Eagles of the Third Reich: Men of the Luftwaffe in WWII (Stackpole Military History Series) Read Free Page A

armed with only two light machine guns and had an operational ceiling several thousand feet below the Messerschmitts. The P.11 was also about one hundred miles per hour slower than the Me-109.

    TABLE 5: ORDER OF BATTLE, 1ST AND 4TH AIR FLEETS, SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
    1st Air Fleet: General of Flyers Kesselring
Chief of Staff: Col. Wilhelm Speidel
1st Air Division: Lt. Gen. Ulrich Grauert
KG 1 (-)
KG 26 (-)
KG 27
StG 2 (-)
ULG 2
ZG1(-)
Lehrdivision: Lt. Gen. Helmut Foerster
LG 1
KG 2
KG 3
UStG 1
UJG 1
Luftgau I (Koenigsberg)
Luftgau III (Berlin)
Luftgau IV (Dresden)
    4th Air Fleet: Gen. of Flyers Alexander Loehr
Chief of Staff: Col. Guenter Korten
2nd Air Division: Lt. Gen. Bruno Loerzer
KG 4
KG 76
KG 77
UZG 76
Air Command z.b.V.: Maj. Gen. Baron von Richthofen
StG 77 (-)
SLG 2 (-) *
UZG 2
Luftgau VIII (Breslau)
Luftgau XVII (Vienna)

    * 2nd Stuka Training Wing.
    Source: Speidel MS.
    Poland did have a modern medium bomber, the P.37 “Elk.” Unfortunately, the Polish bomber arm had just begun to modernize, and only thirty-six Elks had reached the groups.
    In addition to its obsolete aircraft and lack of centralized command, the Polish air forces were handicapped by poor dispositions. Each of the six Polish armies was given one fighter group, one reconnaissance group, and one balloon company, under an air unit commander. In all, the army and naval air forces had 165 of the available fighters, 265 recon aircraft, 100 liaison airplanes, 30 naval reconnaissance planes, and 10 naval defense aircraft. This left only 150 fighters for the defense of the Polish cities, industrial regions, and rear areas. Of these, sixty were located in the general vicinity of Warsaw, twenty in the Deblin area, thirty around Gdynia (the Polish Baltic Sea port), and forty in the various industrial regions. These fighter units were under the control of the chief of air forces at Polish GHQ in Warsaw.
    World War II began at 4:40 A . M . on September 1, 1939. There have been a great many misconceptions about the Luftwaffe’s success on that day. Many people believe that the Polish air forces were destroyed on the ground in the first few hours of the campaign. This simply is not true. The Polish leadership recognized that war was a distinct possibility, if not actually imminent. They did not keep their air units concentrated in their large peacetime bases; rather, with the international situation at the boiling point, they took the elementary precaution of dispersing their air units to ninety tactical airfields throughout the country. They thus saved most of their airplanes from the initial German onslaught.
    The Poles lost control of the air battle before it began, because the Polish ground services were extremely primitive. No Polish air signal corps existed. This fact was of critical importance, for Polish air units had to depend on army signal units, which had no specialized training in aerial communications. The Polish tactical airfields were not even served by telephones. The Polish air command simply did not have the communications to contact—much less control—their small units, which were now scattered all over the country. Much like the Polish army, the Polish air units operated in “penny packets,” which were swamped one by one by the Wehrmacht. Except in the vicinity of Warsaw, where Polish communications were at their best, Polish aviators never achieved a single important concentration against the Luftwaffe.
    The weather was poor throughout Poland on the morning of September 1, but it was especially bad in the zone of the lst Air Fleet, where most of the Luftwaffe’s striking power was concentrated. At Warsaw, for example, the cloud ceiling was 600 feet and visibility was less than three-quarters of a mile. Lacking proper instrument training, the Luftwaffe’s plans for a synchronized takeoff of all operational air forces were upset. Only a few units actually took off on schedule and the planned large-scale attack deteriorated into a