Seelöwe: German Air Operations and anti-ship Capabilities

[fredleander]

No, sadly sortie data is incomplete for the Luftwaffe at the best of times. But simply assume one sortie-per-day-per aircraft, so a maximum of maybe 200 Ju-87 sorties, the result....on their best day....was three ships sunk (four if you count York in Suda Bay, but she was already immobilized).

Bevoor is summing up the LW force of VIII Air Corps in Greece as:
120 Do17, 40 He111, 80 Ju88, 150 Ju87, 90 Me110 and 90 Me109. Whether these were organisational or actual figures he doesn't tell.

If Oh, now you have precise figures for the sinkings at Dunkirk? 236?.

More interesting than the figures themselves are the less than ideal conditions these were achieved under. Robert Jackson in his: Dunkirk, the British evacuation, 1940, writes:

"Quite apart from the question of depletion, there was no possibility of the Luftwaffe's bomber squadrons launching an immediate fullscale onslaught on Dunkirk, for they still had heavy operational commitments elsewhere..........according to Richthofen.....they were still too far back, and the demands of the Army for close-support aircraft meant that they were split up all along the front.

The twin-engined bomber squadrons were even more poorly situated; a few had moved to to bases in Holland but most were still in Germany, and it was a fairly long haul to the Channel.

The first bomber squadrons arrived overhead in the dark (morning May 26th - they could get up in the morning if they wanted to.... ). Luftwaffe activity was very much reduced on June 2nd, the reason being that the German combat squadrons were held in readiness for a major operation which was to take place on June 3rd, a massive air attack on factories and airfields in the Paris area....

During the nine days of Dunkirk, between May 26th and June 3rd the RAF squadrons committed to the battle over the beaches and beyond had carried out 171 reconaissance, 651 bombing and 2.739 fighter sorties. Combat losses for the RAF during those nine days were 177 aircraft destroyed or severely damaged, including 106 fighters. On June 4th, the RAF had suffered such attrition over Dunkirk that its first-line strength was reduced to 331 Spitfires and Hurricanes, with only 36 fighters in reserve...........German records admit a loss of 240 aircraft of all types all along the whole Franco-Belgian front, of which 132 were lost in the Dunkirk sector, a number that corresponds roughly with the losses of Fighter Command".

And an equal number damaged? How much is "to some degree"? And what were they? How many were naval combatants? How many were hit at night??.

Doesn't you "AIR" statistics show...?

[RichTO90]

According to Nowarra the first aircrafts supplied to the KG 40 (Fall '39) were six civilian versions of the FW200 which were originally ordered by Japan. These were confiscated and used for procedural and navigational training. The first really military version of the FW200 - the "C", was supplied just before the "Weserübung".

Oh dear, aren't you clever. :roll:

The question was with regards to the maritime strike capability of the Luftwaffe.

V-1 was originally named 'Saarland' until it was converted to an extra-long range transport with additional fuel as the S-1 with the name 'Brandenburg' to fly the 'Berlin to Tokyo' proving run that made the Condor so famous. It was lost in 1938 when it ditched near Manila after running out of fuel on the run back from Tokyo (the fuel loss was never explained).
V-2 'Westfalen' was lost over Norway on 25 May 1940.
V-3 was completed as Hitler's personnel transport and was named Immelmann III.
Nine were completed as civil transports and were given the designation A-0.
A-01 (V-4) took the name 'Saarland' and flew the Berlin to Cairo proving run.
A-02 was delivered to DDL (the Danish national airlines).
A-03 (V-5) was delivered to Lufthansa as 'Nordmark' and crashed in 1943.
A-04 (V-6) was used as Ribbentropp's personal aircraft.
A-05 was delivered to DDL.
A-06 (V-7) went to Lufthansa as 'Friisland'.
A-07 went to Brazil.
A-08 went to Brazil.
A-09 (V-9) went to Lufthansa as 'Pommern'.
So of the nine, two were delivered to DDL of which one was in England when Germany invaded Denmark (it was destroyed in an air attack in 1941) and I believe the second was destroyed on the ground during the German invasion? Two more were delivered to the Brazilian airline Syndicato Condor (although some sources say they were FW 200B). The remaining five were used by Lufthansa during the war as civilian airliners or as VIP transports, although they were occasionally pressed into regular transport service.

