- 2 days ago
For educational purposes
"THE WEAKEST LINK"
Without the extra operational range of four-engine aircraft Germany was deprived of the necessary weapon to strike deep into the heart of a well-defended enemy.
The short and medium-range bombers necessary for the blitzkrieg tactics were unable to deliver effective, strategic bombing.
The Luftwaffe was superbly structured and equipped to fulfil the tasks that Hitler had chosen for it.
Unfortunately, it was to prove to be the wrong task. The bombers of the Luftwaffe were unable to prevent the ultimate defeat of the German war machine.
"THE WEAKEST LINK"
Without the extra operational range of four-engine aircraft Germany was deprived of the necessary weapon to strike deep into the heart of a well-defended enemy.
The short and medium-range bombers necessary for the blitzkrieg tactics were unable to deliver effective, strategic bombing.
The Luftwaffe was superbly structured and equipped to fulfil the tasks that Hitler had chosen for it.
Unfortunately, it was to prove to be the wrong task. The bombers of the Luftwaffe were unable to prevent the ultimate defeat of the German war machine.
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00:02Guernica, a town in northern Spain, was important to the culture of the Basques that lived in that region.
00:09In its center stood an ancient oak tree under which the people gathered to meet and elect their leaders.
00:17On April the 26th, 1937, the name of the town was written into the pages of the history of warfare
00:24forever.
00:25It was the first town to be destroyed completely by aerial bombardment.
01:16At 4.30 in the afternoon, the main church bell rang to warn of the coming of an air attack.
01:20It was market day, and in spite of the civil war raging around the town, farmers had still come in
01:27with their sheep and cattle.
01:29Upon hearing the bells, they joined the refugees from the battles around the town and went down into the cellars.
01:36A single Heinkel 111 bomber of the German Condor Legion's experimental squadron flew over the town, dropped its load on
01:44the center, and then disappeared.
01:47Most people came out of their shelters believing the attack was over, and went to help the injured.
01:54Fifteen minutes later, the full squadron flew over.
01:58They began dropping various sizes of bombs.
02:02People rushed back into the cellars choking on the smoke and dust.
02:06It was clear that the shelters could not withstand the heavier bombs, and a stampede into the fields around the
02:13town began.
02:15Then the Heinkel 51 fighter squadron swept over, strafing the men, women, and children.
02:23Livestock, and even the nuns from the town's hospital were caught up in this.
02:27A major part of the attack had not even started.
02:31At 5.15, the sound of heavier aero engines were heard.
02:37These were identified as the Ponderous Junkers 52.
02:40Three squadrons from Burgos carpet-bombed the town systematically, in twenty-minute relays, for two and a half hours.
02:49Their loads were made up of a variety of bombs.
02:53The incendiaries were sprinkled down from the Junkers in two-pound aluminium tubes like metallic confetti.
03:01The resulting scene was described in terms of hell and the apocalypse.
03:08The attack on Guernica was completely unexpected, for two main reasons.
03:15Firstly, the Republican forces had been preparing the Condor Legion in secret, and therefore the people on the ground hadn't
03:25expected to be attacked.
03:27But more importantly, they felt that they were protected by the Washington Accord, which actually forbade aerial attacks against civilian
03:36targets.
03:37And it was a great exercise in cynicism, whereby the Germans were able to achieve this political sleight of hand,
03:46and actually disguise their own national forces as some kind of mercenary outfit known as the Condor Legion, which in
03:54practice they never were.
03:56So it was a very cynical attack, and unfortunately, it was a forerunner of what was to come in World
04:02War II.
04:03Whole families were buried in the ruins of their houses.
04:07Cattle and sheep, blazing with thermite and white phosphorus, ran crazily between the burning buildings until they died.
04:15Approximately a third of the town's population were casualties.
04:191,654 killed and 889 wounded.
04:24Condor Legion veterans were later to claim that their squadrons were really trying to bomb the Renteria Bridge nearby,
04:31but that strong winds blew their loads onto the town.
04:35The bridge was never hit.
04:37There was virtually no wind.
04:39The anti-personnel bombs, incendiaries and machine guns used by the Junkers are not effective against stone bridges.
04:48Those hurrying towards the town from Bilbao had their original disbelief at the news changed by the sight of the
04:55orange-red glow in the sky.
