German Luftwaffe Groundcrew

[Larry deZeng]

Hello Gymning,

As the others here have said, you won't find much about the Luftwaffe here aside from aircraft, aircrew, parts recovered from long lost or buried wrecks and that which is directly related. For the past 18 years, I have tried to get just a few of these gentlemen interested in the Luftwaffen-Bodenorganisation, Flakartillerie and the Luftnachrichtentruppe, but to no avail. I am a miserable failure, I guess.

If you will go to the link below, you will find what you are looking for, at least what a wartime Luftwaffe airfield might look like in terms of the ground staffing, air units present at a given time, representative airfield strength returns, etc. How is your German? You will have a tough time with this material unless you use the Glossary (see the Introduction) and are already familiar with the unit abbreviations and the Luftwaffe-related acronyms in general. This material loses all relevance and import if translated into another language.

Anyway, this is about all you will find. I have not finished Russia and the Baltic States yet and I already have roughly 15 years and 30,000 hours invested in this project, including the years I spent in archives doing research. To study this subject on your own, you will need the language skills, lots and lots of time and lots and lots of money so you can travel to the Bundesarchiv-Militaerarchiv in Freiburg, The British National Archive in London, the U.S. National Archives in Washington and the Air Force Historical Research Agency in Montgomery/Alabama, although some of the primary material held at these repositories has recently been made available on-line. Good luck and best wishes.

http://www.ww2.dk/lwairfields.html

Larry deZeng