Why was the Luftwaffe the greatest and superior airforce of WW2?

Also failed at almost all of their strategic tasks.

They lost alot more than they killed in battle of Britain though. Perhaps russian airforce wad worse?

The top Allied ace was a Russian, though.

>Germans had some badass flying aces with crazy high scores.

Considering that most "Aces" throughout history had their kill counts heavily inflated for propaganda reasons, that's not surprising. The real numbers are unknowable. I mean, I'm sure they killed a lot of dudes but the exact number is not trustable.

And he flew exclusively on P39 Airacobra. The Russian aircraft were generally shit.

Compared to German scores even the toppest Russian aces seem mediocre.

(((You)))

((((You))))

(((Jew)))

So?

I could argue that the purpose of an airforce is to deliver bombs to the enemy ground forces; after all, the air to air kills only matter insofar as they help your air foces affect things on the ground and deny the enemy the same.

The RAF delivered more bombs on Germany in 1943 than the Luftwaffe dropped for the entire war. "Clearly" the RAF is awesome and the Luftwaffe is shit.

Not to mention that just because you have great aces doesn't mean that you're going to win the war. They usually lost their air battles to the Western Allies, indicating that their run of the mill pilots weren't doing so great, it was only a handful of aces that were carrying the operation.

Luftwaffe was actually pretty ineffective.
>lose heavy casualties against the poles in BoP
>lose heavy casualties against the french in BoF
>lose heavy casualties against the brits in BoB
>lose air superiority against the reds
>allies gain air supremacy in the west
They did have a lot of meme aces.

(((autism)))

Because they were one of the few modern air forces with actually recent combat experience.

>indicating that their run of the mill pilots weren't doing so great, it was only a handful of aces that were carrying the operation.
This.

For every Hartmann or Barkhorn you had hundreds of shitty pilots who usually died on their second or third sortie.

>For every Hartmann or Barkhorn you had hundreds of shitty pilots who usually died on their second or third sortie.

That was kinda true for everybody in the war, but the allies at least had the ability to easily replace those guys. Same applies to the Japanese and how they lost all their good pilots after their carriers got sunk at Midway.

>They have the highest kill/death ratio of any airforce ever
>things that never happened

>bringing up BoF as an example of an ineffective Luftwaffe
>blaming them for losing air superiority in the east/west

'no'

soviets win air superiority because of numbers
>le zergrush slavshitmeme

germans win air superiority because of numbers
>Why was the Luftwaffe the greatest and superior airforce of WW2?

There's a video on yt by an Austrian who explains it. Luftwaffe was stretched by multiple fronts and pilots spent much more time on the air, while allied pilots were regularly subbed out and rested. The high amount of German aces is still impressive, but they were by necessity obliged to get into their planes very often.

Crucially the Luftwaffe failed in their objectives, which has always mattered more than "but we killed so many of em".

>They have the highest kill/death ratio of any airforce ever
with that logic, Finland has the second best airforce ever

And yet...they utterly failed at keeping their enemies out of the skies of the Reich.

How'd they end up losing the Battle of Britain?

No way to recover downed pilots.
Damaged planes were often ditched over water rather than crash landed and repaired.
Fighting into radar meant the British always knew they were coming, the Germans did not know the British were around until the British entered visual LOS or started shooting at them.
Germany's strategic bombing capabilities were actually awful.
Low loiter time for escorts due to the relatively small fuel tank of the Bf.109 and the need to cross the Channel before engaging the enemy, while the British enjoyed near 100% loiter time for friendly aircraft.
Fighting into hostile anti aircraft.
Again the German strategic bombing capabilities were awful. They had no decent way to actually interrupt British aircraft production.
British pilots were good and their aircraft also good, while Goering's stupid fucking Bf.110 heavy "fighters" were garbage at boom and zoom, dogfighting, and lateral maneuvers, and Stukas were marginally faster than a hot air balloon, with German bombers being unarmored and under gunned.

The battle of Britain was a battle of attrition in which the Germans were losing from the very start

>bringing up BoF as an example of an ineffective Luftwaffe

lost 1059 planes (more than during BoB) to 5-10 years old aircrafts is pretty inefficient, Germanboo. Maybe if the French had transferred the 1K+ German aircrew prisoners they made to England, you would have noticed more. but well they didnt trust le eternal anglo...

German high scores are retarded and impossible to verify.

When Soviets were reconquering Crimea Luftwaffe said they've took down 2000 airplanes. USSR had 2000 planes total in the area and reported loss of 600. Yes, Luftwaffe inflated the number by ~4.

Because they stopped attacking the RAF airfields and switched to shit tier strategic bombing of cities.

The British were super close to losing the Battle of Britain but then the Germans switched to Strategic bombing and actually gave the RAF some room to breathe.

>'greatest and superior airforce of WW2'
>couldn't even win the BoB

>while Goering's stupid fucking Bf.110 heavy "fighters" were garbage at boom and zoom
Every major country had a 2-engine heavy fighter that obviously couldn't keep up with single-engine fighters. They were useful where range was essential and for night fighting.