04:58When they reached the town, they found the parliament buildings and the oak tree untouched.
05:04The rest of Guernica was a burnt skeleton.
05:09The architect of the attack on Guernica, who was also the architect of the Luftwaffe,
05:15was Hermann Goering.
05:19Goering had been a fighter pilot during the Great War and fought with great distinction in the Richthofen Squadron.
05:28But between 1933 and 1945, he evolved into a kind of mixture between a gangster and a warlord.
05:40He ran the Luftwaffe as his own fiefdom.
05:45He was vain, selfish, arrogant, greedy, childish.
05:51Almost every unfavourable adjective you can think of can be applied to Goering.
05:57He was so vain that he had his own uniforms tailored to his own design.
06:01He amassed enormous personal wealth by stealing from the countries that Germany had occupied.
06:11The same tactic that was used on Guernica was used against the Polish city of Warsaw when Germany began its
06:17push into Poland on September 1, 1939.
06:22From the first attack, the Polish capital was battered by German bombers.
06:27Very soon it was surrounded by the ground forces.
06:30It stood defiant with enemies all around.
06:33The task of breaking the will of this stronghold was given to the Luftwaffe.
06:40At the beginning of the war, both sides did not specifically go out to attack civilian populations.
06:48This was for two reasons.
06:49One, they didn't have much in the way of bombers to attack civilian populations effectively.
06:54And two, they were afraid of retaliation from the other side.
06:58But even in 1941, you can see that while they attacked military targets, a lot of bombs miss, hit civilian
07:07populations.
07:08Each side is convinced that the other did that on purpose, so there is a mounting willingness to attack civilian
07:14populations.
07:15It's also the case that in the interwar period, the theorists of air power had realised, or supposed anyway,
07:23that attack upon civilian population would result in a great destruction of civilian morale,
07:30and thus of loss of fighting efficiency.
07:33So the civilians were always liable to be there as a target.
07:38For 27 days, the planes came again and again to smash the heart out of the once proud medieval city.
07:46This was another mass bombing of a civilian target.
07:49This was Blitzkrieg in its awful majesty.
07:54This was the Luftwaffe at its most devastating, fulfilling the role it had been designed to meet.
08:14As the war went on and Germany continued to confront its enemies on front after front,
08:19again and again the Luftwaffe was asked to fulfil the role of tactical bombing.
08:27In Norway and then in the push through Holland and Belgium and on into France,
08:32the Junkers Ju-87B or Stuka, Dornier Do-17 and Heinkel He-111 operated in their close support role to
08:40the advancing ground forces.
08:43Only after the fall of France did the shortcomings of an air force designed to support this tactic become apparent.
08:49It was always intended to support first and foremost the needs of the army on the ground.
08:57It was never really envisaged as having a long-range strategic role.
09:03One of the reasons for that is that the Luftwaffe was almost entirely officered by people who came from the
09:12army.
09:12There were very few true flyers in there, such as you would recognise in the RAF.
09:18One of the main reasons for that, obviously, is that under the Treaty of Versailles for a long time,
09:24there was no such thing as a German air force.
09:27So they didn't have the same separate agenda and separate esprit de corps that you would find, for example,
09:34in the United States Air Force or the British RAF.
09:39Germany now faced Britain.
09:41Here was an enemy where the swift blitzkrieg attack was not immediately possible.
09:46The planned invasion could not go ahead until the Luftwaffe held the skies over southern England and the English Channel.
09:54The Battle of Britain was begun.
10:02At its height, the same aircraft that had been used to bomb Poland, Norway and the rest into submission were
10:09having considerable success in weakening the British fighters and their bases.
10:15It looked like it would be only a matter of time before the might of the German army would once
10:20more be advancing under its familiar air umbrella.
10:35Then, in September 1940, the nature of the air campaign changed.
10:43The orders went out from the highest level that instead of the airfields, London must be bombed.
10:51This was the way that Britain would be brought to surrender.
10:55A new type of blitz had begun.
10:58The Luftwaffe stopped the bombing of the airfields because they thought they had virtually achieved their purpose, that the airfields
11:06were almost unusable and that they had destroyed most of the strength of fighter command by this tactic.
