Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Gentlemen!

Larry and I wish to announce that our Luftwaffe Officer career database is now available for download by any interested party via the Michael Holm's website at www.ww2.dk.

It contains everything we currently have about officer careers and follows our rules for content and format.
It is in the form of several pdfs which can be downloaded, viewed, searched and, in segments, copied. Please read the copyright disclaimer.

It is our intention that this be made available to interested parties for the purpose of preserving our work for the future and to further the general good of development of the field.

Periodically (once in a year or two) we will replace the segments with updated sections as worthwhile amounts of change accumulate.

Please send any corrections/ updates/ elaborations to me (Doug) at : Luftoffzfeedback@shaw.ca. Please include substantiation for the change because without confidence in it, we can't incorporate it.


Enjoy!

HLdZ
DGS

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

As far as I know you via your posts here and the Schlachtflieger-book, this supposedly is a truly great piece of information! Also the adress where it can be found supports this very positive prejudice.

Thank you very much in advance. I am sure this will help my hobby-work and also I hope to be able to support this project.

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Dear Larry and Doug,
What a tremendous piece of work, the list of abbreviations is in itself a nugget.
I very much look forward to going through the lists and using them in my research.
One small point. You have like scores of others before you translated zbV almost literally to "for special purpose". The correct transliteration is "provisional" i.e. "not in the normal establishment/organisation". Knowing Larry's attention to detail I trust my comment will be appreciated.
bregds
SES

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Truely outstanding and everyone who collects items (and/or researches) Luftwaffe officers will owe you a debt of gratitude for the publication of these lists.

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

What an excellent source of info on Lw officers! And a truly selfish act of sharing it with everyone interested in the topic. Thank you Larry and Doug!

One of the first names I checked was Lt. Dietric Orth, who trained the Rumanians to fly the outstanding Henschel Hs 129 ground attack aircraft.

What I can add to his bio is his date and location of death, in action: he was shot down in a combat sortie, reportedly by ground fire, at Sviatogorovka, on 1943. Sept. 08. Source: Combat Diary of the Rumanian 8th Assault Group.

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Great! Thank you Larry and Doug!

Andrey

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Hi SES,

Many thanks for your commentary on "z.b.V." (zu besonderer Verwendung, or zur besonderen Verwendung). The reason we translated it as we did is because we used the translations provided in: Air Ministry (A.I.12), "Manual of German Air Force Terminology, German - English, Part I - Administrative and General Terms" (London, Air Intelligence Directorate, n.d.), p.13. We used this Manual with premeditated intent for just this purpose: to avoid squabbles over terminology. However, since your translation as "provisional" and accompanying definition also fits very nicely indeed, Doug will add it to our list of future amendments as an "add on". In other words, we will add "provisional - not in the normal establishment or organisation" to what we already give. Since this meaning and definition was well-known to the Allies and one they used for their own units when applicable, it must have been an omission of error on their part not to include it. Interestingly, there was another term that is usually translated as "provisional": an der Kommandoweg aufgestellt. This was used for units formed in the field by a senior field command on a provisional basis with a duration of no longer than 6 months. Its existence past 6 months could only be authorized by the Organisationsabteilung/Ob.d.L.

Cheers,

Larry

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Hi Larry,
Thank you very much for your long response and I'm so glad you saw my point. As we both know ADI documents have to taken with a grain of salt.
bregds
SES

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Hi Larry, etc.
Congratulation on a great site. Now we have the task to analise/peruse in order to help with our research; the ball is in our court.
Great work, I like it.
berkyboy

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Not bad, you just saved me from making a very big mistake. Thanks !
Carsten

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Doug and Larry:

Congrats and thanks for sharing so MANY tedious hours/years of work. You are super unselfish to be sure. Everyone here will benefit for sure.

Cheers

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Doug and Larry;

What an excellent job.. Congratulations !

Pyker

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Hi Larry and Doug.

A big thank you for making this research public. I have for several years benefitted from this work, and will continue to do so.

Greetings from Denmark.

Junker

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Thank you guys!! make it much easier to look for info, than writing emails to you with requests :) excellent work.

