in aerial warfare was pilots not planes. German pilots that were coming out of training were barely qualified to fly the aircraft they were assigned to. In the East this left them roughly equal to their opponets in the Red Airforce. In the West they were just cannon fodder.
An aircraft is as good as its pilot. Having a 1000 or 10,000 aircraft with losers flying them is just a waste of material.

You may be right, but you must have present that wing commander Adolf Galand, wich was Luftwaffes best pilot (or one one of the best) did'nt die until january 1944, or the prince H. Who didn't die untill October 1943

curious friend who are you talking about ? Addi Galland lived through war's end and did not die till some years ago. Prince H who is this please ?

Point is and this is fact, the bulk some 7/8th of the Luftwaffe fighter Geschwadern were sent to the eastern front to battle the Soviets for the Battles of Berlin in mid January 1945, and some of the Geschwaders ran up some very impressive scores the last several months of the war.

~E

Let's not forget the fuel situation. It's all very good to have lots of planes (Adolf could thank Albert Speer for that), but without the fuel for both training and operations, they were useless. Of course, the same is true for tanks.

Yours,
Paul

I did not understand the statement, "I'm talking about Köliblitz, wich actually, was somekind of flying saucer".

Can you expand on that please ?

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Sorry there TA, it is not Köliblitz...you Kugelblitz, wich was a secret weapon, wich had the shape of a flying saucer, or UFO, another one was the Feruerbal, but the prototypes were never produced, the plans and sientist in charge of the proyect were sunk, in an escape on the Atlantic

ERich, you are dam right, and I am sorry.... prince H was a prince, who got his title since he came from a renamed prussian familiy, whos'e last name was something starting with H.... but I can't remember his name or last name...

1944 was too late already and like said, they did not have pilots, and soon they did not have fuel either...

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Ah Goering, you incompetent, gluttonous, Morphene addict. Goering was the best friend the Allies had, his blatant incompetence and inability to develop any kind of strategic vision, combined with his desire to accumulate positions of power, and then ignore their responsabilities entirely made him a mobile disaster for the third reich. I challenge you to find anyone in a position of power who consistently did so much harm and so little good to the Axis war effort.

I highly recomment 'Luftwaffe' by Williamson Murray, the current authoritative look at the fate of the third reich's air power. Reading through it is amusing, every bad idea was accepted by Goering, while every good idea was turned down.

As for giving Hitler 1000 aircraft, Goering was also famous for insane predictions and promises which turned out to be completely impossible, things like:
-Promising the air force could destroy the British on the beaches of Dunkirk;
-Promising to wipe out the RAF in 2 weeks prior to the battle of Britain;
-promising to keep combat aircraft flying over the 1941 Moscow front no matter the weather or opposition;
-Promising to supply Stalingrad entirely from the air;
and so on. Goering is directly associated with a large majority of the third reich's worst military disasters.

[ 23. December 2003, 08:47 AM: Message edited by: Vermillion ]

However there has been the anti-aircraft tank Kugelblitz, which was dammit effective, but only a one-digit number has been produced till the end of the war.

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What are you talking about? The Red Air Force with its 9.000+ aircraft concentrated in Berlin in spring 1945 when Guderian was Chief of Staff of a non-existant Army and when Stukas had been withdrawn from service long ago.

The only prince-pilot I've read about was Prinz Heinrich zu-Seyn Wittgenstein, the second best night-fighter ace in History who was killed in 1944.

Exactly, Kai! And even if available, they would have been overwhelmed anyway by 25.000 Allied planes...

Vermillion, you're forgetting that Göring achieved quite an enormous success by re-equipping and re-fitting his eastern squadrons in early 1944. Quite a remarkable success for some one as underrated as Göring, who, was not a very capable military genious - which can be expected from some arrogant pilot who commanded a single squadron in WWI and reached the rank of captain - but was a very capable organiser. Or at least had the talent to persuade better organisers than him and put them to work to-gether.

However, the Luftwaffe in the east in 1944 was very rapidly annihilated because of Soviet tactics of massing aircraft in the most strategically important and critical spots, thus, forcing the Luftwaffe to extend his resources to its limits.

I don't want to start new discussions out of topic, but I couldn't resist:

This COULD be done.

Not in two weeks and not with the tactics they used, but it could be done to a certain degree.

You're entirely right here.

