[Nick Beale]

Apart from its factual errors the essay seems to rely entirely on secondary sources and to accept Adolf Galland's postwar exercises in reputation-polishing as gospel. A piece making more use of Pow interrogations and the SRA reports (covert recordings of prisoners' conversations) might have reached quite different conclusions. When I read that Galland was "regarded among the Luftwaffe’s all‐time great leaders", I mentally added "not least by himself". Ulrich Steinhilper took didn't revere Galland and the and old guard. Steinhilper may not have been typical but I doubt he was unique. Way back, I read a very critical PoW interrogation report from his time as Jafü Sicily (but can't locate the file reference at the moment). The prisoner concerned had worked in Jafü HQ and claimed Galland went in for all the bullying, accusations of cowardice and court martial threats that he complained of when Goering did the same.

"The entry of America into the air conflict over Europe in 1943 highlighted the lack of investment in home air defence in earlier years." Again he takes the Galland line but what then should Germany have done given its industrial capacity and existing military commitments? What was the daylight threat to the Reich before the USAAF arrived and was it being adequately contained? What should Germany have given up, say in Summer 1942, to expand home defence when the camaigns in Africa and the USSR were going well for them. I'd argue that they'd got in way over their heads, with no right answer given the manpower and material resources they could generate.

"The Luftwaffe was hierarchical and bureaucratic in structure" — and there’s an organisation of a million-plus people that isn’t?

"There was very little interest in team related sports" and "None of the pilots interviewed for this article expressed any interest in football." — that is genuinely interesting when you compare it with RAF ORB "Summary of Events" which often read more like a calendar of sporting fixtures.

"Towards the close of the war the Jagdwaffe had 17‐year‐old pilots on squadrons" — so they'd joined up at 15?

"The bewildering variety of aircraft types brought into service" — was any of the major powers immune to this?

"Venereal disease was an accepted disadvantage" — wasn't catching an STD punishable under the Military Code? In general though, I don't find it remarkable that large groups of young men away from home might go in for skirt-chasing and booze. Add in the combat adrenalin and repeatedly seeing their friends killed and injured and it would be more surprising if they'd spent their off-duty hours at poetry readings and flower arranging.

"Geschwader carried the name of a famous World War I hero or some other dignitary" — Afrika, Grünherz, Pikas, Herzas? And the names of Boelcke and Immelmann, fighter pioneers both, didn't go to fighter units. And what about JG 52 having the most claimed victories but no honour title — how does that square with the famous names = motivation argument?

I think also that to talk about Luftwaffe culture conferring competitive advantage puts him on shaky ground. What worked against Poland and (at greater cost) France didn't work against Britain for example. There were other factors at work — the relative preparedness, strength and technical sophistication of the opponent, the Channel. Did the chasing of high individual scores produce a fighter arm that was more or less effective than its opponents? Others have observed that the old guard saw bringing down enemy fighters as where the glory lay, even when bombers and (indirectly) reconnaissance machines were a bigger threat. So was the Jagdwaffe's culture the same year-by-year and theatre-by-theatre and if it didn't adapt to changing circumstances did it confer competitive advantage or become a liability?