Luftwaffe
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The Luftwaffe (pronounced "looft-vaaf-feh") is the name for the air force of Germany. Yet it has not always been so. In fact, this was the name for the air force of Germany during the Third Reich when Adolf Hitler was in power and was also the name for the air force during the era of the Cold War when Germany was divided into two: East Germany and West Germany. This meant that the Luftwaffe was the air force of West Germany between 1955 and 1990. In 1990, these two countries became one country again, so the Luftwaffe has been the air force of the united (together) Germany since 1990. Luftwaffe is Air force in English. .
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[edit] The early years including World War I (1910-1918)
Germany first had aeroplanes in its army in 1910, four years before the start of World War I in 1914. At that time, aeroplanes had no guns. They were being used for reconnaissance duties, that is, they would fly over the battlefield to see what the enemy was doing and fly back so that the pilots could tell their generals what they knew. The generals would then use that information. Before aeroplanes came along, balloons had been used. For example, the German army had used balloons to see what the French army was doing when they were at war in 1870. Even during the wars against Napoleon between 1793 and 1815, balloons were being used to spy on the enemy. The German air force is not the oldest air force in the world, because the French army started to use aeroplanes in 1910, while the British army started to use them in 1912. The British army’s aeroplanes were in what was called the "Royal Flying Corps". This would become the famous Royal Air Force in 1918.
During World War I, Germany used a few kinds of aeroplane to fight its war, such as fighters, bombers and reconnaissance aeroplanes, but the fighter aeroplanes became very famous because of its brave pilots. The most famous German pilot of World War I was Manfred von Richthofen. The British called him "The Red Baron". He shot down 80 enemy aircraft before he was killed in April 1918. Germany also used airships called "Zeppelins". They had the name of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who had built the first airships in 1900, but he had wanted them to carry cargo and passengers, not bombs. He died in 1917, but people still use his name when they remember the German airships of World War I. (In fact, the Zeppelin company is still making airships today, but these are much smaller now.)
One could recognize a German aircraft in World War I because of the Iron Cross on it. The Iron Cross was a medal given to German soldiers for bravery. From 1918, the last year of the war, Germany started to use a cross that had straight lines on it. This was called the Balkan Cross. This would become very familiar to the whole world during the years of the Third Reich (1933-1945) when Hitler was leader of Germany because all German military aeroplanes had the Balkan Cross on them.
In November 1918, the "Allies" (which included Britain and France) won the war, and Germany had to sign the Treaty of Versailles. It was told that it could not have any military aeroplanes at all because it was blamed for starting the war in 1914. Germany therefore had to destroy all its military aeroplanes as a punishment, which meant that its air force no longer existed.
[edit] The years between the two world wars (1918-1939)
For many years, Germany pretended to have no army pilots because the German army generals did not like the idea of not having any aeroplanes. At first, pilots would pretend to be training to become airline pilots but this was of limited value because they really needed to fly fighters and bombers. The Treaty of Versailles did not allow Germany to have them, so Germany had to ask for help from Russia, its former (and future) enemy. In 1924, German army pilots started to fly Russian fighters and bombers at a secret training school near the Russian city of Lipetsk. These pilots would then become the first ones to fly for the new German air force, the Luftwaffe, when Hitler said that it now existed. The training school closed in 1933.
In 1935, Hitler finally told the world that Germany had a new air force, even if the Treaty of Versailles forbade Germany from having one. Hitler therefore was defying the Allies, who had won World War I, but they did not do anything about this, because many people still remembered the war in 1914-1918. They were frightened by the idea of war and did not want another one. Hitler knew this. Before he announced the existence of the new air force, German army pilots were part of the so-called "German Sports Flying Union", flying very fast aeroplanes, but this was, of course, meant to be a secret air force. It was Germany’s way of "getting around" the Treaty of Versailles. The announcement of the existence of the Luftwaffe now meant that Germany was openly defying the Allies.
