styles/strategies of experten in ww2

[JensenPark]

Just finished reading Kittyhawk Pilot, about Canadian James Edwards - top scoring Africa allied pilot (and by Africa I'm not counting Malta).

It describes, like many other allied pilot memoirs, of the huge losses they endured to their fighters - and the high scores of German aces.

One thing I always notice is the how they always described their battles as sticking to the mission - groundpounding low, sticking with the bombers, etc - and how the Germans always played the b'n'z from high - engaged and disengaged at will.

[delta7]

I have read a few biographies and my feelings are that the luftwaffe developed a highly sucessful tactical way of fighting with their fighters. The experten were the flight leader and attacker and the other 3 in the flight looked after his back.

In the eastern front and desert they would often fly with 2 or 3 staggered flights in a wing , the lower being the scoring wing. Each theatre dictated the height with the desert and eastern front being low whereas the western front was high.

They also had to chose their engagements carefully as by 1942 they were outnumbered on all fronts and the experten started to get whittled down by attrition, to be replaced by inexperienced pilots.

However there is strong evidence that the herp warship of richthoven was strong, so many wanted to emulate him and the desire for kills that led to points and decorations made many to regard this as their prime objective and not the mission or strategic goals. The russian pilots are very scathing of the german tactics, they never left their bombers or il2s and often found that the germans fighters would if they were threatened.

The german airforce of course made a more determined stand when defending their homeland skies against the allied bomber forces . All accounts are that the attacks on the bombing boxes protected by the long range fighter were regarded as suicide and it was only a matter of time before the luftwaffe was effectivly wiped out in the west.

luftwaffe aces by micheal spink and gallands biography " the first and the Last " and steinhoffs "messchersmitts over sicily"