Luftwaffe
 

That damned Goering. Just as i launch eels at the nelson in the channel (sep 1940) those air jockeys turn up and ruin my convoy :/\\!!. http://i978.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps49afc24e.jpg

They should just stick to flying there pretty planes around France and stopping the RAF bombing Berlin.

Aside from leaving port and having a couple of their birds follow me out I've never seen the Luftwaffe try to steal any of my targets, or even show up. Lazy gits.

Nice shot jreid666.

I have also lost a target to the Luftwaffe but it was a small merchant!

Incredible picture :arrgh!:

Proof positive that Murphy's Law is not limited to the Allies. Then again, showing up when not wanted and not appearing when needed was one of Goering's more infamous traits.:doh:

Too bad for the Kriegsmarine that they had no naval aviation of their own. All aircraft - coastal based and ship based - were under command of the Luftwaffe and flown by Luftwaffe officers, following the Göring's order that, "everything that flies belongs to me".

Who knows what devastating results could have been obtained on convoys by dedicated naval attack aircraft in concert with the U-Boats.

They sorta DID have that, iirc the Heinkel HE-111 was outfitted with torpedos in coastal torpedo bomber duty and was somewhat successful :hmmm:

This is true, and the HE 111 could also carry the remote controlled anti-shipping missile that was in development at the end of the war. The FW 200 Condor also carried bombs and attacked shipping as well. Although after a few Condor's were shot down, that practice stopped (but they did sink 331,122 tonnes of shipping first). It was rare for luftwaffe to attack shipping, but it happened far more often than most people think.

For instance, July 4, 1942 an arctic convoy PQ17 was attacked by U-boats and HE 111's. The U-boats attacked and lured the escorts away and the HE 111H-6 (torpedo variant) and Ju 88 level bombers sank 23 merchants out of 33 that sailed from Ireland.

the Fritz-X yeah, I recall it

The biggest issue was reconnaissance: some reasonable four engine bomber, built instead of the Condor and the He-177 and fitted with an adequate electronic suite would have been very helpful for finding convoys, something that submarines were relatively poorly suited for.
As it was it sometimes happened that it was the U-boats that had to locate targets for the Luftwaffe.
It is doubtful however that they could have produced and earmarked for such tasks enough airframes to make a really big difference.

True. Especially after Operation Barbarossa began and around the clock bombing of industry followed. The Luftwaffe found itself spread pretty thin by mid war. About 5% was devoted to coastal operations and it was never enough.

Actually, this is not quite true. Elements of the Küstenflieger, while poor in quality and numbers, remained under Kriegsmarine control well into the war. While individual Staffeln were handed over to Luftwaffe control throughout the war in the time frame this thread deals with, most units were still subordinate to ObdM. True, they were transferred to Luftwaffe control but only in a piecemeal fashion. There is a new book that deals with these units called - yep, you guessed it - Küstenflieger.

As for Luftwaffe encounters, I play with the option to have updates turned on so when I see a lone ship in the vicinity I assume that this is a Luftwaffe report. However - I turn this option off from 1943 onwards as the chance of getting useful info from that source is rather dubious. Also, any report beyond the western approaches I discard because no aircraft could that far out into the Atlantic, right? That is my sum total of Luftwaffe experience!

I use single map contacts in a similar manner. But outside possible Luftwaffe coverage, I treat them like a Radio Direction contact (the purpose of the RDF loop).

I don't get speed or course info from that, so I'll just plot a course in the direction of the contact and run it down. If I happen to gain a visual contact from it, great. If not, oh well. I feel like it keeps the amount of single ship sinkings under control.

Just a thought.

T

The only aircraft I know of that might is the Condor. It could fly Berlin to New York non stop. But I do not know how far west they flew as convoy spotters before having to fly back home.

There are others possible sources though, such as the submarine own direction finding equipment. The loop antenna on the conning tower was there precisely for this reason.