Early German victories and later Allied victories

Germany had air superiority in both numbers and tactics in the Poland, Norwegian, French, and the invasion of Russia as they either destroyed many planes on the ground or faced obsolete Russian aircraft. The French military had little to no air support and the BEF provided what it could while still retaining a strong fighting force for the eventual defense of Britain.

The Allies had complete air superiority in numbers, tactics, support, etc in the second half of the war and had several victories with air support as a major factor.

I read and hear from different sources that the Western Allies relied on air power and couldn't have won a ground war, but Germany had complete air domination in those early campaigns and that seems to be left out of arguments I've seen.

What are your thoughts?

 

The Allied tactics were wrong. They either believed in ww1 warfare to be rerun or did the wrong move like send the troops up North and Germans made a pocket attacking from behind through the Ardennes. Some say the phoney war also made the Allied lazy while the Germans had frequent military exercises to keep them ready for action. How many times the western offensive was cancelled due to bad weather when Hitler had given the attack order? 30+?

 

I was referring to air superiority that the Germans had in those early victories was comparable to the air superiority the Allies had later in the war, but I always read and hear that the Allies relied on air power too much and didn't have what it took on the ground. I don't believe that to be true.

 

For a while, in 1943, through 1944, the Allies used strategic bombing assets to blast holes in German lines that were holding up the ground forces and causing horrible casualties. It got so the German high command wouldn't even think an attack was serious and sending in their reserves unless an Allied attack was preceded by a heavy air bombardment. Good examples would be the fight on the Gustav Line at Cassino, Italy, Goodwood, and Cobra attacks in Normandy.

In both Italy and to a large extent, Normandy, the terrain canceled out a lot of the Allies superiority in maneuver and air interdiction. That meant that the "crunchies" and "ground pounders" had to attack a tough foe on ground of the defender's choosing. The Germans, being on the defensive, could inflict massive casualties on Allied units. Some units took the equivalent of 100% casualties. The British could not take these kinds of losses any more, and America was getting low on replacements as well. So, our generals sometimes used both the RAF and USSAF heavy bomber fleets to try and break the impasse without the campaign becoming a repeat of WW1.

 

The German Luftwaffe losses in west and Bob were quite awful I think. Just a while ago I mentioned about the Hurricane losses, the British trying to bomb the Meuse bridges were stopped perhaps more by the AA units around the bridges, but Germans had a rough time moving their airfield crew further ahead all the time. Stukas were quite accurate but I still think the blitzkrieg tactic of bypassing the cities was one Key element. If you hear suddenly that the German tanks are 50 kms behind your city there propably was chaos among troops.
If I understood correctly the French had not enough modern planes but could have fought valiantly with what they had. The Germans also had battle experience from Spain and the pilot-wingman set was quite effective compared to other tactics. The Hurricane battle losses were small to moderate so other losses were the big picture. The book author was rather saying sending more Hurricanes due to French plea would not have helped a bit. I think it is in info on the western front early war.

 

Of the 266 Hurricanes, 66 were evacuated. 74 were lost in battle. The remainder were were lost due to attack to the air fields, no service capability or no pilots for the planes.

I think the RAF used finger-four until the end of Bob. Then they started using the wingman method, too. I read the Russians used a three plane method but changed to wingman as well.

 

Yes, and France had barely a plane. Germany had roughly 3000 of all types. Superiority in strength, numbers, and battle potential in a way that the Allies had late in the war.

 

Maybe I should have worded it "land battle victories" as in I've seen "The Allies only won land battles because of air power" however in 1939-41 Germany had the mass superiority of air power and support comparable to the late war Allies.

 

Anyway, BEF and the hitting power of the French went north to stop the Schlieffen 2 attack but Germans went round them. I think in tank power the Allied had even more tanks than the Germans but better tactics, generals and communication won. Maybe even luck. You remember how Churchill asked "Where are your reserves?" and the French answered " We have none".

 

The "phony war" gave the Germans time to gather supplies and weapons, to strengthen defence and to develop forces. They created at that time 43 new infantry divisions and increased the number of armoured divisions to 10.

On the other hand Allies' military preparations were sluggish and effortless. The French formed three times fewer divisions than the Germans did. The Brits also were increasing their army slowly. It was not until February 1940 that the British government resolved to form 55 new divisions, but the deadline for their final readiness was not established. British troops were not in hurry to France: in October 1939 only four British divisions, and by the beginning of 1940 another six ones arrived there.

However France and Great Britain possessed superiority in troops till the end of the ill-fated campaign of 1940. The Germans had some superiority in tanks, aircraft and artillery, but this superiority was considered so slim, that it could not solely justify their further victories and the Allies' defeats.

Sorry the site of this info has died away meanwhile...

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I always thought Luftwaffe destroyed the Allied air force striking power in the west on the first day- 10 May 1940....

" The Luftwaffe attacks on the Allied airfields at dawn on 10 May inflicted very little damage on the French fighters. Only four were destroyed, and the most serious single incident occurred at Cambrai where thirteen Morane 406s were damaged in varying degrees by enemy bombs. The Groupes de Chasse were soon in action, and by the end of the day the French fighter pilots had claimed forty-nine victories-including forty-two bombers-and ten probables."

