"Soldiers, Sailors, and Airmen of the Expeditionary Force!
You are about to embark upon the great crusade, toward which you have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.
In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1944. Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, on open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground.
Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!
Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking."
Dwight Eisenhower, D-Day
At 9:45am on 14 June, 1940, the Swastika was hung beneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. France was on her knees. At 6:50pm on 22 June, she signed away her freedom to Germany at Compiegne, her sole hope of liberation now resting upon the shoulders of the mighty British Empire and her Commonwealth allies. In London, General DeGaulle pleaded for a French return to the war. Marshal Petain, de facto leader of the provisional French government in Vichy, refused. In Unoccupied France, the Vichy would retain control of French colonial possessions and a margin of authority on French soil.
DeGaulle brazenly addressed the French people, calling them to arms, to join with him and the British in opposing German tyranny. His powerful words stirred the valiant people of France. The undaunted, unmittigated gall of the 49 year old Brigadier General-in-exile, without an army, had just challenged the authority of a Marshal of France. He and his fellow contemporary, General Giraud, would go on to lead the French armies, and her peoples, to freedom.
So began the true struggle of WWII. Air Squadrons from 13 nations would clash in untold battles that raged over 5 continents and 3 oceans, participating in an unrivalled struggle for air supremacy throughout the world. In Europe alone, over 3/4 of a million aircraft would compete for the future of a world at war. Upon the high seas, ocean depths and barbed wire torn landscapes tread the grim soldiery of ancient powers and fledgling nations. There has never been an equaled showing of military might in the history of mankind. In the end, it took in excess of 47 million lives and 2 atomic bombs to bring to a close.
From the burned out wreckage of WWII emerged a forever changed world. It was the end of seapower and the beginning of airpower, the death of Nazism and the birth of Communism, the closing of the conventional age and the dawn of the nuclear age. As one war closed, another would begin. On 22 August 1945, British aircraft parachuted in soldiers of the French Foreign Legion to oppose the vietnamese communist leader Ho Chi Minh, who siezed power on 19 August. 20 years later, the Vietnam War would engulf the U.S.
However, the true heroes of WWII will never be heard and perhaps, thier story was the most compelling. 8 million Jews and Poles, and 20 million Slavs would perish in nightmarish conditions under the most brutal and brackish of tortures.
This page, this squadron, is dedicated in loving memory to the millions of WWII who gave the ultimate sacrifice to preserve for us the most precious gift of our time.
Freedom.
We all owe them a debt we cannot repay. It is all the more human that they gave of it freely.
You shall not be forgotten.
A Call To Arms
So What...
It's just a game. Too true. But, it is, in my humble opinion, the finest of the Multiplayer Games available today on the Internet. Congratulations to the team at Kesmai for a definite winner.
I have enjoyed myself immensely. It's grand. But, at the same time I wanted a level of teamwork and esprit de corps missing in many squadrons. And, if you're flying simply for fun, hey, that's great. I do that all the time.
But WWII was ordered of massive air strikes, bombing raids and squadron sized dogfights never before seen, much less drempt of. The atrocities aside, it was, and still is, the most fascinating military revolution of all time. It saw the end of the mighty 'battlewagons', as even the powerful battleship now trembled in the wake of emerging fighters and bombers. The massive oceangoing rulers of the high seas still demanded awesome respect, but now the lords of the skies ruled the battlefield on land, air and sea. Seapower was out, Airpower was in.
The struggle for air supremacy was constantly in flux, as innovative design, technological advances and industrial might dared against the envelope of the unknown to break the boundary, flaunt aviation law and rewrite it altogether. Science itself soon surrendered to the undaunted spirit of the defiant, and declared war.
In the small step between WWI and WWII, the propeller driven fighter had crawled from the primordial stuff of which it was fashioned and the laughable performance it rendered in WWI. From plywood and cloth, to rivet and steel, the fighter left one of the most famous and idolatarized legacies in human history. She was sleek and powerful, a machine driven impassionately by fire and fury into the pages of history by the legends who flew her. She was given the most fearsome arsenal in mankinds posession to carry out her unbending task. Radar, guided weapons, rockets and her terrible guns made her deadly beyond belief. She danced and slipped through the heavens at speeds and altitudes not thought possible, with an agility that belied her immense strength. She captured the breath and imagination of a world at war. The roar of her propellers stirred fear in the hearts of her enemies and respect in the men who flew her.
All Quiet on the Western Front
Even the appearance of Gemany's much vaunted jet fighter could not tame the high spirited propeller driven fighters. In the first jet-propeller dogfight over Nijmegen near the Dutch-German border on 6 October, 1944, a squadron in the Royal Canadian Air Force engaged and destroyed the aircraft with little trouble and no losses to thier venerable Spitfires. Even the jet laid bowed before the classic dogfighter.