The B-series, one B-1 ('Holstein') and three B-2 ('Kurmark', 'Pommern' and 'Hessen') were those ordered by Japan, but were completed under contracts for Lufthansa.

The V-10 was a B-series rebuilt and completed in January 1940 as an armed (although it had no bomb bay) maritime reconnaissance aircraft and so was in fact the protoype for the C-series. It was issued along with V-2 to Petersen's Fernaufklärungsstaffel, that became the basis for 1./KG 40. It completed its first mission on 8 April 1940 as part of Weserübung, flying from Denmark.

The first C-0 were actually converted from partially completed B-series on the production line. Ten were ordered in September 1939 and the first four were completed as transports, while the remaining six were the first - after the V-10 - to be armed, all in the spring of 1939.

KG z.b.V. 105 was initially equipped with the four B-1 and B-2 and the four transport version C-0. They also participated in Weserübung and Nowarra may have confused them with the aircraft issued to KG 40. The 'B's later became something of an 'executive flight' for the Nazi bigwigs, Pommern only survived the war, and Hessen crashed in Bavaria after flying out of Berlin on 21 April 1945. The transport C-0 were apparently used as such throughout the war?

The first six armed C-0 (which unlike the V-10 had a bomb bay) were sent to 1./KG 40 in the spring of 1940 and KG 40 remained the only C-series equipped unit during the war. The armed C-0 were not really part of a Japanese order, although it could be argued that Kurt Tank's decision to convert the V-10 was based on a Japanese request for a long-range maritime reconnaissance and strike aircraft.

So no C-series were completed before January 1940, although the V-10 is usually counted as the 'first' military version and is often referred to as being completed in 1939, but that is when it was completed as a B-series aircraft, the conversion to the V-10 was actually complete in 1940. No C-series were issued to units other than KG 40, except for the four transport C-0 with KG z.b.V. 105. KG 40 was not formed in the fall of 1939, although Petersen's Fernaufklärungsstaffel was ordered organized in late 1939 it received its first equipment in 1940 and was renamed as 1./KG 40 that year....as I've already covered.

I have - yet again - no idea what you think you were talking about? A transport aircraft is not a maritime strike aircraft, which was the subject at hand - KG 40, Stukas and etc.


.

[RichTO90]

Bevoor is summing up the LW force of VIII Air Corps in Greece as:
120 Do17, 40 He111, 80 Ju88, 150 Ju87, 90 Me110 and 90 Me109. Whether these were organisational or actual figures he doesn't tell.

Who is 'Bevoor'?

As of 5 April 1941 there were 248 Ju-87 on hand with Luftflotte 4 and VIII Fligerkorps. As of 20 May 1941 there were 205.

More interesting than the figures themselves are the less than ideal conditions these were achieved under. Robert Jackson in his: Dunkirk, the British evacuation, 1940, writes:

Jackson's study is now 35 years old and somewhat dated.as are most works on Dunkirk.


(snip) The first bomber squadrons arrived overhead in the dark (morning May 26th - they could get up in the morning if they wanted to.... ). [/quote]

Of course they could, it's relatively easy to take off in the dark - although harder to land in the dark. But flying in the dark and finding and effectively attacking targets in the dark are too different things. Which are the ships damaged and sunk in the dark? Answer....none.

During the nine days of Dunkirk, between May 26th and June 3rd the RAF squadrons committed to the battle over the beaches and beyond had carried out 171 reconaissance, 651 bombing and 2.739 fighter sorties. Combat losses for the RAF during those nine days were 177 aircraft destroyed or severely damaged, including 106 fighters. On June 4th, the RAF had suffered such attrition over Dunkirk that its first-line strength was reduced to 331 Spitfires and Hurricanes, with only 36 fighters in reserve...........German records admit a loss of 240 aircraft of all types all along the whole Franco-Belgian front, of which 132 were lost in the Dunkirk sector, a number that corresponds roughly with the losses of Fighter Command".

