The question as posed was clearly limited to changes in the Luftwaffe's strategy, rather than anything more fundamental, like a peace-loving Hitler.

As I've pointed out, the strategy would have to have been changed quite significantly several years beforehand, to ensure that the Luftwaffe was properly constitued and equippped to win a battle of attrition over England. By the time the war started, it was too late to do that.

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Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum.

Exactly. It makes it a moot point without allowing the change of any other factors because that's simply not enough to make any demonstrable difference to change an outcome as big being "successful" in the air war. He stated "the Luftwaffe's strategy" and that was partially thwarted by Hitler, Milch, Himmler, Speer and even Goring to greater or lesser degrees. With those perameters people like Galland, Wever, Kammhuber or Udet could never change "Luftwaffe strategy" to a degree sufficient to make huge differences.

While the above mentioned certainly would have done things differently and better it is impossible to say so because our parameters of strategy involve Hitler, Milch, Himmler, Speer and Goring and there is no geting around them.

"Given history, what could have been changed in the Luftwaffe's strategy to make them successful, if anything?"

And it comes down to every one's definition of what successful is. Did they usually do the best with the assets they had? Probably. Since it is far out of any Luftwaffe commander's control to dictate production, modifications, deployment, approve new designs, etc. we are stuck ever returning to our controling influences Hitler, Milch, Himmler, Speer and Goring who flock things up.

The 1st time I talked with Gen. Galland in the 1980s some similar form of this question was asked....and no doubt by everybody who interviewed him. Even when Galland was made General of the Fighter Pilots he didn't have power to change the already set organizational details of the whole damned branch of service.

Going back and pointing out faults that were not readily apparent at the time 65 years ago is more voodoo logic. Deciding now which planes should have been deployed is a complete unfair advantage since back at that time no one had the luxury we do today of knowing how things would turn out!

No one knew the Bf 110 would suck in 1939. In the 1930s the worldwide concept was that a fast bomber would always get through popping off enemy interceptors like flies. So how can we fault the Luftwaffe or any other air force for then "needing" escorts. Plenty of puny Brit bombers that couldn't hold their own against fighter attack existed. Should we damn the RAF that they should have known? How is that fair?

The Americans were almost stupid enough to believe the prevailing 1930s propaganda that bigger bombers with more guns would get through without escorts. The inneffective Luftwaffe in late 1943 nearly annihilated them to the point that the 8th was a hair's breath away from switching to night time only bombing.

Every country experimented with things that ultimately proved unsatisfactory. How can we say that they missed development of the jet engine when they were the 1st to field both fighter and bomber aircraft with superior 2nd generational engines and aircraft in prototype stage in 1945?

Damning the Luftwaffe's aircraft in hindsight is fruitless since the decisions of what planes could or should be produced and with with what characteristics wasn never in the hands of the Luftwaffe beyond tokenism. Hitler, Milch, Himmler, Speer and Goring were the characters with input on what aircraft were produce, where they were deployed along with all organizational BS of the Luftwaffe itself.

Men Like Gunther Lutzow, Adolf Galland, Ernst Udet, Werner Moelders, Gunther Rall and quite a few others had organizational and leadership skills along with strategic and tactical battle planning yet they had no say in how may Ju 87 were built or where they were deployed, how pilots were trained or decided what technology should be pursued. The Luftwaffe was simply not set up in that way any more than the RAF or USAF was!

What the Luftwaffe did was exploit their resources as best was was possible and deploy them in the best ways to do damage to the enemy.

We can't damn the Luftwaffe because they didn't develop a strategic bomber when the main proponent for such, Walther Wever, was killed in 1936. If Billy Mitchell had died around then how great, or poor, would the USAF have been?

Luftwaffe wing commanders and squadron commanders prosecuted the air war to be best of their abilities with the resources they had at any given time.

Given the circumsatnces of the way things were there is nothing in strategy or tactics that anyone below Reichsmarshall could have changed. And even Goring was thwarted by Hitler and Speer!

