All of the countries involved in the 1939-1945 war obtained examples of enemy aircraft. The very rapid expansion of captured territory resulting from the mobile warfare of Blitz Krieg yielded a considerable quantity of aircraft to the Germans. In the early stages of the war, their armies captured many airfields with intact aircraft and factories producing or assembling aircraft. Later in the war, the Germans acquired intact aircraft flown by defectors or landed reluctantly on German controlled territory.
NAME: Foreign Planes in the Service of the Luftwaffe
CLASSIFICATION: Book Reviews
FILE: R1577
DATE: 201209
AUTHOR: Jean-Louis Roba
PUBLISHER: Pen & Sword
BINDING: Hard back
PAGES: 223
PRICE: GB £19.99
GENRE: Non fiction
SUBJECT: Warplanes, WWII, fighters, bombers, black flag, interdiction, deception, combat analysis
ISBN: 978-1-84884-081-2
IMAGE: B1577.jpg
LINKS: http://tinyurl.com/
DESCRIPTION: All of the countries involved in the 1939-1945 war obtained examples of enemy aircraft. This included wrecks shot down over their territory, aircraft that landed in error or in defection or force landed. Other aircraft were acquired when their airfields were over run before they could be flown off or removed or destroyed. The very rapid expansion of captured territory resulting from the mobile warfare of Blitz Krieg yielded a considerable quantity of aircraft to the Germans. In the early stages of the war, their armies captured many airfields with intact aircraft and factories producing or assembling aircraft. Later in the war, the Germans acquired intact aircraft flown by defectors or landed reluctantly on German controlled territory. Also, German acquired a great volume of aircraft wrecks as the Allies flew vast formations of bombers and fighters over Germany in a round-the-clock bombing campaign. As a result, the Luftwaffe received a regular flow of enemy aircraft to evaluate and to use operationally. In the early stages of German expansion before 1939 and in the first years of the war, The Luftfwaffe was expanding so quickly that it was keen to press captured aircraft into service. Mostly these aircraft were used for second line service as training aircraft and as communications aircraft, but some were flown in first line combat. As the German aircraft industry expanded to meet Luftwaffe demand and captured factories were put to work building German aircraft types captured aircraft were sold off or donated to friendly powers including Finland and Romania. This left most intact captured aircraft transferred to the Luftwaffe as evaluation models to familiarize fighter pilots with their capabilities and to thoroughly test the aircraft to identify strengths and weaknesses. However the Luftwaffe also formed combat units flying captured aircraft against their original operators. Some were used to drop agents, flying back in returning Allied bomber streams. Some were used to infiltrate bomber streams and attack those aircraft from within their own formations and some aircraft were used for a range of attacks and special operations duties where they infiltrated defences by deception. This new book contains a wealth of captured aircraft photographs. Text is limited but adequate with the strength of the book being with the captioned photographs. The nature of the use of captured aircraft means that no book can truly claim to be a complete comprehensive record, but this book is as close as it is possible to get. The author has debunked some myths and introduced fresh insight. The book is good value and an essential addition to any WWII collection of aircraft books.