Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: marsh@linus.UUCP (Ralph Marshall)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: dogfighting
Message-ID: <7521@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 16 Jun 89 03:34:20 GMT
References: <7022@cbnews.ATT.COM> <7210@cbnews.ATT.COM> <7250@cbnews.ATT.COM> <7395@cbnews.ATT.COM> <7450@cbnews.ATT.COM>
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From: marsh@linus.UUCP (Ralph Marshall)
In article <7450@cbnews.ATT.COM> welty@lewis.crd.ge.com (richard welty) writes:
>
>
[stuff about merits of rotating out pilots deleted]
>
>as far as i know, this is not considered a factor in the decline
>of the Luftwaffe.  the Luftwaffe was hurt mostly by the loss of
>fuel sources and by Hitler's insistence on offense over defense.
>many many aircraft and pilots were grounded by lack of fuel at the
>end of wwii.
>
>richard

	Another cause for the decline of the Luftwaffe was the sheer lack
of planes.  Their military production was messed up during the war due
to a variety of problems: Hitler expected a short war and thus didn't 
concentrate on coming up with a second generation of planes to replace
the Me109 until it was really too late (the FW 190 was only available after
they had lost most of their aircraft factories and strategic materials)
Also, the rate of loss exceeded the new production rate (regardless of
quality of the replacements) for most of the war, while both the United
States and Russia built HUGE numbers of planes from 1943 onward. So,
the Luftwaffe never really had problems with pilots (until 1945, when
everything went to hell and they had boys and old men in the army) as much
as they did with planes and fuel.

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Ralph Marshall (marsh@mbunix.mitre.org)

Disclaimer:  Often wrong but never in doubt...  All of these opinions
are mine, so don't gripe to my employer if you don't like them.
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