NAZI MISTAKES

The Nazis made military mistakes, too, which contributed to the Allied victory. Their blunders in air matters fell into three categories: technical development, production and training, and tactics. The grossest and perhaps most avoidable blunders committed by the Germans lay in their lapse in technical development after the introduction of the Me-109 and their standard bombers. This lapse may already have begun in the late 1930s, and not just after the fall of France, when Hitler, assuming that the war was already won, ruled against long-range development programs and Germany failed to produce sound follow-ons to the planes it had in 1939. While the Allies produced many new types of planes, some of which, like the Mustang, were designed after the war began, Germany introduced only one new type of plane on a large scale, the Focke-Wulf 190. It also lagged behind in developing high-octane aviation gasoline. Much of its resources were wasted on the rocket fighter and the Army’s V-2 program, but contrary to a widespread myth, Germany was not ahead in jet development, and while its jet fighter development was mismanaged, it is doubtful that even an all-out effort to get the Heinkel 280 into action would have had much effect.

Given its lack of alloy materials, instead of developing jet fighters and rocket-powered ballistic missiles that could not be accurately aimed, the Germans might have been wiser to concentrate on getting the most advanced possible piston-engine successor to the Me-109 and FW-190, and antiaircraft missiles. Instead of the V-1 and V-2, the Germans could have tried to develop a turbojet-powered cruise missile with some type of command guidance system, capable of attacking precision targets like factories and ships. A weapon with a warhead comparable to that on the V-1, but steerable to a small target, would have been a dangerous threat to the Allies. Had even the pulse-jet-powered V-1 been a little faster, it would have been extremely hard for Allied fighters to catch. A faster, turbojet-powered missile might have been nearly immune to the Allied propeller-driven interceptors, while the short life and unreliability of the German jet engines would have mattered less in a missile than in a manned aircraft. Eventually the Allies would probably have jammed any radio-guidance systems the Germans could have developed for either antiaircraft or offensive missiles, but a combination of fast fighters like the Do-335 and missiles might have enabled the Germans to regain air superiority and even do serious damage to Allied bases for a time.

The Germans’ failure to fully mobilize for war until 1942 left the Luftwaffe far smaller than it need have been. Their failure to build more fighters was exacerbated by their reluctance to stop bomber production in favor of fighters until 1944. The Germans also blundered in handling their training program. Initially it was just not big enough; later they fell for the temptation to turn out as many pilots as they could as soon as possible, even though they were less well trained. This proved foolish, as the inadequately trained pilots proved easy prey for Allied pilots. The Strategic Bombing Survey later concluded that “the deterioration of quality of German pilots appears to be the most important single cause of the defeat of the German Air Force.”'*

The Germans made other, tactical mistakes. In night defense their one major mistake was to end the night intruder operations over Britain in 1941. In day fighting their mistakes were more numerous. During 1943 they usually avoided engaging American escort fighters, either striking after the escorts had left the bombers or evading them to hit the bombers in preference. The concentration on shooting down bombers was understandable up to a point, but it let American fighter units grow in experience and fly deeper and deeper into Germany. The Luftwaffe’s mistaken, or at least overlong, reliance on the clumsy twin-engine fighters stemmed from and accentuated the concentration on fighting bombers. So did its addiction to assembling large formations before engaging the enemy. Given the vast superiority of the Allies in numbers and quality, however, the Luftwaffe’s tactical errors probably merely speeded up the Allied victory in the air.