Defending Hitler's Reich: German Ground-Based Air Defenses, 1914-1945

摘要

Based on the experience gained in World War I and the technological and organizational developments of anti-aircraft forces in the interwar period, Germany's political and military leadership entered the Second World War with high expectations for the Luftwaffe's ground-based air defenses. These expectations were tied to a standard that measured success based simply on the number of aircraft shot down. Despite the success enjoyed by the Luftwaffe's flak defenses between 1939 and 1945, many Luftwaffe leaders demonstrated a limited understanding of the broader outlines and effectiveness of Germany's ground-based air defenses. These men repeatedly were guilty of evaluating the performance of the Luftwaffe's air defenses using a simple binomial equation that compared flak with fighter performance. This myopic focus on fighters versus flak led the Luftwaffe's leadership consistently to ignore or grossly underestimate the contributions of other elements of the ground-based air defense network. German flak defenses accounted for at least half of American aircraft combat losses during the war and an estimated thirty-seven percent of Bomber Command's missing aircraft during night raids, while anti-aircraft fire damaged more than 66,000 U.S. bombers and over 9,000 British bombers.