Behind the planes were the gallant men that loved them and the mighty Air Forces to which they belonged. One such force was the Royal Air Force of Great Britain, epitomized in their fighting spirit and unswerving bravery by their 'bulldog' countryman, Winston Churchill. Unbroken by the French defeat, the RAF showed it's blue-blue gunmetal spirit over England during the largest and longest single air battle in history. The Battle of Britain. From that day forward, the RAF was never again seriously opposed in Europe again.
Outnumbered and outclassed, (in terms of equipment) the airmen of His Majesty's Royal Air Force never gave up. They were British, Australian, South African and Canadian to name a few. They would go on to lead the Allies in every aspect of air combat, a title they would hold to the bitter end.
The dogged tenacity, unrivalled sportsmanship and eventually, unsurpassed skill of the RAF won them the respect of their enemies. As a testament in closing, to the gentlemen who fought so valiantly for England in the RAF from 1939-1944, of the nearly 100,000 who died and were washed up onto or fell over German occupied soil, nearly all of them were buried with full military honors by their German enemies.
God Save the King.
Red Storm Rising.
Another such force was the Voyenno Vozdushniye Sily Aviatsii of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Irregardless of their handicap entering the air war circa 1939, the VVS laboured on tirelessly.
From the opening months of 1940 to the surrender in 1945, the VVS maintained total air superiority over Soviet airspace. The Luftwaffe never won a margin of control over the skies of the Soviet Union.
True, this is largely due to the immense size of the Soviet Union. Factually, the Luftwaffe did maintain a dominant position in the USSR air war from '40-'43 in their area of operation. I'm talking real estate. The air war in the East lumbered on well after air superiority in the West had been lost, (September 1941) the Luftwaffe requesting and recieving plentiful machines and men right up to the end. Well after the Luftwaffe could no longer defend Germany's airspace, they continued to contribute mightily in the East, supporting the mauled Sixth and Eighth German Armies throughout their retreat into Poland.
As air superiority in the West had been broken over London, so it would be broken in the East over Stalingrad. The Red Army stubbornly held onto an 800 meter stretch of Stalingrad on the western bank of the Don river, resupplied by the Russian Navy and Army, which ferried supply through the shelling.
Stalingrad represented the linchpin to a 4000 mile front stretching from the line Arkhangelesk-Leningrad in the north to the line Stalingrad-Petrograd-Odessa in the south. Von Paulus' Sixth Army had been invested in Stalingrad for eight months, unable to further prosecute the action in the city.
By the spring of '43, Von Paulus had requested a withdrawl three times, all in turn rebuffed by Hitler, who saw no retreat in the East. The arrival of 400,000 soldiers from the Soviet Far East had reinforced Zukhov's army near Stalingrad. The stage was set.
The offensive, beginning 400 miles north of Stalingrad and 200 miles to the south, hammered through the northern Roumanian army and through the lightly defended southern flank of the Sixth Army. Within two months, the two advancing Soviet armies linked up 600 miles west of Stalingrad. Von Paulus lay encircled.
Hitler had finally granted permission for a withdrawl, but it was too late. It would cost 200,000 German soldiers their lives. A further 400,000 would be marched into Soviet captivity.
Earlier in the spring, guerilla warfare units and elite Soviet commandos had started a six month operation against the Sixth Army's rear area supply. The thrust against Stalingrad was endangered. Hitler interrogated Goering, wanting to know if the Luftwaffe could supply the Sixth by air.
If they could not, Von Paulus would be allowed to withdraw to the Sigfried Line, 400 miles to the rear. Goering's reply finished the Luftwaffe in the East and ended the tentable margin of air superiority they had maintained. He told Hitler they could.
Had Goering told him otherwise, Paulus would have retired to the Sigfried Line and the tragedy of the following months would never have occured. Instead, the Luftwaffe was thrown against a numerically and technically superior air force. The antiquated Bf109 labouring on in the East as the West recieved the newer 190's.
The newer Yaks and La's were well acclimated to the Russian climate and performed with a rugged reliability. Through Lend-Lease, the Soviets were deploying new Spitfires, Mustangs and Thunderbolts against Goering's aging Eastern air fleet.
The Luftwaffe was forced to defend large numbers of transport and cargo planes against thousands of Soviet fighters. It proved impossible.
Hitlers move against the USSR had been predictable, if not inevitable. The Wermacht never impeded the capability of Soviet industry, it having had been dismantled, packed onto trains and re-assembled east of the Urals. Newer factories were being built and production accelerated as the USSR's wartime industry caught up with demand. Newer manufacturing processes and methods were leading to finer equipment and soon the Soviet T-34 was the most dreaded armour piece in the East, outclassing the powerful German Tiger.
