Like many here I've read up on the Battle of Britain for years and years.
I came across this brief piece that presents German losses and battle fatigue more clearly than any other I've read. We often read of how close the Luftwaffe came to breaking the back of Fighter Command and how Goering's decision to quit attacking airfields turned the tide of the battle. We rarely hear of how stretched-thin the Luftwaffe was during that same period.
352 German aircraft lost on Day 1 of the Blitzkrieg, wow.
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Ulrich Steinhilper, on the other hand, was shot down over England at the end of October, by which time he was mentally and physically completely exhausted.
“There is no doubt in my mind,” he says, “that the RAF broke the back and the spirit of the Luftwaffe during the Battle of Britain.”
Birdwatcher
"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744
And unlike the Allies, who rotated pilots out after completing so many missions, the Germans essentially forced their pilots to fly until they died at it.
And unlike the Allies, who rotated pilots out after completing so many missions, the Germans essentially forced their pilots to fly until they died at it.
Yep. They really had no other option. Same with the Brits but the Brits held a little longer.
NRA Life,Endowment,Patron or Benefactor since '72.
And unlike the Allies, who rotated pilots out after completing so many missions, the Germans essentially forced their pilots to fly until they died at it.
Out of that workload were 'forged' the best fighter Aces of WW2...and who can deny that considering the RAF and USAF consulted with them and picked their brains in the decades following.
Erich 'Bubi' Hartmann 352 Gerhard Barkhorn 301 Gunther Rall 275 etc, etc.
You can see here how many Germans hold the top ace ranks for the whole war combined! Germans exclusively hold the first 130 positions, then 98% of the first 200 and overwhelmingly over 90% of the TOP 400. the first American comes in over 300 ranks down with 40 kills, the first British a dozen positions below him with 38.
...the Germans essentially forced their pilots to fly until they died at it.
???...hmmm....looking at the above list of German pilots with high AVs and I believe corresponding highly extended combat exposure, I do notice a good proportion actually survived.
anyway, Nobody better to explain the workload of german fighter pilots that Mr Rall himself... somewhere in these clips he also explains his encounters,various injuries and personal aircraft losses.
Hartmann is an rather exceptional example, having never been shot down, never lost a wingman all while attaining the highest AVs of the war. His 109 had his infamous 'black tulip' scheme on the nose, Allied pilots would sometimes refuse to engage and turn and run from Hartmanns signature 'BT' 109. He had to swap to a 109 without the identifying BT so they would hang around just long enough for him to cut them down...
WWII: Did the British pilots and officers fight well?
Rall: Outstanding. They were a well trained and highly motivated force, with good equipment and good morale.
WWII: A mirror image of your Luftwaffe at that time?
Rall: Oh, yes, and I was in a wing which at that time was not very experienced, as it was a newly formed wing. We learned our lessons over the British Channel, and we had tremendous losses against the Royal Air Force. I had the highest respect for them.
WWII: Were most of your losses during fighter missions or bomber escort missions?
Rall: We had unfortunately been assigned to escort Junkers Ju-87B Stukas (dive bombers), very slow-flying aircraft. We had to fly close escort (in Messerschmitt Bf-109Es), which was wrong. We had to stick with them, giving up all of our superiority and speed. So we escorted them over the Channel where the Spitfires and Hurricanes waited upstairs for us, and we had tremendous losses. I lost my group commander. The adjutant and all three squadron commanders were killed in a time span of about two weeks. I, as a young lieutenant, had to take over my 8th Staffel (squadron) as commander at the age of 22. I did this for three years.
WWII: I suppose that all of this combat experience trained you and prepared you for when you were later transferred to Russia?
Rall: Yes, that is correct.
WWII: In what other areas did you serve during the war?
