Eagles of the Third Reich: Men of the Luftwaffe in WWII (Stackpole Military History Series) (30 page)

*
Excluding coastal aircraft.

Note: Aircraft in parentheses were attached directly to the army.

Source: Plocher MS 1941.

Two antiaircraft corps also took part in the advance. Maj. Gen. Walter von Axthelm’s I Flak Corps was assigned to the 2nd Air Fleet. His 101st and 104th Motorized Flak Regiments particularly distinguished themselves in support of second Panzer Army. The II Flak Corps (Lt. Gen. Otto Dessloch) was assigned to 4th Air Fleet. Three independent flak regiments were assigned to Keller in the north. Since there was little Soviet air activity, these units were used primarily to support the ground forces, so their operations will not be covered here in detail. Suffice it to say that the AA guns, with their flat trajectory and high rate of fire, were extremely effective against Soviet bunkers, border fortifications, and entrenched tanks. The 88mm guns were particularly effective in an antitank role. Second Flak Corps, for example, destroyed 250 tanks and 51 bunkers between June 22 and July 15 and also brought down 92 Soviet aircraft. Almost all the tanks were destroyed by the 88s. The best German tanks at that time (the PzKw IIIs and IVs) were armed with only 75mm guns. Later in the war the famous PzKw VI “Tiger” tanks were armed with the 88s and became one of the most feared weapons in the German arsenal.

Besides its aviation and flak units, each air fleet controlled one or more air administrative command headquarters, which were responsible for supplying the air fleet, plus one or more air administrative command staffs, which were charged with building up ground organizations in newly occupied territory. Finally, Lt. Gen. Wilhelm Speidel’s Luftwaffe Mission in Rumania was attached to the 4th Air Fleet and had responsibility for defending the Rumanian oil fields against Soviet air attack. The mission was, in effect, a defensive tactical unit, since it had numerous flak batteries and a wing of Me-109s attached to it. The Russians did, in fact, launch several ill-coordinated attacks against the oilfields, but they inflicted only minor damage. Units of Speidel’s command shot down 143 Soviet aircraft in these attacks—73 of them by fighters.
²⁰

Schmid’s Intelligence Branch placed the strength of the Red Air Force at 8,000 airplanes, of which 6,000 were in European Russia.
²¹
As usual, the report was terribly wrong. The Russians had about 10,000 aircraft in the western areas alone, supported by an average production of 1,131 per month,
²²
plus at least 3,000 in the East, available as a reserve.
²³
Although most of the airplanes on its western frontier were obsolete, the Red Air Force was in the process of converting to new fighters (Yak-1s, MiG-3s, and LaGG-3s), and some 3,700 of these were already with the units or on their way.
²⁴
A few experts from the Luftwaffe had been allowed to visit Russia in the spring of 1941 and, after visiting six factories in the Urals, reported that a large-scale aircraft production program was underway. Luftwaffe intelligence ignored the reports.
²⁵
Although their leaders did not know it, the Luftwaffe pilots were attacking a foe that outnumbered them seven to one.
²⁶

The German air offensive began at 3:30
A
.
M
. on June 22. All available airplanes were in the air at first light. German bomber units flew up to six missions a day in the first few days, while dive-bombers and fighters flew five to eight missions daily, depending on the distance from their forward airfields to their targets. It was essential that they establish air superiority from the outset, so they could turn their attention to the Russian armies. It was absolutely vital that the Red colossus be destroyed by winter.

The German airmen achieved surprise all along the front. Soviet airfields were pulverized, their aircraft destroyed on the ground. Foerster’s I Air Corps alone attacked 77 Russian airfields in 1,600 sorties during the first three days of operations.
²⁷
It shot down 400 enemy airplanes and destroyed another 1,100 on the ground. By August 23 it had shot down 920 enemy aircraft and destroyed 1,594 more on the ground, for a total of 2,514 aircraft destroyed—more than three times the number of aircraft in the entire 1st Air Fleet. To the north, Wild’s Luftwaffe Command Baltic sank 66,000 tons of shipping, including five destroyers. It also destroyed fifty-eight Soviet airplanes, while losing only twenty itself. Most important, it forced the Soviet Baltic Fleet back towards Leningrad, where it could not hinder the advance of the left flank of the Eighteenth Army. Having accomplished its mission with its limited sources, it was transferred to the Crimea and redesignated Luftwaffe Command South in October.
²⁸

