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Originally Posted by Graham Boak
Kesselring was an army general who simply moved from post to post as required.
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Errrrr.... well sort of! He was certainly a former army officer who transferred to the Luftwaffe pre-war and learned to fly (IIRC he had been an artilleryman in the Great War).
He may have got the role of OB Suedwest on account of being the ranking officer in theatre once Rommel was off the scene. And he wasn't appointed land commander, he was supreme commander. Obviously the land element of his command was way bigger than the air and naval ones but even so it was an all-arms job.
As for his command effectiveness in the BoB, as always I'd recommend the analysis in Stephen Bungay's "The Most Dangerous Enemy." As it turned out, Kesseling and Sperrle were running quite distinct campaigns after a while, especially when the fighters were massed in the Pas de Calais, so a comparison between them would maybe not be apt.
Bungay does point out however that AVM Keith Park beat Kesselring twice, in the BoB and the siege of Malta.