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Unread 09-21-2005, 09:47 AM
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Default New article on Luftwaffe Field Divisions

It's at the Wargamer. Here's the link:

http://www.wargamer.com/articles/luf...eld_divisions/
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Unread 09-21-2005, 12:51 PM
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interesting article, thnx:)
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Unread 09-21-2005, 01:35 PM
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It’s sad that so many irreplaceable resources were squandered because of political arrogance. Goring didn’t want his men to be used as replacement for other German organizations like the Heer or SS. Instead they created divisions from scratch with none of the foundation or cadre of experienced NCO’s and officers that a division or any fighting unit needs to survive in a front line battlefield position. The luftwaffe ground personnel at best might of have had 4 weeks of additional training for ground operations. This might have been acceptable if these units would have had NCO’s to further that training when they were at their theater of operation. The 12th SS division had around 6 weeks of training before they fought in normandy. The main difference was they had a cadre from the Waffen SS front line units such as the 1st SS,2nd SS, or 5th SS.The 12th SS was a exceptional front line unit and proved themself time and time again on the battlefield.The Herman Goring division was able to survive as a fighting force for a lot longer that these LW infantry units because of the cadre of experienced personnel that were transferred from the Heer to the luffwaffe and visa vesa. In saying this, this division should of never existed in my opinion. It is true that this was a premiere elite organization of men but in its creation, sapped experienced leadership from an already army strained by an increasingly costly war. This in effect degredated the performance and battlefield readiness of these army units.

Another thing was equipping all of these units with assault guns, artillery, infantry guns, any other equipment that a modern army unit needs to be considered effective on the battlefield. As with the men that were used ineffectively, so was the allocation of equipment resources. All of this equipment could have been put to better use by giving it to experienced divisions that had a real need for refit

Germany’s biggest problem was that there leadership had a habit of creating new divisions as this alone could make up for the numbers they were loosing monthly. All this did was burn up a ready source of manpower that could have been used better else were.

Luftwaffe personnel were actually successfully incorporated into already existing divisions. Mainly I’m talking about the 3000+ luftwaffe personnel that were used as replacements for the Waffen SS divisions before the battle of Kursk in the summer of ’43. The three premiere divisions . (1st SS Leibstandarte, 2nd SS das Reich, 3rd SS Totenkolpf) suffered considerable casualties the spring of '43 in there battles over the city of Karkov. Something like 10,000 killed and wounded in total. In my opinion, redundant Luffwaffe personel should have been used in this way. This was a great source of manpower to tap for the Heer and SS on the East front. The losses were so severe that rarely were they made good except for Heer Grouppe Nord, that on occasion made good on the losses they had suffered. This was a extreme rarity but did happen from time to time.

Branden...


LOL I think I still have the nack since havent read much on topics such as this lately. Im just recalling some of this from memory, so hopefully my facts wont be too off

Last edited by Brandenburg; 09-21-2005 at 08:20 PM.. Reason: clumsy sentence & minor typo's
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