The success of I Air Corps was matched all along the front. During the first two days of the invasion, Kesselring’s 2nd Air Fleet attacked every Soviet airfield within a 185-mile radius of the front line. The Red Air Force in the central combat zone was virtually wiped out within the first forty-eight hours. Kesselring claimed to have destroyed 2,500 Russian airplanes in the first week. This success was of such magnitude that Goering did not believe it. He ordered an investigation to determine if Kesselring had inflated the size of his triumph. The investigators reported that Kesselring had underestimated the number of airplanes destroyed by his pilots by 200 to 300 aircraft.
²⁹

Meanwhile, Baron von Richthofen was distinguishing himself again. For Operation Barbarossa, his VIII Air Corps was part of Kesselring’s 2nd Air Fleet and was initially given the mission of supporting Col. Gen. Hermann Hoth’s 3rd Panzer Group’s deep armored thrust into the Soviet Union. He also supported Col. Gen. Adolf Strauss’ Ninth Army. His forces included StG 1, StG 2 (Ju-87s), KG 2 (Do-17s), II/KG 11 (Do-17s), JG 27 (Me-109s), and ZG 26 (Me-110s). He also had a group of Ju-52s from a special employment transport wing, which he used to resupply the other air units and the fast-moving motorized columns.
³⁰
His was one of the strongest corps in the Luftwaffe at the time.

Baron von Richthofen set up his command post on the north shore of Lake Wigry on the old East Prussian-Polish border as soon as he left Crete and worked feverishly to assemble his units before attack day, which was set for June 22. By the twentieth he was ready. Initially, VIII Air Corps only had to cover a frontage of 186 miles.
³¹
As the armies advanced from west to east, however, the Eurasian continent expanded both north and south. The frontage would grow larger and larger with each advance.

The Russo-German war was scheduled to begin at 3:30
A
.
M
., a very unfavorable time for the 2nd Air Fleet because, according to Richthofen, the German dive-bombers and single-engine fighter pilots had not yet learned to fly in formation at night. If he waited until dawn to attack, the Soviet air force would have forty minutes’ warning before the Stukas and fighters struck. This delay might well prevent the Germans from establishing air superiority by destroying the enemy air force on the ground, as it had done in Poland, France, and Yugoslavia. Richthofen therefore adopted what General Plocher later called a “dangerous plan of operations.” He sent three aircraft, each manned with crews experienced in night flying, to each Soviet airfield on which fighter aircraft were based. The plan worked perfectly. On only one airfield did the Germans meet a Russian formation, and it was preparing to take off. The German unit dropped its bombs into the midst of the taxiing Soviet unit, smashing all of its aircraft. The other fields were knocked out before the Russian pilots could scramble. Eighth Air Corps destroyed well over 1,000 Russian airplanes in the first week of the campaign—almost all of them on the ground.
³²
To the south, II, V, and IV Air Corps experienced similar successes. In the first four days of operations, Greim’s relatively weak V Air Corps flew 1,600 sorties against seventy-seven Soviet airfields, destroying 774 Soviet aircraft on the ground and 136 in the air. By July 3, Greim was able to report that his units had destroyed their 1,000th Soviet airplane on the ground.
³³
Goralski wrote that on June 24, “About 2,000 Soviet planes had now been destroyed. In just seventy-two hours the largest air force in the world had been reduced to an ineffectual remnant.”
³⁴

If anything, Goralski understated the case. An estimated 1,800 Soviet aircraft were destroyed on the ground during the first day of operations. On June 29, at the end of the first week of the campaign, OKW reported the destruction of 4,017 enemy aircraft at the cost of 150 German airplanes destroyed or heavily damaged—a ratio of 27 to 1.
³⁵

