Air Force Field Division
The Luftwaffe field divisions were divisions of the Luftwaffe of the Wehrmacht that were used in ground combat during World War II .
Starting position
Due to the heavy personnel losses of the German army in the winter of 1941/42 and in the subsequent summer offensive on the Eastern Front , soldiers were increasingly missing. The Luftwaffe's extensive ground organization at that time had numerous units with trained personnel. With Adolf Hitler's guide of September 12, 1942, the Luftwaffe was to immediately transfer 200,000 soldiers to the army. The instruction met with little approval from the Commander- in -Chief of the Air Force (OdL) Hermann Göring . Instead, he was able to persuade Hitler to bring air force soldiers to the earth front in newly established air force field divisions (LFD).
Lineup
On September 17, 1942, the OdL Hermann Göring issued instructions on the formation of 20 air force field divisions. While officers were supposed to volunteer, NCOs and crews were partially taken over from existing associations. The personnel provided the airborne units, the training units of the anti-aircraft artillery , the air intelligence force and the air force construction force. The air force fighter regiments were formed from the flying formations, the air force artillery regiments and the flak departments were formed from the anti-aircraft cartillery, the air intelligence troops became the air force intelligence departments and the air force construction troops were formed into air force engineer battalions. Their officers up to the division commander also came from the air force and had no infantry experience. They should receive this in a short training of a tactical and management technical nature with regard to an infantry operation. The NCOs and men were briefly trained after they were unloaded behind the front.
The 21st and 22nd LFD are listed here for the sake of completeness. They are not newly formed and infantry inexperienced divisions.
The predecessor of the Luftwaffe field divisions was the Luftwaffe Division Meindl , which had been fighting on the Eastern Front since winter 1941/42 and was named after its commander, Major General Eugen Meindl .
The following overview shows which Air Force field divisions were set up and where the divisions were deployed for the first time.
Lineup | number | first use |
September 1942 | 1. | November 1942 Eastern Front, Army Group North , 18th Army |
September 1942 | 2. | November 1942 Eastern Front, Army Group Center, 9th Army |
September 1942 | 3. | November 1942 Eastern Front, Army Group Center , security group behind the front |
September 1942 | 4th | Winter 1942/43 Eastern Front, Army Group Center, 9th Army |
September 1942 | 5. | December 1942 Eastern Front, Army Group A , 1st Panzer Army |
September 1942 | 6th | Winter 1942/43 Eastern Front, Army Group Center, 9th Army |
September 1942 | 7th | November 1942 Eastern Front, Army Group B , Army Group Hoth |
October 1942 | 8th. | December 1942 Eastern Front, Army Group B |
Late autumn 1942 | 9. | November 1942 Eastern Front, Army Group North, 18th Army |
October 1942 | 10. | November 1942 Eastern Front, Army Group North, 18th Army |
September 1942 | 11. | January 1943 Greece, 12th Army, occupation forces |
January 1943 | 12. | April 1943 Eastern Front, Army Group North, 18th Army |
December 1942 | 13. | February 1943 Eastern Front, Army Group North, 18th Army |
December 1942 | 14th | January 1943 Norway, Army High Command Norway, occupation forces |
March 1943 | 15th | March 1943 Eastern Front, Army Group A |
December 1942 | 16. | March 1943 Netherlands, occupation troops |
December 1942 | 17th | February 1943 France, Army Group D , occupation forces |
December 1942 | 18th | January 1943 France, Army Group D, occupation forces |
March 1943 | 19th | April 1943 Belgium, Army Group D, occupation forces |
March 1943 | 20th | June 1943 Denmark, occupation forces |
December 1942 | 21st | December 1942 Eastern Front, Army Group North, 16th Army |
22nd | not completely set up, parts went into 21st LFD |
structure
The LFD were organized like an infantry division in 1942. However, as a fourth division in the Air Force Artillery Regiment, each division had an anti-aircraft division. The regiments were called Luftwaffe-Jäger-Regiments. The soldiers therefore also used the designation hunter for soldier, or Oberjäger for non-commissioned officer. All soldiers wore air force uniform.