The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 gave the Germans the opportunity to test its new aircraft, pilots and weapons in battle. Hitler sent many aeroplanes and pilots over to Spain because he wanted to support a man called Franco, who wanted to get rid of the Spanish government. Amongst the aeroplanes were fighters called the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and dive-bombers called the Junkers Ju 87 ‘Stuka”. These aeroplanes would become very famous during World War II (1939-1945). Hitler did not want to make the world think that Germany itself was supporting Franco, so the Germans did not have Balkan Crosses or swastikas (the symbol of the German Nazi Party) on their aircraft; instead of the Balkan Cross, German aircraft now carried a black disc (circle).
The world now remembers one mission that the German air force carried out during the war. Some bombers attacked the city of Guernica in the Basque region of northeast Spain, and many civilians (people who were not soldiers) died in the attack. Many governments around the world were horrified at the attack. The painter, Pablo Picasso, painted a painting called Guernica that has become very famous. People see the painting as a symbol of the horror of war. Many people were afraid that wars in the future would be exactly like this. An Italian general named Giulio Douhet had said that countries would win wars by sending their bombers to bomb cities, rather than by soldiers fighting each other as they did in World War I. Bombing attacks like the one on Guernica did become very common during World War II, which broke out only a few months after the end of the war in Spain.
[edit] World War II (1939-1945)
The German air force was the strongest in the world when World War II broke out in September 1939. It supported the army on the ground and the aircraft were very effective at defeating all opposition, since the German armed forces, the Wehrmacht, had practised a very new and very fast way to defeat the armies of enemies. This was called Blitzkrieg or Lightning War. This would be very different from the way in which the armies had fought each other in World War I more than 20 years earlier. The French and the British were prepared for a trench war. When the whistling sounds of bombs coming off of Junkers Ju. 87s were heard, it was impossible to fight back. The French had outdated aircraft technology and was unable to hold back the fist of the Luftwaffe. Instead of years and years of fighting and many thousands of soldiers being killed, the Germans intended to conquer countries very, very fast. Within a year, Germany had conquered Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, and France. Britain supported the countries attacked by Germany but found herself on her own by June 1940 when Germany had conquered most of western Europe. Spain had a civil revolt before World War II. One side was the nationalists and the other was dictatorship. Germans took the side of dictatorship and helped them gain control in Spain. This resulted in Germany not occupying Spain.
The Luftwaffe's next assignment was to gain air superiority over southern England so that the German army could mount a marine invasion. This was a tall order for the Royal Air Force would be their first formidable foe & the Luftwaffe was well aware of the English fighting spirit from their 1914-18 encounters. The Luftwaffe was at a disadvantage now. Goring was being ostentatious and used all of the aircraft in production and in inventory. The British used three fourths of their aircraft and left one fourth of the aircraft in reserve. This turned out to be a wise decision. Due to the limited range of the Messerschmitt Me. 109 and Focke Wulf. Fw. 190, these fighters could not escort bombers all the way through. Another disadvantage was that the Luftwaffe lacked a heavy four engined bomber. To make up for this, the German War Ministry decided to build various light and medium bombers to make up for the deficiency. As the war progressed, this turned out to be an inadequate decision. The battle started (Battle of Britain) in July 0f 1940 and raged furiously throughout the summer months with heavy losses on both sides. The Luftwaffe came mighty close to victory but by the fall of 1940 it became apparent that the RAF was far from vanquished & the invasion was called off. It should be noted that poor decisions made by Luftwaffe brass(and Hitler) contributed to the Luftwaffe's loss as much as anything. Poor decisions would plague the Luftwaffe through out the war years.
As the war went on, things began to go badly wrong for the Luftwaffe. The leadership of the Luftwaffe began to become quite bad, as generals were arguing about what the air force should be doing and blaming each other when the Luftwaffe was unable to stop the British from attacking German aircraft factories and other industrial targets in large numbers during the night since they had lost many planes when attacking them by day. Not only that, but Germany was suffering a shortage of materials needed to build the aeroplanes. Things got worse for the Germans when the USA joined the war in December 1941, because the Americans brought thousands of bombers to the United Kingdom, and they attacked Germany from there.