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"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

this topic really never should of been started in the first place. Since there are two others. I think you new-comers need to go through the older archived threads and if you want to add input then do it there. The Luftwaffe was not overwhelmed in the last days as it kicked Soviet bootie till the end, there were plenty of pilots and a/c just not the fuels to supply the fighters both day and night. The reduction or comressed Reich did not allow for any long distant flights and it was just matter of days till the end.

~E

The Luftwaffe was not entirelly overwhelmed. But the Soviets used a smarter strategy: mass their planes in critical spots of the front achieving complete but partial air superiority over a small front. And thanks to their numbers, they could do this at many spots, thus stretching the Luftwaffe's resources to the limit.

There were many pilots (?) and aircraft but not fuel. So, those many pilots you're talking about were mostly young and inexperienced ones who couldn't get enough practical training because of lack of fuel supply?

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"War is less costly than servitude, the choice is always between Verdun and Dachau." - Jean Dutourd, French veteran of both world wars

"A mon fils: depuis que tes yeux sont fermes les miens n’ont cessé de pleurir." - Mère française, Verdun

For what reasons were they trained worse than their Allied counterparts? Just lack of time, or other, deeper reasons?

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If someone tries to remove the speck in your right eye, will you turn to him the other also?

Lack of time and hadent Germany start producing both cheap and also plentiful planes (of new models)Plus they started using one time use planes and you don't want to waste money training someone who will not be in the air long!

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For what reasons were they trained worse than their Allied counterparts? Just lack of time, or other, deeper reasons? [/quote]

It was more a case of poor planning. In the early war and pre-war years the Luftwaffe program remained small and took an almost leisurely pace in training pilots. Up through 1941 there wasn't a real shortage of pilots and, it appeared Germany might win the war soon. By 1942 this had changed dramatically. Pilot losses now far exceeded the replacement rate. The war wasn't going to be short. The Luftwaffe began to shorten the training cycle for pilots at this point to try and get more replacements to units. Then, along came things like the Stalingrad airlift. More pilots than were available at the front were needed to fly the lift. Instructors and advanced students were pulled to make up the difference. This disrupted the training cycle.
By 1943 things were in a spiral towards a severe shortage of pilots in general. Many redundant bomber or transport pilots were given short training courses on fighters and sent to the front. Pilot training was again shortened. Losses began to climb as these pilots proved generally unequal to the tasks they were assigned.
By 1944 things got even worse. Fuel shortages were now the norm making training flights harder to schedule. With fewer areas free of Allied fighters training flights were also becoming more difficult to conduct. There was also a shortage of the proper types of aircraft to train on. Many pilots learned on say, Me 109's only to be posted to a Focke Wulf unit where they found themselves flying a totally unfamiliar aircraft. Operational flying time fell to just a few hours, on average as few as 20 or less by this point.
The Japanese fell into the same situation having initially set their standards high keeping their program small.
The US and Britain on the other hand started huge programs immediately that didn't really pay off until 1943 when they began to turn out large numbers of very well trained pilots with literally hundreds of hours of flying time in training and hundreds more on operational flights before going into combat. The USAAF program, in fact, was so large that many pilot selectees in late 1943 were taken out of the program and placed into ground forces replacement training as they were no longer required, many ending up as infantry officers.
The Soviet program trained large numbers too. The best (or the survivors) of these pilots often were recruited into special "ace" units with the best equipment. It was not infrequently these units that performed well against the Germans while the rest of the air force took a beating. As German pilot quality fell, the Soviets were continiously able to increase their survival rate and eventually make many of their units reasonably good through retained experiance.

Actually fighter a/c for the Luftwaffe hit an all time high in 1944 and there was not a shortage of eager although in-experienced pilots to take to the skies. The biggest problem of all was fuel. with the reduction of ground on the Ost and WEst fronts, Airfields were hurreidly cleared and more than just fighter a/c were shot up on the overcrowded aifields, transport/cargo, bombers as well, so much so and the heavier fields that fighter pilots could not get airborne. We must also take into consideration with the loss of groud on both fronts this did also include early warning radar defences.

~E

I think you two are right, but I really think that Erich is completeley right about the fuel situation.

Shoot Goering in 1938 and put someone slimmer in charge. In fact a chimp could be of more use...

Fuel, Fuel and more Fuel!!! The bugbear of the German war effort! they had planes, even pilots of a sort but no fuel!!!

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