A bit off that, actually 115 RAF fighters were recorded lost. I'll check the rest later.

Doesn't you "AIR" statistics show...?

Yet again, you seem to have comprehension problems. Why would an Air Ministry file detail losses and damage to Admiralty ships? I'm really beginning to wonder if you have the slightest notion what the sources for these data and accounts you are bandying about are?

[JonS]

During the nine days of Dunkirk, between May 26th and June 3rd ... Combat losses for the RAF during those nine days were 177 aircraft destroyed or severely damaged, including 106 fighters. ... German records admit a loss of 240 aircraft of all types all along the whole Franco-Belgian front, of which 132 were lost in the Dunkirk sector ...

A bit off that, actually 115 RAF fighters were recorded lost. I'll check the rest later.

According to Murray:

During the nine days from May 26 through June 3, the RAF lost 177 aircraft destroyed or damaged; the Germans lost 240.[63]

[63] Ellis, The War in France and Flanders, p.246. The German losses, it should be noted, were for the entire western theater of operations, but most of the Luftwaffe's effort was concentrated in this time period over Dunkirk.

[RichTO90]

I have not quoted from this source........neither do I know it..... .....Glad to be informed, though....

You don't know the source, so you asked me how it could be applied to answering your questions to me?

RichTO90 wrote:
And an equal number damaged? How much is "to some degree"? And what were they? How many were naval combatants? How many were hit at night??.

Doesn't you "AIR" statistics show...?

Try to focus.

When was the information in these files updated, please.....?

They are not "updated" they are the original classified records of the Air Ministry so represent the best state of knowledge for what was going on with the RAF. Just as the surviving RLM records are the primary source for the German data. Sadly though, the Air Ministry records are much more complete than the RLM records.

[RichTO90]

According to Murray:

During the nine days from May 26 through June 3, the RAF lost 177 aircraft destroyed or damaged; the Germans lost 240.[63]

[63] Ellis, The War in France and Flanders, p.246. The German losses, it should be noted, were for the entire western theater of operations, but most of the Luftwaffe's effort was concentrated in this time period over Dunkirk.

Yes, but Murray's figures are total RAF aircraft losses over France. Fighter losses were recorded as 115 (sorry, I miscounted, see below). And I haven't had a chance to check the Luftwaffe loss records for this period so have no opinion on what their loss was.

[RichTO90]

During the nine days of Dunkirk, between May 26th and June 3rd the RAF squadrons committed to the battle over the beaches and beyond had carried out 171 reconaissance, 651 bombing and 2.739 fighter sorties. Combat losses for the RAF during those nine days were 177 aircraft destroyed or severely damaged, including 106 fighters. On June 4th, the RAF had suffered such attrition over Dunkirk that its first-line strength was reduced to 331 Spitfires and Hurricanes, with only 36 fighters in reserve...........German records admit a loss of 240 aircraft of all types all along the whole Franco-Belgian front, of which 132 were lost in the Dunkirk sector, a number that corresponds roughly with the losses of Fighter Command".

In that period, of the 2,739 fighter sorties:

26 May - 107 resulted in engagements (all given as Calais-Dunkirk or Dunkirk) with the loss of 9 aircraft missing and crashed and 2 crashed but recovered and repaired
27 May - 177 resulted in engagements (Calais-Dunkirk, Gravelines, Cambrai, Furness-St Omer, Gravelines-Furness) with the loss of 19 aircraft missing and crashed and 1 aircraft crashed but recovered and repaired
28 May - 83 resulted in engagements (Dunkirk) with the loss of 13 aircraft missing and crashed and 1 crashed but recovered and repaired
29 May - 148 resulted in engagements (Dunkirk, Dunkirk-Furness, Dunkirk-Furness-Calais) with the loss of 16 aircraft missing and crashed and 3 crashed but recovered and repaired
30 May - no engagements and no losses
31 May - 168 resulted in engagements (Dunkirk-Furness) with the loss of 20 aircraft missing and crashed and 1 crashed but recovered and repaired
1 June - 166 resulted in engagements (Dunkirk and Dunkirk-Furness) with the loss of 17 aircraft missing and crashed
2 June - 95 resulted in engagements (Dunkirk) with the loss of 10 aircraft missing and crashed
3 June - 9 resulted in an engagement (Dunkirk) with the loss of 1 aircraft missing