Germany did have very large aircraft with four engines before the war had started, but they had flown with the national airline, Lufthansa, not with the Luftwaffe. These aircraft were able to fly to the USA directly from Germany, though. Even so, the Germans did not think of building enough of them in order to attack targets very far away from Germany. Instead, they built hundreds of bombers with just two engines in them, so that they could not fly to the USA at all. The reason for this was that Germany did not think that the USA would join the war, but it did when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, and Japan was Germany’s ally. This meant that Germany, too, became the enemy of the USA.
Soon, hundreds of American and British bombers were attacking Germany every single day both by day and by night. Yet the Luftwaffe stayed strong and its pilots fought back. They succeeded in shooting down many of the bombers. On one night at the end of October 1944, 95 British bombers were shot down over the southern German city of Nuremberg, and the Allies were shocked. Nuremberg was famous already, not just because it was a historical city with very old buildings, but also because the Nazis had held very large political meetings in the city before the war. In 1946, it would be famous again, because this was where the Allies put many of the top Nazis on trial for war crimes, including Hermann Goering, the former commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe.
In Russia, some German fighter pilots were able to shoot down very many Russian aircraft because they were far better and more experienced at fighting enemy planes than the Russians were. One pilot called Erich Hartmann shot down 352 enemy planes by the time the war ended in May 1945. At first, after the war, the Allies simply refused to believe that he could have done this, but eventually this astonishing feat was accepted. A Russian pilot called Ivan Kozhedub shot down 62 German aircraft during the war, and it was he who shot down the most German aircraft among all the fighter pilots from the Allies. Kozhedub received many medals for bravery from the Russian government, and he would rise to very high rank within the Russian Army Air Force after the war.
Germany, though, could not hope to win the war on the ground. Since Russia was so huge, the government set up factories hundreds of miles away from the fighting in order to build aeroplanes, tanks, guns and other weapons for the Russian Army. This meant that the Russians would eventually start to push the Germans back west, especially after they defeated the Germans in great battles near the city of Kursk and in the city of Stalingrad itself. The Germans had failed to conquer the city of Leningrad, too. (After the war, the Russians changed the names of the cities, so that Stalingrad became Volgograd in 1961 and Leningrad changed its name back to Saint Petersburg.)
The Luftwaffe fought the Allies on many fronts, including in North Africa, where the German aircraft supported the German army units called the "Afrika Korps", which General Erwin Rommel commanded. The German air force was also in Italy, even after the country, Germany's ally, changed sides midway through the war, and stayed there until the very end. In Rumania, another of Germany's allies, Luftwaffe fighters protected the oil fields, which were giving Germany fuel for its armies fighting the Russians.
Unlike other countries, Germany's air force, not its army, had units of parachute troops. They saw action in major operations in the early years of the war. These included the operation to capture a major fortress in Belgium in May 1940 and the island of Crete in the Mediterranean Sea in May 1941. However, in the operation to take Crete from the British, more than 3,000 parachute troops lost their lives. Hitler was very shocked and ordered the parachute units to take part in smaller operations only from then on. One of them was when the Italian leader, Benito Mussolini, was successfully rescued after he had been deposed and then taken prisoner.
The Germans had tried to fight enemy bombers at night even in World War I. When the British began to send many bombers to attack Germany at night in 1940, the Luftwaffe had to start learning again how to fight them. The Germans set up many radar stations from Norway to the border with Switzerland. Lieutenant General Josef Kammhuber was in charge of these. These stations detected the enemy bombers and they alerted the German night-fighter squadrons, which then sent up their planes to shoot down the bombers. Some of the aircraft themselves later had radar. The Heinkel He 219 was called the "Owl", and many people considered this fighter to be the best one to shoot down the enemy bombers at night. However, the Germans never built enough of them. The Allies themselves started to make the German radars useless by dropping many strips of aluminum foil from their aircraft many miles away from the places they were going to attack. This was called "Window". Even so, one pilot called Helmut Lent shot down 110 enemy bombers during the war before he died in an air crash in October 1944. Another called Wolfgang Schnaufer shot down 102 of them, but he died in a car crash in France in 1950.