11:12It would therefore be reasonable to try to destroy the remaining strength of fighter command by attacking a different target.
11:20It is also the sort of target that appealed to people like Göring and Hitler to strike savagely in daylight
11:28at a big city, partly aiming at legitimate military targets like the docks, but also aiming to spread terror and
11:38fear amongst the population.
11:43Now, the German bombers rained down their loads on another ancient capital.
11:48Bombs fell on dockyards and palaces alike.
11:51Fires raged in all parts of the city, in the poorest east and the fashionable west.
11:58But it was not enough.
12:00For once, the bombers of the Luftwaffe were found wanting.
12:07Designed for a close support role, they were ill-equipped for the task of strategic bombing that had been thrust
12:13upon them.
12:24It was very difficult to put enough defensive firepower on a medium bomber to give it good defensive capacity because
12:33of its relatively small size.
12:35These planes also could not carry much in the way of armour to protect the engines, pilots and so forth.
12:44And they also did not carry a very heavy bomb load, so they were not terribly satisfactory aircraft.
12:52Night and day saw plane after plane failing to reach its target, falling prey to fighter and ground-based attack.
13:03From the success of the Blitzkrieg as seen in the destruction of Warsaw, the planes of the Luftwaffe were facing
13:09defeat in the skies over Britain.
13:32It was in the 1930s when the first stages for what would be the largest war the world had ever
13:38seen were first implemented.
13:40The German High Command felt that total victory could be achieved in a few short years.
13:47Their strategy would see Central Europe fall piece by piece in a series of deep offensives.
13:55Air power was seen as a vital component of this, for battle, transport and supply, as well as providing the
14:02essential offensive support.
14:06The Treaty of Versailles that had ended World War I disbanded the German Air Force.
14:12The Germans were banned from producing military aircraft and prohibited from subsidizing the manufacture of civil aircraft.
14:19Initially, the German aircraft designers were forced to seek work abroad, although when the restrictions of non-military craft was
14:26lifted in 1926, they were able to return.
14:30Germany then began to plan for war by designing aircraft seemingly for peaceful purposes, such as airliners or airmail carriers
14:39that could be adapted for military use.
14:43The Third Reich was to discover that the needs of a commercial aircraft are very different to the needs of
14:49an effective warplane or transport.
14:55The Luftwaffe rotated around one man, Hermann Göring.
15:11History was to show that he was too interested in his own success to stand firm against the inaccurate ratings
15:17of the Fuhrer.
15:19He was boastful, he told lies, he was a fantasist, he really is one of the strangest characters to grace
15:30the pages of history.
15:31He must have been a huge opportunist, because although he was fairly brave as a fighter pilot, which no one
15:37denies, he seems to have gone personally and politically out of control.
15:43He saw himself as Hitler's successor and in the last years of the war mounted a forlorn attempt to replace
15:52Hitler.
15:54And he did manage, as history tells us, to cheat death, to cheat the hangman's nooths after the trial at
16:02Nuremberg, when somehow he alone managed to smuggle in some cyanide into his cell.
16:10So he is the most bizarre character you come across on the pages of history.
16:16It's almost inconceivable that such a man with so many obvious and glaring faults could not only rise to that
16:26position, but to hold that position throughout the entire war,
16:30when he made a series of disastrous lapses of judgment and terrible mistakes, almost from day one of the war
16:39right through to the end.
16:41However, the Luftwaffe, in its conception, was a highly trained, well-equipped strike force.
16:47All that was left was to blood the pilots and test the tactics.
16:53The opportunity was taken in 1936 with the outbreak of the Civil War in Spain.
17:12Hitler immediately provided 20 JU-52s and a fighter escort of six HE-51s to convoy 10,000 Moorish soldiers
17:21from North Africa to Spain for General Franco.
17:25In November 1936, the first German pilots of the so-called Volunteer Condor Legion arrived in Spain.
17:33In the next two years, Germany cynically rotated thousands of her aircrew and dozens of aircraft types in service with
17:41the Condor to distribute battle experience as widely as possible.
17:45By May 1937, the Condor was operating 200 aircraft, including 50 JU-52s in a bomber role, up to 50
17:54fighters, and various ground attack and reconnaissance types.
18:00Later, the Messerschmitt BF-109B fighter and the new HE-111 bomber were tested.