After Dynamo:
4 June - 10 resulted in an engagement (Dunkirk) with the loss of 1 aircraft crashed (how he implies that this days attrition was so severe is beyond me? :roll: )

So of the 2,739 sorties, 953 resulted in engagements and the permanent loss of 113 aircraft and another 8 badly damaged and out of service for some time. And that loss reduced Fighter Command (not the RAF) to and on hand of 333 Spitfires and Hurricanes, plus 36 in reserve as of 4 June. But by 1 October 1940 Fighter Command had 368 Hurricanes alone serviceable, plus 225 Spitfires, 37 Bleinheim, 17 Defiant, and 8 Gladiators.

Now from the ratio of the number of sorties versus the sorties engaged (2.87-to-1) we may presume that the most active day was 27 May with possibly 509 sorties flown. We may compare that to 30 September 1940 when FC flew 1,173 day sorties alone, with 414 engaging. The result was 16 Cat 3m, 8 Cat 3, 17 Cat 2, and 7 Cat 1 losses to the RAF and 42 100%, 6 60-90%, 5 40-59%, and 6 1-39% losses for the Luftwaffe. So in terms of 'total' losses, 48 Luftwaffe to 24 RAF.

[fredleander]

4 June - 10 resulted in an engagement (Dunkirk) with the loss of 1 aircraft crashed (how he implies that this days attrition was so severe is beyond me? :roll: )

If I may assist a little in your understanding of this (almost like a translator, you know). His remark is a summary, not explicit for that date.....

[fredleander]

My point were the results achieved (anti-ship) by the Luftwaffe in spite of their less than ideal operational conditions at this instance. Which I have referred to earlier. Please note the rather light Stuka losses.

Hooton has this setup:

[RichTO90]

My point were the results achieved (anti-ship) by the Luftwaffe in spite of their less than ideal operational conditions at this instance. Which I have referred to earlier. Please note the rather light Stuka losses.

Hooton has this setup:

Compare this with strikes against the English Channel and British coast in August:

(German aircraft losses are 100%/60-99%/40-59%/1-39%)

8 August c. 159 Stuka sorties, 8/2/4/3
11 August c. 20 Stuka sorties 2/0/0/0
12 August c. 40 Stuka sorties 0/0/0/0 (two were damaged in accidents)
13 August c. 119 Stuka sorties 6/1/1/0
14 August c. 80 Stuka sorties 4/0/0/0
15 August c. 82 Stuka sorties 7/0/0/0
16 August c. 90 Stuka sorties 9/0/1/3
18 August c. 85 Stuka sorties 16/2/0/4

So circa eight days of sorties over eleven days versus five days of sorties over seven days. Approximately 675 (just over 84 per active day) sorties versus 805 (161 per active day). Losses of 52 versus 10 (which Hooten is probably counting as 100% losses only).
Losses per sorties of 7.7 percent versus 1.2 percent. In addition, in August we know that another 5 were so badly damaged as to require factory rebuilds, 6 were damaged requiring repairs that the limited facilities available in France were barely able to cope with, and 10 were lightly damaged and probably flyable with a simple patchup.

So over the English coast the German sortie rate was nearly half that at Dunkirk, despite the alledged 'problems' they had at Dunkirk (you should realize, 'problems' occur everywhere, the worst one for the Luftwaffe in France in fall 1940 was the almost complete lack of facilities and support at their forward airbases). And their raw losses were five times Dunkirk, while their loss rate was 6.4 times that at Dunkirk.

Do you see why they were withdrawn from service over the Channel and the British coast?

[fredleander]

So circa eight days of sorties over eleven days versus five days of sorties over seven days. Approximately 675 (just over 84 per active day) sorties versus 805 (161 per active day). Losses of 52 versus 10 (which Hooten is probably counting as 100% losses only).
Losses per sorties of 7.7 percent versus 1.2 percent. In addition, in August we know that another 5 were so badly damaged as to require factory rebuilds, 6 were damaged requiring repairs that the limited facilities available in France were barely able to cope with, and 10 were lightly damaged and probably flyable with a simple patchup.

