Eagles of the Third Reich: Men of the Luftwaffe in WWII (Stackpole Military History Series) (21 page)

He was right. Under pressure from the Luftwaffe and the Panzertruppen, the French Ninth Army was disintegrating. That night seventy-eight British heavy bombers took off from England and bombed the Ruhr for the first time, setting several oil plants on fire. They returned to base without loss.
²⁷
Apparently they hoped to force the Luftwaffe to pull back some of its flak guns and fighter planes for the defense of the fatherland. If so, it did not work. The Luftwaffe continued its tactical support missions all along the front.

The Manstein Plan was working out exactly as its creator said it would. Panic broke out in Paris on May 16, and Brussels fell to the Sixth Army on May 17, the same day that Gamelin recommended to Reynaud that he seek an armistice. On May 19 Reynaud sacked Gamelin and replaced him with General Weygand, but the move did little good. The next day Guderian’s spearhead reached the English Channel near Abbeville, cutting off the B.E.F. and the First and Seventh French Armies with their backs to the sea. Almost simultaneously, the R.A.F. abandoned its last airfield in Belgium and flew back to England. Only 66 of its original 261 fighters had survived the ten-day air battle. The French campaign was won. Hitler was already mapping out the peace terms he would offer the defeated Allies.

At this point, Hermann Goering made one of the worst of the many mistakes he would make in the Second World War: he let success go to his head. On May 23, as Ewald von Kleist’s tanks closed in on Dunkirk, Goering was sitting at a heavy oak table near his command train. A dispatch arrived with the news that the Allied forces in Flanders were all but surrounded near Dunkirk. Goering banged his fist on the table with delight. “This is a wonderful opportunity for the Luftwaffe!” he exclaimed. “I must speak to the Fuehrer at once.” In the ensuing telephone conversation, he assured Hitler that the Luftwaffe alone could destroy the enemy. Hitler, perhaps wishing to conserve his panzer strength for the drive on Paris, consented. Goering even persuaded him to withdraw some of the tank units a short distance, so that they would not be in danger of being hit by a misdirected bomb.

Milch, Kesselring, Jeschonnek, and Maj. Gen. Alfred Jodl (the chief of operations of OKW) all opposed the plan. When a very sarcastic army general told him that the panzers had been halted, Wolfram von Richthofen rushed back to his headquarters (a children’s convalescent home at Proisy) and telephoned Jeschonnek immediately. These orders must be revoked immediately, he cried: “Unless the panzers can get moving again at once, the English will give us the slip. No one can seriously believe that we alone can stop them from the air!”

“You’re wrong,” Jeschonnek replied. “The Iron One [Goering] believes it.”
²⁸

The Luftwaffe lacked the necessary prerequisites for the operation. The air units were nearly exhausted after two weeks of continuous action, they had no advanced airfields, and they had lost about a thousand aircraft to enemy fighters, ground fire, and normal maintenance problems. It was too late for discussion now, however: Goering had committed himself.

For the first time, over Dunkirk, the Luftwaffe met large numbers of British Spitfires flying at a maximum speed of 370 miles per hour—13 mph faster than the best German fighter, the Me-109. The Messerschmitts did dive better and had a 2,000-foot fighter ceiling, but they were much less maneuverable than their British opponents—a critical disadvantage in aerial combat. The Stuka dive-bombers were almost helpless against the new R.A.F. fighters. In short, for the first time, the Luftwaffe met pilots as good as their own in aircraft as good or better than their own. As a result, they were unable to halt the British evacuation. Some 40,000 French troops were captured when Dunkirk fell on June 4, but 338,226 British and Allied soldiers had been saved. It was the first serious loss of prestige for the Luftwaffe.

