Fighter Aces of the Luftwaffe in World War II

287 Pages·2007·6.72 MB·English

by  Kaplan

FIGHTER ACES
OF THE
LUFTWAFFE
IN WORLD WAR II
FIGHTER ACES
OF THE
LUFTWAFFE
IN WORLD WAR II
PHILIP KAPLAN
First published in Great Britain in 2007 by
Pen & Sword Aviation
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd Copyright © Philip Kaplan, 2007
ISBN 978-1-84415-460-9
The right of Philip Kaplan to be identified as Author of this Work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is
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Contents
Introduction
1 Adolf Galland
2 Werner Mölders
3 Gunther Rall
4 Erich Hartmann
5 Johannes Steinhoff
6 Hans-Joachim Marseille
7 Other Luftwaffe Fighter Pilots
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
he author is grateful to the following people for their generous assistance
T
and contributions made in the development of this book: Malcolm Bates,
Tony Bianchi, Peter Coles, James H. Doolittle, Adolf Galland, Gerd
Gloystein, Stephen Grey, Mark Hanna, Ray Hanna, Margaret Kaplan,
Neal Kaplan, Wade Meyers, Michael O’Leary, Geoffrey Page, Horst Petzschler,
Gunther Rall, Christine Seidel, Klaus Seidel, Peter Vogler, Duke Warren.
Introduction
ollowing Germany’s defeat in World War One, the victorious Allies
F
convened at Versailles to debate the future of the German nation and to
hammer out what many have since recognized as a vindictive peace treaty.
Four years spent in a losing cause had taken Germany to the brink of
bankruptcy, forcing her to sue for peace and accept any terms offered. The Allies
gathered in the French palace with the mutual goal of eliminating the military
and economic strength of Germany through the Treaty of Versailles, which was
signed in June 1919.
The German people were impoverished and gravely short of food and all other
necessities of life. Their nation’s few remaining military assets included a still-
sizeable Naval force, the Army and the Flying Corps. One aim of the
representatives at Versailles was to end Germany’s military aviation capability.
Resurrection of the German Flying Corps would be prohibited. Under the
monitoring of the Allied Control Commission, the Germans were compelled to
turn over all of their aircraft and aeronautical material to the governments of the
Allied powers during 1920. This amounted to the surrender of more than 15,000
aircraft and 27,000 aero engines. The framers of the treaty, however, did not
include a long-term provision to prevent the manufacture and mass production of
civilian aircraft. This oversight resulted from the Allies’ failure to recognize the
potential of civil aviation in the years to come.
In spite of all the restrictions, limitations and prohibitions of the treaty, the
Germans capitalized on the civil aviation loophole and plunged headlong into
the development of commercial airlines, flying and gliding clubs and aviation
training schools. They trained pilots and pursued the design, engineering and
construction of many new and conceptually advanced aircraft. Their efforts
formed the nucleus of the clandestine German Air Force.
Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering did not found the German Air Force. It
was General Hans von Seeckt who began to plan for the new Luftwaffe in 1920,
even while the German Flying Corps was being eliminated. Von Seeckt was
Chief of the Army Command at the German Defence Ministry and was able to
create and staff a small sub rosa group of regular officers within his department
to deal exclusively with special aviation matters. The Allies would come to
regret their negligence in not breaking up the surviving and highly effective core
of the German Army Staff, for from it came the members of von Seeckt’s special
aviation department, including Hugo Sperrle, Walther Wever and Albert
Kesselring, who would rise to principal commands in the Luftwaffe during
World War Two.
In the 1920s, the German aircraft makers Heinkel, Junkers, Dornier, and
Focke-Wulf were formed, followed by Messerschmitt. Their development of
new and varied aircraft (ostensibly for civil use), laid the groundwork for
equipping a new German Air Force and, in 1924, von Seeckt arranged future
cooperation between the Civil Aviation Department of the Ministry of Transport
and his Defence Ministry by securing the appointment of a colleague to head the
CAD. Thereafter, German civil aviation would develop under clandestine
military control.
The year 1926 saw the establishment of Deutsche Lufthansa, the German
State airline and, with it, the development and construction of many large
airfields. The chairman of Lufthansa was Erhard Milch, who would become the
production chief for Hermann Goering’s Luftwaffe in the next world war. Milch
oversaw the pioneering developmental work in flying instrumentation and radio
navigation and his airline rapidly became the best in Europe. Its pilots and
navigators would form the basic training organization of the new Luftwaffe.
While Lufthansa was growing, so, too, was the Deutscher Luftsportverband,
an organization of more than 50,000 members whose involvement in sport flying
and gliding had been encouraged by von Seeckt’s Defence Ministry as another
way around the restrictive clauses of the Versailles Treaty. Von Seeckt had
determined to make Germany air-minded and in another clandestine move, an
agreement with the Soviet Union was entered into, giving service personnel
military flying instruction at the Lipetsk training centre. Thus, by the 1933
accession of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party to power in Germany, the
foundation of the new Luftwaffe was firmly in place.
Barely two years after Hitler took power, he openly flaunted the Treaty of
Versailles, announcing a major rearmament programme. In it he called for
development of a Reichsluftwaffe which would put a ‘steel roof over Germany’.
By 1935, Germany had a frontline air strength of eight squadrons – three of
fighters and five of bombers. They were, of course, illegal under the terms of
Versailles. Hitler even embellished his annual mass rallies at Nuremberg with
low-level flypasts by these aircraft which now wore the black cross insignia of
the Luftwaffe. The propaganda message for the rest of the world was clear and
intentional. Goering’s man, Erhard Milch, was quietly generating production
miracles, raising the annual manufacturing output of the German aircraft
industry from a few hundred to thousands of planes. Gone from the inventory of
the young Luftwaffe were the old, obsolete machines that had been purchased for
training. They had been replaced by a range of powerful, all-metal monoplane
types of superb and advanced design and capability.
During the Spanish Civil War in the mid-thirties, when Hitler offered
Germany’s assistance to the Franco government of Spain, the new Luftwaffe was
given an ideal opportunity to try out its latest weaponry in combat conditions.
Many of the future aces and leaders of the World War Two Luftwaffe – men like
Adolf Galland, Gunther Lützow and Werner Mölders had their first taste of air
combat.
This book considers the air force careers of Galland, Mölders, Eric Hartmann,
Gunther Rall, Johannes Steinhoff and Hans-Joachim Marseille – all of them
high-achieving aces and outstanding leaders, and, each in his own way, a pioneer
in aerial warfare.
C H A P T E R O N E