The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

locomotives and shipping were converted to the production of aircraft.
Junkers went from making eighteen Ju 52s a year with its 2,200-strong staff
to being given an order for nearly a thousand. Milch had begun to envisage
a larger air force than had ever been originally suggested – not a thousand
aircraft strong but twenty times that size.
Both Göring and Milch had been fortunate to have one of the most
talented of the army’s staff officers as the new Chief of Staff of the
Luftwaffe. 4 General Walther Wever had been on both von Hindenburg’s and
von Ludendorff’s staffs during the First World War and joined the
Luftwaffe with a superb reputation that he soon proved was entirely
justified. A clear and realistic planner and thinker and someone who
inspired both affection and respect, he was able to draw the best from those
around him. Wever had believed, correctly, that the greatest threat to
Germany came from the Soviet Union, so he planned to build up, first and
foremost, a strategic bomber force that would operate separately from the
army, and a solid air defence system. He also recognized, as did Milch, the
importance of creating a solid General Staff in which its number were all
imbued with a common purpose and who were very much singing from the
same hymn sheet.
It was also General Wever and his staff who drew up the specifications
for some of the key aircraft that were now flying over the Western Front:
the Messerschmitt 109 and twin-engine 110; the Ju 87 ‘Stuka’ dive-bomber;
and the Ju 88. He had also, crucially, issued a specification for a long-range,
heavy four-engine bomber. The Heinkel 111 medium bomber was also
brought into production with a new large factory opened at Oranienburg
just outside Berlin specifically for that task.
In May 1936, Wever had produced the first Luftwaffe training manual
on air strategy, in which he made clear the importance of the strategic
bomber force and the ability of a strong Luftwaffe to seize the initiative in
any war. ‘In a war of the future,’ he said in an address to the Air War
Academy in 1935, ‘the destruction of the armed forces will be of primary
importance. This can mean the destruction of the enemy air force, army, and
navy, and of the source of supply of the enemy’s forces, the armament
industry…Only the nation with strong bomber forces at its disposal can
expect decisive action by its air force.’
In this strategic thinking, Milch was in complete accord with Wever.
Tragedy struck, however, when Wever, a new and inexperienced pilot,