Logistics Aloft

Air-force transport formations supplied advanced German units--German communique, Dec. 30.

Eleven transport planes were brought down in the Stalingrad area--Russian communique, Dec. 30.

Terse, official statements like these last week highlighted a vital phase of the war in Russia. For the Russian front was now, in many respects, similar to the Pacific front: the Germans were pocketed on a series of "islands," where the beleaguered armies could survive only so long as they were supplied from centers many miles away. As rail and road routes fell to the Russians and advance depots were depleted, the Germans had to depend more & more on supply by air.

Junkers v. Stormoviks. Neither their plight nor their task was new to the Germans. The Luftwaffe built up its fleets of three-engined Junkers 52 transports before the war, and ever since the invasion of Poland the air supply of field armies has been routine.

Early in the Russian campaign they demonstrated that they could fly in replacements, guns, ammunition and food to surrounded units. Several large German groups survived last winter largely because of efficient Luftwaffe supply; officers "surrounded" near Staraya Russa took leave in Berlin, returned to their troops when the encircling Russian lines were still unbroken.

But the Russians also learned. They kept air patrols along the principal German supply routes, harried the Junkers with fighters and Stormovik assault planes, sought out and incessantly bombed the fields where the German transports landed. Where the German routes crossed Red Army territory, the Russians lined the way with hidden ack-ack batteries. Sometimes guerrilla ack-ack units planted batteries behind the German lines. German pilots flew through snowstorms to outwit the Russian hunters. The Luftwaffe constantly changed its routes, began to dispatch transports singly or in small groups rather than in large formations.

Describing this intricate contest in a recent issue of Britain's weekly Aeroplane, the Red Air Force's Major General Kondratov said that in six months of 1942 the Russians destroyed 600 Junkers 528 in the air and on the ground. Wrote General Kondratov: "Along the Soviet front . . . we saw German self-confidence wane and then vanish when transport airplanes ceased to arrive."

How Many Junkers? The Luftwaffe was reported to have at least five thousand 528 and other transport planes at the war's start. But the Balkan campaign, Crete and the trans-Mediterranean supply of Rommel must have absorbed a big proportion of the available transports. The Germans in Tunisia now require many more for their prodigious air-supply operation via Sicily (see p. 25).

With the need, the rate of loss in Russia has also risen. Early in the campaign to relieve Stalingrad the Russians concentrated on the Luftwaffe transports; Moscow claimed the destruction of 46 in one day, 60 in another, 225 in seven days. The Germans apparently still had advanced airdromes for most of their armies, still had transports. Upon the Russians' ability to destroy these airlines to the German islands, victory might swing.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.