Rall: Well, we were withdrawn to Germany, where we trained new pilots, and then went to Romania. We were to protect the oil fields and the bridges over the Danube River down to Bulgaria. We were stationed near Bucharest, the capital of Romania. This was for only a short time, from December 1940 to March 1941. When we moved into Bulgaria, Greece was beginning. I also had operations over Crete in May 1941. I came back with the group from Romania when Crete was finished, and we were given a new airplane, the Messerschmitt Bf-109F, which was a much better aircraft. It had round wingtips and a new Daimler Benz engine, the 603. At that point–June 1941–the war with Russia was just beginning. From then until 1944 I was in the southern part of Russia, moving down to the Caucasus and on to Dnepropetrovsk, Stalingrad, all of the important names. This was a very fast-moving war, contrary to the northern part of the Russian Front, which was more stationary. In the spring I came back to Germany to the Home Defense (Reichs Verteidigung), flying against the Eighth Air Force, as you know, against all the North American P-51 Mustang, Lockheed P-38 Lightning and Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighters.
WWII: Describe the crash in which you injured your back.
Rall: This was November 28, 1941. I was flying between Taganrog and Rostov. In those days it was very cold. We had temperatures of minus 40 degrees Centigrade. I flew an afternoon mission, what we would today call a fighter sweep, when my wingman and I ran into Russians. It had just started getting dark, and I had a dogfight with a Russian, shooting him down in flames. In this very late light, I was blinded a little bit. I didn’t pay attention, and a Russian came in behind me. He shot my engine dead and it was over Russian territory, so certainly I moved and turned trying to reach the German lines– not a solid line, but I saw some German tanks. I was flying westward, and I tried to make a belly landing, but I saw where I was going to touch down, in what they call a baikal. This was a little canyon just across my flight direction, and I touched the ground at too high a speed. The aircraft hit and jumped up again. I bounced over a little canyon and pushed my stick forward. I bellied in and crashed on the other side. That was the last I knew, as I saw this wall coming against me, and in the big bang I was knocked out. The rest of the story I learned from my wingman, as he was circling over me and watching what happened. When the battle and crash were over, my wings came off, my engine came off, and thank God these things came off so I didn’t catch fire. I was hanging in the wreckage and nearby was a German tank. The crew jumped out and cut me out of the cockpit. I was unconscious and I didn’t know how I got out. Later that night I ended up in a burned-out school in Taganrog. This was a kind of aid station for the ambulance, and there was no medical treatment there.
WWII: You were very lucky.
Rall: Yes, I was lucky. In the crash I broke my back in three places–the eighth and ninth thoracic vertebrae and the fifth lumbar vertebra. I was paralyzed for a long time on the right side and my right leg.
WWII: How many times were you wounded during the war?
Rall: I was wounded three times, but I was shot down about eight times. I bellied in between the front lines, I jumped out and was picked up by Germans in tanks and so on. I was always lucky, except I was seriously wounded three times. The first time it was my back. I was then shot and hit right in the face and in my hand, and the third time I jumped out and a P-47 Thunderbolt shot my left thumb off.
-Bulletproof and Waterproof don't mean Idiotproof.
The Poles, Czechs etc, and Hawker Hurricane often don't get near enough credit...
alphabetical list of non-British nation B-O-B pilots... Winston Churchill called "The Few". Australia Barbados Belgium Canada Czechoslovakia France Ireland Jamaica Newfoundland New Zealand Northern Rhodesia Poland South Africa Southern Rhodesia United States
-Bulletproof and Waterproof don't mean Idiotproof.
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard
Was lucky enough to be in London when they were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the BoB. Got to touch a Hurricane, see flyovers, parades.
Met a couple who went through the Blitz. He was a fire fighter. She was a nurse. Talked to them for about a half an hour outside Westminster Abbey. Happened to get a front row seat to see the royal family along with Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher.
There's a one hour documentary that I watched recently that discussed very much how stretched thin the Luftwaffe became. Lots of Brits of course lost too, but the Brits REALLY gave them hell.
Contrary to the myths, the Germans were extremely unprepared for the war in general. They even started demobilizing divisions after the fall of France. They were planning the invasion of Britain and arguably the Soviet Union already and they were demobilizing panzer divisions.
