WW2-370 LUFTWAFFE NORTHERN FRANCE 1942 FIGHTER PILOTS READY TO SIT WHILE PLAYING SKAT

The Luftwaffe is a German air force that began to form in February 1935 under a special order of the Nazi dictator of Germany - Adolf Hitler. The commander of the Luftwaffe - from its very beginning, actually until the end of World War II - was Herman Göring. The quantitative development of the German air force in the period 1935-1939 was rapid, and at that time it was equipped with machines that de facto served until the end of the war, including the Me-109 fighter, the Ju-87 Stukas dive bomber or medium bombers such as the He- 111 or Ju-88. Some German pilots also gained combat experience while serving as part of the Condor Legion during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Moreover, even before the war, the Luftwaffe was oriented in such a way as to be able to support the operations of the land forces as effectively as possible. This was reflected in its equipment, structure and organization, as well as in the training of pilots. The German air force successfully emerged from campaigns in Poland, Norway and France, with the Luftwaffe sustaining relatively heavy losses in the latter campaign - both in planes and in personnel. On the other hand, a very painful lesson was the Battle of Britain, during which it had a decisive defeat, losing many more planes, and above all well-trained pilots, than the enemy. It can be added, by the way, that Adolf Galland was one of the best fighter pilots in the Luftwaffe during this battle. In the course of the fighting on the Eastern Front (1941-1945), the German air force, especially at the beginning of the conflict, dominated the quality of aircraft and the training of crews and pilots, which translated into horrendous losses of Soviet aviation and led to even fantastic results of shooting down German fighter aces, such as for example, Hermann Graf or Walter Nowotny. However, in the years 1942-1943 the scales of victory in the air war over Europe began to lean towards the Soviet and - above all - the Allied aviation, which, thanks to machines such as the latest versions of the Spitfire or the P-51 Mustang, caused the German Luftwaffe more and more losses, also in the course of fighting over Germany and in the course of strategic bombing. Even the efforts of the Luftwaffe to make a qualitative leap by introducing jet machines such as the Me-262 or Ar-234 into the line in 1944-1945 did not bring any effect, and the increasingly poorly trained German pilots suffered higher and higher losses in the clash with Allied machines . It is assumed that from the beginning of the war to January 1945, the losses of Luftwaffe personnel amounted to approx. 140,000. people killed and approx. 155 thousand. missing persons.