IN THIS ONE volume, aviation historian Alfred Price brings together a comprehensive collection of data and statistics about the German Air Force during the second world war.
IN THIS ONE volume, aviation historian Alfred Price brings together a comprehensive collection of data and statistics about the German Air Force during the second world war. He includes information about the individual Fliegerkorps, Luftflotten, Kommandos, Staffeln, Gruppen, Geschwader etc, at seven key stages of the war, enabling the reader to follow the varying strength of the Luftwaffe from one campaign to another. The book includes brief biographic details of many of the outstanding personalities of the Luftwaffe, including Göring, Kesselring, Milch, Galland, Udet and Stumpff, but it concentrates mainly on organisation, tactics and operations. It is interesting to read how German fighter pilots, at the beginning of WW2, went through around thirteen months and 200 flying hours training, while bomber pilots received twenty months training, involving around 220 to 270 hours of flying. As the war progressed, fuel shortages, pilot losses and attacks by Allied aircraft on German training bases and aircraft, had reduced flying training to the point where, by 1944, Luftwaffe pilots were being sent into action with barely 100 hours total in their logbooks. This is essentially a specialist’s book, and concentrates mainly on history, and operational statistics. The Luftwaffe Data Book does, however, contain a great deal of other material that will fascinate any reader who has an interest in the aerial combat that took place over Europe, and the anti shipping and reconnaissance work that was carried out by the Luftwaffe over the Atlantic during the second world war. James Allan.