Less than three weeks later the French capitulated. Despite Dunkirk (the importance of which had not yet been recognized by the Germans), the Luftwaffe had again distinguished itself. It had lost 1,389 airplanes, including 521 bombers, 122 Stukas, 367 fighters, 213 transports, and 160 reconnaissance aircraft. The Belgian and Dutch air forces had been almost totally wiped out, and the R.A.F. had lost 854 of its 1,873 frontline airplanes—more than 45 percent of its strength. The Allied losses to the Luftwaffe totalled well over 3,000 planes by June 4.
²⁹

The most successful Luftwaffe ace of the campaign was Capt. Wilhelm Balthasar, a squadron leader in JG 27. Balthasar, who had scored seven kills as a member of the Condor Legion (including four in a wild, six-minute combat), shot down twenty-three enemy airplanes and destroyed thirteen more on the ground. He had shot down nine airplanes on June 6 alone. Later he commanded III/JG 3 in the Battle of Britain and the 2nd Fighter Wing “Richthofen” in the West (1940–41). Known for his chivalry in battle, he was killed on July 3, 1941, when his overstressed wing suddenly collapsed during a tight turn in a battle against Spitfires. In accordance with his wishes, he was buried in Abbeville, France, next to his father, a World War I captain who had been killed in action in 1915 when Balthasar was ten months old. Balthasar had forty victories at the time of his death.

Werner Moelders also distinguished himself in this campaign by shooting down thirteen enemy aircraft before June 5, when he was surprised by a French fighter near Compiegne. Shot down and promptly captured, he spent the next few weeks as a prisoner of war, but returned to his wing after the French surrender.
³⁰

And what had happened to the French air force? Between May 10 and June 12, it had received 1,131 new aircraft—668 of which were fighters. French air power had actually increased during the campaign, General Vuillemin later admitted that his air force had received more aircraft during the campaign than it had lost to enemy action. After the armistice, there were 4,200 military airplanes in the unoccupied zone of France, and the Italian Control Commission in North Africa found 2,648 modern French airplanes. More than 700 of these were fighters—many of them of recent manufacture.
³¹
It is hard to escape the conclusion that the French air commanders lost their nerve after the first Luftwaffe attacks and abandoned both their allies and their own troops to their fate. As for the Luftwaffe, it had covered itself with glory once again. Reward day was not long in coming.

On the evening of July 19, in the Opera House in Berlin, Hitler promoted a dozen generals to the rank of field marshal. The highest honors, however, went to Hermann Goering. Hitler himself read the citation: “For his mighty contribution to victory, I hereby appoint the creator of the Luftwaffe Reichsmarschall of the Greater German Reich, and award him the Grand Cross of the Iron Cross.”

Goering was now the only holder of the highest decoration in the land and the only holder of the highest military rank in German history, and a hitherto unheard of rank at that. That night he celebrated in his usual style, throwing a lavish party for a few friends at the Leipziger Palace, his Berlin residence. The meal included pâté de foie gras from Paris, several different-colored vodkas from Poland, roast salmon from Danzig, Moselle from Trier, goose with Chateau Haut Brion from Veldenstein, Viennese torte with Chateau d’Yquem, as well as Napoleon brandy and French liqueurs. Everyone got quite inebriated. Goering promptly forgot all about the war, concentrating most of his energies on hunting art treasures. From then until 1945, except for very brief periods, the Luftwaffe was almost leaderless. Air fleet commanders frequently had to journey to Rominten to see Goering, where the most important business was discussed in breaks during stag hunts.
³²

Goering was not the only one rewarded on July 19. Sperrle, Kesselring, and Milch were promoted to field marshal. Richthofen was awarded the Knights Cross and advanced to general of flyers, completely skipping the rank of lieutenant general. Ulrich Grauert was promoted to colonel general. Ritter von Greim became a general of flyers, as did Hans Jeschonnek, who, like Richthofen, bypassed the rank of lieutenant general. Others receiving promotions that day included Alfred Keller, Stumpff, Ernst Udet, and Hubert Weise, all of whom became colonel generals. Hans Geisler became a general of flyers, and a score of lesser lights received promotions and/or high decorations. Except for Goering, these men had little time to rest on their laurels, however, for England had not yet been subdued. Here, for the first time, some of the weaknesses of the German Air Force would be made apparent, and the Luftwaffe (and the Reich) would suffer its first major defeat.

