* 1937 – Spanish Civil War: Guernica ( or Gernika in Basque ), Spain is bombed by German Luftwaffe.

James Corum states a prevalent myth about the Luftwaffe and its blitzkrieg operations is that it had a doctrine of terror bombing, in which civilians were deliberately targeted in order to break the will or aid the collapse of an enemy.

In Des Teufels General ( The Devil's General ) of 1954, a Luftwaffe general named Harras loosely modeled after Ernst Udet, appears at first to be cynical fool, but turns out to an anti-Nazi who is secretly sabotaging the German war effort by designing faulty planes.

Guernica is best known to those residing outside the Basque region as the scene of the April 26, 1937, Bombing of Guernica, one of the first aerial bombings by Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe.

* 1940 – World War II: Battle of Britain – The German Luftwaffe begins attacking British convoys in the English Channel thus starting the battle ( this start date is contested, though ).

In the proposal, it concluded " The mission of the Luftwaffe is to serve these goals ".

It is commonly assumed this attack was the result of a " terror doctrine " in Luftwaffe doctrine.

It is unclear whether these tests were carried out by Luftwaffe personnel or on the orders of OKL.

* 1941 – World War II: The House of Commons in London is damaged by the Luftwaffe in an air raid.

* 1940 – World War II: the old city centre of the Dutch town of Middelburg is bombed by the German Luftwaffe, to force the surrender of the Dutch armies in Zeeland.

* 1940 – World War II: Rotterdam is bombed by the German Luftwaffe.

* 1940 – World War II: In England, the city of Coventry is heavily bombed by German Luftwaffe bombers.

* 1940 – World War II: Battle of Britain – During a night-time air raid by the German Luftwaffe, St. Paul's Cathedral in the City of London, England is hit by a bomb.

* 1939 – The Wound Badge for Wehrmacht, SS, Kriegsmarine, and Luftwaffe soldiers is instituted.

* 1943 – The Municipal Theatre of Corfu is destroyed during an aerial bombardment by Luftwaffe.

* December 2 – A Luftwaffe bombing raid on the harbour of Bari, Italy, sinks an American ship with a mustard gas stockpile, causin numerous fatalities ( though the exact death toll is unresolved, as the bombing raid itself causes hundreds of deaths too ).

* February 19 – February 22 – WWII: Three Nights ' Blitz over Swansea, South Wales: Over these 3 nights of intensive bombing, which last a total of 13 hours and 48 minutes, Swansea's town centre is almost completely obliterated by the 896 high explosive bombs employed by the Luftwaffe.

** WWII: The British House of Commons is damaged by the Luftwaffe in an air raid.

** Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and her government flee to London ; Rotterdam is subjected to savage terror bombing by the Luftwaffe ; 980 are killed, and 20, 000 buildings destroyed.

However, the Luftwaffe also provided volunteers to Spain to test both tactics and aircraft in combat, including the first combat use of the Stuka.

The Soviets were also helped indirectly by the American and British bombing campaigns, which forced the Luftwaffe to shift many of its fighters away from the Eastern Front in defense against these raids.

As all such prior NSFK members were also Nazi Party members ; this gave the new Luftwaffe a strong Nazi ideological base in contrast to the other branches of the German military.

The Luftwaffe also quickly realized the days of the biplane fighter were finished, the Heinkel He 51 being switched to service as a trainer.

The Luftwaffe also greatly expanded its aircrew training programs by 42 %, to 63 flying schools.

The absence of a strategic bomber force for the Luftwaffe, following General Wever's accidental death in 1936 and the end of the Ural bomber program he fostered before the invasion of Poland, would not be addressed again until the authorization of the Bomber B design competition in July 1939, which sought to replace the medium bomber force with which the Luftwaffe was to begin the war, with more advanced, twin-engined high speed bomber aircraft fitted with pairs of relatively " high-power " engines of 1, 500 kW ( 2, 000 hp ) output levels and upwards each, that would also be able to function as shorter range heavy bombers.

The spring 1942 Amerika Bomber program also sought to produce useful strategic bomber designs for the Luftwaffe, with their prime design priority being an advanced trans-oceanic range capability as the main aim of the project to directly attack the United States from Europe or the Azores.

Moreover, Luftwaffe leadership from the start poached the training command, which undermined its ability to replace losses, while also planning for " short sharp campaigns ", which did not pertain.

From 1943, the Luftwaffe also had an armoured paratroop division called Fallschirm-Panzer Division 1 Hermann Göring, which was expanded to a Panzerkorps in 1944.

The Luftwaffe also took part by strafing fleeing civilian refugees on roads and carrying out an aerial bombing campaign.

For commanding the navy and the air force, Third Reich had also the Oberkommando der Marine ( OKM ) and the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe ( OKL ) respectively.

The Luftwaffe also lacked armour-piercing bombs or aerial torpedo capabilities that were essential to defeating larger warships.

He was also a major in the Luftwaffe, flying nearly one-hundred combat missions until 22 July 1941, when his plane was hit by Soviet anti-aircraft fire.

Microwave Early Warning ( MEW ) radar, another technique pioneered by Quesada, was also used by XIX TAC as an air traffic control radar to both cover against Luftwaffe attacks and to vector flights already in the air to new sites.

The Luftwaffe also used the technique in order to help their small bombers, and the enormous Gigant, Messerschmitt Me 321 glider, conceived in 1940 for the invasion of Britain, and used to supply the Russian front which also had air tow assistance from up to three bombers, into the air with loads that would have made the takeoff run too long otherwise.

A paratroop detachment also dropped at the airfield of Aalborg which was crucial for the Luftwaffe for operations over Norway.

Blohm & Voss, which had until then specialized in shipbuilding, also began to design and build aircraft for use by both the German state airline, pre-war Deutsche Luft Hansa, and the air-force, Luftwaffe.

On February 18, 1943, three Dynamo Kyiv football players ( Trusevich, Klimenko, and Putistin ) who took part in the Match of Death with the German Luftwaffe team were also murdered in the camp.

As commander-in-chief of Fighter Command, Douglas was responsible for rebuilding of the command's strength after the attrition of the Battle of Britain, but also for bringing it on the offensive to wrest the initiative in the air from the German Luftwaffe.

It also appears that the German Luftwaffe used the tower as a marker.

The term is also a generic term for the function of a leader of a squad of infantry ( 9 or 10 men-Gruppe ) in the German Army, Waffen SS, or Luftwaffe ground troops.

Human figures may be either a generic figure of a type ( such as " World War II Luftwaffe pilot "), a historical personage ( such as " King Henry VIII "), or a fictional character ( such as " Conan ").