18:07There was never a shortage of volunteers from the Luftwaffe to serve in Spain.
18:12They received extra pay and a step up in rank for serving with the Condor.
18:19The Germans perfected their ground attack techniques in this campaign, often turning around their aircraft so fast that each completed
18:27six or seven sorties in a day.
18:30But they also made some serious errors.
18:34They muddled through the war with scarcely any provisions for ground-to-air or air-to-air radio communications.
18:42It was a considerable disadvantage, of course, but it should be remembered that the Germans had a very good ground
18:49radar system, at least as good as the British had,
18:54and that this system could be used to coach German fighters onto allied bomber formations, whether by day or by
19:03night.
19:05No effort was made to improve this equipment until after 1940.
19:13They also found that their DO-17 and HE-111 bombers were faster than the Republicans' biplane fighters,
19:19and rashly regarded this as proof of the effectiveness of the self-supporting bomber formation.
19:27This view was reinforced by a visit to RAF Hornchurch by senior German air officers Erhard Milch and Ernst Uder.
19:36Here they found this British fighter squadron to be equipped with Gloucester gladiator biplanes,
19:42which could also be outpaced by the Heinkels and Dorniers.
19:46These observations were to lead to even greater overconfidence.
19:51Milch and Uder were certainly misled by their brief visit to Britain,
19:59when famously they were taken to visit a squadron of Gloucester gladiator fighters,
20:04which were old biplanes, and they formed the impression that the entire RAF used aircraft which were as antiquated as
20:12that.
20:13It's very fortunate for us indeed that that happened, because at the time there were relatively few spitfires and few
20:20hurricanes,
20:20they were only beginning to come into service in 1936.
20:25And it's a great mercy that the Germans formed that view at that particular time,
20:31otherwise the outcome of the Battle of Britain could have been very different if Germany had concentrated on better fighters
20:40with a longer range than the Messerschmitt 109.
20:45The opportunity taken in the Spanish Civil War was to hold the Luftwaffe in good stead when the war began
20:50in earnest with the attacks on Poland, Norway and France.
20:56In the atmosphere of Blitzkrieg, the expected quick victory had no need for strategic or long range bombers.
21:04Hitler was reluctant to put much in the way of resources into long range bombers for a number of reasons.
21:13One is that the Luftwaffe was developed primarily to assist the army, so you wanted fighters, dive bombers and short
21:22range bombers in order to meet that purpose.
21:28He also expected to fight reasonably short wars, this was the theory behind the Blitzkrieg idea, fight a short war
21:36and get it over quickly.
21:37And long range bombing tends to have its effect over a considerable period of time.
21:44And so for that reason too, there would be a reluctance to develop long range bombers.
21:50But the principal reason perhaps in 1936, perhaps was a technical one.
21:55In 1936-37, which is when the Germans would have to be beginning development of these bombers to have them
22:01useful in the war,
22:03because it's a lead development time of six or seven years,
22:06in 1936-37, the Germans didn't have engines powerful enough to drive a big four-engine bomber with a heavy
22:15bomb load and a great height.
22:18They tried, but the results were not impressive.
22:24The speed of expected advance meant that every new design proposed was first assessed on its ability to be turned
22:30into a dive bomber.
22:33The Luftwaffe was certainly obsessed by the use of dive bombers.
22:37And the reason is an interesting one.
22:40The man in charge of technical development, Ernst Udet, paid a visit to America around 1930.
22:46Now, at this time, the American Navy was experimenting with dive bombers,
22:52because it had found that horizontal bombers flying level at 10,000 feet could not possibly hit warships that were
23:01maneuvering below.
23:02They worked out that the only chance they had of hitting these ships with bombs was by dive bombing.
23:09You go down from 10,000 feet, release your bombs at about 2,000 or 3,000 feet,
23:14you have something like 20 or 30 seconds to zero in on the target, and if the target moves, you
23:20can move with it too.
23:21And they found that dive bombing was at least 10 times as accurate as the horizontal bombing of the time.
23:29Udet was greatly impressed with this, bought some dive bombers from the Americans and took them back to America,
23:34and when he became technical director, laid down this directive that dive bombing was the way to attack.
23:41And most certainly, it is in terms of accuracy.