So over the English coast the German sortie rate was nearly half that at Dunkirk, despite the alledged 'problems' they had at Dunkirk (you should realize, 'problems' occur everywhere, the worst one for the Luftwaffe in France in fall 1940 was the almost complete lack of facilities and support at their forward airbases). And their raw losses were five times Dunkirk, while their loss rate was 6.4 times that at Dunkirk.

Do you see why they were withdrawn from service over the Channel and the British coast?

On to Hooton again:

British official history states: ".....the Royal Air Force had defeated the Luftwaffe's intention to make evacuation impossible".

And; "......yet this was never Gøring's intention, for the Germans were slow to recognize not merely the scale of the evacuation but the fact that one was taking place at all. The intention was to destroy the troops in the Allied pocket just as that Luftwaffe did with the Ilza and Bzura pockets in Poland, Gøring informing Hitler that "it was imperative to destroy from the air the British forces surrounded in Dunkirk", according to Schmid, who overheard their telephone conversation".

Further: "......while shipping near the beaches was attacked, the majority of German sorties appear to have been against land targets until the beginning of June. There was no attempt to interdict traffic in the Channel or in reception ports such as Dover. Indeed, the Luftwaffe actually transferred an anti-shipping Gruppe (II/KG 30) to Norway during Dynamo".

And, on June 2nd, set off the major parts of their air assets for the Paris bombing campaign on the 3rd. If the above is correct one can only wonder what would have been the end result if conditions had been "normal". Or if all resources had been concentrated on enemy shipping. Also, the LW basing situation was infinetely better ultimo September than during the Dunkirk fighting, while the Stuka and 110-units would have had approx. 1 month for recuperation.

A point to consider is that as soon as the first German ground forces were ashore the British radar warning stations would necessarily "go down". Removing this important Fighter Command advantage.

[LWD]

????
Over the channel (IE post Dunkirk) the Stukas were being almost decimated on a per sortie bases. British radar would have had little impact on this or Dunkirk. It would have more impact over the invasion beaches. Note if you fly 3 sorties a day at the above rates you are under 80% strength at the end of the first day. Factor in damaged aircraft and by the end of the second you'll be near 50%.

[RichTO90]

(snip irrelevency)

Further: "......while shipping near the beaches was attacked, the majority of German sorties appear to have been against land targets until the beginning of June. There was no attempt to interdict traffic in the Channel or in reception ports such as Dover. Indeed, the Luftwaffe actually transferred an anti-shipping Gruppe (II/KG 30) to Norway during Dynamo".

You continue to miss the obvious. Most of the missions in both cases were directed against land targets. At Dunkirk they were bombing the perimeter defenses, the troops preparing to evacuate, and the transport vessels themselves. In August the missions included attacks on air bases, radar stations, the port of Dover, and on Channel ship traffic.

There are almost always more requirements than there are means to accomplish the mission.

And, on June 2nd, set off the major parts of their air assets for the Paris bombing campaign on the 3rd. If the above is correct one can only wonder what would have been the end result if conditions had been "normal". Or if all resources had been concentrated on enemy shipping. Also, the LW basing situation was infinetely better ultimo September than during the Dunkirk fighting, while the Stuka and 110-units would have had approx. 1 month for recuperation.

Yes, there are almost always more requirements than there are means to accomplish the mission.

There is no "normal" condition. In August the bombers had multiple exclusive targets just as at Dunkirk.

The only permanent improved base the Stukagruppen operated out of in August that I'm aware of was the airfield at Cherbourg, the others were all unimproved or partly improved grass strips, which was also the fate of the Jagdgruppen. The Kampfgruppen got the lions share of the improved permanent fields. And that is amply reflected in the decreased sortie effectiveness of the Luftwaffe over England.

And if you think the Bf-110 units were 'recuperating' during September you are mistaken, only the Stukas were withdrawn from the frontline attacks.