Like many here I've read up on the Battle of Britain for years and years.
I came across this brief piece that presents German losses and battle fatigue more clearly than any other I've read. We often read of how close the Luftwaffe came to breaking the back of Fighter Command and how Goering's decision to quit attacking airfields turned the tide of the battle. We rarely hear of how stretched-thin the Luftwaffe was during that same period.
352 German aircraft lost on Day 1 of the Blitzkrieg, wow.
Birdwatcher
Mike, thanks for bringing this topic up. There has been a recent resurgence in WW2 aviation history, with a number of really good books coming out in print in the past few years that give a much clearer picture of both the "big picture" of the air war in Europe, and of the small details that contributed to the final outcome. I want to particularly cite Masters of the Air by Donald Miller (which has become the HBO series The Mighty Eighth) and The Men Who Killed the Luftwaffe by Jay Stout. Both Miller and Stout give excellent explications of the downfall of the Luftwaffe. As your source points out, this was as much a result of the short-sighted planning of the German high command as it was the efforts of trying to fight a battle at the very stretched limits of a long supply line.
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
I've always been a addict for anything Battle of Britain related, as well as most WW2 fighter plane stuff. There are a lot of good books on Kindle about this time period, and there are several books written by Spitfire pilots, who did not survive the war. It is very hard to sit here today, and try to understand what those men must have went through, and that includes men on both sides of the conflict.
...the Germans essentially forced their pilots to fly until they died at it.
???...hmmm....looking at the above list of German pilots with high AVs and I believe corresponding highly extended combat exposure, I do notice a good proportion actually survived.
The high-scoring German aces did have, as you point out ,"highly extended combat exposure". But where and when they were thrown into the war had a great deal of influence on their success rates in aerial combat and their chances of survival. For example, Erich Hartmann, your leading ace, did not complete his fighter pilot training until 1942, which was extremely lucky for him. This meant he didn't fight in the devastating air battles over France and England in 1940-41, during which the casualty rate for Luftwaffe pilots approached 200%.
Originally Posted by Williamson_Murray
By the beginning of 1942, the Germans had lost the equivalent of two entire air forces.
This quote is from Murray's Strategy for Defeat: The Luftwaffe 1933-1945, a 1983 publication and available online for anyone interested in a really in-depth study of the air war. Dry reading at times, perhaps, but very well written nonetheless. Google it up if you have a mind to.
Anyway, back to Hartmann's extraordinary luck. Hartmann received his first combat posting in 1942 to Jg 52 on the eastern front, where the Luftwaffe's best pilots were slaughtering the inferior Russian planes and pilots at will. He received careful training from these excellent mentors and learned well. He was able to hone his skills as a hunter-killer of enemy aircraft in a zone where the Luftwaffe enjoyed a 20:1 or better victory rate over their opponents. This was not quite as good as it sounds, at first, because the sheer numbers of Russian planes and pilots eventually overwhelmed the Germans. He fought the entire war on the Russian front, which contributed greatly to both his survival and his aerial victory tally, because Russian pilots were vastly inferior to British and American pilots on average. As the videos you've posted attest, the German pilots who faced American and British air forces were hard-pressed by western Allies. If Hartmann had been transferred to the West, his story would likely not have ended so gloriously.
But this is all anecdotal stuff. Let's look at your core assertion from the above quote:
Originally Posted by Starman
a good proportion [of Luftwaffe fighter pilots] actually survived.
"Proportion" means, as I'm sure you know, a relative portion of a whole; or put another way, what you've said is that a substantial fraction of the Luftwaffe's fighter pilots survived the war.
Now, I appreciate the videos you posted of old German aces recounting their war experience, but that doesn't really prove anything, really. I had a house-mate in college whose dad had been a Bf109 and Me262 pilot in the War, and he was one hell of a fine fellow, but his stories and bonhommie didn't prove much other than the fact he was a very skilled pilot and he was lucky enough to survive.