23:45It was sheer lunacy to try and adapt these huge aircraft to be used in a dive bombing role,
23:55because by definition, dive bombing is about precision.
23:59It's about being able to dive almost onto the target and lay your bomb with pinpoint accuracy.
24:05Big aircraft are used for area bombing against area targets,
24:09and for that reason, they don't need to be so accurate as a dive bomber does.
24:15So the whole thing was nonsensical and futile.
24:19The main thrust of new aircraft design had to be towards the short and medium range bomber to operate in
24:26support of the ground forces.
24:28Pride of place to this type of attack aircraft must go to the Junkers Ju-87B.
24:34This was to be known as the Stuka dive bomber.
24:39However, this aircraft was to be ably supported by others.
24:56The Dornier D017 was also in service at this time.
25:00This was nicknamed the Flying Pencil because of the narrow fuselage section.
25:06Originally designed as a fast passenger airliner, but made so slim that it was unacceptable for fair paying customers.
25:13By chance, flown by an Air Ministry official in 1934, who was so impressed that he suggested it could form
25:20the basis for a bomber.
25:23It was to form the basis of the tactical bomber strength in the late 1930s.
25:28By the end of 1935, three large factories were devoted to producing this aircraft.
25:36In 1938, Dornier produced a new, almost whimsical nose design to hold four crew with a gun firing below towards
25:44the rear.
25:46This was to lead to the main wartime model, the Z and the 215.
25:53Because of the increased weight of the aircraft, the 17Z was initially underpowered,
25:58and the full bomb load had to wait until the Fafnir 323P engines replaced the earlier Brammer radials.
26:07Although technically obsolescent by 1939, about a quarter of the German bomber and reconnaissance units deployed in the Battle of
26:14Britain were equipped with this aircraft.
26:26Unarmoured and underpowered, it was highly vulnerable to fighter attack and carried a poor bomb load.
26:32Its chief merits, in the eyes of its crews, were strength, stability and reliability.
26:38It was the most popular and reliable of Luftwaffe bombers at that time.
26:59Another aircraft designed originally for commercial purposes in service at the start of the war was the Focke-Wulf FW
27:05200 Condor.
27:07This had been planned solely as a long-range commercial transport for the German airline, Deutsche Lufthansa.
27:15The pre-war FW 200 prototype set up impressive record flights to New York and Tokyo.
27:23Transport prototype and production versions were also used by Hitler and Himmler as VIP executive machines.
27:31In 1938, the Japanese asked for one to be converted for use as a long-range ocean reconnaissance machine,
27:38which was to provide the Luftwaffe an aircraft which had never been requested.
27:43This was to prove a most powerful weapon of war.
27:52It was used operationally from June 1940.
27:55By September 1940, these planes had sunk over 90,000 tonnes of Allied shipping,
28:01and for the next three years, to quote Churchill, were the scourge of the Atlantic.
28:08Churchill was right to be threatened by the Focke-Wulf Condor,
28:12and it's a really interesting example of where Germany could have taken a four-engine design.
28:19The Condor was a magnificent aircraft, it had a long range,
28:24and it was able to carry a fairly heavy bomb load.
28:27Had that aircraft been taken and developed as a four-engine bomber,
28:31who knows what Germany might have been able to achieve.
28:34As the FW-200 family continued to add new equipment,
28:39making it into an even more lethal aircraft, the Allies fought back.
28:45The use of long-range coastal command aircraft,
28:48aircraft carriers to escort convoys,
28:50and fitting catapult-launched fighters onto merchant ships
28:53effectively countered the attacks.
28:56By mid-1940, the surviving Condors had been forced into a transport role on other fronts.
29:04One of the fundamental failings of the Condor was structural weakness,
29:08catastrophic wing and fuselage failures occurring not only in the air,
29:12but even on the ground, on take-off or landing.
29:30The Heinkel He-111 was a graceful machine with elliptical wings and tail.
29:40The Heinkel He-111 was a graceful machine with elliptical wings and tail.
29:51The
29:51operations began in February 1937 with the Condor Legion in Spain, where they had considerable success.
30:04Powered by 660 horsepower BMW 6 engines, it had a typical armament of three manually armed machine guns.
30:14The useful bomb load of 2,200 pounds was stowed nose up in eight cells in the center fuselage.