By June 24, with most of the Red Air Force destroyed, the primary mission of VIII Air Corps became direct and indirect support of the army. On the afternoon of the 24th, the VIII and XX Army Corps of the Ninth Army came under heavy Soviet tank and cavalry attack near Bialystok and Lunna. Richthofen committed his entire corps to these sectors and destroyed 105 Russian tanks by evening. The next day it also destroyed a large number of Russian tanks in the Kuznica-Odelsk-Grodno-Dabrowa area. The Russian ground forces, under the overall command of Marshal Semen Konstantinovich Timoshenko, tried to turn the tables on Richthofen on June 26 by launching a counterattack toward the main VIII Air Corps base at Lida. The Russians established bridgeheads over the Neman River at three points and headed for Lida, opposed only by weak security forces. Their overall objective was obviously to force Ninth Army to divert units to the threatened sector, weakening or possibly even preventing the encirclement of Bialystok. Richthofen’s corps was forced to defend its own bases. The Stukas attacked the forward Soviet positions north of the Neman, concentrating against Mosty, Orlya, Bolitsa, and Ruda. They delayed the Reds long enough for the infantry of the V Army Corps to come up and beat back the Russians. Meanwhile, Col. Gen. Adolf Strauss’s Ninth and Field Marshal Guenther von Kluge’s fourth Armies encircled Bialystok without having to divert their main forces.
³⁶

No sooner was the Soviet Tenth Army encircled at Bialystok than a larger encirclement developed to the east. Hoth’s 3rd Panzer Group on the northern wing was deep in the Soviet rear, driving on Minsk from the northwest. Col. Gen. Heinz Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Group was also advancing on the White Russian capital from the southwest. Richthofen gave close air support to the 3rd Panzer Group, while Gen. Bruno Loerzer’s II Air Corps supported Guderian (who was less than pleased with its performance).
³⁷
Richthofen’s units attacked road and railroad junctions at and near Minsk, slowing down the Soviet retreat and cutting off their resupply efforts. Meanwhile, other elements of the VIII Air bombed and dive-bombed the remnants of the Soviet Tenth Army, which still held out at Bialystok.
³⁸

In late June, Richthofen had to modify his tactics for dealing with Russian withdrawals and with Soviet units trying to escape German air and ground forces. The Russians withdrew mainly at night, but during the day they broke into very small units and proceeded cross-country, away from the roads. Luftwaffe attacks on these small units usually came too late, because the Russians were warned of the bombers’ approach by the appearance of German reconnaissance aircraft. Richthofen’s solution was simple: he developed a policy of armed reconnaissance. Bombers and dive-bombers roamed the skies above the battlefield in formations of three to six aircraft and did their own reconnaissance. Relatively few Soviet troops survived attacks by such formations.
³⁹

Meanwhile, a new command was formed in the zone of II Air Corps: the
Nahkampffuehrer
, or Close Air Support Command. The VIII Air Corps, it will be recalled, was especially designed for close air support, but the II Air Corps was not. As a result, Guderian’s panzer spearheads were not getting the kind of immediate aerial support they had come to expect. To solve this problem, Loerzer set up the temporary headquarters, 2nd Close Air Support Command, under Col. Martin Fiebig, a close air support specialist who had first learned his trade at the clandestine German aviation school in the Soviet Union in the 1920s.
⁴⁰
He had led the 4th Bomber Wing “General Wever” (He-111s) in Poland, France, and the Low Countries, where his pilots had bombed Rotterdam.
⁴¹
Under Richthofen, Fiebig had played a major role in the bombing of Belgrade, for which he would later pay with his life. (He was executed by the Yugoslavs in 1946.)
⁴²
Now, however, Fiebig put his expertise to good use, guiding the light forces of II Air Corps to targets in front of the 2nd Panzer Group and smashing Soviet resistance to the spearheads. As a result, Guderian was able to move rapidly toward Minsk. Meanwhile, Loerzer continued to direct the heavier bomber wings of his air corps against Soviet supply installations, airfields, and railroads, especially the Minsk-Borisov-Orsha and Minsk-Molodechno routes, and against the Orsha, Zhlobin, and Osipovichi rail junctions. In doing so, he disrupted Soviet troop movements, and the Red Army was not able to launch a coordinated relief attack to rescue its forces surrounded at Bialystok.