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

AIR SUPERIORITY
counterair operations.40 Moreover, the Germans feared that the strong antiaircraft
defenses around the fortified zones and industrial centers in
Bohemia and Moravia could have inflicted serious losses on German aircraft
over Czech targets, especially as low-level strikes (vulnerable to antiaircraft
fire) would have formed the basis for most mission profiles during
bad weather.41
For the Luftwaffe, Hitler’s decision not to push the Czech crisis over
the brink came as an enormous relief. It avoided war with Great Britain and
France-a war that the Reich would have fought at considerable disadvantage.42
Unfortunately for the Allies, the Germans used the eleven months
between Munich and the outbreak of war far better than their future opponents.
By the late summer of 1939, the Luftwaffe was in considerably better
shape than it had been in 1938. This time Hitler refused to be cheated of an
opportunity to wage a limited conflict.
Luftwaffe planning for the Polish campaign began in April 1939. Reacting
to a British guarantee to Poland, Hitler announced to his entourage that
they would “cook the British a stew on which they would choke.”43 He also
demanded that the military begin preparations for an attack on Poland at
the end of August 1939. Poland presented an easier problem to German
planners than had Czechoslovakia in 1938. Not only was the Wehrmacht in
better but Poland’s strategic situation was even more hopeless than
Czechoslovakia’s. Hostile territory surrounded the Poles; they possessed
no natural defenses; their military forces were less well equipped than the
Czechs’; and Polish terrain proved an ideal place to test the army’s mechanized
and motorized formations.
Within the strategic context of the decision to conquer Poland, the
Luftwaffe cast its plans. The initial target of air operations would be the
Polish Air Force in a move to gain general air superiority. That would enable
the Germans to attack the mobilization and deployment of the Polish
Army as well as its logistical The Germans also planned a massive
aerial assault on Warsaw to destroy military and industrial targets, and
thereby paralyze the Polish government at the beginning of hostilities. Bad
weather around Warsaw in the early morning of September 1, however,
prevented the Germans from launching such a blow and limited the initial
efforts to attacks on the Polish air and ground forces. Once the weather had
cleared, air operations against the Polish military were going so well that
the German Air Force commanders hesitated to shift the emphasis of their
attacks to strategic
Despite obsolete aircraft, the Poles proved themselves surprisingly
tenacious opponents in the air. Undoubtedly, a high skill level among their
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