CHAPTER 6

The Air War against Britain, 1939–42

T
he air war against the United Kingdom can be divided into two major periods: 1) the years 1939–41, when Germany was essentially on the offensive, and 2) the 1942–45 period, when the aerial offensives were conducted largely (but by no means exclusively) by the Royal Air Force and its American ally. The first period can be subdivided into a number of phases: 1) antishipping operations; 2) the Battle of France; 3) the Battle of the Chan nel; 4–6) the three phases of the Battle of Britain; and 7) the period of stalemate, when Hitler and the Luftwaffe leaders knew that England could not be bombed into submission but had to keep up a harassing action for reasons of prestige. The air war against Britain did not begin with the Battle of Britain, as many of today’s Americans think; rather, it began with the start of the war.

Initially, before the invasion of France, Germany’s air war against Britain was waged against the Royal Navy and the merchant marine. Two commanders directed these operations: Maj. Gen. Joachim Coeler and Lt. Gen. Hans Ferdinand Geisler. Geisler’s chief of operations, Maj. Martin Harlinghausen, also distinguished himself in these operations. Appropriately enough, all three of these men were ex-sailors.

Joachim Coeler was born in Posen (now Poznan, Poland) in 1891 and entered the navy as a cadet in 1912. He joined the 1st Navy Air Unit (
Marine Flieger Abteilung
) as an ensign in 1915 and became a fighter pilot. Later he commanded the naval bomber school at Putzig until the armistice. He remained in naval aviation during the Reichswehr period and, after a tour of duty with the German mission in Tokyo (September 1934, to March 1935), was transferred to the Luftwaffe as a staff officer with Luftkreis VI (Sea) in 1935. In 1936 he was promoted to colonel and named inspector of naval aviation. In 1939, Coeler was promoted to major general and named commander of Naval Air Group West (
Seeluftstreitkraefte West
), headquartered in Kiel. For the first six months of the war he was subordinate to the High Command of the Navy (OKM).
¹

When the war began, Coeler had 228 aircraft under his command—mostly obsolete He-59 and He-60 seaplanes, some floatplanes, and a few Stukas and Me-109s that had been specially adapted for naval support operations. Coeler made the most of his limited resources and conducted an aggressive mine-laying campaign against the British navy and merchant marine. He was so successful that, by mid-December, his slow, obsolete aircraft had been responsible for sinking about one hundred thousand tons of British shipping. As a result, his command was upgraded to 9th Air Division on February 1, 1940, and placed under Luftwaffe, rather than naval, control. Coeler himself was decorated with the Knights Cross and promoted to lieutenant general in the massive promotions of July 19, 1940.
²

Meanwhile, Hans Geisler was in charge of direct bomber attacks against British naval forces. Geisler, who was also headquartered at Kiel, had joined the navy in 1909 and had served as an aerial observer and reconnaissance pilot in World War I. Later a flotilla commander and a frigate captain, he had joined the Luftwaffe as a lieutenant colonel in September, 1933, and had become commander of the Luftwaffe’s naval air units as a colonel in 1935. Because the war started three years ahead of schedule, Geisler’s forces, which had been designated 10th Air Division in the autumn of 1939, had only two understrength bomber wings. His operations against the Royal Navy were generally unsuccessful, so Geisler turned his attention to British shipping and sent several merchant vessels to the bottom. Not as successful as Coeler, he was nevertheless promoted to general of flyers on May 7, 1940. His command was upgraded to X Air Corps on February 1, 1940.
³

The combined efforts of the 9th Air Division and X Air Corps constituted a considerable nuisance to the British navy but were nothing compared to the body blow the R.A.F. suffered in the Battle of France in 1940. During this campaign, most of the British air units sent to the Continent lost more than half of their aircraft, and several were completely wiped out.