War Over the Steppes - The Air Campaigns on the Eastern Front 1941-45

The war between Nazi German and the Soviet Union was the largest land campaign of WWII and it involved millions of troops and tens of thousands of tanks and warplanes.

In the East the Luftwaffe played a vital role by establishing air superiority, supporting the ground troops at the front, bombing important targets deep behind enemy lines and keeping the enemy under constant observation with its recon planes.

The Red Air force suffered great losses in 1941-42 but in the period 1943-45 it was rebuilt and it managed to play an important role in the actual fighting.

Until recently studies of the air war in the Eastern front were hampered by the lack of adequate sources for both participants. Authors either had to rely on the surviving Luftwaffe records, which meant they would have to use German estimates of Soviet strength and losses instead of the actual data, or they were forced to use the official Soviet post war histories, which downplayed Soviet defeats and exaggerated German strength and losses.

Author E. R. Hooton has written several books on the Luftwaffe, specifically ‘Phoenix Triumphant: The Rise and Rise of the Luftwaffe’, ‘Eagle in Flames: The Fall of the Luftwaffe’ and ‘The Luftwaffe: A Complete History 1933-1945’.

Hooton’s books are different from other similar works due to their emphasis on statistical analysis of the Luftwaffe operations.

His new book ‘War over the Steppes: The air campaigns on the Eastern Front 1941–45’ covers the air war in the Eastern front and the main battles between the Luftwaffe and the Red Air force.

The book has the following chapters:

1. From friends to foes: Russian and German air power 1924 to 1941.

2. Invasion and retreat: June 1941 to April 1942.

3. The tide turns: May 1942 to February 1943.

4. The Russian advance: March 1943 to April 1944.

5. Red Star triumphant: May 1944 to May 1945.

The main strength of the book is the addition of detailed tables on the strength, loss and sortie statistics for both sides. After the fall of the Soviet Union the government archives were opened to researchers and new material on WWII has became widely available. Hooton was able to take this data and incorporate it into his book, thus offering detailed and most of all reliable information for both air forces.  

I consider this book to be on the same level as ‘Stopped at Stalingrad: The Luftwaffe and Hitler's Defeat in the East, 1942-1943’, meaning it is essential reading for anyone interested in military aviation history. 

Soviet pre-arranged form reports

The war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was the largest land campaign of WWII, with millions of troops fighting in the vast areas of Eastern Europe. In this conflict both sides used every weapon available to them, from various models of tanks and self propelled guns to fighter and bomber aircraft. However an aspect of the war that has not received a lot of attention from historians is the use of signals intelligence and codebreaking by the Germans and the Soviets.

Codebreaking and signals intelligence played a major role in the German war effort. The German Army had 3 signal intelligence regiments (KONA units) assigned to the three Army groups in the East (Army Group North, South and Centre). In addition from 1942 another one was added to monitor Partisan traffic. The Luftwaffe had similar units assigned to the 3 Air Fleets (Luftflotten) providing aerial support to the Army Groups. Both the Army and the Luftwaffe also established central cryptanalytic departments (Horchleitstelle Ost and LN Regt 353) for the Eastern front in East Prussia. During the war this effort paid off as the German codebreakers could solve Soviet low, mid and high level cryptosystems. They also intercepted the internal radio teletype network carrying economic and military traffic and used traffic analysis and direction finding in order to identify the Soviet order of battle.

An important source of information on the Soviet military was their pre-arranged form reports sent at regular intervals by all units to their higher headquarters. These messages used a pre-arranged format to communicate strength, serviceability and loss statistics. By reading these messages the Germans were able to monitor the strength, losses and reinforcements of Soviet formations.

Luftwaffe Chi Stelle effort

Several TICOM sources give information on the exploitation of these pre-arranged reports by the codebreakers of the Luftwaffe. According to IF-187 Seabourne Report, Vol. XII. ‘Technical Operations in the East, Luftwaffe SIS’ (available from site Ticom Archive) pages 5-8 the reports had information on the condition of Soviet airfields, stocks of planes, ammunition, rations and fuel.

TICOM report I-107 ‘Preliminary Interrogation Report on Obltn. Chlubek and Lt. Rasch, both of III/LN. RGT. 353’, p4 says that the pre-arranged reports were extremely valuable to the Luftwaffe.

