Eagles of the Third Reich: Men of the Luftwaffe in WWII (Stackpole Military History Series) (40 page)

In mid-1942, as it prepared for the summer offensive, the Luftwaffe had four major commands (north to south): 5th Air Fleet (Stumpff), 1st Air Fleet (Keller), Luftwaffe Command East (Greim), and 4th Air Fleet (Loehr). To support Army Group South, the main thrust, Loehr had 1,593 aircraft (1,155 serviceable)—as many as the other three commands combined. In the Far North (including northern Russia, Finland, and Norway), Stumpff had only 182 frontline aircraft, while Keller had only 375 with which to support Army Group North. In the central sector, Greim had 600 frontline aircraft. All totalled, including aircraft not assigned to the four major commands, the Luftwaffe’s strength in the East was 2,750 combat airplanes—out of a total of 4,262 in the entire air force. More than 64 percent of the Luftwaffe’s combat aircraft were on the eastern front. The Red Air Force still outnumbered it three to one.
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To reach even this strength, Jeschonnek had to dip into the training establishment once more. This time he sent fighter training units and their instructor pilots to the front. Adolf Galland, the general of fighter forces, protested and called upon him to increase the number of fighter training units, not to decrease them. “If you reduce them now instead of forcing them up, you are sawing off the branch on which you are sitting,” Galland told him.

Jeschonnek listened quietly, without interrupting. He did not try to dispute the validity of Galland’s arguments. When Galland was finished, he spoke “without vehemence, presumption or demagogy.” He told the general of fighters that he understood the seriousness of his decision, but the rapid annihilation of the Soviet Union was an essential prerequisite for the continuation of the war. This was the Fuehrer’s goal in the summer offensive of 1942, and all forces, including the Luftwaffe, now had to be concentrated for this decisive blow. “He was fully aware of the deathly crisis in which the Luftwaffe stood because of the war in the east,” Galland recalled.
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Operation “Blue”—the German summer offensive on the eastern front in 1942—was to be directed by Army Group South (Field Marshal Fedor von Bock) and essentially consisted of three phases. In the first phase, Col. Gen. Baron Maximilian von Weichs’ Second Army, on the left wing, was to drive southeast from the Livny sector toward Voronezh. Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army, the center formation of Army Group South, advancing from Kurst, was to execute a wide sweep to the south, and was then to turn east and north, linking up with Weichs at Voronezh, trapping several Soviet armies in a huge pocket east of Voronezh. To the south (on the army group’s right wing), Col. Gen. Friedrich Paulus’ Sixth Army was to launch attacks in support of Fourth Panzer Army. Phase two would begin after the Voronezh Pocket had been cleared. Fourth Panzer and Second armies were to execute a bold dash along the western side of the Don River, while Sixth Army drove northeast to meet them, forming another large pocket west of the Don. Finally, in the third phase, Army Group South was to be divided into Army Groups A and B. Army Group B (Bock) was to mop up the Soviet forces in the bend of the Don, while Army Group A (Field Marshal Siegmund Wilhelm List) was to attack southeast, taking the Caucasus oil regions and even seizing Baku, the oil city on the western shore of the Caspian Sea. In phases one and two, Army Group South was to be supported by Col. Gen. Alexander Loehr’s 4th Air Fleet, which included the IV and VIII Air Corps and I Flak Corps. Loehr’s first mission in the campaign was to support Fourth Panzer Army’s drive to Voronezh.
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The operation was scheduled to begin on June 27.

Misfortune dogged the steps of Operation Blue even before it began. On June 19, a Fieseler “Storch” (Fi-156) strayed over Russian lines and was shot down. In it was Maj. Joachim Reichel, the operations officer of the 23rd Panzer Division, who was carrying a copy of the plans for phase one of Blue. No one knew if Reichel had been taken alive or how much the Russians had learned from him. Was he tortured into revealing everything? Did the Soviets capture the plans, or were they burned in the crash? To this day we do not know. What is known is that when Operation Blue began on June 28 (it was delayed twenty-four hours by rain), the Soviets retreated rapidly. There was no large bag of prisoners at Voronezh or on the Don. The Germans gained a great deal of ground during the first two phases of Blue, but fell well short of accomplishing their objectives.

