Death of the Luftwaffe

I’m posting this on the 70th anniversary of the Luftwaffe’s Operation Bodenplatte (Baseplate). It was the last major offensive of the German air force in World War Two.

The operation had been planned weeks, months, in advance. By the autumn of 1944 the Allied forces in the west had pressed to the borders of the Third Reich, and Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s forces in the north and General Omar Bradley’s forces, including the Third Army of George S. Patton, were preparing to overrun German territory. By that time German Chancellor Adolph Hitler had lost all faith in his military commanders, and he was personally directing strategy. An attempt on his life by high-ranking military officers in July of 1944 had left him physically shaken and distrusting of all but his own will.

Hitler’s grand plan to forestall the inevitable was a major roll of the dice. He issued commands for a major ground offensive through the Ardennes Forest in Belgium. He hoped to drive through Belgium and recapture the port of Antwerp, cutting off a major route of supplies of the Allies and simultaneously splitting their forces. His hope was that the Allies would then recognize their weakened position and enter into peace negotiations rather than continue the destruction of Germany.

It was recognized that Allied air superiority in the west would be a major obstacle to the ground offensive, and Bodenplatte was aimed at delivering a crippling blow with a preemptive strike. The operation would involve the preponderance of remaining Luftwaffe resources in the west.

The ground offensive, Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein (Operation Watch on the Rhine) got underway in the early morning hours of 16 December 1944. Bad weather in the area kept Allied air power from assisting Montgomery’s and Bradley’s ground forces. However, it also delayed the Luftwaffe’s strike until the first day of the new year. Operation Bodenplatte got underway on 1 January 1945, 70 years ago today.

By the autumn and winter of 1944 Allied fighters were no longer operating out of bases in England. Advances by ground troops had made possible the establishment of fields close to the front lines, in France as well as in Belgium and the Netherlands. Operation Bodenplatte was aimed at attacking these bases and destroying fighters on the ground.

If Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein was well-concealed from Allied intelligence, Bodenplatte was even more so. Even German air defenses were not informed. As a result, when the Bf 109 and FW 190 fighters crossed the German front lines that morning their own troops opened up on them, resulting in significant losses. 850 fighters started out, and one fourth were taken before the attack started. Upon reaching their targets and even after achieving complete surprise, the German fighters still faced a lop-sided fight.

After five years of war and heavy attrition, many of the newer generations of Luftwaffe pilots were very poor marksmen and lacked flight skills. There was a lack of experienced instructors, and many of the training units were forced to fly front-line operations in order to bolster the front-line Jagdgeschwader. Long-range Allied fighters exacerbated this situation by shooting down many training aircraft. By late 1944, there were no safe areas in which pilots could be trained without the possibility of air attack. Allied personnel who witnessed the attacks frequently remarked on the poor aim of the strafing aircraft, and many of the Luftwaffe aircraft shot down by Allied anti-aircraft fire were caught because they were flying too slow and too high. Aviation fuel supplies were also at a premium.

The plan called for the units to maintain strict radio silence and secrecy in order to maintain surprise. Maps were also only half complete, identified only enemy installations, and left out flight paths, lest the document fall into Allied hands enabling them to trace the whereabouts of German fighter bases. Most commanders were also refused permission to brief their pilots until moments before take-off. This created operational confusion. Commanders only managed to get across the bare essentials of the plan. When the operation got underway, many German pilots still did not understand what the operation was about, or what exactly was required of them. They were convinced it was just a reconnaissance in force over the front, and were happy to follow their flight leaders on this basis.

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Seventeen fighter bases were attacked on the morning of the 1 January, and the Germans achieved their main goal of destroying large numbers of Allied aircraft on the ground. In the air was a different story. The History Channel’s Dogfight series features the story of the fight at a base called Y-29 at Asch, north of Liege in Belgium. The video is posted on YouTube and tells the story with interviews of American pilots and computer-generated reconstructions of the action.

The Battle of the Bulge was well under way nearby, and eight American P-47s took off at 0915 to provide ground support. At the south end of the field a flight of twelve P-51 fighters of the 352nd Fighter Group sat with engines idling. They had been denied permission to head out for a sweep, but flight leader Lt. Col. J.C. Meyer was itching for a fight.

As the P-47 flight formed up and headed east Lieutenant John Kennedy spotted flak bursts to the north over base Y-32. Then Lieutenant Mel Paisley called out that there were bandits at 2 o’clock low. They were Fw-190s, Germany’s new, high-performance fighter with a radial engine. This was the first time many of the American pilots had ever seen German aircraft in the air. Records indicate the Germans were equally surprised. One said, “Where the **** did all these Thunderbolts (P-47s) come from?”

The Americans jettisoned their bombs and went on the attack. One of the Americans who had previous experience in air combat was Paisley, and he was the first to draw blood. He turned into an approaching enemy fighter and dove. The German broke off and attempted to exit toward the east of the airfield, but Paisley got behind him and shot him down at low altitude. Captain Lowell Smith quickly took down another 190.