A point to consider is that as soon as the first German ground forces were ashore the British radar warning stations would necessarily "go down". Removing this important Fighter Command advantage.

You remain delusional. The CHL station at Dover was essentially impervious to the German plan as was the one at Beachy Head (110 Brandenburg commandos were not going to seize it any more than another 100-odd in motorboats were going to seize Dover harbor). Between them they provided an adequate coverage for the CHL site at Fairlight, which would have been threatened by the German landing. The CH sites at Pevensey and Rye were also more or less directly in the path of the invasion, but their loss could be backed up by the stations at Ventnor and Dunkirk (Dunkirk England BTW before you get confused again).

So by no means would any of the individual stations "necessarily 'go down' although some might be lost. And it is a virtual certainty that the redundancy built into the system would prevent the system as a whole from going down. That was acheived on only one occassion during September when a fluke bomb hit on an electrical substation caused the temporary failure of the entire southwestern power grid, knocking all the stations from Dover to Cornwall offline for some four to six hours. Surprisingly enough though the Germans remained blissfully unaware of their coup and the accident alerted the British to take measure that averted the danger in the future.

[Bronsky]

And I've given you the Stuka strengths numerous times, why do I have to post them again?

10 May 360 on hand, 326 operational
13 August 347 on hand, 276 operational
7 September 161 on hand, 123 operational

Do you notice a pattern?

Murray ("Luftwaffe, a strategy for defeat", Table III p.40) gives 417 dive bombers as of 4 May 1940, of which 122 were lost in May & June and another 28 damaged.

Presumably, the pattern wouldn't be so neat i.e. the Stukas could recover a bit if allowed a break - which was the point of the relative hiatus post-battle of France. This is not to contest your general point, more inserting another data point.

Now, don't get me wrong: I fully agree with the general idea i.e. the Luftwaffe is not going to sink or damage all that many British ships, a lot of these will make it to the landing areas where they will battle German forces and it will be ugly. Odds are that the Luftwaffe will sink some damaged British (as well as German!) ships in the morning, but the disruption to the landing schedule will be awful.

Two more points here:

1. Leandros argued that the Luftwaffe didn't focus on anti-ship strikes over Dunkirk for most of the battle, which is correct, although given the size of the perimeter there was precious little difference between bombing troop concentrations (in the ports or on the beaches) and bombing ships.

2. Assuming Sea Lion takes place, the Luftwaffe is going to have the Heer screaming for air support. See how much of the Luftwaffe assets were diverted to support the breakthrough over the Meuse, which was the main effort at the time. Sea Lion will rate a similar priority. With Hitler attending daily OKW & Army Group conferences, where the generals will be quick to finger the Luftwaffe if anything goes wrong (name one WW2 army that doesn't try to blame battlefield failure on air support when it has even the beginning of a case?), it would take a very bold Göring to ignore such a political threat and tell the Army that his Stukas will continue to focus on British ships rather than on British coastal defenses.

All of this to say that the burden of proof is being reversed in all these threads. We get unsourced figures for numbers of ships sunk at Dunkirk, unfounded assertions about range, and a "logical conclusion" that the Luftwaffe would sink the RN while challenging everyone else (e.g. Rich) to "prove it ain't so". Whereas it seems to me that the Sealion supporters, i.e. leandros as the most active of that bunch, should be the ones making a detailed case that the Luftwaffe could in fact do all of this with others being engaged in picking at it.

[LWD]

If the Luftwaffe takes out the RAF, they Gain air dominance.

Maybe with someone else besides Goring in charge of the Luftwaffe, the complete destruction of the RAF might have been a possibility, but only under completely different circumstances such as not diverting from bombing the airfields, aerodromes, radar stations, etc, to bombing London instead.
....

I think this rates right up there with destroying the RN. Data has been posted that shows the switch didn't really have that much of an impact on the RAF or LW losses and may even have benefited the LW. Even then Dowding wasn't going to allow fighter command to be destroyed. He would have withdrawn it until it had regained it's strength or the Germans tried an invasion. Furthermore the LW needed more than air superiority over the channel and South England they needed air supremacy. With only air superiority the RAF could still have broken their hold at critical times because they would have had the initiative.