From Airwar over France 1939-1940 by Robert Jackson

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On 4th April, 1939, a meeting took place between the Secretary of State for Air ( Sir Kingsley Wood ) and the French Air Minister ( M. Guy le Chambre ) to discuss amongst other things , French aircraft production. During the meeting the French "Plan 5" was considered. This had visualised a production of 1,800 aircraft in the period between April 1938 and march 1939, but concern was felt as only 716 aircraft had actually been produced. The same plan also envisaged the production of 3,000 aircraft in the following year, but the rate of production at the time of meeting was only 100 per month, rising to 150 per month in the summer of 1939 and 200 per month in the Autumn.

M. Guy le Chambre explained that their figure in the plan of 1,800 was only a goal to be reached under optimum conditions! He further explained that the French Air Force at that date consisted of 1,200 aircraft, which were out-of-date, with a further 5,000 aircraft obsolete but which could be used for other military purposes! Their fighters were only capable of 240 mph and the bombers were too slow to be used except at night or with cloud cover.

From "Blitzed!" by Victor Bingham

 

10th May 1940 for the Allied Air Forces....

" ...the hours of the morning dragged on, and still no order came to unleash the Allied bombers. In the joint headquarters at Chauny, Air marshal Barratt, commanding the BANFF, and General d´Astier de la Vigerie, commanding the Zone d´Operations Aeriennes Nord,paced up and down in frustration as they awaited the necessary signal from the French GHQ. Their anger mounted when, at 08.00 , they received a signal restricting Allied air operations to fighter and reconnaissance activity. At that very moment the enemy columns were highly vulnerable to air attack; and yet, because of the general Gamelin´s irrational hope that a bombing war might somehow be avoided, the opportunity to hit the invaders hard was being thrown away.

It was not until 11.00 that GHQ finally relented - and even then its orders only added to the frustration of the Allied air commanders. The ZOAN was authorized to attack enemy columns as first priority and Luftwaffe air fields as second priority, but built-up areas were to be avoided at all costs.

In addition , the Allied bombers were strictly forbidden to attack enemy industrial areas or centres of communication- an order that directly contravened the operational plans so carefully formulated by the French and British Air Staffs during the tortuous discussions of the previous year.

In the end the French day-bomber force, totally confused by the ambiguity of it all, simply stayed on the ground while General d´Astier begged GHQ for further orders that might clarify the position.

From "Air war over France 1930-40" by Robert Jackson

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On 12 May 1940, five Hawks surprised a formation of Ju-87 Stukas dive-bombing a French motorized column in the Ardennes and shot down no fewer than sixteen of them in the space of a few minutes.

From " Air war over France 1939-40 " By Robert Jackson

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Luftwaffe and invasion in the West 1940

May 10

Between dawn and dusk the Luftwaffe flew more than 1,000 individual bombing sorties against targets in the three countries in the course of some 150 attacks.

In the morning, 400 He 111´s, Do 17s and Ju 88s had struck at 72 air bases, 47 of them in Northern France, in an attempt to destroy a large portion of the Allied air force on the ground. In fact, the Luftwaffe failed to achieve more than a fraction of its objectives during this opening phase. In the French Northern Zone of Air Operations (ZOAN) only four aircraft were destroyed on the ground during the initial onslaught, with a further 30 or so damaged;while in the Eastern Zone of Air Operations (ZOAE) the only real result was obtained by the Do 17s of KG2, which destroyed five Amiot 143 bombers and two Royal Air Force Hurricanes. ( Far greater destruction was achieved on 11 May, when the German bombers caught considerable numbers of Allied machines refuelling and rearming at their bases between sorties).

From Stuka Squadrons by John Ward

 

On 10 May 1940, the Germans had more aircraft and many aircrews were veterans of the war in Spain. French inter-service rivalry led a Potez reconnaissance aircraft crew, which had spotted a huge concentration of Panzers and supporting infantry units concealed in the Ardennes forests two days after the start of the invasion, not being believed by the army commanders who refused to act on what they called air force scaremongering.

The Armée de l'Air was beset by obsolete strategy, tactics, aircraft, weapons and even in communications, and the lack of equipment owing to "technical problems." Both became apparent when the Germans advanced swiftly through France and Belgium. On 11 May, nearly 20 French bombers and over 30 British fighter escorts were shot down attacking German crossings over the Meuse river. French fighter and bomber strength was rapidly depleted in May as Luftwaffe fighters and Flak shot down aircraft, which attacked the advancing Germans. Squadrons were often out of contact with any French army units that they were supposedly supporting, partly to the poor coordination of communication between the army and the air force and partly to the outdated, unreliable army communications equipment being used.

Figures for aircraft losses during the Battle of France are still debated, although it is reasonable to suggest that the French did inflict considerable losses on the Germans. General Albert Kesselring, reflected that Luftwaffe effectiveness had been reduced to almost 30 percent of what it had been before the invasion of France.

History of the Armée de l'Air (1909–1942) - Wikipedia

 

From Julian Jackson´s Fall of France (2003)

In the first stage from 10th May to 3rd June 1940 German losses : casualty rate 2,500 per day.