30:23In 1937, a number of generally similar machines secretly flew photo reconnaissance missions over Britain, France and the Soviet Union
30:31in the guise of airliners of Deutsche Lufthansa.
30:35At the same time, flight performance was being improved by the fitting of Daimler Benz DB 600 CG engines, producing
30:43950 horsepower, replacing the earlier DB 600 C engines and their 880 horsepower.
30:53To a considerable degree, this misled the Luftwaffe into considering that nothing could withstand the onslaught of their huge fleets
31:00of medium bombers.
31:04They were faster than the single-seat fighters of that era, and, so the argument went, therefore did not need
31:11much defensive armament.
31:14So the three machine guns carried by the first HE-111 bombers remained unchanged until they were hacked down with
31:22ease during the Battle of Britain.
31:25Its only defense was the structural strength, and its ability to come back after being shot to pieces.
31:34The main drawback of the Heinkel 111 as a bomber was in its lack of defensive armament.
31:42There was only one solitary machine gun pointing forwards, and most of the defensive arrangement was towards the rear arc
31:50of the aircraft.
31:51So it wasn't long before the RAF discovered a weakness like that.
31:55And with the inability of the German fighters to stay over England for very long, they had a field day
32:02destroying the 111.
32:04Despite that, Goring continued to persevere with that aircraft as the mainstay of the German bomber forces right through the
32:14whole four years of the war.
32:16There were a few attempts to upgrade the armament.
32:19It was given twin machine guns in the nose, for example.
32:22But they were very few and far between in comparison to the enormous dangers that it posed to the crews
32:29as both British and American and finally Russian fighters came up to scratch and they were able to knock them
32:36from the skies in huge numbers.
32:38The inevitable result was that more and more defensive guns were added, needing a fifth or even a sixth crew
32:45member.
32:47areas of the strength of the fighter's equipment used, so the
33:00You could figure out something.
33:03Was there any version of the Ha-111?
33:05Was there any progression of the Unlesse 111?
33:09The variations were legion, including versions with V-1 tucked under the left wing route and a saboteur transport.
33:22The most extraordinary was the HE-111Z glider tug of 1942,
33:28which consisted of two HE-111 H6s joined by a common center wing carrying a fifth engine.
33:37This model was designed as a tow aircraft for giant gliders.
33:42One of these was the Messerschmitt 321.
33:45This entered service in the Russian front in late 1941.
33:49The complex towing arrangements restricted its use to primarily rear area logistical operations.
33:57Another giant glider, the ME-323, had originally been designed for use in the invasion of the Benelux countries.
34:03Made of a plywood or fabric skin fitted over the welded steel tubular frame, it was extremely tiring to fly.
34:12This was due to the large control forces involved when loaded with its payload of 48,500 pounds or complete
34:20company of infantry.
34:22It was so heavy that takeoff had to be boosted by rocket motors fitted under the wings.
34:29Originally towed by a complex arrangement of BF-110s in formation, it was later to be another glider towed by
34:36the HE-111Z.
34:40Despite these innovations, the Luftwaffe was dependent on older designs.
34:45Right to the end of the war, the German industry failed to find a replacement for the HE-111 as
34:51a close support bomber.
34:52At least 6,086 were produced.
34:57Production even continued after the war in Spain until 1956.
35:11Production of the Air Force
35:12Records show that by September 1939, Germany had built up an air force of some 9,220 aircraft.
35:20Of these, 4,530 were bombers.
35:24To face them, Britain had 928 fighters.
35:31The reorganization of the aircraft manufacturing plants during the early war years did a little to redress the balance.
35:39In August 1940, at the start of the Battle of Britain, the number of German bombers available was 1,112.
35:48Amongst them, there was not a single four-engine bomber.
35:52This restriction came from the FĂĽhrer Direct.
35:55He felt that an aircraft with four engines was less useful than two aircraft with two engines.
36:02This guided German aircraft in an unusual direction.
36:06The aim was always to get as many aircraft into the air as possible.
36:11Hitler believed that mighty flights of aircraft passing overhead would surely raise the morale of his forces that saw them,
36:18and push them on to victory.
36:22The tactical changes forced upon Germany by the events of the summer of 1940 showed up the shortcomings of this
36:28view.