 

Army’ s General der Nachrichten Aufklaerung effort

According to FMS P-038 'German Radio intelligence', p115-7 pre-arranged reports sent by Soviet Army units contained information on personnel strength, losses, number of vehicles, guns, ammunition gasoline supplies and similar statistical data.

 

 

By analyzing this information the Germans were not only able to monitor the strength and equipment situation of enemy units but also make deductions about overall Soviet strategy.

Recommended reading on the Eastern Front

Every year countless books dealing with WWII are published worldwide. Many cover the fighting in the East between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. This conflict was the largest land campaign of the war and claimed the lives of millions of people. There is no shortage of great battles for authors to write about such as the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad, Kursk etc

However with so many books available there is the problem of quantity vs quality. How many books have accurate information from both sides? How many present new information?

Unfortunately many books that I’ve read have serious mistakes because they rely mostly on other books for their information and not on the relevant archives. This is understandable since researching the archives is very costly both in terms of time and money.

What i look for in a book is clearheaded analysis and lots of statistical data from both sides. Based on this what are the books that I can recommend?

First let’s have a look at the ones that I found lacking.

Two of the most popular Eastern Front histories are ‘When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler’ by David Glantz and Jonathan House and ‘Russia's War: A History of the Soviet Effort: 1941-1945’ by Richard Overy. Having read them I can say that they have serious mistakes since they rely on Soviet sources for information on German strength and loss statistics. This leads to exaggerations that could have been avoided had the authors used the reports available from the German archives.

In addition there are other mistakes scattered throughout both books. For example Overy writes in chapter ‘The Citadel: Kursk 1943’ that the T-34 got a 3-man turret in 1943. He’s off by a year. This might seem like a small mistake but it undermines his argument that the Soviet forces won the battle not through numerical superiority but because they upgraded their equipment and tactics.

‘When Titans clashed’ is guilty of perpetuating several WWII myths. For example the chapter ‘An army in disarray, 1937-1939’ exaggerates the effects of the purges on the Red Army.  Despite its flaws ‘Russia’s war’ points out in chapter ‘The darkness descends’ that during the period 1936-38 41.218 officers were dismissed, not executed (or even all arrested). By May 1940 11.596 officers had been reinstated. The book says ‘Of the 179.000 officers employed in 1938 only 3.7 per cent were still formally discharged by 1940’. It is true that the higher ranks suffered disproportionately but many of these officers (such as Marshall Tukhachevsky) were lackeys of the regime and had not gained their position by merit. In chapter ‘The Red Army’ the T-26 tank is called ‘aging’ and ‘obsolete’ even though its operational characteristics were similar or superior to the German tank types Pz I, Pz II, Pz 35, Pz 38 and Pz III. Why was this tank ‘obsolete’? Its main problem was the 2-man turret and by that standard the mythic T-34 was also ‘obsolete’ since it only got a 3-man turret in 1944.

Having said that let’s take a look at some very interesting books:

RAF Strength Far East Command – January 1942

In December 1941 Japan entered WWII on the side of the Axis by attacking the forces of the USA and UK stationed in the Pacific.

The most audacious attack was against the US fleet in Pearl Harbor but in the same period the Japanese invaded the Philippines, Thailand and British controlled Hong Kong and Malaya.

Both the Americans and the British had underestimated Japan’s military and they paid the price. The British also suffered from their ongoing war against Germany and Italy. They had limited military resources and the choice had been made to concentrate these in Europe. Thus their forces in the Far East were equipped with outdated weapons. This is obvious in the case of the RAF, as shown by the following strength reports:

 

Source: AIR 22 ‘Air Ministry: Periodical Returns, Intelligence Summaries and Bulletins’

The types available were second line aircraft like the Hawker Audax, Westland Wapiti, Westland Lysander, Vickers Vildebeest and a handful of relatively modern Curtiss P-36, Bristol Blenheim, Bristol Beaufort, Lockheed Hudson and Brewster F2A Buffalo.

These forces were not capable of standing up to the modern Japanese planes, especially the Mitsubishi A6M Zero.