It was General Galland himself that reaffirmed the fact that to me "even had the 262s been in service a year earlier the outcome would have been the same, ableit, the war would have gone somewhat longer."

"Hitler and Goring bickering. Milch personally meddling in certain projects. Speer out maneuvering them all in order to keep the industry moving. It was like a dishonest carnival. Everything was rigged. It was madness. And all the while units like JG 7 were beating the odds in one small corner of the war."

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He did. He died 19 Feb 1936 after being out of the Army since 1926.

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Not Slipdigit

Errrm - but that's the whole point of "what if?" threads....

As far as I can see, no-one has criticised the Luftwaffe for doing anything wrong in the circumstances in which they found themselves. The question which kicked this off might be reformulated as: "if they had known what we know, could they have changed matters enough to make a difference?"

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Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum.

There you go, you've answered T.A. Gardner's 'what if'.
Using historical realities there was nothing the Luftwaffe could do, to enable them to win the air war they actually found themselves fighting, instead of the short war the Nazi leadership wanted to fight.

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Not completely true. For example, the dive bombing mania that gripped the Luftwaffe could have been changed even at the time. The USAAC realized the limitations of dive bombing and short ranged dive bombers quickly after purchasing the A-24 (an Army version of the Navy SBD dive bomber). These were quickly relegated to secondary duties due to lack of range and unsuitability.
The Wever v. Udet argument over a more tactical airforce and one with more strategic aircraft strikes at the heart of this idea. Even at the time given the known range of missions and their potential distance from available bases the Luftwaffe could have easily realized that the Ju 87 was of extremely limited potential. They could also have easily rejected the very advanced proposals for the Bomber A and B programs in favor of more flexible design criteria giving manufacturers wider latitude in getting something that worked out the door. As I pointed out, the Fw 191 was mainly, if not totally, a failure due to the RLM making idiotic technical demands on Focke Wulf just so they could experiment with the aircraft. This was ludicrious given that Germany was at war already.
Even something as simple as better target selection could have helped immensely. What if the Luftwaffe spent more effort in Russia right from the start trying to identify and take out critical factories and rail junctions in a coordinated campaign like the US and Britain did (for the most part)?
On the whole, the Luftwaffe made so many bad decisions at so many levels....and recognized that fact in many of them after they occured.... that their strategies could have changed simply on the basis of having more competent or even just more precient leadership at the time.

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Re: Mitchell edit- I meant "If Billy Mitchell hadn't died".....ie., did he have an impact and would strategic bombing have been different?

Interesting how the carrier war was different in that it allowed creaky planes like Vals and SBDs to actually function in their designated roles though, far longer than the Stuka did.

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Wish I had time to look up the numbers for sorties, bomb weight, and damage of the USAAF/RAF in the several anti transportation campaigns. My first thought was the Luftwaffe did not have the number of bombers needed, but I'm probablly misguessing the requirements.

My father was a ordinance officer in the 9th Air Force & I've always been struck by his remarks about how the weight of ordinance required to significantly curtail the German and French railroads was several times what they had assumed up through 1942. Groups of 24-30 medium bombers making level attacks from altitudes from 10,000 feet down to 500 feet and below caused far less damage than they expected to bridges and rail yards.

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2/3rds of high level aimed bombs also missed their targets in WW II. Part of the reason that fighters were turned lose to cause as much tactical damage as possible.

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Thats been oft mentioned. Single engine aircraft making diving attacks on point targets... Maybe I can dig up some numbers on this later in the week.

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A lot of the damage done by the 9th AF was done by single-engine tactical fighters that continued the work that the Stuka started, in a faster package. The Jug really found its home here, with 8 .50s and a ton of bombs or rockets, and the ability to take a fair amount of flak damage and still get home. The Typhoon was another notable here, especially with rockets. I guess you could say the 9th AF continued what the Luftwaffe taught the Allies about close air support, *but*, it was only one force of several that the Allies had. That was the difference. The Luftwaffe was originally set up in the late 30s to do what the 9th Air Force did, with very little provision for all the other things the Allies did with air power. And by the time they knew it, it was too late to fix.