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Hello Larry and Doug,

thank you

Byron

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Doug and Larry - many thanks for such a selfless act. Hopefully, people will try to contribute towards its improvement as a resource and it won't just be something people take from. I shall check through the files I have for the small number of officers I am interested in and offer amendments backed up with documented evidence.

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Hello,

Thanks for good base but some pilot missing on this list for example Wolfgang Beer 4./JG3

http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showthread.php?p=138680

Luftwaffe Officer Career database
 

Doug and Larry

Thank you very much indeed for this.

Your information will be a major source of invaluable information for any Luftwaffe historian, collector and researcher.

Regards Richard.

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Larry, Doug,

Fantastic job (as always)!

Regards,

Marcel

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Thank you both, Larry and Doug for your generosity.

Best Regards

Chris

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

B R A V O !

Wonderful, thanks for sharing.

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Hello Larry and Doug,

As already ventured to you directly, this huge and most generously presented database will not only help all of us tremendously, but hopefully will inspire us all to send in additions, corrections, still failing names etc.

As several people have copies of Luftwaffe Personalamt files of officers, I do hope that the essential info of these are sent to Larry and Doug too. If we all benefit from this list, we all should support this magnificent job as well I think.

Keep this train moving! All the best, Marcel

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

This is an invaluable source of information for any serious student of the subject. You are both to be congratulated for putting it together and thanked for making it freely available. Good job - well done.

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

My voice can only echo what all other members said.
In this world of "profit first", your move is absolutely remarkable. Thanks for it.
Since I donwloaded the files, I have searched them about a dozen times!
Just a question: where can I find a glossary?

Chris

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Thanks for the kind words, Chris, and that goes for everyone else, too. We labeled the "Glossary" as "Terminology" and here it is:

http://www.ww2.dk/Lw%20Offz%20-%20Ap...0-%20Intro.pdf

Larry & Doug

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

The database is proving useful practically every time I'm working on anything, so a big thank you to Doug and Larry.

In return, I'm attaching a small but colourful contribution to one biography:

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

I am sorry to have this old thread pop up again, but would it mean that the transport units had been considered as "provisional/not in the normal organization" for over 7 years?
It makes no sense, does it?

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

And who, dear SES, is the supreme authority who has irrevocably given forth English language definitions for all German military abbreviations and set them in concrete for all time and ever after? There isn't a single one of the more than 20,000 translations that at least one person won't find something to argue over.

We used the Manual of German Air Force Terminology: German - English, prepared and publishd by the Air Intelligence Section 12 of the British Air Ministry in 1945-46 as a standardized reference for the use of all the Allied Powers as our source for translations. These are the ones we used.

The abbreviation "z.b.V." is given as "zur besonderen Verwendung" and translated into English as: "special duties (literally 'for special employment')" (see page 13 of the cited Manual).

Personally, you can call it anything you like. That would be fine with me. It may well be that you are right and the Air Ministry is wrong. But Doug and I had to use a generally accepted standardized source to prevent eternal squabbling and nitpicking over the translation of some word or other.

If I already addressed this complaint earlier, then I apologize for repeating myself.

Larry

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Some units, such as the Jagdgeschwader zbV, surely were "provisional".
As for the transport units, I read somewhere (a long time ago) that this designation (KG zbV) had been given to raise the morale of the crews who had been promised to be part of the striking arm of the Luftwaffe (bombers) but were mainly used for pizzas delivery.
If this story is true, it would fully explain the "special duties" designation.
But is it?

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

It was my understanding that in the mid-1930's the Ju 52-equipped units were temporarily considered auxiliary bomber units until such time as there were enough Do 17s and He 111s to outfit them as proper bomber Gruppen. Hence, the z.b.V. designation.

Pizza deliveries? Maybe Bratwurst, Schnitzel, Schinkenbrot and Bier deliveries, but not pizza! Pizza was all but unknown in the 1930's, I think, at least in Germany.

L.

