What happened to the Luftwaffe?

[K62_]

If you look at campaigns '43 then '44 in WiR from the German point of view, something amazing happens to the Luftwaffe. It almost disappears

In '43, the Red Air Force has no chance against the big, bad and experienced German squadrons. But, less than one year later, Luftwaffe only has a few badly depleted FW190F (:( ) groups on the East Front. So all the German armed forces get bombed into nothingness.

So what happened? What was the historical disaster? I've tried searching info on this with no success. Anybody know anything about it?

[ShadowPanzer]

Their was no real big historical disaster as much as a lot of small ones in this time. Number one factor was a large number of US aircraft in the West. Germany had to use more of their air power in the west against the US and British fighters and that lessoned the pressure on the Russians who were building more and better aircraft that also made for more losses in the east. This made for a decrease in their air power ontill thay got to the point that more aircraft were being lost then being built durong this time.

Also if you look at the numbers their are just as many aircraft in 44, its just that they are spread out more and many are not in squodrens. This owning to the fact that the Germans are on the defince and cant really use their bomber forse.

Chick out this site for some hilpfull info on this, you will find that they had the same number of aircraft in 44 as in 43 but they were faseing 11,000 more allied aircraft.

http://www.angelfire.com/ct/ww2europe/stats.html

[K62_]

Thanks man - great link! Only that if you look at WiR the Luftwaffe is definitely weaker on the whole in '44 than in '43. Was it the Mustang?!

[ShadowPanzer]

Originally posted by K62
Thanks man - great link! Only that if you look at WiR the Luftwaffe is definitely weaker on the whole in '44 than in '43. Was it the Mustang?!

For me I think it was two things that were the really big factors.

1. Pilot quality, by 44 a lot of the experince pilots from 43 were no longer alive and the new pilots going into the air were not trained as will as the pre-war pilots were.

2. Operational aircraft, for this you would have to look at a number of factors. The number of aircraft delivered to the front and their time spent in the air. If your out numbered in the air your going to watch were you send your air and what you do with it so that it dont get destroyed.


I thing factors like the above were used in desideing axis air power in 44 for the game.

[Von Cone-on]

Hi to All,
I've been reading Adolf Galland "First to the Last" which is interesting. The dissappearance for the Luftwaffe can be laid squarely at the feet of Hitler & Goering.
Never at anytime would they admit they had lost the initiative to the allies & until the end of the war gave priority to building bombers. Which led as the fighters diminished in numbers, to even greater losses.

Also the the demands of the southern, eastern & western fronts were relentless & never met at anytime by sustained increase in fighter production or allocation to fighter units many thousands went to recon & ground attack.

In addition Hitler's refusal to consider any type of withdrawal meant that many times precious aircraft & spares were lost as airfields were overrun on these fronts. Galland mentions that on the southern front that twice in 43 - 44 virtually the entire fighter force had to be replaced due to this problem.

Last but not least the attrition of skilled pilots (the german's rarely let them rest & basically most flew until they died) led to a steady decline in quality & again greater losses. For instance in 1944 the average new allied pilot had 3X the hours as a new german pilot ( in one interview a senior german pilot lamented that the young pilots lacked the basic skill to trim their aircraft so that they flew crooked through the air!)

Cheers Von Cone-on