In the end, there were the pilots of the VVS. Most of them were young, barely 18 years of age. Some were fathers, sons, husbands and mothers.
But they hung on, fighting from farm fields and the back of trucks. Soviet fighter pilots often had to maintain their own aircraft, with no support in the way of crews. Soviet aircraft had radio, but only in lead aircraft. Communication was nearly impossible, and an aviator who lost sight of his formation could very easily become lost.
Devastating losses in men and materiel due to design flaws, particularly in extreme temperatures, severely taxed the VVS throughout it's early years. It lacked organization and had little formal training. Regardless, ingenuity perserved in the face of absolute adversity to forge the VVS into a premier fighting force by wars end.
I'm reminded of the words of a U.S. Navy Admiral who once stated in reference to the U.S. Marine Corps, that "...uncommon valour was a common virtue." The same holds true of the early VVS.
Iron Eagles
The Luftwaffe was birthed into the most adverse and severe of conditions, and thrived. And, in retrospect, irony concludes that the very force which would seek to destroy them in the Second World War, was the very same force that created them. The Allies.
Chained under the debilitating terms of the Versaille Treaty of 1918 at the conclusion of World War I, Germany was left impoverished, humiliated and impuned as a power in Europe. So damaging were the terms that even the American president, Woodrow Wilson, rebuked the Allies. Sadly, inevitably, Wilson made a prediction which would be prophetic.
Wilson, a self-professed pacifist, recoiled at the thought of entering the war, but could no longer restrain the public opinion in the U.S. An American declaration was inevitable. The sinking of the Lusatania sealed that declaration.
However, at the conclusion of hostilities, Wilson enthusiastically embraced the Versaille summit, open and optimistic that the treaty would bring a new peace to Europe.
Wilson instead found the European delegations hostile and unreceptive to his peace plan for the re-introduction of Germany into world trade and the rehabilitation of it's state. They wanted nothing more than to carve Germany up, divide her peoples and split the spoils.
When Wilson left the conference, he warned the delegation, that the Versaille Treaty has brokered no peace. It had bought time. So spiteful were the stipulations, Germany would never heal.
It wouldn't. Thirty years later, Germany would find national pride, military power and political order in the form and figure of Adolph Hitler, himself a product of the First World War. Germany would no longer go hungry, Germany would no longer be broke. Germany would no longer pander to the European powers. Germany would be free.
The diet of propaganda fed the German people led them to believe in Hitler, who in turn led them to the brink of destruction.
The Versaille Treaty did not allow for an air force for Germany. So, in 1926, a meager beginning began, with gliding. Pilots were instructed how to operate gliders and how to understand the basics of aerodynamics and flight.
So Germany built an air force, from the ground up. They built the aircraft, the air doctrine and the principles upon which they would wage the greatest war ever fought in the history of mankind.
The Allies had created the hurt, the hunger. The Allies had tempered the character. The Allies had created their ingenuity. The Allies had sown the seeds of war, and would now reap a bitter harvest. The windfall that was the Luftwaffe would sweep Europe clean, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Urals, they destroyed everything that stood in their path. A path to reconciliation, a path to retribution, a path laid by the Allies in 1918.
The men who fought in the Luftwaffe were a breed apart. They served in an air force that was less than two decades old, a fighting force which represented the pinnacle of technical might.
Indoctrinated into a service above others, which demanded more and took more than any other, the Luftwaffe emboldened a tradition of honour and character. They regarded their enemies with respect.
Their young service would shake the aviation world to it's foundation, break the laws of flight, and re-write them altogether. And in the end, outnumbered, outgunned and bereft of supply, they laboured on in the service of their homeland. No Allied pilot would ever approach the records of the Luftwaffe aces.
WWII is ended. And the men who fought will it pass into history. Time may forget the gallant men of the Luftwaffe, the RAF and the VVS, but history never will. Time marches in ordered strides and I wonder, if but for a moment, it faltered in 1939.
We serve a memory and model, an ideal of a golden age, of a more gentlemanly war, fought in the heavens for control of the earth.
In closing, a final tribute to the silent minority who struggled so valiantly to defeat Nazi Germany. History will stand a silent witness to those patriots who quietly guarded their country in her darkest hour and dared to play that most dangerous game.
Men like Admiral Canaris, Galland, Rommel and many others, who behind the curtain of tyranny fed the Allies information throughout the course of the war. History is an impassive judge and will remember them otherwise. They were Germans who believed in their Germany. A free Germany. Professional soldiers who worked within their means to secure that freedom.
Salute, Mein Komaraden.
"He who would move the world, must first move himself" -Socrates
"Man is made or unmade by himself; in the armory of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself. He also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace." -James Allen
"Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals; we storm heaven itself in our folly." -Horace
