Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

LUFTWAFFE AGAINST POLAND
The twin-engine Bf-110 had numerous shortcomings.
remained at a relatively low level throughout the struggle (6,000 men in
1937). At its peak in 1937 the Kondor Legion contained no more than 40
He-1 1 Is, 5 Do-l7s, 3 Ju-~~s, 45 Bf-l09s, 4 He-45s, and 8 He-54s.” But
the Germans were able to learn a good deal from the experiences of the
small force. First of all, in 1936 they recognized from combat how technologically
deficient were the first generation of German aircraft sent to
Spain. Not only did the Germans rapidly replace those aircraft with newer
models such as the Bf-109, but the experiences in Spain sped the process
of reequipping the Luftwaffe back home with a new generation of fighters
and bombers. With respect to air superiority, the lessons learned from airto-air
combat proved equally valuable. Like the RAE the Luftwaffe before
the Spanish Civil War had evolved a set of fighter tactics based on close
formations of three aircraft.
Combat experiences in Spain, however, underscored the vulnerability
of such tactics. The future World War I1 ace, Werner Molders, established
a looser combat formation based on the finger formation of four aircraft
with two sections of two aircraft. The German tactics were later copied by
nearly all the world’s air forces. Molders, after his return from Spain, wrote
a lengthy report on his experiences, and that report formed the basis for
German air-to-air doctrine at the outbreak of the war.-’? It was to give the
Germans an important initial advantage over their opponents.
The “finger-four’’ tactics proved to be the basic building block of
World War I1 air-to-air combat. They provided not only better visual cov-