The German Aggressor (September 1938 to February 1943)
The Luftwaffe was originally conceived as a tactical air force to support the operations of the Wehrmacht, by acting as long-range artillery.
Its
modus operandi was to destroy the enemy air force on ground, bombarding its airfields by surprise, while the
Stuka dive bombers neutralized the strong points of the ground defences, previously located by reconnaissance aircraft. Then the medium bombers, escorted by Messerschmitt Bf 110 heavy fighters, attacked the capital city of the enemy, forcing its surrender.
The aerial superiority required, for this tactic to work well, was achieved by using single engine fighters which performances exceeded those of the enemy interceptors. After the failure of the Heinkel He 51 in Spain against the Soviet Polikarpov, the
Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM) requested the design of an air superiority fighter powered by the most advanced in-line engine available.
In the summer of 1936 the Messerschmitt Bf 109 won the fighter contest for the re-equipment of the
Jagdflieger, becoming the spearhead of all conquests made by the Third Reich until February 1943. It was only overcome after the arrival of large quantities of North American P-51 fighters to Europe during the second half of 1943.
When the Germans tried to use the Luftwaffe for strategic purposes, without the support of the Wehrmacht, they failed in their attempts to destroy the RAF, the Soviet industry and the Allied convoys over the Atlantic Ocean. The main cause was the decision not to build heavy bombers, to increase the production of medium bombers Heinkel He 111, Dornier Do 17 and Junkers Ju 88, as well as the failure to use the Messerschmitt Bf 110 as an escort fighter.
Germany was not prepared for a long war and when the
Blitzkrieg stalled, their industrial capacity turned out insufficient.
The Spanish Civil War served to perfect many of the technologies used during the Second World War: the monoplane fighters with retractable undercarriage, enclosed cockpit, 20 mm cannons, radio and oxygen equipment; the long range bombers, with 1,000 kg bombs or the dive bombers with 500 kg bombs were military secrets still in experimental stage. But its use in real conditions of combat was only useful for international observers to obtain the wrong lessons.
The French proved that their planes were technically inferior to their German counterparts and, despite having the opportunity to carefully study a Messerschmitt Bf 109 and a Heinkel He 111 captured by the Republicans, they refused to reform their aeronautical policy until it was too late. The Russians lost their opportunity to take advantage of the tactical experience gained by their pilots against German aircraft because of purges that eliminated a considerable number of them. Therefore, they continued building biplane fighters, along with the British and the Italians. The Czechs and Poles did not have time to apply what they had learned and the British observed, remained silent and decided that they were not prepared, starting a policy of appeasement and massive rearming.
The Germans drew the wrong conclusions that would cost them the next war: the decision not to manufacture four engine strategic bombers prevented them from destroying the Russian factories located behind the Urals in 1942. The success of the He 111 and Do 17 against the primitive interception means of the Spanish Republicans, made them believe that they could operate without fighter escort. They also did not take any actions to equip the Bf 109 that flew over London with detachable fuel tanks, even though the system had been successfully used in Spain.
The precision of the
Stuka attacks led them to build the next generation of bombers to act as dive bombers, with pernicious effects in the production of the Ju 88 and devastating results in that of the He 177.
