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The Stalingrad airlift normally only gets a brief mention in accounts of the siege of Stalingrad, focusing on the gap between the amount the Luftwaffe had promised to deliver, what they managed to deliver, and sometimes the cost in lost aircraft.
We start with a general background to the airlift, looking at earlier German airlifts, the size and equipment of the Luftwaffe’s transport force, the Soviet attack that isolated the German Sixth Army and the decision making process that led to the attempt to supply Stalingrad from the air. This demonstrated some of the flaws in the German decision making process, with expert reports making it clear that it wouldn’t be possible to provide enough supplies from the air to keep the pocket supplied and fighting being ignored in favour of more optimistic assessments from men closer to Hitler. One aspect of this airlift that I hadn’t considered was that it happened at roughly the same time as the attempts to fly supplies into Tunisia, so the Luftwaffe wasn’t able to focus all of its transport aircraft on either task.
The account of the airlift itself is split into two parts – the first covering the period when there was still a sizable pocket around Stalingrad and some hope that a relief force might break through, the second looking at the final Soviet attacks on the German pocket and how the Luftwaffe attempted to keep flying in supplies even as the last airfields inside the pocket were lost. There isn’t really a clear dividing line between the two periods – the Germans were being pushed back constantly – but the tone does change in the final part.
The people actually running the airlift had to face a daunting series of problems. The biggest was that they simply didn’t have enough transport aircraft to carry enough tonnage into the pocket. At first the Germans used Ju 52 transports and He 111 bombers to carry out the airlift, but as things got worse heavier aircraft were pressed into service – some, like the Focker-Wulf Fw 200 Condor were a reasonable success, while others, like the Heinkel He 177, were a disastrous failure. Some effort went into using gliders, but this looked like a far better idea in Berlin than it did at Stalingrad, where it was clear that the conditions on the ground would mean that hardly any of the gliders would survive to make a second trip. Added to this basic problem was the winter weather, which often greatly reduced or even stopped flying, the slowly increasing distance between Stalingrad and the air outside the pocket, the increased need for supplies as the stockpiles within the pocket were eliminated, Soviet fighters and anti-aircraft guns and interference from further up the Nazi hierarchy. Eventually Erhard Milch, one of the most senior Luftwaffe leaders, was sent to take command of the airlift, but he soon discovered that there wasn’t really much more he could do.
This is a compelling account of a failed operation. The men on the ground may have done all that they could, but the task they had been set was always going to be beyond them, and Hitler’s refusal to let the 6th Army attempt to break out while it still could means that their efforts were essentially futile. However that doesn’t make this account of their efforts any less fascinating.
Chapters
Part I: Conquest
1 – The Man for the Moment
2 – Dangerous Precedents
3 – The Fuhrer Directive
4 – The Decisive Factor? The Luftwaffe Air Transport Force, summer 1942
5 – ‘The Great Day’
6 – Rubble and Fire
7 – Uranus
8 – ‘Impossible’
Part II: Crisis
9 – The Stalwarts of Stalingrad
10 – ‘The Cost in Blood will be High’ 24-29 November 1942
11 – ‘A Hard and dangerous way for the men to earn their bread’ 30 November-11 December 1942
12 – ‘The Fuhrer was Appalled’ 12-21 December 1942
13 – ‘General, We Must Get Out of Here!’ – Disaster at Tatsinkaya 22 December 1942-8 January 1943
14 – The Giants of Stalingrad
Part III: Catastrophe
15 – ‘No Hearts Beat Stronger’ 8-16 January 1943
16 – Cometh the Hour 17-23 January 1943
17 – Fading Signals 24 January-2 February 1943
18 – The Reckoning
Author: Robert Forsyth
Edition: Hardcover
Pages: 352
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2022