These were the last operations Richthofen supported as a corps commander. On July 4 Alexander von Loehr was named commander-in-chief, Southeast, and left for the Balkans and his fate. Born in Croatia, he was successful in recruiting Croatian units to serve in the German Army. This, his anti-guerrilla operations in the Balkans, and his efforts to protect pro-German Croatians at the end of the war, earned him the hatred of Tito’s Communists. On February 16, 1947, they executed him after what General Plocher called “a flimsy trial.”
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Meanwhile, he was replaced by Wolfram von Richthofen. The air fleet was the highest command in the Luftwaffe, so in a sense the Silesian baron had reached the pinnacle. He was only forty-seven years old.
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Richthofen’s new command included his old VIII Air Corps, now commanded by Lt. Gen. Martin Fiebig, the close air support specialist who had formerly commanded the 4th Bomber Wing, 1st Air Division, and 2nd Close Support Air Command. Richthofen also controlled IV Air Corps (Gen. Kurt Pflugbeil) and the I Flak Corps (9th and 10th Flak Divisions plus a few aviation units) under Otto Dessloch, now a general of flyers. Richthofen also inherited Luftwaffe Command North, a temporary organization under Col. Albert Buelowius, charged with supporting Second Army on the northern wing of Army Group B, as well as Col. Gen. Rudolf Schmidt’s Second Panzer Army, on the southern flank of Army Group Center.
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Richthofen briefly retained Loehr’s chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Guenther Korten, but he was promoted soon afterwards and assumed command of I Air Corps (later Air Command Don). He was succeeded by Col. Hans-Detlef Herhudt von Rohden.
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Richthofen’s first task was to provide air support for the next phase of the summer offensive. Throwing logic aside, Hitler decided to take both Stalingrad
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the Caucasus at the same time. He sacked Fedor von Bock, a capable and experienced field marshal, replaced him with Col. Gen. Baron Maximilian von Weichs, and gave von Weichs the mission of advancing to the east to seize Stalingrad, while Army Group A was advancing southward on the Caucasus. The two army groups were sent off in divergent directions in the very face of an undefeated enemy. Hitler planned to cover the gaps that would develop between Army Groups Center, B, and A with his allied armies: Hungarians, Italians, and Rumanians.

Richthofen initially left Luftwaffe Command North with the responsibility for providing air cover for Second Panzer and Second armies, although he assigned it the task of supporting the Hungarian Second and Italian Eighth armies south of Stalingrad later in the campaign. He ordered VIII Air Corps to support the Fourth Panzer and Sixth armies in the main drive toward the Volga, while IV Air Corps supported Army Group A (First Panzer and Seventeenth armies) in their drive on the Caucasus oil region.
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Richthofen then began to come to grips with the huge logistical problems facing an air fleet commander in the immense spaces of the eastern front.

As the Soviets retreated without becoming decisively engaged, the German armies followed them rapidly. The air units had to move frequently to airfields further and further to the east and south. Of course they had to be resupplied with fuel, lubricants, ammunition, bombs, and spare parts. This task grew more and more difficult each day, as supply lines became longer. The Russian road and railroad systems were in terrible condition, and the supply and transportation units of the Wehrmacht were inadequate for the demands made upon them. Not only did Richthofen have to resupply 4th Air Fleet, but he had to help resupply the ground forces as well, because of the difficulties caused by the primitive Soviet road and railroad network. His problems increased with every step the army groups took. In compliance with Hitler’s orders, they were advancing in divergent directions. By August the spearheads of Army Groups A and B were 700 miles apart. Fourth Air Fleet now had to cover more than 2,700 miles, instead of the 1,000 it would have had to cover if Hitler had settled on Stalingrad as the primary objective.
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To lessen Richthofen’s administrative problems, Luftwaffe Command North (Korten) was made an independent command, responsible for supporting the northern wing of Army Group B and covering the area between Luftwaffe Command East and 4th Air Fleet. General Korten had only sixty airplanes to do this with, however.