British report on German armor piercing projectiles

The very interesting report ADM 213/951 ‘German steel armour piercing projectiles and theory of penetration’ is available from World of Tanks forum user Daigensui.

From page 19 onwards there is a review of the German method of staging and conducting tank round penetration trials. Source of the information was

‘The writer was fortunate in tracing Oberbaurat HENNING TELTZ of Wa Pruef 1 (1X). This man was in charge of the firing of all trials of A.P. Shell against armour plate, masonry, concrete and soil and was responsible to Oberst Plas. He joined the H.W.A. in July 1933 and thus had considerable experience. He had been living under an assumed name and informed the author that he was the first allied officer who had interviewed him. He was cooperative and appeared to be most efficient and it is thought that the information given by him is complete and trustworthy.’

Operational research in Northwest Europe - No. 2 Operational Research Section

A very interesting report is available from site dtic online. This is the report Operational research in Northwest Europe , the work of No. 2 Operational Research Section 21 Army Group.(originally found through world of tanks forum user GhostUSN)

The No2 research section teams followed the Allied ground troops and estimated the performance and effectiveness of Allied weapons and tactics by gathering data from the battlefield.

There are separate chapters for airpower, artillery, tanks and infantry weapons.

WWII Myths – German tank strength in the Battle of France 1940

In May-June 1940 Germany shocked the world by defeating the combined forces of France, Britain, Holland and Belgium in the Battle of France.

At the time no one expected that the French forces would be defeated in such a short campaign. During the interwar period the French Army was thought to be the best trained and equipped force in Europe. On the other hand Germany had only started to rearm in the 1930’s.

The sudden collapse of France led to a search for the reasons of this strange defeat. There was no shortage of excuses. Every part of France’s defense strategy came under attack, from the old Generals of WWI that tried to control the battle from the rear to the funds wasted building the Maginot line.

General Gamelin who commanded the French forces told Churchill that the defeat was due to: ‘Inferiority of numbers, inferiority of equipment, inferiority of method’.

Was that true? Considering the role played by the German Panzer divisions in cutting off the northern part of the front it is important to have a look at their strength.

Did the Germans have more tanks than the Franco-British Alliance?

According to Panzertruppen vol1, p120-121 the German Panzer divisions used in the Battle of France had the following strength on May 10 1940:

Div	Regt	Pz I	Pz II	Pz III	Pz IV	Pz 35	Pz 38	Pz Bef	Sum
1 Pz Div	1,2	52	98	58	40			8	256
2 Pz Div	3,4	45	115	58	32			16	266
3 Pz Div	5,6	117	129	42	26			27	341
4 Pz Div	35,36	135	105	40	24			10	314
5 Pz Div	31,15	97	120	52	32			26	327
6 Pz Div	11		60		31	118		14	223
7 Pz Div	25	34	68		24		91	8	225
8 Pz Div	10		58		23		116	15	212
9 Pz Div	33	30	54	41	16			12	153
10 Pz Div	7,8	44	113	58	32			18	265
Total		554	920	349	280	118	207	154	2,582

The same source gives the following losses at the end of the battle in page 141:

	Pz I	Pz II	Pz III	Pz IV	Pz 35	Pz 38	Pz Bef	Sum
May	142	194	110	77	45	43	38	649
June	40	46	25	20	17	11	31	190
Total	182	240	135	97	62	54	69	839

How did the German tank strength compare with the Allies? According to The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West, p37-38 the French Army had in the Northeastern Front 3.254 tanks, the British Expeditionary Corps had 310 plus 330 in transit from the UK, the Dutch Army had 40 armored vehicles and the Belgian Army roughly 270. Total for the Allies came to 4.204.

So in the field of tanks the Germans were definitely outnumbered. If we look at tank types it’s easy to see that they were also outgunned. Their main vehicles were the Panzer I and Panzer II. The first had only two machineguns and the second a 20mm gun. Against Allied tanks equipped with guns of 37mm caliber and over they were cannon fodder.

The German victory was not due to a numerical or qualitative superiority in armored vehicles. Instead it had to do with the way they used their armored forces, grouping them together, supporting them with ample airpower and providing them with dedicated infantry, anti-tank, artillery and communication units.