>Because they stopped attacking the RAF airfields and switched to shit tier strategic bombing of cities.
Meme

>The British were super close to losing the Battle of Britain
British airframe and pilot numbers increased every month of the BoB.

information was in british hands.
German had sheer numbers (but they had lost a third of the Luftwaffe in BoF) but not quadrireactors.
overall it's clear the RAF was superior to the Luftwaffe, but the reasons for it are deeper in German and English societies : code breaking, plane design and so on

*unsheathes spitfire*

pshh

This

Everyone agrees that the bf110 was a disaster

Everyone agrees that you are a gay.

The odds were stacked against Germany from the very beginning. They didn't have heavy bombers, they didn't have fighters with the range to escort the bombers they had, which weren't particularly effective in the first place. A German fighter pilot could fight over Britain for roughly 10 - 15 minutes if he didn't want to swim home. Not to mention that a downed British pilot could bail out and return to battle while a German pilot would either be taken prisoner or drown in the channel.
In terms of aircraft, Germany was pretty evenly matched. The Bf109 and FW190 were easily en par with any of the British aircraft and in certain regards even superior. In a 1on1 I would put my money on a Bf109 rather than a Spitfire due to it being faster at altitude, having better climb and being more heavily armed.
However, air combat is not composed of 1on1 situations and retarded tactics, forcing the fighters to fly in tight formation with the bombers rather than allowing them to hunt freely gave up any advantage the aircraft may have had, not to mention that the low fuel capacity was a severe handicap.

on the off chance you are serious - no, not at all, the raf was pretty much winning from the start

Yeah, but the Bf.110 was the worst of the whole lot. Although I'm willing to admit, that perception might be because Goering insisted in forcing its use as a daylight fighter up until the end of 1941.

The Red Airforce fucked you pretty well mate. Americans finished the job

>How'd they end up losing the Battle of Britain?

The better question why they were dumb enough to try in the first place.

Ehh, they weren't the only people who thought that a bit of bombing would render a moral failure and leave enemies unable to muster the will to resist. Interwar literature treats air war the way we think of nuclear war; and the British were right up there in thinking it too. Some of Trenchard's predictions circa the late 1930s were that 500 tons of bombs delivered on Berlin would bring down the German government.

Aryan übermensch pilots

Wehrmacht Aircraft Identification Guide:
If it's camouflaged, it's British.
If it's silver, it's American.
If it's invisible, it's one of ours.

Additionally Allied pilots were regularly rotated back to train new pilots in How To Fly Good, while German and Japanese pilots were essentially flown to death.

I think you are right.

meh...Germans had outstanding individual aces but the Allies had much better units because the average Allied pilot was much better.

>RAF 303
st AVG (Flying Tigers)

categorically not.

they had worse bombers than the western allies

worse fighters than the allies, jets included.

and the defense of the reich failed .

they had high scoring aces because pilots stayed in the front lines till they died rather than being rotated out to train new pilots this meant that they had a few excellent pilots and a bunch of shittier ones, the allied approach meant they had some very good pilots and a a metric fuckton of good pilots.

want to have a good airforce for the conditions pervailing in the 1940s, examine the decisions the luftwaffe made and then do something else.

>USSR
>on the allies

Don't lump those commie bastards in with us, they were their own faction.

>Every major country had a 2-engine heavy fighter that obviously couldn't keep up with single-engine fighters
except for the mossie which could keep up with single engined fighters just fine.

To be fair, he was mentioning countries, not planes. The Luftwaffe too had twin engined fighters that could keep up with the singles, if you counted the jets.

Britain had the Beaufighter and another one I'm blanking on at the moment, that had that very early 1940s "long ranged heavy armed unmaneuverable as all hell fighter)

>best airforce
>blown out of the fucking sky by the USAAF and RAF

>t. hoi pro

>flying coffins
Actually after early teething problems were fixed Soviet aircraft were pretty good, some even on par with German and Allied planes.
Soviet problem was that they started with a shitty cadre, and that shitty cadre was surprised and destroyed by Germans, so even shittier people had to train new people, and there wasn't much time for training so those badly trained pilots died a lot and that left too few pilots to teach next batch.
It was a vicious cycle and they only achieved some parity with Germans in 1944.

Not him, but it wasn't just that.

Soviet air doctrine was in some ways logical, but in other ways autistic, for lack of a better word.

They viewed that the important thing was to take and hold territory, and that the ground forces were the most important arm of the military. Air forces were to support ground forces, so primary emphasis in their air arm was to CAS. Fighters were considered a tertiary weapon, most important for getting through their own tactical bombers and trying to stop the enemy's.

Noting that most tactical bombing occurred at low altitudes, Soviet fighters were designed primarily to fight at said low altitudes. They nimble as all hell. Problem was, until very late war designs, they almost all had low flight ceilings and engine difficulties even at the upper end of what they did have. So they kept being vulnerable to dive attacks, and had trouble meaningfully establishing air superiority, since German fighters could always rise up out of their reach.

Yup