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Hi Larry,
You have addressed my comment previously to my full satisfaction :). I have tested my interpretation of zbV on our learned German colleges and they agree with me.
The AM list is not faultless, one of my favourites is Luftnachrichten Dienst translated to Air Intelligence Service, which is an OK translation, but it does not describe the operational function, which was Control, Reporting and Signals Service.
But my small comment does (hopefully) not detract anything from your great effort and piece of work.
kind regards
SES

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Thanks, SES. :) :)

"Provisional" and "Composite" were widely used WW II Allied terms that were often affixed to unit designations. There are many examples of this. Yet, in English-to-German Allied military dictionaries from the WW II era, neither word appears. I am looking at my copy of TM 30-506: German Military Dictionary (War Department, May 1944) right now. Evidently these two terms puzzled the compilers of the dictionary and they provided no translation into German. That's especially curious since the term "zur besonderer Verwendung" was widely used by the Heer and the Luftwaffe, particularly the latter. As you know, many Luftnachrichten units, mainly the small specialized ones, used the "z.b.V." designation for the duration of the war. So I must conclude that duration of existence was not always the determinant in affixing "z.b.V." to a unit's designation. It meant something more than just "Provisional".

Larry

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Hi Larry,
I agree that zbB cannot be directly translated into provisional, and we may need a deeper understanding of the Wehrmacht organization in order fully to comprehend the notion. But I'm glad to learn that our predecessors also struggled with the term.
bregds
SES

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

So?
How can we understand the "KG zbV" designation?
"Provisional for the duration of the war" :-))

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Brilliant!

All the best

Andreas

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

The original question in this thread was about transport units. When the entire transport branch of the Luftwaffe, namely XIV. Fliegerkorps, was reorganized effective 1 May 1943, all of the "z.b.V." designations were dropped. The new designations were Transportfliegergeschwader, Transportfliegergruppe and Transportfliegerstaffel.

So, I guess you might say that the "z.b.V." term was retained for as long as the Organisationsabteilung/Genst.d.Lw. wanted to retain it. There do not appear to have been any firm and fast guidelines used in making these decisions, at least none that I know about.

Organisationsabteilung der Gen.St. der Lw. (2. Abteilung)
(Organizations Branch of the General Staff of the Air Force (2d Branch))

Chef
Obstlt. Hermann Plocher (1 Feb 39 - 4 Jan 40)
Gen.Maj. Dipl.Ing. Wolfgang Erdmann (12 Jan 40 - 31 Mar 43)
Oberst i.G. Hermann Aldinger (1 Apr 43 - 3 Nov 44)
Oberst i.G. Wolfgang Ruhsert (3 Nov 44 - c. 28 Apr 45)

History
Generally, the branch had some 9 subdivisions during the war years. In November 1944 it had 30 officers and 57 others - responsible for the mobilization, formation and organization of all Luftwaffe staffs, commands and units.

This is the Branch that decided what designations and names units were to have. No doubt there was consultation with higher authorities, but ultimately it was the decision of the Org.Abt./Genst.d.Lw.

L.

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

To be honest, I think the clue is in 'Kampfgeschwader zbV'. What was the bV? Well, transporting stuff, rather than bombing places, which, when you come to think of it, is rather special. ;)

I wouldn't be surprised to see that the crews of the Junkers were on whatever perks/status/etc. if any there was for KG crews, instead of JG crews (maybe an extra Pervitin pill a day?) They maybe underwent similar training too, being on multi-engined planes (guessing here). Was there much cross-crewing during the early years?

I really struggle to accept a translation as 'provisional' (German vorlaeufig or Aushelfs-?), since that mucks up the purpose of the formation with either the status and/or the expected duration of the formation, and the three are rather distinct items. Of course a special purpose maybe of rather short duration, but it may not be, as in this case.

But what do I know... :)

All the best

Andreas

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Ever heard the French expression "C'est le provisoire qui dure"? Roughly, "temporary measures have a habit of becoming permanent."

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

German is a more precise language. :D

All the best

Andreas

Re: Luftwaffe Officer Career database now available
 

Oh, absolutely. Now shall we translate »Nachrichten« as "news" or "intelligence" or "signals" or … ?