Air Warfare
RAF 1936-39 Part II
The worst omen of 1937 was the ministerial change in May: Stanley Baldwin retired, and Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister, with Sir John Simon as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Anthony Eden was Foreign Secretary. A new card had already been introduced into the political pack: a Minister for Coordination of Defence. Sir Thomas Inskip took up that office in March…
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Luftwaffe in Barbarossa Part I
As the German forces were being assembled in the east slowly at first and then more rapidly from February 1941, when the real buildup began-the Luftwaffe was still engaged in fighting England. Its first move consisted of an attempt to destroy the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) Fighter Command and gain…
Luftwaffe in Barbarossa Part II
Luftwaffe Dive Bombers, Sink the Marat at Kronshtadt Barbarossa. At 0300, 22 June 1941, the Luftwaffe opened the campaign by the now-standard method of a surprise strike at the enemy’s airfields. The weather that day was almost perfect-warm and sunny with a slight haze that cleared up later during the…
Luftwaffe in Barbarossa Part III
SKG 210 in flight during Operation Barbarossa. Meanwhile, far to the south, Army Group South advanced from Poland. Its left wing was formed by Sixth Army, acting as a flank guard against possible counterattacks coming from the Pripet Marshes; next, from north to south, came 1st Panzer Group, Seventeenth Army,…
Luftwaffe in Barbarossa Part IV
Even as these operations were going on, the most important part of the drama was taking place neither in the Baltic nor in the Ukraine but with Army Group Center north of the Pripet Marshes in Belorussia. The armored forces, forming the spearheads of the army group, were put on…
Luftwaffe in Barbarossa Part V
Up to this point, the Luftwaffe’s task in the east had consisted almost exclusively of operativ warfare in indirect or increasingly direct support of the army. Indeed, Hitler’s Directive No. 21 had explicitly ordered attacks on Soviet “strategic” targets such as arms manufacturers to be postponed until after the Archangelsk-Volga-Astrakhan…
Luftwaffe in Barbarossa Part VI
Seen in retrospect, the German campaign in Russia in 1941 was the greatest display of maneuver warfare in history, and it will likely remain so in the future. In point of preparedness, doctrine, numbers available for the offensive, and leadership, the German armed forces had peaked during the summer. These…