Air fleet empire

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Air fleet empire

active February 5, 1944 to May 8, 1945
Country German Reich NSGerman Reich (Nazi era) German Empire
Armed forces Wehrmacht
Armed forces Balkenkreuz.svg air force
Type Higher command authority
structure see subordinate area
Location Berlin-Wannsee
commander
Commander in chief Colonel General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff

The Luftflotte Reich was the air fleet of the Luftwaffe of the Wehrmacht , which was set up on February 5, 1944 in Berlin-Wannsee from the staff of the Luftwaffe Commander- in- Chief , and was responsible for the defense of the Reich territory , especially the region around Berlin, against the Allied bombing attacks . The Wolfsschanze headquarters was also included in the advance warning system of the air fleet .

history

At the beginning of 1944, the Air Force Command only had six day-hunting squadrons with 19 groups and a few independent squadrons. Overall, the proportion of women in the air fleet in the spring of 1944 was almost 70 percent. In April 1944, according to a report by Galland , the air fleet lost more than a third of its crews. During the Battle of the Bulge and with the Bodenplatte company , she lost her last hunting reserves.

Due to the increasing threat to the Reich capital, the command post of the Reich Luftflotte was relocated from the Heckeshorn bunker to Stapelburg on March 3, 1945 . On March 8, 1945, a top secret call came Goering for ultimate use with low probability of return of the pilots from all hunting associations of the Reich Air Fleet, the supplementary units of the General of the Fighter and the school units of the general of pilots training was happened. Shortly before the end of the war on April 9, 1945, the command post was relocated to a manor house in Quassel, which is now a district of Lübenheen .

guide

Standard of the Commander in Chief of an Air Fleet

The commander-in-chief of the association was Colonel-General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff until the end of the war , who had already been Air Force Commander-in-Chief on February 3, 1944, before the reorganization. His deputies and chiefs of staff were Major General Sigismund Freiherr von Falkenstein until mid-May 1944, followed by Lieutenant General Andreas Nielsen .

The commander, like the Luftwaffe commander in the center , was in charge of the air raid protection in his area and gave corresponding orders and instructions in management and fundamental matters to the subordinate Luftgau commandos. He was authorized to check the air raid protection readiness of all positions and all individual objects and usually delegated this to the subordinate Luftgau commandos.

The first general staff officer and head of the command department of the Reich Air Fleet was at last Colonel i. G. Karl Kessel , later major general in the Bundeswehr. Lieutenant Colonel i. G. Werner-Eugen Hoffmann , later lieutenant general in the Bundeswehr, was the chief quartermaster of the large unit.

Subordinate units

designation from to
Air Force Command West September 28, 1944 April 1, 1945
IX. Air Corps (J) September 1944 November 13, 1944
I. Hunting Corps February 5, 1944 January 26, 1945
14th Aviation Division April 1, 1945 May 8, 1945
15th Air Division April 1, 1945 May 8, 1945
Hunting section leader in the Ruhr area 1944 1944
Luftgau Command I February 5, 1944 August 8, 1944
Luftgau Command III February 5, 1944 May 8, 1945
Luftgau command V September 1944 April 1945
Luftgau Command VI February 5, 1944 February 1945
Luftgau Command VII February 5, 1944 March 1945
Luftgau Command VIII February 5, 1944
March 1, 1945		 January 23, 1945
May 8, 1945
Luftgau Command XI February 5, 1944 May 8, 1945
Luftgau Command XII February 5, 1944 April 1, 1944
Luftgau Command XIV September 1944 March 1945
Luftgau Command XVI December 1944 January 1945
Luftgau Command XVII February 5, 1944 March 1, 1945
5th Flak Brigade October 1944 April 1945
30th Flak Division April 1945 End of war

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bernd Lemke : The Air Force 1950 to 1970: Concept, Structure, Integration , p. 103.
  2. ↑ The Commander of the Führer Headquarters ( Memento of the original from July 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Federal Archives. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bundesarchiv.de
  3. ^ The history of I / JG 11 ( Memento from February 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
  4. ↑ Franka Maubach: Holding the position: War experiences and life stories of military assistants , p. 207.
  5. ^ Robert Forsyth, Jim Laurier: Fw 190 Sturmbock Vs B-17: Europe 1944-45 , p. 71.
  6. ↑ Andreas Kunz: Wehrmacht and defeat: the armed power in the final phase of the National Socialist rule 1944 to 1945 , p. 72.
  7. ↑ The attacks chronologically , airpower.at.
  8. ↑ Christian Möller: The Störkampf- und Nachtschlachtgruppen of the German Air Force 1942 - 1945: I.1 No suicide units! .
  9. ↑ Berliner Unterwelten  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / berliner-unterwelten.de  
  10. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 604, source BA N 1080/272.
  11. ↑ Structure and forces of air defense in action (PDF; 9.0 MB).
  12. ^ Karl Kessel , Munzinger.
  13. ↑ Gotthold Schramm : From the Nazi Wehrmacht via the Bundeswehr to NATO, printed in STOP NATO! 60 Years of NATO - 60 Years of Threat to Peace by Konstantin Brandt (ed.). (With a preface by Egon Krenz) OCLC 318643036 ISBN 9783939828389 .
  14. ↑ renamed the 30th Flak Division