36:29The German bombers were at best medium range, medium strength, and of low defensive capability.
36:37They had been shoehorned into their new roles from the original designs until new designs could be manufactured.
36:45But they were stretched to the very limit of their endurance as they rained down a deadly torrent of explosives
36:52on their chosen targets in London.
36:55Here, they were met with a revitalized defense from the plains of British Fighter Command, and were forced to abandon
37:01daylight raids and the invasion of Britain that was to have followed.
37:07Having failed to bring Britain to its knees, the German army turned its attention elsewhere.
37:14Other countries were to become the target for the blitzkrieg machine.
37:19Attacks were made in the Balkans.
37:21Then, on the 21st of June 1941, a major push into Russian territory began.
37:29The tactical bombing by close air support once more yielded good results.
37:35The German armies were moving forward again, pursuing a retreating army, and the Luftwaffe was fulfilling its designed role.
37:43All this was about to change.
37:48The Russian war was Hitler's greatest gamble, and also the most flawed campaign that he embarked upon in his career.
37:57The generals were absolutely opposed to this foray into Russia, and it was here that the real failings of the
38:04Luftwaffe were most exposed.
38:07They had insufficient aircraft, they had the wrong type of aircraft, and they were completely unsuited to the climactic conditions
38:16that they were going to face throughout the Russian war.
38:20There were a few successes.
38:21The Focke-Wulf Yuhu or the Owl was a good reconnaissance aircraft, but by and large, the aircraft were totally
38:30unsuited to the job.
38:31They were insufficiently prepared for the Russian campaign, the logistics were a nightmare, the winters were stronger and fiercer than
38:42anyone could have imagined.
38:44And by 1941, a lot of the aircraft were coming to the end of their service life, so there was
38:50a great extra strain on spares and repairs which had to be brought all the way from Germany.
38:56So the Luftwaffe started the campaign at a disadvantage and then decreased in effectiveness.
39:03When faced with the swiftly advancing enemy, Russia fell back on its well-tried defence.
39:09The country was placed on a war footing that used the size of the country as an ally.
39:15By destroying all facilities and communications in front of an advancing enemy, they forced the Germans to be dependent on
39:22ever-lengthening supply lines.
39:25These were vulnerable to counter-attacks that were launched from deep inside Russian territory.
39:32The Russians moved their own manufacturing base to the region of the Urals far to the east.
39:38The medium-range German bombers could not fly this far.
39:43In spite of the time this took, once established, the Russians gained significant successes in slowing and finally defeating the
39:51German advance.
39:54The summer of 1943, during the Krusk offensive, saw the last attempt to secure air superiority over a major battlefield.
40:03The Germans had amassed 1,700 warplanes for the battle.
40:07Initially, this force achieved a number of notable successes, but was then checked and finally driven from the skies.
40:15The Russians had used their remote industries to produce increasingly capable warplanes flown by better-trained crews.
40:24The tactical bombing of Blitzkrieg was not designed to meet such a challenge.
40:29The Luftwaffe could not strike at an enemy whose war machine was located far behind the front line.
40:36Germany lacked the means to strike back.
40:39It lacked an effective long-range bomber.
40:43Despite the Luftwaffe's best efforts, they had been forced to concentrate on the shorter-range aircraft.
40:50One long-range design considered was the Junkers Ju 86.
40:56As with the HE 111, it was originally planned as both civil airliner and a bomber.
41:03In 1934, it was one of the most advanced aircraft in Europe.
41:08The design team abandoned corrugated skin and created a smooth and efficient machine with prominent double-wing flaps and outward
41:16-retracting main gears.
41:18This aircraft was the standard heavy bomber, but in Spain it proved vulnerable even to biplane fighters.
41:27Faster versions, Series E with powerful BMW radials and the Swedish Bristol-engined K-Series, were produced and used against
41:36Poland.
41:36But that was their swan song. Resources were diverted to other projects.
41:43Later versions, the P-1 bomber and P-2 bomber reconnaissance aircraft, each fitted with a pressure cabin, were developed
41:50for high-altitude operations.
41:53They did see some service over Russia and Britain, where they could operate out of the range of all but
41:58the most determined fighters.
41:59The R-Series that followed had an even longer wingspan and frequently operated over southern England in 1941-42.