Germany became famous as the country, which flew the first jet aeroplanes. In 1944, the Luftwaffe started to use the world’s first jet fighter plane, the Messerschmitt Me 262, even if the engines sometimes did not work properly. Once again, the shortage of the materials needed to build the plane as well as the continuing bombing of Germany meant that not as many Me 262s were built as Germany would have liked. Even so, Germany also built and flew the world's first jet bomber, the Arado Ar 234, the world’s first fighter plane powered by a rocket, the Messerschmitt Me 163, the world’s first "cruise missile", the V-1, and the world’s first ballistic missile, the V-2.
On 01 Jan 45 the Luftwaffe launched a desperate plan called operation 'Bodenplatte'(Baseplate), a dawn air attack aimed at multible Allied air bases in Belgium & Holland. Over 800 German aircraft were rounded up with many veteran pilots retired from combat duty pressesd back into service. The plan cost more than it was worth, with over 280 German planes lost & 213 irreplaceble pilots killed or captured. As with the fog of war, 100+ German planes were shot down by their own ground fire who weren't in on the plan.
After the war the allies were quite impressed with Germany's technical know how & gleaned all they could from the vast array of Luftwaffe aircraft strewn across Germany.
[edit] The Cold War (1945-1990) and afterwards
Once again, the Allies prohibited Germany from having an air force. The Russians were in the eastern half of Germany, and this half became East Germany. The British, French and Americans were in the western half, and this half became West Germany. These became countries in their own right, and East Germany became a Russian puppet state. In case a new war started with Russia and East Germany as enemies, the Western Allies finally allowed West Germany to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), an organization of western countries which wanted there to be peace throughout the world. NATO allowed West Germany to have an air force because the country was right next to East Germany. In 1955, the Luftwaffe was re-born in West Germany, but it had only aircraft made in the USA. The aircraft displayed the old Iron Cross on their wings and fuselage and the West German flag on the tail. Many pilots who had fought in World War II joined the new air force, including Erich Hartmann. General Kammhuber joined, too. At the same time, Russia allowed East Germany to have its own air force, too, just in case there was another war with the USA and West Germany as their enemies.
In the 1960s, many fighter aircraft called the F-104 “Starfighter”, which were made in the USA but used by the Luftwaffe, crashed in accidents, killing many of the pilots. The German press began to call this aircraft the "Widowmaker" because of the many women who lost their husbands when their F-104s were destroyed. The East German air force, in the meanwhile, was using aircraft built in Russia, including the famous MiGs, but they would join the Luftwaffe after West Germany and East Germany became one country again in 1990.
The Panavia Tornado and the Eurofighter Typhoon are two examples of military aircraft built not just by one country in Europe, but by several. Germany was one country that was responsible for building parts of both of these aircraft and for flying them in the Luftwaffe. The Tornado, which first flew in 1974, is a fighter-bomber, while the Typhoon, which will enter military service in or around 2007, is going to be a fighter.
Germany used military aircraft in war for the first time since 1945 when they supported British aircraft in the war in Kosovo in 1999, but many people still believed that Germany should never again go to war because of what had happened in the two world wars.
[edit] See also
This article is a simplified (and slightly reduced) version based on the one about the Luftwaffe in the (other) English Wikipedia. [1] A list of books about the Luftwaffe and about military aviation in general is there.
[edit] Internet sites
A list of internet sites is also in the article about the Luftwaffe in the (other) English Wikipedia. [2]
