Even though it was known that the Luftwaffe in the north was now being directed by the young and energetic General Peltz, the commander who would conduct the `` Little Blitz '' on London in 1944, a major raid on Bari at this juncture of the war was not to be considered seriously.

The Luftwaffe, the German air force, was established, and development begun on ground-attack aircraft and doctrines.

German successes are closely related to the extent to which the German Luftwaffe was able to control the air war in early campaigns in Europe and the Soviet Union.

However, the Luftwaffe was a broadly based force with no constricting central doctrine, other than its resources should be used generally to support national strategy.

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.

While early German tanks, Stuka dive-bombers and concentrated forces were used in the Polish campaign, the majority of the battle was conventional infantry and artillery based warfare and most Luftwaffe action was independent of the ground campaign.

The concept of a blitzkrieg Luftwaffe was challenged by Richard Overy in the late 1970s and by Williamson Murray in the mid-1980s.

The rearmament of the Kriegsmarine was to have been completed in 1949, the Luftwaffe rearmament program was to have been completed in 1942 with a force capable of carrying out strategic bombing using heavy bombers.

After the bombing of Guernica in 1937 and of Rotterdam in 1940, it was commonly assumed that terror bombing was a part of Luftwaffe doctrine.

J. P. Harris states that most Luftwaffe leaders from Goering through the general staff believed as did their counterparts in Britain and the United States that strategic bombing was the chief mission of the air force and that given such a role, the Luftwaffe would win the next war and that:

The Luftwaffe did end up with an air force consisting mainly of relatively short-range aircraft, but this does not prove that the German air force was solely interested in ’ tactical ’ bombing.

In February 1941, Swansea was bombed by the Luftwaffe in a " three nights ' blitz ".

This was just the opportunity the German Luftwaffe, Italian Regia Aeronautica, and the Soviet Union's Red Air Force needed to test their latest aircraft.

Allied fighters, by gaining air superiority over the European battlefield, played a crucial role in the eventual defeat of the Axis, which Reichmarshal Hermann Göring, commander of the German Luftwaffe summed up when he said: " When I saw Mustangs over Berlin, I knew the jig was up.

On April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, Guernica was the scene of the Bombing of Guernica by the Condor Legion of Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe.

As part of the deal in which Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Hermann Göring — future commander of the Luftwaffe and an influential Nazi Party official — was named Interior Minister of Prussia.

On the Eastern Front the USSR was lacking pilots and several French pilots joined the Soviet Union and fought the Luftwaffe in the Normandie-Niemen squadron.

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.

Hermann Göring had promised the Luftwaffe would complete the destruction of the encircled armies, but aerial operations did not prevent the evacuation of the majority of Allied troops ( which the British named Operation Dynamo ); some 330, 000 French and British were saved.

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.

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

Beginning in August 1940, the German Luftwaffe began a series of concentrated aerial attacks ( designated Unternehmen Adlerangriff or Operation Eagle Attack ) on targets throughout the United Kingdom in an attempt to destroy the RAF ( Royal Air Force ) and establish air superiority over Great Britain.

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

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

It also protected Allied shipping from the aerial threat posed by the Luftwaffe.

The leaflet comically shows Hermann Göring, head of the German Luftwaffe, and his supposed reaction to aerial warfare.

Bader was well known to the Luftwaffe and at the time of his capture had been credited with 22 aerial victories.

On 29 May 47, 000 British troops were rescued in spite of the first heavy aerial attack by the Luftwaffe in the evening.

He engaged in aerial combat 825 times while serving with the Luftwaffe.

Axis reverses beginning with Allied routs of overextended German forces in El Alamein and Stalingrad resulted from British and Soviet forces adopting Nazi field strategies, and as the United States became a participant in the war it adopted much the same techniques of aerial attack upon Nazi Germany, if with greater force than the Luftwaffe could ever inflict.

Operation Plunder began at 21: 00 on 23 March after a week-long aerial bombardment of Luftwaffe airfields and the German transport system, involving more than ten thousand Allied aircraft.

Despite their speed, the German jets were too few and produced too late to stop the Allied aerial armadas from simply overwhelming the Luftwaffe and leveling their targets.

During the Second World War, matches at heavily-attended grounds were initially prohibited due to the fear of aerial bombing by the Luftwaffe.

* August 9 – Flying a Dornier Do 215B-5 night fighter, Luftwaffe Oberleutnant Ludwig Becker achieves Germanys first aerial victory employing airborne radar, using a Lichtenstein radar to detect and close with a British Vickers Wellington bomber participating in a raid on Hamburg, Germany, before shooting down the Wellington.

During the predawn hours of the day, a Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 87 " Stuka " dive bomber flown by Leutnant Frank Neubert of I Group, Sturzkampfgeshwader 2, scores the first aerial victory of World War II, shooting down a PZL P. 11c fighter flown by Polish Captain Mieczysław Medwecki.

** Flying a Messerschmitt Bf 109, Luftwaffe fighter pilot Erich Hartmann scores his final aerial victory, shooting down a Soviet Yakovlev Yak-9 fighter over Brno, Slovakia.

The Luftwaffe also began eliminating strategic objectives and bombing cities and civilian population in Poland in an indiscriminate and unrestricted aerial bombardment campaign.

The unit's history began in 1934, when the Luftwaffe, impressed with Oberst ( Colonel ) Theodor Rowehl's aerial reconnaissance missions over Poland, formed a special squadron under Rowehl's lead that was attached to the Abwehr, Germany's military intelligence department.

A Luftwaffe aerial photograph of RAF Manston at the outbreak of war in 1939 when it was still an all-grass airfield

It started with huge aerial bombardments by the Luftwaffe starting on September 1, 1939.

From the very first hours of World War II, Warsaw, the capital of Poland, was a target of an unrestricted aerial bombardment campaign by the German Luftwaffe.

Half of their remaining armor, for example, had been lost during the defensive fighting, and there was a severe lack of fuel and ammunition for the surviving vehicles given that the Luftwaffe was not able to cope with the aerial resupply.