Smith spotted another 190:

“I then got on the tail of another Fw 190 and chased him 20 to 30 miles to the east. I was unable to overtake him. I fired several bursts at extreme range but observed no strikes. I broke off and returned to Y-29. Just north of the field, I was bounced by a Fw 190. I broke right and succeeded in out-turning him. We were below 500 feet when he snap-rolled and dove into the ground.”

John Manrho, Ron Pütz: Bodenplatte: The Luftwaffe’s Last Hope. Stackpole Books, p 244

P-47 pilot Bob Brulle was seeing air combat for the first time, and his lack of experience showed. He jumped a 190, and the German pilot flew right down to the flat Belgium landscape. Brulle got behind the German but was unable to get low enough to bring his guns to bear. He nearly expended all his 20 seconds worth of .50 caliber shooting over the top of the 190.

However, Brulle did save some of his remaining ammunition and pursued the 190 along the tree tops. Finally, he noticed a puff of smoke from the 190’s engine and immediately concluded the German pilot had cut power to force Brulle past him.

Brulle matched the German’s action and pulled abreast of the 190. This is where air combat gets up close and personal. Brulle contemplated taking out his .45 and shooting the German pilot. However, a stand of trees forced the German to pull up, allowing Brulle to get his guns on him. With his last .50 caliber he raked the enemy plane. It bellied in at 350 miles per hour.

P-51s wait for permission to get into the fight.

Interview with J.C. Meyer

Meanwhile the P-51s at Y-29 had still been denied permission to enter the fight. Observing the flak to the north, flight leader J.C. Meyer ignored his instructions and orderd his pilots to take off. It was none too soon.

Meyer was in the process of bringing the P-51’s wheels up when he found himself nose to nose with a 190. He opened up and downed the enemy fighter. The 190 slammed into the runway in front of a Mustang that was taking off, forcing its pilot to take evasive action.

Wheels coming up, shooting down an Fw-190

The remaining P-51s got into the air and joined the fight. Al Rigby quickly noticed a 190 that was tracking the flight leader. He shouted into his radio for the P-51 pilot to break left. When the flight leader broke left the German pilot followed, bringing him right into Rigby’s line of fire.

The fight at Y-29 was at extremely low altitude and was fast and close up. Fighters dodged among slag heaps that jutted out of the flat country side. There was no room for error and little opportunity to bail out of a crippled plane.

Those on the ground at Y-29 got a ring side seat of possibly the only combat they were destined to see in the war. They cheered the action like fans at a football game. Sometimes their participation was more than called for. A P-51 pilot who pursued two German fighters low across the field was hit by AA and had to immediately loop around and park his plane on the grass.

No P-51s were lost in the air combat and only one P-47. The Germans lost 28 of their 61 fighters at Y-29. Twenty-eight pilots were killed or captured.

The tally for Operation Bodenplatte was in the Germans’ favor in terms of aircraft destroyed.

The results of the raid are difficult to judge given the confusion over loss records. It is likely more aircraft were destroyed than listed. The Americans failed to keep a proper record of their losses and it appears the U.S. 8th Air Force losses were not included in loss totals. When these estimates and figures are added to the losses listed in the table below, it is likely that the correct figures are 232 destroyed (143 single-engine, 74 twin-engine and 15 four-engine) and 156 damaged (139 single-engine, 12 twin-engine and five four-engine). Researching individual squadron records confirms the destruction of even more USAAF aircraft. This suggests at least a further 16 B-17s, 14 B-24s, eight P-51s, and at least two P-47s were destroyed on top of that total. A total of 290 destroyed and 180 damaged seems a more realistic summation than the conservative figures given by the USAAF, RAF, and RCAF. Including the 15 Allied aircraft shot down and 10 damaged in aerial combat, 305 destroyed and 190 damaged is the sum total of the attack.

However, for the Luftwaffe the outcome was grim to fatal.

The Luftwaffe lost 143 pilots killed and missing, while 70 were captured and 21 wounded including three Geschwaderkommodore, five Gruppenkommandeure, and 14 Staffelkapitäne—the largest single-day loss for the Luftwaffe. Many of the formation leaders lost were experienced veterans, which placed even more pressure on those who were left. Thus, Bodenplatte was a very short-term success but a long-term failure; Allied losses were soon made up. Lost Luftwaffe aircraft and pilots were irreplaceable. German historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote that it left the Germans “weaker than ever and incapable of mounting any major attack again”.

In the remaining 17 weeks of war, the Jagdwaffe struggled to recover from the 1 January operation enough to remain an effective force. In strategic terms, German historian Werner Girbig wrote, “Operation Bodenplatte amounted to a total defeat”. The exhausted German units were no longer able to mount an effective defence of German air space during Operation Plunder and Operation Varsity, the Allied crossing of the Rhine River, or the overall Western Allied invasion of Germany. Subsequent operations were insignificant as a whole, and could not challenge Allied air supremacy. The only service in the Luftwaffe capable of profitable sorties was the night fighter force. In the last six weeks of the war, the Luftwaffe was to lose another 200 pilots killed. Werner Girbig wrote, “it was not until the autumn of 1944 that the German fighter forces set foot down the sacrificial path; and it was the controversial Operation Bodenplatte that dealt this force a mortal blow and sealed its fate. What happened from then on was no more than a dying flicker”.