THE LUFTWAFFE: A HISTORY

321 Pages·2013·3.22 MB·English

by  John Killen

THE LUFTWAFFE: A History
PEN & SWORD MILITARY CLASSICS
W e hope you enjoy your Pen and Sword Military Classic. The series is
designed to give readers quality military history at affordable prices.
Below is a list of the tides that are planned for 2003. Pen and Sword Classics are
available from all good bookshops. If you would like to keep in touch with
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then please contact Pen and Sword at the address below.
2003 List
Series No.
JANUARY
1 The Bowmen of England Donald Featherstone
2 The Life & Death of the Afrika Korps Ronald Lewin
3 The Old Front Line John Masefield
4 Wellington & Napoleon Robin Neillands

FEBRUARY
5 Beggars in Red John Strawson
6 The Luftwaffe: A History John Killen
7 Siege: Malta 1940–1943 Ernle Bradford

MARCH
8 Hitler as Military Commander John Strawson
9 Nelson’s Battles Oliver Warner
10 The Western Front 1914–1918 John Terraine

APRIL
11 The Killing Ground Tim Travers
12 Vimy Pierre Berton

MAY
13 Dictionary of the First World War Pope & Wheal
14 1918: The Last Act Barrie Pitt

JUNE
15 Hitler’s Last Offensive Peter Elstob
16 Naval Battles of World War Two Geoffrey Bennett

JULY
17 Omdurman Philip Ziegler
18 Strike Hard, Strike Sure Ralph Barker

AUGUST
19 The Black Angels Rupert Butler
20 The Black Ship Dudley Pope

SEPTEMBER
21 The Argentine Fight for the Falklands Martin Middlebrook
22 The Narrow Margin Wood & Dempster

OCTOBER
23 Warfare in the Age of Bonaparte Michael Glover
24 With the German Guns Herbert Sulzbach

