Eagles of the Third Reich: Men of the Luftwaffe in WWII (Stackpole Military History Series) (38 page)

The air forces, being more complex in character and staffed by technically trained personnel who were more difficult to replace, suffered more immediately from the war than did the German Army, with its sounder and more robust organizational structure.
⁴

Plocher also noted another shortcoming of the Luftwaffe in Russia in 1941, and that was the failure to apply the principle of mass. He wrote:

The principle of concentration of forces was not uniformly observed among Luftwaffe units in the Soviet Union. Real concentrations of air power were observed on only two occasions in 1941, once in the general advance upon Leningrad and again during the offensive against Moscow. At all other places the German Air Force was employed in a piecemeal fashion, usually in accordance with the demands of front line ground units. Unfortunately for the Luftwaffe, German ground forces found themselves in a series of crises at the very time when Air Force reserves were least able to give support. By the winter of 1941–42, the effects of the war were beginning to tell heavily upon the Luftwaffe organizations in Russia and in other theaters as well. It was the beginning of the death of the German Air Force.
⁵

The strategic failure of the Luftwaffe during this period has already been noted. It lacked the four-engine bomber, which might have been used to disable the Soviet aircraft industry or destroy the massive tank factories at Gorky, east of Moscow. The tactical doctrine of the Luftwaffe also contrib -uted to this failure, however, because the air units were used almost exclusively in support of the army. Not even the Soviet tank and aircraft factories within easy range of the twin-engine bombers were attacked. Wolfram von Richthofen must bear partial responsibility for this failure, since he was a major motivating force behind the development of the close air support doctrines of the Luftwaffe, and because he was the principal air force commander on the central sector for five months in 1941–42, when the distance to the main Soviet factories (in the Moscow area) was shorter than it would ever be again. Soviet production continued virtually unimpeded throughout the war and soon outpaced German industrial output in several vital categories, including tanks, aircraft, and artillery production. In fact, the failure of the Luftwaffe to “think strategically” was probably its major shortcoming during the entire 1936–45 period. The same could probably be said of Wolfram von Richthofen.

Richthofen’s VIII Air Corps was certainly not the only Luftwaffe unit to be engaged in heavy fighting in the winter of 1941–42. In November, 1941, First Panzer Army had captured Rostov. Air support by Greim’s V Air Corps had been vigorous, but costly. Its 54th Bomber Wing had to be withdrawn to Germany to rebuild, leaving it with only the 55th Bomber Wing. The operational strength of this Geschwader was only six to nine aircraft per day, on the average.
⁶
When the Soviets launched massive counterattacks on November 25, air cover for First Panzer (when weather permitted) was provided by Close Support Air Command North, now under Lt. Gen. Otto Dessloch. Between January 6 and March 21, 1942, alone, this small command flew 5,087 sorties in 56 days, destroying 158 enemy aircraft (76 of them on the ground), as well as 838 motor vehicles, 44 tanks, and 73 guns.
⁷
Elsewhere, the Luftwaffe was even more hard-pressed. At Kholm, in the zone of Army Group North, Maj. Gen. Theodor Scherer (CG, 281st Security Division) was surrounded with about five thousand two hundred men on January 21, 1942, while at Demyansk Gen. of Infantry Count Walter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt’s II Corps was surrounded on February 8. Count von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt had six divisions and the remnants of others—about 103,000 men in all, and he was tying down the bulk of five Russian armies. Kholm and Demyansk were the key defensive positions on the northern sector of the Russian front. It was imperative that the Luftwaffe keep these garrisons supplied until relief attacks could be mounted. Thus began the first large-scale airlifts in military history.

Kholm had no airfield, and the pocket was too small to allow construction of one. Against the advice of Col. Fritz Morzik, the chief of air transportation, Colonel General Keller ordered his Ju-52s to land in no-man’s-land, drop their supplies while taxiing, and take off again before the Soviet artillery could open fire. This expedient did not work, and five of the seven transports used in this manner were destroyed. After that, supplies were air-dropped by He-111s or delivered by DFS-230 gliders (each with a one-ton capacity). Large items of equipment were delivered by the huge Gotha Go-242 gliders, which carried 2.5-ton payloads. Later, as the pocket contracted, this became impossible, and supplies could only be delivered via air drop. To achieve an accurate drop into such a small drop zone, the He-111s had to descend to an altitude of 1,300 feet over Soviet-held territory. Naturally the Russians quickly concentrated a large number of antiaircraft guns in the area, and KG 4 “General Wever” suffered heavy casualties. Nevertheless the Luftwaffe continued to resupply Kholm until May 5, when it was relieved after a siege of 103 days.
⁸
Only twelve hundred of Scherer’s men were still standing when the rescuers finally arrived. Fifteen hundred wounded were also rescued. Another fifteen hundred soldiers lay buried in the snow.
⁹

The resupply operations for Demyansk were even more difficult than those for Kholm because of the numbers involved. Initially, Keller had only one transport unit available, the 172d Special Purpose Bomber Wing (KG 172 z.b.V.). The 100,000 men trapped at Demyansk would require 300 tons of food and material every day. Hitler promised to make available 337 transports for this operation and, for once, was as good as his word. Jeschonnek attached Col. Fritz Morzik to the 1st Air fleet and put him in charge of the resupply effort. He was given sixteen air transport groups, which flew into his base at Pskov Airfield.
¹⁰

