The Bombing War: Europe 1939-1945

The two forces that opposed each other in August 1940 were organized, equipped and led very differently. On 3 August the German Air Force had a bomber strength of 1,438 aircraft of which 949 were serviceable, substantially fewer than in May; to conduct the war against the RAF there were 878 serviceable Messerschmitt Me109E/F single-engine fighters and 320 Messerschmitt Me110C twin-engine fighters from an operational strength of 1,065 and 414 respectively.⁵⁹ The Ju87B dive-bomber, which had proved so effective in the land campaign, was withdrawn after the opening days of the ‘England-Attack’ when it was discovered that its slow speed in the dive made it exceptionally vulnerable to fast fighter interception. The aircraft were divided between the three air fleets: 44 combat squadrons (19 bomber) in Air Fleet 2; 33 combat squadrons (14 bomber) in Air Fleet 3; and six combat squadrons (four bomber) in Air Fleet 5.⁶⁰ Unlike the British and American systems, the German Air Force was not organized functionally but territorially. Bombers, fighters, fighter-bombers and reconnaissance aircraft were under a single air fleet commander responsible for a particular geographical area. Air Fleet 2 was led by Albert Kesselring (former commander of Air Fleet 1), a jovial former cavalry officer, who had joined the air force in 1934, served briefly as air force chief of staff in the mid-1930s, and eventually rose to be commander-in-chief of Axis forces in the Mediterranean theatre, where his authorization of savage reprisals earned him the status of a war criminal in 1945, after the end of the war. His fellow commander of Air Fleet 3, Hugo Sperrle, like Kesselring a Bavarian and former army officer, boasted a commandingly large frame that dwarfed even the corpulent Göring. Air Fleet 5, stationed in Norway under General Stumpff, was the Cinderella of the air force. Short of aircraft, faced with dauntingly difficult and lengthy flights across the North Sea, Stumpff’s force played a marginal part in the campaign.

Over them all presided Hermann Göring, both Air Minister and air force commander-in-chief, promoted to Reich Marshal in July 1940, the highest-ranking officer in the German armed forces. He was served by an Air Force General Staff which had liaison officers posted to Hitler’s Supreme Headquarters to maintain regular contact. Most of the running of the air force was conducted by the general staff and the permanent officials in the Air Ministry, whose state secretary was the former Lufthansa director Erhard Milch, also recently created field marshal. The special political position enjoyed by their commander-in-chief, who was president of the German Parliament and Hitler’s nominated successor as Führer, meant that Göring could argue the air force case from a position of considerable strength, though it also meant that his time and fluctuating energy had to be divided among a great many tasks.⁶¹ He was a jealous and ambitious commander, almost childishly enthusiastic about the air force, yet almost all accounts of his leadership highlight the arbitrary, irregular and often ill-informed character of his interventions. One of the first American interrogators assigned to Göring in 1945 summed up the prevailing view among his subordinates, culled from the many interviews he had read: ‘Lazy, superficial, arrogant, vain and above all a bon viveur.’⁶² In practice he was a more assiduous and perceptive commander than this judgement suggests, but he did manipulate the air force to enhance his own standing. The role of the air force in the strategic bombing of Britain owed much to Göring’s conviction that it could achieve things the other services could not. The political value of success for both the air force and its leader was a driving force of the strategic campaign.