Richthofen soon transferred all of his multiengine aircraft to IV Air Corps in an attempt to support the southern push, to which Hitler initially gave priority. Luftwaffe transport units carried more and more material and supplies for the ground units, and less space was available for such things as aviation gas, bombs, and critical spare parts. These efforts in support of the ground forces strained Richthofen’s own logistical network and soon had their effect at the front. By mid-July the number of sorties the combat units could fly each day was being severely limited by logistical considerations, and the distances were growing still greater. Nevertheless there were successes. On July 13, for example, fighter pilots destroyed twenty Russian aircraft in a single raid on the Kamensk airfield, and twelve Soviet bombers were shot down by another fighter unit as they tried to take off from an airfield east of the Don.
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Fourth Air Fleet, which now contained 54 percent of the total Luftwaffe aircraft on the eastern front, continued to dominate the air space over the combat zone. Stukas and bombers blasted Russian troop concentrations and supply installations, although they were unable to prevent the main Red armies from escaping across the Don. The fundamental weakness of the Luftwaffe was again demonstrated: for all of its tactical success, it was essentially a ground support arm, incapable of influencing events at the strategic level.
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As the ground units became increasingly spread out, Richthofen came to depend more and more heavily on the flak arm to provide them with anti-tank and antiaircraft protection. First Flak Corps did indeed distinguish itself during the drive on Stalingrad. On July 19, for example, a single battery from the 19th Flak Regiment destroyed eighteen heavy Soviet tanks near Voro-nezh. A week later, in the same sector, the 153rd Flak Regiment knocked out 130 Russian tanks and halted an enemy counterattack in close combat. On July 29 a single 88mm gun crew attached to the 168th Infantry Division destroyed eleven enemy tanks. All of these engagements occurred within two weeks in the Second Army’s sector, but many other examples could be cited. In fact, Richthofen credited the flak artillery with making the rapid German advance of July, 1942, possible.
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The aviation units were also heavily engaged. In early August, VIII Air Corps supported Sixth Army’s assault across the Don and the double envelopment of Timoshenko’s forces at Kalach, where the Soviet First Tank and Sixty-second armies were annihilated. Some 35,000 Russian soldiers, 270 tanks, and 600 guns were captured.
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Later that month, VIII Air Corps flew 1,600 sorties and dropped 1,000 tons of bombs in support of XIV Panzer Corps’ drive to the Volga. It shot down ninety-one Soviet aircraft against a loss of three German planes.
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Under this air umbrella, General Gustav von Wietersheim and his panzer troops reached the Volga north of Stalingrad on August 22.
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Fourth Air Fleet launched its first heavy air attack on Stalingrad on September 3. Bombs from Ju-88s and He-111s hit the city day and night, causing massive fires. The main targets were the Red October, Red Barricade, and Dzerzinsky tractor (and tank) factories, but residential areas were also pulverized. Later that month, as Sixth Army closed in on the city, Luftwaffe units resumed their close air support role, destroying Soviet heavy weapons and artillery positions. They were unable to seal off the battlefield, however. The Russian Sixty-second Army in Stalingrad continued to receive supplies, reinforcements, and replacements from across the Volga by night. As Stalingrad became a battle of attrition, the 9th Flak Division and the 91st Flak Regiment were committed to the ground fighting, where they both inflicted and sustained heavy casualties. They were most effective against Russian tanks.
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Richthofen ascribed the German failure to take Stalingrad to poor leadership on the part of the ground commanders, especially to Colonel General Paulus. “It is an actual fact that the efforts to liquidate strongpoints in Stalingrad were nothing but combat patrol operations on a somewhat larger scale,” he confided to his diary. He frequently tried to get Paulus to launch an all-out attack, but the cautious Hessian never did.
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As a result, Sixth Army was slowly bled white in the house-to-house fighting for Stalin’s city.