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One of the most important, and yet least publicised, components of the front-line Luftwaffe was the Schlacht, or ground attack, arm. This book details the Schlacht units who were in the thick of the fighting from the first day of the war until the last. They played a vital part in the heady successes of the early Blitzkrieg campaigns and went on to perform an equally essential role in the dark hours of last ditch defence and ultimate defeat. In between, they fought in all defensive battles: on the eastern front at Stalingrad, Kursk and Berlin; in the west, by night, over Normandy, the Ardennes and the Rhine.
The 'storm troopers' of the Luftwaffe, the elite Strumgruppen units comprised the most heavily armed and armoured fighter interceptors ever produced by the Germans. Their role was to smash like a mighty fist through the massed ranks of USAAF daylight bombers. Only volunteers could serve with these elite units, and each pilot was trained to close with the enemy and engage him in extremely short-range combat, attacking from the front and the rear in tight arrowhead formations. In exceptional circumstances pilots would even ram their enemy. This book chronicles the brief, but violent, career of the Sturmgruppen during the dark days of 1944-45, employing first-hand accounts and rare archival photography.
The air war over the Steppes was more than a brutal clash in which might alone triumphed. It was a conflict that saw tactical and technological innovation as the Soviet air force faced off against Herman Göring's Luftwaffe. As Germany and the Soviet Union battled for victory on the Eastern Front they had to overcome significant strategic and industrial problems, as well as fighting against the extreme weather conditions of the East. These factors combined with the huge array of aircraft used on the Eastern Front to create one of the most compelling conflicts of the war. Told primarily from the strategic and command perspective, this account offers a detailed analysis of this oft-overlooked air war, tracing the clashes between Germany and the Soviet Union over the course of World War II. Historical photographs complement the examination as author E. R. Hooton explores these epic aerial battles between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union.
Hitler's Eagles charts the turbulent history of the Luftwaffe from its earliest days to its downfall. At the beginning of World War II, the Luftwaffe was the world's most advanced air force. With superior tactics, aircraft and training, it cut through opposition air forces. Despite this auspicious beginning, by 1945 the Luftwaffe was a dying force. The Allies were destroying German aircraft at unequal rates, and Luftwaffe aviators were dying in their thousands in an unbalanced battle to save Germany from destruction. Once Hitler was in power, the Luftwaffe came out of the shadows and expanded under a massive rearmament programme, then embarked upon the war that would define its existence. As well as providing a detailed history of the Luftwaffe's combat experience, the book expands on its human and material aspects. Aces and commanders are profiled and aircraft are described both technologically and tactically. The book conveys all the drama of the Luftwaffe's existence with Osprey's famous aviation artwork bringing the story incomparably to life.
Barbarossa was the biggest German invasion of World War II. Comprehensively illustrated, this study explores the air campaign that spearheaded it, and how it evolved during the rest of 1941. The German invasion of the USSR, Operation Barbarossa, was the apex of Hitler's aggression. The strength of the Luftwaffe was gathered from across Europe for its opening strikes, where it faced a huge but badly equipped and ill-prepared Soviet Air Force (VVS) of 20,000 aircraft, which it quickly destroyed. In this book, Eastern Front expert William E. Hiestand examines this shattering first campaign, as well as how the Barbarossa air war developed over the following months. He describes how between June and December 1941, Luftwaffe losses rose and aircraft readiness steadily decreased under the pressure of combat. He also analyses the evacuation of Soviet industry – including aircraft production – to the Urals, and the rebuilding of the VVS; by the time German columns stalled 25km from Moscow, the VVS had more operational aircraft at the front than the Luftwaffe. He also covers aspects such as the abortive VVS strikes on Berlin and other strategic targets, and the Luftwaffe's strategic bombing raids on Moscow. With striking original artwork, 3D diagrams, maps and rare photos, this book reveals the full story of the aerial campaign in Barbarossa, as the devastation began in the most brutal theatre of World War II.
Jagdgeschwader 52 (JG 52) was the most successful and highest-scoring fighter unit, not just in Germany's World War 2 Luftwaffe, but in the entire annals of aviation history. No other fighter group has ever come close to matching its staggering total of around 9000 enemy aircraft shot down in combat. And yet, because much of that combat took place over the tractless wastes of the Russian front, very little has been written in English about the exploits of this charismatic unit. This book provides a full combat history of JG 52 and its members, including the three top-scoring aces of all time, who claimed a total of 900 victories between them.
A detailed, illustrated account of the air campaign that accompanied the Red Army's final push towards Berlin, in which massed Soviet air power defeated the Luftwaffe's high-tech Me 262 jets and Mistel exploding drones. The last months of World War II on the Eastern Front saw a ferocious fight between two very different air forces. Soviet Air Force (VVS) Commander-in-Chief Alexander Novikov assembled 7,500 aircraft in three powerful air armies to support the final assault on Berlin. The Luftwaffe employed some of its most advanced weapons including the Me 262 jet and Mistel remotely-guided bomb aircraft. Using photos, 3D diagrams, maps and battlescene artwork, William E. Hiestand, a military analyst with a longstanding interest in Soviet military history, explains how Germany's use of high-tech weaponry and massed Soviet air assaults was not just the culmination of World War II air combat, but also pointed to how the future rivalry with NATO would play out. The VVS used powerful and flexible air armies to control and employ its huge force of aircraft – organizational and employment concepts that would shape Soviet plans and preparations for combat during the Cold War. For the first time, this volume explains how air power helped win the war on the Eastern Front, and how victory shaped Soviet air power doctrine for the decades to come.
Soviet fighter aviation suffered terribly at the hands of the Jagdwaffe in the first year of the war in the east and, with the arrival of JG 51 and its Fw 190s on the Stalingrad Front in September 1942, things only got worse. However, help was on its way in the form of the La-5. Tougher, faster, and with a greater rate of climb than its predecessors, most were flow by a new generation of better-trained pilots led by combat veterans. These new fighters soon found themselves pitted into action on the Central Sector against the equally new Fw 190As of JG 51. From then on, these two fighters would battle it out in the skies over the Eastern Front. This book tells the complete story of the battles between these two important fighters.
The battle for the skies in World War II fuelled a race between rival air forces to develop ever faster and more capable fighter aircraft – and the struggle for air superiority was never over until the war itself ended. This volume explores four clashes of some of the finest planes and pilots, in key theatres of the war: Spitfires duelling the formidable Bf 109 over the Channel, the Fw 190 battling the Soviet La 5 and 7 on the Eastern Front, the F4F Wildcat in a desperate clash with the legendary A6M Zero-sen, and the F4U Corsair in combat with the second-generation Japanese Ki-84 in the closing days of the war. Fully illustrated with contemporary photographs, maps and colour artwork, Air Combat conveys the full story behind these dramatic aviation duels.
Few battles attract interest so much as the Battle of Kursk. Operation Zitadelle, the code name given by Hitler to the Wehrmacht's last offensive on the Eastern Front in July 1943, has acquired an almost mythic status as one of the greatest clashes of armour in the history of warfare. Long been depicted as the 'the swan song of the German tank arm' by virtue of the huge tank losses experienced by the Germans; the reality, in light of the emergence of new information proved it to be anything but, with historians previously accepting without question exaggerated Soviet accounts of the battle. For all the resources devoted to this operation by the Germans, Zitadelle was an abysmal failure; and whilst they were not outfought by the Red Army at Kursk, they were out-thought by commanders of outstanding quality. Zitadelle describes the German and Soviet tactics and explores the realities of the battles on sodden ground that culminated in the defeat of the panzers and the Soviet advance on the Reich.