The statistics are far more grim. Firm numbers are hard to come by, but every source I've found agrees that the Luftwaffe's fighter pilots had a very poor survival rate. Here's a short list:
Franz Stigler, Luftwaffe historian quoted in Adam Makos' book, "A Higher Call", states flatly: "Of 28,000 German fighter pilots, only 1200 survived the war."
Other authors give somewhat better survival rates: varying from 3300 to 4500 survivors. Most of these survivors had less than 2 years' total service,and this number includes prisoners of war.
James Corum ("Why AIr Forces Fail: Luftwaffe 1935-45"): "By late 1943 the Luftwaffe had lost most of its original complement of [fighter] pilots. In the first six months of 1943, Germany lost 1100 fighter pilots, which was about 60% of the number [of active duty fighter pilots] at the start of the year. It lost another 15% in each of July and August. It is interesting to note that of the 100+ Luftwaffe aces credited with over 100 victories during WW II only eight of them started their flying career after 1942... the average life expectancy of a JG 300 pilot for the last year of the war amounted to just 11 hours of flying--barely four sorties."
So, no, it doesn't look like the proportion of Luftwaffe fighter pilots who survived the war was healthy at all. At best, these men had a one in five chance of survival, and for the men who entered the war in 1939 on active duty, the chances of survival were almost nil.
"I'm gonna have to science the schit out of this." Mark Watney, Sol 59, Mars
Although morale was a serious issue for the Germans, it was by no means the deciding factor in the Battle of Britain, IMHO. I agree with the assessment that Germans tended to be more of a fly-'til-you-die group, but both sides were running full-tilt. The British had a much better assessment program for pilot fatigue. Pilots were watched for telltale behaviors. If they had a marked increase in smoking or drinking or showed other hints, they would get pulled out and rested. However, the attrition rate was so staggering; a Spitfire pilot pretty well knew he was not getting out of the war alive.
The ME 109 and the Spitfire had strengths and weaknesses. However, as the war progressed, there were more and more improvements in the Spitfire and far fewer in the ME 109.
What was the deciding factors IMHO? 1) The Germans bet everything on a single massive crushing defeat. They had neither the planes nor the personnel to carry on a long attritional air war. Most importantly, they did not have a good pipeline for increasing aircraft production past the initial assault. The British kept increasing production of planes to where they were producing Spitfires and Hurricanes far faster than Germans could shoot them down. 2) The Me 109 could operate for a very short time in the combat box before skedaddling back to base. The Brits could stay longer and use more fuel in actual combat. 3) All the strategic decisions were being made by Goering and Hitler, and they were both egomaniacal nutjobs. Their decisions were not based in Reality. The Brits on the other hand were a bunch of cool, calculating bastards.
So, no, it doesn't look like the proportion of Luftwaffe fighter pilots who survived the war was healthy at all. At best, these men had a one in five chance of survival, and for the men who entered the war in 1939 on active duty, the chances of survival were almost nil.
Thanks for saving me the footwork.
From Wiki, here's Gunther Rall on the British.
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In my experience, the Royal Air Force pilot was the most aggressive and capable fighter pilot during the Second World War. This is nothing against the Americans, because they came in late and in such large numbers that we don't have an accurate comparison. We were totally outnumbered when the Americans engaged, whereas at the time of the Battle of Britain the fight was more even and you could compare. The British were extremely good.
Willi Heilmann, who's book I recently came across,and who was in the air to the bitter end including Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge flying FW 190's and later Doras assigned to cover Me 262 airfields , expressed the same opinion. https://www.amazon.com/Fought-You-Skies-German-Fighter/dp/B000J6AMNK
One time period/location I'd like to read up on more was '41-'42, when RAF fighter patrols flying "rhubarbs" from England over Northern France were getting hammered by the Luftwaffe in pure fighter vs. fighter actions.
Birdwatcher
"...if the gentlemen of Virginia shall send us a dozen of their sons, we would take great care in their education, instruct them in all we know, and make men of them." Canasatego 1744
