I was reading in Winged Victory and the author made the statement that 30,000 flak batteries defended Germany in late 1944. The author didn't give numbers of heavy vs light batteries. If I were to assume 10 men per battery, that comes to 300,000 men just manning the guns, but not including support formations such as fire control, radar, ammunition handlers and the like, nor does it include luftwaffe flight and ground personnel, which had to be significant. I've seen the yearly ratios of divisions facing the Soviets vs those facing the Western Powers. Has anyone seen any numbers of individuals defending the German west vs the east? I am not interested in comparing the horrific losses sustained by the Soviets to the western powers, but am looking at what effect the western air campaign had on German manpower numbers throughout the war and especially in the east.
Jeff, the Flak-Batteries where very often manned with workers from their own companys and lots of Flakhelfer which have been school boys from the age of 14 on. There is a good book to this topic, sadly only in german language. It describes the daily life, the fightings and the losses of the Flakhelfer with the Luftwaffe and the Marine. http://www.amazon.de/gp/customer-me...79494/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_0?ie=UTF8&index=0 But indeed it had some influence onto the fronts. The need of guns and crews had stolen them from action at France , Italy and the Eastern Front.
I have also read that some flak units also employed Red Army POWs as Flakhelfer. By 1942 the guns were probably better used for their original purpose, AA defense. By that time most tanks had 75mm guns or better that fired reasonably effective HE shells and the standard 88mm flak guns and their crews were vulnerable to HE, not to mention rockets, strafing and small arms fire. While the Flak 18 was effective on tanks right up to the end of the war, it needed to be mounted in some sort of armored carriage in order to have a of reasonable chance of survival.
I just finished watching A Newsreel History of the Third Reich: Volume 18, in DVD and they quite clearly show how the AA was being supplemented by both Hitler Jungen and female “volunteers” in early '44. One has to assume that this was to release more “men” to fight on both fronts.
Flak German Anti-aircraft Defenses 1914-1945 Edward B. Westermann University Press of Kansas 2001 http://www.nazi.org.uk/military pdfs5/Flak German AntiAircraft Defenses - 1914-1945 .pdf page 183 The State of the Flak Arm By the autumn of 1944, the ground-based air defense force numbered 1,110,900 persons, with 448,700, or 40 percent, coming from outside the Luftwaffe. The non-Luftwaffe personnel included 220,000 Home Guard, Labor Service, and male high school auxiliaries; 128,000 female auxiliaries; and 98,000 foreign volunteers and prisoners of war. The fact that 40 percent of the Luftwaffe's flak arm consisted of auxiliaries indicates the extent of the personnel crisis facing the German armed forces by the last year of the war. In August 1940, the Luftwaffe's flak arm had included 791 heavy flak gun batteries, 686 light flak gun batteries, and 221 searchlight batteries operated by a total of 528,000 regular and reserve Luftwaffe personnel. Four years later, the size of the flak arm had increased to 2,655 heavy flak gun batteries, 1,612 light flak gun batteries, and 470 searchlight batteries. Despite the fact that the total number of batteries had almost tripled, the number of service personnel had grown by only 134,000, while civilians, high school students, foreign nationals, and prisoners of war increasingly provided the basis for the Luftwaffe's battle against Allied bombers. In fact, flak units stationed within the Reich consisted of only 10 percent fully qualified regular military personnel by the latter stages of the war. page 197 Germany's "Lost Divisions"? In addition to the question of the cost-effectiveness of the flak, an associated criticism of the flak concerns the high personnel requirements of the flak arm-General von Axthelm estimated that ground-based air defenses employed approximately 1.2 million persons by the end of the war. Without doubt, the Luftwaffe's flak and searchlight batteries absorbed a great number of people; however, the contention that these persons could have been used to establish hundreds of additional Wehrmacht divisions is flawed for several reasons. First, bv April 1945, fully 44 percent of those serving with the flak arm were either civilians or auxiliaries, including factory workers, prisoners of war, foreign nationals, and high school students. Furthermore, of the regular service personnel serving with the flak, 21 percent were between the ages of thirty-nine and forty-eight, and a further 35 percent were older than forty-eight or medically exempted from combat duty. Second, this "lost divisions" argument fails to consider the fact that a large proportion of the active Luftwaffe flak formations were in fact engaged in combat activities at the fighting fronts; the operations of Flak Corps I and Flak Corps II in the campaign against France and the Low Countries in 1940 offer but one example. Finally, based on its geographic position and the scale of the Allied bombing effort, the Luftwaffe required a substantial ground-based air defense force within