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

AIR SUPERIORITY
erage, but also direct defensive coverage for those fighters carrying out
attacks on enemy aircraft. Equally important was the fact that the Luftwaffe
was able to shuttle a considerable number of its senior and particularly
its middle-level commanders through Spain so that combat experience
gained in the Civil War could be passed as widely as possible through the
rapidly expanding Luftwaffe.’) Nevertheless, one should not overestimate
the Spanish learning experience and its impact on the German military. On
the ground and in the air the commitment of German forces remained limited;
military operations in terms of the equipment and tactics were at best
primitive; and the air war particularly remained almost entirely out of contact
with the rapid development of technology (such as radar) in the
advanced industrialized nations.
German plans and preparations in 1938 for Full Griin, the invasion of
Czechoslovakia, established a pattern that the Luftwaffe repeated in the
next two military confrontations: Full Weiss (invasion of Poland in 1939)
and Fall Gelb (the offensive of May 1940 into France and the Low
Countries). The Wehrmuchr was so weak in 1938 that German planners
had to concentrate nearly all its forces, including the Luftwaffe, on the
destruction of the Czech Rep~blic.)~ Virtually nothing remained in the
West (five divisions and a smattering of air units) to protect against a
possible French reaction.” Two air forces (Lufrjlotren, or airfleets,
equivalent to numbered air forces in American terminology), the First and
the Third, received the task of destroying the Czech Air Force and
supporting the invasion. The Luftwaffe’s plans called for strikes against
Werner Molders (right), father of “finger-four” tactics, talking with Hermann
Goering.
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