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...in the U.S.-supported and trained minesweeping squadrons that operated in the North Sea in the postwar era. For the core of an army, there were hundreds of carefully screened ex-Wehrmacht officers and NCOs serving in organized units of the federal border police. To establish an air force, however, was a very different matter. There was no core group for an air force. German civil aviation and aviation industry both were just getting started again and in no position to produce either modern equipment or trained pilots for an air force--as they had during the 1930s. Although Germany had a large air force in World War II, and had even fielded the world's first jet fighter and bomber units, the former Luftwaffe pilots had be en out of the cockpit for ten years. In the ten years since the end of World War II, aviation technology had seen enormous advances. The U.S., UK, and France had already gone through three generations of modern jet fighters and bombers.
Despite the many problems that Germany faced, by 1960 the Federal Republic possessed a fairly modern and capable jet air force ready to play a major role in NATO defense. True, it was a force much smaller than NATO's initial goals for German rearmament and full aerial rearmament took several years longer than expected. Still, it was a fairly successful program by most standards. Germany was provided with a foundation on which to build a much more capable air force. Central to the program of aerial rearmament in Germany was the role of the United States Air Force (USAF) as trainer, mentor, supplier, and organizer of the Bundesluftwaffe. The RAP also played a role, albeit, a much smaller one.
The grand political and strategic issues of German rearmament and entry into NATO have been covered in considerable detail in several major works. What has been left out of the historical literature are the practical matters of just how the German Air Force initially built up, equipped, and trained and the role the USAF had in this mission. Once the grand design was set up and the agreements were signed in 1954 and 1955, the USAF and Bundesluftwaffe had to deal with numerous leadership, management, financial, and technical problems in creating an air force. The USAF and Luftwaffe handled many of these issues at the middle and lower levels of command--among officers in ranks from captain to colonel. The USAF-Luftwaffe relationship provides an interesting case study in management and command. At the very least, it is an interesting account of friction, and technological problem solving on a grand scale. Although there were failures, setbacks, and innumerable problems, the USAF role in building up the Bundesluft waffe into an effective and modern force was generally successful.
Origins of German Rearmament: Initial Policies and Goals
Planning for German rearmament came only a year and a half after the founding of the Bundesrepublik. With Germany at the center of the Cold War, the formation of NATO in 1949, and the conflict in Korea, that prompted a large-scale buildup of U.S. forces in Europe, Chancellor Konrad Adenhauer called a conference of fifteen former Wehrmacht officers in October 1950 to draft a plan for a German defense force for the Atlantic alliance. The Himmerod Conference, named for the monastery where the officers met, developed a plan for a German armed forces that would include an air force of at least 831 ground attack, interceptor, and reconnaissance aircraft. (1) Negotiations and diplomatic efforts began but the effort was soon bogged down by disagreements among the Allied powers as to command and organization structure of the German armed forces. The US and Britain wanted a national German armed forces incorporated into NATO. In late 1950, the French proposed a plan for a European army in which each division and corps would contain units from several countries, all under the authority of the European Union. The plan was created solely to ensure that no German officer would command more than a division of the European force. It was rejected from the start by the U.S. and UK as completely unworkable. It was tough enough to maintain command and control in NATO among various diverse military systems. One can imagine a division composed of units with different equipment, trained to different standards and operating with different doctrines. On top of that, there would be the inevitable language problems. However, once the proposal was laid on the table it had to be negotiated through the European Union. A decision on German rearmament was stalled for more than two years until the French finally withdrew their plan and agreed to allow German rearmament within NATO in 1954. (2) The long delay in rearmament made it ever more difficult to build a German air force. Six thousand Luftwaffe pilots had survived World War II, but as time passed their skills quickly faded. When the Luftwaffe began recruiting for pilots again in 1955-56, only 160 wartime veterans were available and pronounced fully fit for service as jet pilots. (3) In 1951, the U.S. military began making plans for German rearmament and began a process of consultation and joint planning with the German government's military experts. By November 1951, the Germans and Americans had created an informal air planning group to develop a program for building a new German air force. The greatest share of developing the new German air force actually fell on the staff of the US Air Force Europe (USAFE). From 1950 to 1955 the West German government maintained a shadow defense ministry and military staff. While the army staff organization and plans progressed nicely, the German defense authorities made little effort to build up an adequate air staff. In November 1954, on the eve of rearmament, the Luftwaffe Group in the shadow defense ministry had 28 staff sections in its organization tab le. Of these, six sections, including the very important organization, personnel and communications sections, had no section leader. (4) Despite personnel shortages on the German side the German and American officers worked closely together.
In 1954, the Germans signed a formal agreement with the U.S. and NATO nations and committed itself to rearmament. A cadre German force, to provide the foundation for the Bundeswehr, was to be recruited and enter service in 1955. (5) In May 1955, Germany signed the Treaty of Paris and became a member of NATO. Lt. Gen. Josef Kammhuber, a Luftwaffe general of World War II, became the first chief of staff of the new Bundesluftwaffe. Kammhuber, with a small cadre of former Luftwaffe officers as his staff, faced the enormous challenge of building an air force from scratch. (6)
NATO and German plans, developed from 1951 to 1954, called for building a large German air force with the primary responsibility of providing support to ground forces and air defense of the Central Front. NATO and the German government anticipated a three-year buildup phase to create an air force of 6 fighter-bomber wings (75 planes per wing), 8 day fighter wings, 2 all-weather...
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