the Reich for both military and political reasons regardless of the heavy personnel demands made by the flak arm. The military simply had to defend the Reich's industrial infrastructure and urban centers, and that required a sizable ground-based air defense force. Similarly, political considerations involving public opinion dictated the presence of flak defenses, a point made explicit by the many complaints lodged by National Socialist district leaders when these defenses were withdrawn from their districts or viewed as being insufficient. Likewise, Hitler remembered the disastrous effects of the collapse of morale on the home front in World War I, and he clearly recognized the public's psychological need to see, or at least hear, German forces battling the hated Allied bombers. A variation of the "lost divisions" argument can be found in the contention that the flak arm absorbed an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 persons in the production of anti-aircraft weapons and equipment. This statement, however, must be placed in context. By August 1944, Germany employed over 7.5 million forced laborers in a variety of roles, ranging from agricultural tasks to industrial production. Likewise, well over 25 percent of forced laborers worked in industries critical to armaments production. It is not possible to determine the exact number of foreign nationals and prisoners of war included in the estimate of those employed in the production of flak armaments, but the total quite likely reached into the tens of thousands. Furthermore, the widespread mobilization of women into industrial production, as well as the use of men who were medically disqualified from military service, would have further reduced the number of available men from this pool who were fit for combat duties. Finally, by the end of the war the National Socialist leadership had repeatedly combed through the pool of industrial workers in the search for Wehrmacht replacements, leaving very few able-bodied workers in all but the most critical areas.
Old Faithful - HyperWar: contains numbers of personnel, weapons and organization. [h=2]CHAPTER II Organization of the Field Forces[/h] [h=4]17. Antiaircraft Division (Flakdivision)[/h] Under the German system, antiaircraft defense is in the main the responsibility of the German Air Force, although the German Army also has a large number of antiaircraft units of its own. While the composition and equipment of antiaircraft batteries generally are standardized, the formation of these into battalions, regiments, divisions, or units of equivalent size, however, is subject to more variations than in any other of the German arms. The average non-motorized, air force, antiaircraft division, which is shown in the following figure, usually is located in the Zone of the Interior. It has a large number of trailers but very little motorization, and depends for mobility on separate transportation units. As pointed out above, many other combinations of the units shown as divisional components may be encountered frequently, HyperWar: Handbook on German Military Forces (Chapter 2)
From the same source (M.K. beated me): LW flak batteries: 1943: Germany :1930 Belgium and Holland :500 Norway and Finland :170 Balkan :100 NA + Italy :358 East :310 Heeres Flak is not included 1944: Germany :2131 West: 837 N +F:206 Balkan /192 Italy :262 East :639 Crew of a (non motorized) heavy battery:between 129/143 for a light battery :between 158/175 In october 1944: 14th Flak Division : LW:28000 men other male Germans:24000 Female Germans:3000 Foreign volunteers:900 Soviet POW :3600 others :3000 Then,there is also the personnell of the search lights .
The problem with flak obviously wasn't so much the manpower, but the ammunition consumption! All that brass, steel, powder, explosives, and time fuses fired off during a major air raid on a big city for how many planes destroyed? The German artillery forces, so I've read, were chronically short of time fuses that would have been very effective against attacking troops. I also remember reading that just at the end of the war the Germans came up with a new flak doctrine against American daylight raids. The set the fuses on the maximum setting and then fired them through the tightly grouped planes. The few times they used it they destroyed more bombers by direct hits than by the usual methods. Another "to late" thing.
The sheer expense of Shelters, Flak Towers, Guns, Ammunition, Firefighting and search and rescue has to have been enormous and debilataing.
They used them to bring them the ammo. And some of the POW´s tried to escape in the bombings. Can imagine what happened as they were caught.
Women in this case were used on the listening devices as well as ground based radar detectors/range finders as well as ground based radio communique with day/night fighter units under higher ranked men control. a side note a wonderful friend of mine was a Nachtjagd helper with NJG 6 on the Ost front and then back into the Bayern by wars end. in regards to a 10 % ratio on the West front with front-line LW male personell this seems way too low on the other hand may fit to Eastern Front activities. lets remember that the Flak in all it's variants were not duly supplied or governed by the LW as the Heer and KM had it's own Flak batteries and Battalions.