NOVEMBER
25 Dictionary of the Second World War Pope & Wheal
26 Not Ordinary Men John Colvin
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JOHN KILLEN
THE LUFTWAFFE:
A History
First published in Great Britain in 1967 by Frederick Muller Ltd
Published in 2003, in this format, by
P E N & S W O R D M I L I T A R Y C L A S S I C S
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Limited
47, Church Street
Barnsley
S. Yorkshire
S70 2AS
©John Killen, 1967, 2003
The publishers have made every effort to trace the author, his estate and
his agent without success and they would be interested to hear from
anyone who is able to provide them with this information.
ISBN 0 85052 925 5
A CIP record for this book is
available from the British Library Printed in England by
CPI UK
CONTENTS
Foreword
I Aircraft and Aces; 1914–1916
II Year of Attrition: 1917
III The Broken Wings: 1918
IV Phoenix Rising: 1918–1926
V Awaiting Events: 1926–1933
VI Air Force in Embryo: 1933–1935
VII Into the Arena: Spain, 1936
VIII The End of the Airships: 1936
IX Austria to Poland: 1938–1939
X Blitzkrieg! Poland, 1939
XI The Battering Ram: France, 1940
XII A Fortress Besieged: The Battle of Britain
XIII Heinkels Over London: September, 1940
XIV Sunshine and Slaughter: Crete, 1941
XV Red Star Burning: Russia, 1941
XVI The Unconquerable Island: Malta, 1942
XVII Airlift to Disaster: Stalingrad, 1943
XVIII “You can call me Meier!” Cologne, 1943
XIX Bombing Round the Clock: 1943
XX Disintegration: 1944
XXI Fighters, Bombers or Fighter-Bombers? 1944
XXII Dresden and Berlin: 1945
XXIII Cry Havoc to the End: May, 1945
Bibliography
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Fokker Dr 1 triplane (Courtesy: the Imperial War Museum)
A squadron of Albatross fighters at Taulis in 1916 (Courtesy: the Imperial War
Museum)
Manfred von Richthofen (Courtesy: the Imperial War Museum)
General von Hoeppner talking with von Richthofen (Courtesy: the Imperial War
Museum)
Oswald Boelcke (Courtesy: the Imperial War Museum)
Bruno Loerzer, Anthony Fokker and Hermann Goering (Courtesy: the Imperial
War Museum)
Peter Strasser (Courtesy: the Imperial War Museum)
Heinrich Mathy (Courtesy: the Imperial War Museum)
Hugo Eckener (Courtesy: Radio Times Hulton Picture Library)
Ernst Udet (Courtesy: the Imperial War Museum)
The Heinkel He45 (Courtesy: the Imperial War Museum)
Three Henschel Hs123s (Courtesy: the Imperial War Museum)
Hugo Junkers and the Junkers Ju52/3m (Courtesy: Keystone Press Agency, Ltd.)
The Hindenberg, last of the German airships (Courtesy: Keystone Press Agency,
Ltd.)
The Focke-Wulf Fw200 (Courtesy: Keystone Press Agency, Ltd.)
Goering talks to Hitler at a review of the Richthofen Squadron at Staaken
(Courtesy: United Press International (UK) Ltd.)
The twin-engined Dornier D0217 (Courtesy: the Imperial War Museum)
A tandem-engined Dornier D0335 and a Junkers Ju88 (Courtesy: the Imperial
War Museum)
The Focke-Wulf 190 and the Messerschmidt BF 109 (Courtesy: the Imperial
War Museum)
The Me109E and the Me110 (Courtesy: United Press International (UK) Ltd.,
and the Imperial War Museum)
Two Heinkel He111s joined together and given a fifth engine (Courtesy:
Keystone Press Agency, Ltd.)
The Junkers Ju87, or Stuka (Courtesy: Keystone Press Agency, Ltd.)
The Me262 jet fighter (Courtesy: the Imperial War Museum)
The He111 (Courtesy: United Press International (UK) Ltd.)
General Hans Jeschonnek with Field Marshal Kesselring (Courtesy: Keystone
Press Agency, Ltd.)
Adolf Galland (Courtesy: the Imperial War Museum)
A graveyard for German machines at Bad Abling (Courtesy: Keystone Press
Agency, Ltd.)
Goering after the capitulations in 1945 (Courtesy: Keystone Press Agency, Ltd.)
FOREWORD
by Marshal of the Royal Air Force,
Sir John Slessor, G.C.B., D.S.O., M.C.
THE Germans are exceedingly efficient men of war—temperamentally, tactically
and technically, and on land, at sea and in the air—as we know to our bitter cost
in two world wars. Fortunately for us there have been fatal flaws in their system
for higher strategic direction in both wars, but especially the second. Field
Marshal Smuts, in a moment of relaxed rumination, once said to me, “You know
—it’s the greatest mistake to imagine that it’s great victories that win wars. On
the contrary—it’s the great blunders. We ought to put up a statue in Trafalgar
Square to Hitler for having been such a fool as to attack Russia.”
Readers of this book may reflect that in the air war Hitler was indeed our
secret weapon—ably abetted by Hermann Goering. After our near-fatal
blindness and prevarication in the locust years before 1939, it would have gone
ill with us had not the efforts of the RAF been supplemented by the colossal
blunders of the egregious Reichsmarschall and his crazy master. One’s heart
almost bleeds for the senior commanders of the Luftwaffe—many of them very
capable Generals as well as brave fighting men—subject as they were to the
follies and misjudgements of the man who had been a fine fighter leader in the
First World War but was such an unbelievably incompetent Commander-in-
Chief in the second.
It was as well for us that the basic German concept of war was still rooted in
Army tradition. The battle of Britain might have been a very different story had
the Nazis followed up and developed the astonishingly advanced techniques of
“strategic” air warfare initiated by the old Imperial Air Force in their attacks on
Britain a quarter of a century earlier. The personnel of the Luftwaffe were brave
and determined; the scientific and technical backing was excellent; the
organisation, with its emphasis on mobility and flexibility, was basically sound.
Its tactics as the spearhead of Blitzkrieg in France in 1940 and in Russia in 1941