Fritz Morzik was an unusual General Staff officer in that he rose through the ranks. Enlisting as a private in 1907, Sergeant Morzik transferred to the 2nd Flying Battalion in 1914, prior to the outbreak of World War I. As an NCO-pilot, he served on both the eastern and western fronts, as well as in Turkey. A warrant officer in 1916, he did not receive his commission until 1919. From then until March, 1921, he was a member of the Silesian Air Police Squadron in Breslau. After leaving the police force, Morzik worked for the Junkers Company and became an expert in commercial aviation, especially in air transport ventures. He was a flight instructor at the German Aviation School from 1928 to 1934, when he entered the Luftwaffe as a captain. After tours of duty as a squadron and group commander and an assignment with the Inspectorate for Flight Safety at RLM, Morzik was the commander of the 1st Air Transport Wing at the outbreak of the war. Later he would be promoted to major general (October 1, 1943) and become chief of air transport of the armed forces.
¹¹

Morzik did an absolutely brilliant job in resupplying II Corps. His pilots flew an average of ten to fifteen transports per hour into the pocket, day after day, regardless of blizzards, fog, or heavy antiaircraft fire. The two airstrips inside the pocket were very primitive and could be used only during daylight hours. Perhaps offended by the presence of a special transport command in his zone of operations, General Keller was of little help to Colonel Morzik. He did not provide him with regular fighter escorts and since a fully loaded Ju-52 flew at less than 180 miles per hour and had little in the way of defensive weapons (some had three light machine guns, while others had none at all), they were particularly vulnerable to fighter attack. Fortunately the Red Air Force pilots in this sector were not very aggressive. Morzik soon learned that they only attacked single, unescorted transports, so he flew them into Demyansk in flights of twenty to forty. The air base at Pskov was also vulnerable, but the Soviet fighter and bomber units never even tried to launch a major raid against it, although they did occasionally attack the airfields within the pocket and destroy a number of Ju-52s. Unfortunately for the Germans, the Soviet antiaircraft units were much more active and transport losses were often high.
¹²

General Keller also failed to keep Morzik informed of the German and Russian air situation. Once, Soviet paratroopers landed within the pocket. Morzik only found out about this when one of his flights over the pocket sustained several hits from Russian ground fire.
¹³

German relief forces from the X Corps made contact with the 3d SS Panzer Grenadier Division “Totenkopf” on the western edge of the Dem -yansk perimeter on April 20, but it was May 2 before supplies could be moved into Demyansk. Unfortunately this road could accommodate only a limited amount of traffic, and a reduced-scale airlift had to be maintained until Hitler finally allowed the army to abandon the Demyansk salient in early 1943.

During the Demyansk operation, the Luftwaffe air transport units flew 659 missions. They brought in 64,844 tons of supplies and 30,500 replacements and evacuated 35,400 men, almost all of them wounded. During the critical period from February 18 to May 19, 1942, they flew in an average of 302 tons of supplies per day,
¹⁴
but they lost 262 Ju-52s in the process, adding to the 271 lost at Crete, along with irreplaceable training crews.
¹⁵
After Dem -yansk, the Air Transport Branch was decimated.

Meanwhile, to the south, the Soviet winter offensive had been halted, and the Wehrmacht was preparing to go over to the attack once more. The first phase of the offensive would be in the Crimean peninsula. Typically, Baron Wolfram von Richthofen was named to command the air forces supporting the main attack.

If he is not mentioned among the top aerial strategists of World War II, Baron von Richthofen is certainly one of the best tacticians in the history of air warfare. He received further recognition for his abilities and accomplishments on March 1, 1942, when he was promoted to colonel general.
¹⁶
This was a singular honor, for he was only a corps commander, and the rank of
Generaloberst
was normally reserved for air fleet commanders, the very highest staff officers, or the chief of the General Staff of the Luftwaffe.

In late April 1942, VIII Air Corps turned over responsibility for providing air support on the central sector to General Ritter Robert von Greim’s V Air Corps (which was redesignated Luftwaffe Command East) and flew south to the Crimea. Here, Col. Gen. Erich von Manstein’s Eleventh Army was expecting the Russians to launch a major offensive from the foothold on the Kerch Peninsula. Their objective would be to relieve Sevastopol, the major Soviet Black Sea naval fortress, which Manstein had been besieging since November 16, 1941. Manstein had a surprise for the Russians, however. He intended to break through the strong Parpach line (which the Soviets had been improving for months) and overrun the Kerch Peninsula, destroying the Soviet Forty-fourth, Forty-seventh, and Fifty-first Armies in the process. Then he would turn west again and deal with Sevastopol with all of his forces.

The brilliant Manstein and the gifted Richthofen undoubtedly made an excellent team. Manstein wrote later:

Baron von Richthofen was certainly the most outstanding Luftwaffe leader we had in World War II. He made immense demands on the units under his command, but always went up himself to supervise any important attack . . . one was constantly meeting him at the front, where he would visit the most forward units to weigh up the possibilities of giving air support to ground operations. We always got on extremely well together. . . . I remember von Richthofen’s achievements and those of his Air Corps with the utmost admiration and gratitude.
¹⁷