- Rod
- two air force fighter regiments each with three battalions of four companies
- an air force artillery regiment with two light divisions, a heavy division and an anti-aircraft division
- an Air Force Fusilier Battalion with three companies
- an air force tank destroyer division with three companies
- an Air Force Engineer Battalion with three companies
- an air force intelligence division with two companies
- Air Force Supply Forces
- Air Force Medical Department
The nominal strength was about 12,500 soldiers.
commitment
Due to the difficult situation on the Eastern Front in the winter of 1942/43, almost all Luftwaffe field divisions had to be deployed at the front, sometimes even at hot spots. Little trained and inexperienced in infantry, the Air Force soldiers suffered heavy losses. In addition, there were tactical leadership errors of the higher staff. This was the case with the 7th and 8th LFD, both of which had only just arrived at the front at the end of 1942 and were deployed in the great Donbogen against a Soviet offensive. Both divisions consisted only of combat groups in March 1943 and were disbanded in May. Remnants were absorbed in the newly established 15th LFD. Sometimes the material equipment also left something to be desired. The 15th LFD had to fight in its artillery regiment with French 15 cm guns from the 19th century with bronze pipes. Due to the recognized weakness of the LFD, the 16th to 20th LFD were first used as an occupation force in Western or Northern Europe. In the course of 1943, the Luftwaffe was considering merging the twelve weakened Luftwaffe field divisions on the Eastern Front into three powerful Luftwaffe assault divisions. The Army General Staff demanded that the LFD be transferred to the Army. On September 20, 1943, Hitler issued an order that the Luftwaffe field divisions be incorporated into the army under the name Felddivision (L). Air force soldiers became army soldiers. The army replaced almost all commanders and filled the positions with experienced army officers. The Luftwaffe field divisions had thus formally ceased to exist.
The following overview shows which air force field divisions the army took over and where the division was deployed at that time.
Field Division (L) | Place of use |
1. | Eastern Front, Army Group North |
4th | Eastern Front, Army Group Center |
6th | Eastern Front, Army Group Center |
9. | Eastern Front, Army Group North |
10. | Eastern Front, Army Group North |
11. | Greece, occupation force |
12. | Eastern Front, Army Group North |
13. | Eastern Front, Army Group North |
14th | Norway, occupation forces |
15th | Eastern Front, Army Group A |
16. | Netherlands, occupation forces |
17th | France, occupation forces |
18th | France, occupation forces |
19th | Belgium, occupation forces |
20th | Denmark, occupation forces |
21st | Eastern Front, Army Group North |
Conclusion
Of the approximately 250,000 members of the Air Force, around 90,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or missing in just under a year. Since the Luftwaffe field divisions, which served as occupation troops, had no significant losses, the losses fell on the fourteen divisions on the Eastern Front. In particular, the air force fighter regiments there had loss rates of up to 80 percent.
Known members of an Air Force field division
- Alfred Andersch (1914–1980) was a German writer and time-critical author
- Walter Bockenkamp (1907–1994), was from 1959 to 1967 for the DP and CDU member of the Lower Saxony state parliament
- Dietmar Eckert (1913–2002), was from 1968 to 1969, as Brigadier General of the Army of the German Armed Forces , a member of the Federal Armed Forces Command Academy
- Gebhard Greiling (1910–2008), was from 1967 to 1968, as a general physician in the air force of the German armed forces , head of the air force medical service inspection in the general air force office
- Kurt Hähling (1897–1983) was a member of the Dresden District Assembly for the NDPD from 1953 to 1963 and deputy chairman of his party
- Rudolf Kellermayr (1921–2014) was the director of the Academic Gymnasium in Graz
- Günter Leonhardt (1927–2011) was a logistics entrepreneur and founder of the Aviation Museum Laatzen-Hannover
- Charles Michel (1904-1945), was a peripheral figure in the preparation of the assassination on 20 July 1944 involved
- Hanns Günther von Obernitz (1899–1944) was police chief of Nuremberg - Fürth from 1933 to 1934 and a member of the NSDAP in the Reichstag from 1939 to 1944
- Richard Schimpf (1897–1972), from 1957–1962 as major general of the Army of the Bundeswehr, was in command of Defense Area III
- Günter Stratenwerth (1924–2015), was a legal scholar and from 1961 to 1994 full professor of criminal law at the University of Basel
- Paul Winter (1894–1970) was a German composer
- Josef Zander (1918–2007) was a German gynecologist and obstetrician
See also
literature
- Werner Haupt : The German Air Force Field Divisions 1941–1945. Dörfler Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-89555-268-2 .
- Wolfgang Dierich: The air force associations 1935-1945 . Outlines and short chronicles, a documentation. Ed .: Wolfgang Dierich. Verlag Heinz Nickel , Zweibrücken 1993, ISBN 3-925480-15-3 (703 pages).
- Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945. Vol. 1, Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück, 1979, pp. 360–362, ISBN 3-7648-1170-6 .
- Othmar Tuider (edit.): Bibliography on the history of the field divisions of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS 1939–1945 . 2 parts (part 1 (1976) edited by Othmar Tuider, Anton Legler and Hans-Egon Wittas and part 2 (1984) edited by Othmar Tuider), Heeresgeschichtliches Museum , Vienna 1976/84.