42:09These operations were curtailed when solitary Spitfires managed to reach their altitude and effect an interception.
42:29Most of these projects had been long abandoned before the fateful Russian campaign.
42:34Other new projects were developed to take their place.
42:37The desperation induced by the requirements of the Eastern Front led to the usual German response of re-engineering existing
42:45designs.
42:47Gliders were given engines.
42:49VME 323 was fitted with six engines in an attempt to make it more effective.
42:55The resulting aircraft had the capability to deliver bulky loads to airfields virtually in the front line.
43:03Unfortunately, this was at the price of a catastrophic vulnerability to fighter attacks.
43:09There were two main effects from the lack of heavy German aircraft during the Russian war.
43:20The first and most obvious is their inability to reach out and to damage the Russian war effort.
43:26They couldn't get to the other side of the Urals, they didn't have bombers that were heavy enough.
43:31So Russia was able to gear up its industry, to move it back behind the Urals and almost without interruption
43:37to continue to produce the materials of war, particularly tanks, in huge numbers.
43:44That was one major failing for the Luftwaffe.
43:47The other was Goring's boastfulness when he persuaded Hitler that he and his Luftwaffe were capable of supplying the surrounded
43:566th Army at Stalingrad.
43:58Once again, this is a prime example of Goring's many failings and his boastfulness.
44:05He assured Hitler categorically that the 6th Army could be supplied from the air.
44:11And when the time came to break out, the 6th Army was too weak.
44:15The relief army was only 30 miles away, but the inability of the Luftwaffe to take through sufficient supplies, particularly
44:23fuel,
44:24meant that Paulus, in charge of 6th Army, didn't feel that he had enough strength to attempt to push a
44:33corridor through to the relieving force.
44:35If Goring had even been able to maintain half the level of surprise that he promised he could deliver,
44:42there was a possibility that the 6th Army could actually have been saved at Stalingrad.
44:47And that would have meant an enormous change in the fortunes of both the Russian front and, of course, the
44:54whole war.
44:58Late in the war, we continued to see the misuse of German engineering and the brilliance of the design.
45:09Even with the development of jet fighters later in the war, they were still trying to turn those to a
45:15bombing role.
45:16We saw the Messerschmitt 262 and the Arado 234, both of which would have made world-class fighters,
45:24but they were actually used in this fighter-bomber role.
45:29And really that goes back to this whole business of Germany never having really developed a suitable aircraft for the
45:36roles that they were intended.
45:39Throughout its history, the Luftwaffe labored under restrictions that had been handed down from the FĂĽhrer himself.
45:48Goring was to say, Hitler would never ask how big our bombers are, but how many we have.
45:55This pushed the Luftwaffe into trying to get as many aircraft into the air as possible.
46:00Without a doubt, the Luftwaffe was one of the least successful arms in Hitler's war machine.
46:09And again, without a doubt, the blame for that has to lie at the door of Hermann Goring.
46:16In the whole history of warfare, it's difficult to think of someone who held on for so long,
46:23who was so utterly inept at doing the job he was there to do.
46:29Without the extra operational range of four-engined aircraft,
46:34Germany was deprived of the necessary weapon to strike deep into the heart of a well-defended enemy.
46:40The short and medium-ranged bombers necessary for the blitzkrieg tactics
46:45were unable to deliver effective strategic bombing.
46:50The Luftwaffe was superbly structured and equipped to fulfill the tasks that Hitler had chosen for it.
46:58Unfortunately, it was to prove to be the wrong task.
47:02The bombers of the Luftwaffe were unable to prevent the ultimate defeat of the German war machine.
47:10They were able to punish the burden on their various weapons.
47:13They were capable of war machine.
47:18The war machine was incredibly difficult.
47:23The of the last years, it was a project filled with the strength of the war machine.
47:23Their support had been matched in their efforts.
47:23In fact, we don't lose one of the worst-earing enemies for the quier utility of the land.
47:29After three years, every human or the future of this event would be aunl showcased.
47:31It was a perfect chance of the force of theemedian France.
47:31The war machine was very much stronger than the world-ed�ans and the city of the empire.
47:34TheBeforeics' system was existential.
47:34The war machine was revealed in and the opposition of the world that was Hal Weí† .
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