The second phase: 4th June to 18 June, when you´d expect the French troops to have been entirely demoralized, the casualty rate rose almost up to 5,000 per day for Germans!

So military reasons are found:

Weygand´s combative style initially had a galvanizin geffect effect after the torpid and distant leadership of Gamelin.

Second, soldiers who had experienced German air attacks in early May had become partially inured to them. at least to the shrieking of the Stukas.

Third, the High Command had altered its tactics. Abandoning the orthodoxy of the continuous front, Weygand adopted the "chessboard" defence system made up of Hedgehogs, points of resistance centred on a natural obstacle like a wood or a village, and protected by all round by artillery. The gunners were now instructed to fire at tanks on sight, like a revolver, rather than, as French doctrine previously prescribed, being employed only for concentrated fire under centralized control. This gave greater flexibility to the defence.

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Talking about the military reserves...

" The Germans started their attack on France 1940 without a single panzer formation in reserve. To achieve a massive numerical superiority at the crucial point, every single unit was committed to the fight from the first day. If the attack had failed, Germany would have had no mobile units with which to respond to a possible Allied counter-offensive. "

"The wages of destruction" by Tooze

 

Isn't finger-four the same as the wingman method? From what I remember, RAF actually used three-aircraft "vic" early on in the campaign, and only switched to finger-four later on. Luftwaffe used "fingers four" formation from the beginning, giving them advantage in early engagements.

 

Been awhile since I read about aeroplane tactics but I recall that Germans adopted the wingman tactics earlier...I guess from the article that finger four was two 2-plane combinations, the main pilot with the wingman.

The RAF also used the "big wing" adoptation, if I recall the name right where you collected a huge number of planes together and attacked to create more chaos and destruction than singular planes.

German Luftwaffe fighter tactics WW2.

When the Messerschmitt 109 was committed to the Civil War in Spain, its pilots at first flew in the old "V" formations but a shortage of the new aeroplanes forced them to fly in twos when escorting bombing raids, in order to provide cover on all sides of the bombing formations. At this time there arrived in Spain Werner Molders, who took the two aircraft formation and extended its use and moulded it into the tactics needed by the new generation of aircraft such as the Bf109.

The pair of aircraft was called a "Rotte" by the Germans. Molders expanded it into the "Schwarm", two pairs acting together. Again the aircraft flew wide apart, the two leaders looking ahead, the two wingmen concentrating on the rear. The second pair would fly behind the leader of the first pair, stepped up away from the sun. The leader's wingman would fly behind and low. One of the reasons that the time for this sort of formation had come was the availability of air to air radio. A loose formation is only possible when the pilots are freed of flying close enough to see their leader's hand signals. A loose formation is much harder to see against the sky than a tight one, the Schwarm would only close up to keep contact with each other when passing through cloud.

It was the adoption of these tactics, as much as the excellent flying qualities of the 109, that gave victory to the Germans in their early campaigns. The RAF copied the German tactics renaming the Schwarm as the "Finger-four" formation. If you look at your hand you will see the tips of your fingers, when outstretched, approximate to the positions of the aircraft in the formation.

 

Yes.

Thanks. Makes sense - I recall that Luftwaffe used the Spanish Civil War as, essentially, a polygon for development of new tactics. Seems like that was crucial in their early successes.

 

In his "Notes on High Command in War" dated September 1943 Bernard Montgomery starts with...

"Use of Airpower"
1. Any officer who aspires to hold High command in war must understand clearly certain principles regarding the use of air power. The first and basic principle is that you must win the air battle before you embark on the land, or sea, battle.

Isn't this an answer to the OP? Monty understood the importance of air power.

 

Sorry but what BEF means exactly?

 

British Expeditionary Force. Basically the force they had deployed to France.

 

A handful of comments:

Two (and a half) other reasons for the increased effectiveness of Luftwaffe units over Allied aerial units in 1940 -
The Luftwaffe had better communications links with the ground forces, meaning that they could turn up and bomb things at times that were useful to the Wehrmacht
The Luftwaffe typically flew multiple sorties per day (I have seen 4-5 sorties per pilot / crew mentioned) while the Allied aircrew often flew 1 sortie per day, giving the Germans an obvious force-multiplier. And knackered aircrew, but given a short campaign and a few amphetamines...
The Luftwaffe were much better at escorting their bombers (this is the half, because the Allies did at least try to do so)


The 'Big Wing' was a controvesial Battle of Britain tactic proposed by Douglas Bader. The idea was to group several squadrons together for a single big attack rather than feed individual squadrons into the attack as they became available.
The theory was that more fighters = better chances of destroying lots of enemy aircraft with fewer losses.
The downside was that the Big Wing took so long to asemble that it usually could only attack after the bombers had hit their target.

Another hastily abandoned RAF tactic from the early days of the war was the 'area attack' - basically you line all your fighters up (in nice tight Vics) when flying towards the enemy bombers and then everybody gets to fire at the bombers at once, usually from ridiculously long range. It was designed for unescorted bombers, was too impractical to work, and was suicidal against escorted bombers