During the invasion of Poland and the Battle of France, Luftwaffe fighters — primarily the Messerschmitt Bf 109 — held air superiority, and the Luftwaffe played a major role in German victories in these campaigns.

During the Battle of Britain, however, British Hurricanes and Spitfires proved roughly equal to Luftwaffe fighters.

* 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 ).

By 1939 the Luftwaffe was not much better prepared than its enemies to conduct a strategic bombing campaign, with fatal results during the Battle of Britain.

In the summer of 1940, the Luftwaffe contributed to the unexpected success in the Battle of France.

During the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe experienced its first defeat.

Had the Luftwaffe focused on naval aviation, Germany might well have been in a position to win the Battle of the Atlantic.

As a result all fighter and bomber development was oriented toward short range aircraft, as they could be produced in greater numbers, rather than quality long range aircraft, something that put the Luftwaffe at a disadvantage as early as the Battle of Britain.

The Luftwaffe made 21 deliberate attacks on small torpedo boats during the Battle of Britain, sinking none.

* 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.

The earlier Hawker Hurricane and the Spitfire were the mainstay of RAF Fighter Command fighter aircraft which fought off the Luftwaffe bombing raids with fighter escorts during the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940.

* 1940 – World War II: The climax of the Battle of Britain, when the Royal Air Force shoots down large numbers of Luftwaffe aircraft.

# The Battle of Britain ( 1943 ) ( 51: 30 ) – depicts Britain's victory against the Luftwaffe.

* Battle of the Beams, radio countermeasures used against navigational system used by the Luftwaffe during WWII

The invasion of Britain was postponed indefinitely in September 1940 due to the Luftwaffe ′ s failure to obtain air superiority during the Battle of Britain, and the significantly greater power of the Royal Navy over the German Naval forces.

Several prominent German military, cultural, and political figures in subsequent history, including poet Theodor Fontane, General Hermann von François, the hero of the First World War Battle of Tannenberg, Luftwaffe General and fighter ace Adolf Galland ; and famed U-boat captain Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière, trace their ancestry to the Huguenot refugees from France.

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 was during the crucial days of the Battle of Britain that these three RAF stations came into their own, fighting off the overwhelming might of the German Luftwaffe.

A Heinkel He 111H bomber, which was abandoned by the Luftwaffe during the retreat after the Battle of El Alamein, on a landing ground in Libya after being " commandeered " by No. 260 Squadron RAF, who painted it with RAF roundels and the unit code letters " HS -?

The Battle of the Beams was a period early in the Second World War when bombers of the German Air Force ( Luftwaffe ) used a number of increasingly accurate systems of radio navigation, developed by Johannes Plendl, for night bombing in England.

Zocchi has designed a few games himself, including Alien Space, Star Fleet Battle Manual ( not to be confused with Star Fleet Battles ), The Battle of Britain, Luftwaffe, Flying Tigers, Hardtack, and Battle Wagon Salvo.

In fact, far from it being a dedicated panzer spearhead arm, less than 15 percent of the Luftwaffe was designed for close support of the army in 1939.

Although production of Luftwaffe fighter aircraft continued, they would be unable to fly for lack of fuel.

The Soviets increasingly were able to challenge the Luftwaffe, and while the Luftwaffe maintained a qualitative edge over the Red Air Force for much of the war, the increasing numbers and efficacy of the Soviet Air Force were critical to the Red Army's efforts at turning back and eventually annihilating the Wehrmacht.

The alliance was shaky at best, mainly because during this period Himmler was still cooperating with Bormann to gain more power at the expense of Göring and most of the traditional Reich administration ; Göring's loss of power had resulted in an overindulgence in the trappings of power and his strained relations with Goebbels made it difficult for a unified coalition to be formed, despite the attempts of Speer and Göring's Luftwaffe deputy Field Marshal Erhard Milch, to reconcile the two Party comrades.

A notable contradiction existed in Hitler's strategic planning between embarking on an anti-British foreign policy, whose major instruments consisted of a vastly expanded Kriegsmarine and a Luftwaffe capable of a strategic bombing offensive that would take several years to build ( e. g. Plan Z for expanding the Kriegsmarine was a five year plan ), and engaging in reckless short-term actions such as attacking Poland that were likely to cause a general war.

Luftwaffe is also the generic term in German speaking countries for any national military aviation service, and the names of air forces in other countries are usually translated into German as " Luftwaffe " ( e. g. Royal Air Force is often translated as britische Luftwaffe ).

However Göring, as a part of Hitler's inner circle, was to provide enormous financial materials for rearming and equipping the Luftwaffe.

In fact, on the outbreak of war, only 15 percent of the Luftwaffe's aircraft was devoted to ground support operations, exposing a long-held myth that the Luftwaffe was designed for only tactical and operational missions.

Germany imported most of its essential materials for rebuilding the Luftwaffe, in particular rubber and aluminium.

At the start of the war the Luftwaffe had four Luftflotten (" air fleets "), each responsible for roughly a quarter of Germany.

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.

Inevitably, both the Bomber B and Amerika Bomber programs were victims of the continued emphasis of the Wehrmacht's insistence for the Luftwaffe to support the Army as its primary mission, as well as the increasingly devastating results of the RAF Bomber Command at night, and by 1943 the USAAF's Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces ' heavy bomber raids by daylight on the German aviation industry, which catastrophically diminished the Third Reich's overall aviation production capacity later in World War II.

One of the many reasons for the failure of the Luftwaffe in 1940 was that it did not have the operational and material means to destroy the British aircraft industry.

By the time production reached acceptable levels, as so many other factors had for the Luftwaffe late in the war, it was too little too late.

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.

* Forum Discussion on reasons for Luftwaffe Defeat in BoB

* Book – Strategy for defeat: the Luftwaffe 1933 – 1945

* The Luftwaffe Over Germany By Donald Caldwell, Richard Muller – Details of Goring's rant for heavy bombers.

* 1945 – World War II: Ratification in Berlin-Karlshorst of the German unconditional surrender of May 8 in Rheims, France, with the signatures of Marshal Georgy Zhukov for the Soviet Union, and for the Western Headquarters Sir Arthur Tedder, British Air Marshal and Eisenhower's deputy, and for the German side of Colonel-General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff as the representative of the Luftwaffe, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel as the Chief of Staff of OKW, and Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg as Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine.