Oregon Chapter
8th Air Force
Historical Society
Preserving the history of the Mighty 8th
Luftwaffe Information
Nations at war try to understand, anticipate, and counter what their enemy is going to do. Intelligence gathering by any means available was used to try and understand the other side.
The US had many levels of intelligence gathering from the capturing enemy soldier at the front to see what unit they belonged to, radio intercepts, reading captured documents, all the way back to the computer lab back in the USA (yes, the IBM sorters and counting machines were in effect mechanical computers) to try and crack both coded messages, operational tactics, command structure, new equipment, and where units were located.
Found in an antique shop,
this is a photo
of an unknown Luftwaffe
sergeant, Unteroffizier,
of the German Air Force.
It had been ripped out
of an album and sold to
an antique dealer.
During World War Two the US Military printed up a Technical Manual (TM) on the German military called TM-E-30-451 and published it in March of 1945. This 635 page book covered everything about the German military: field kitchens, infantry equipment, aircraft, tanks, insignia, medals, tactics, organizational structure and so on. This FM is where these Luftwaffe information came from.
These are all in PDF format and are around 1/2 meg in size.
- Luftwaffe Uniforms (part 1, PDF) Showing field, mountain, parachutist and officer blue style uniforms.
- Luftwaffe Uniforms (part 2, PDF) Summer, desert, winter, fatigue uniforms.
- Luftwaffe Insignia (part 1,PDF) High level officers and enlisted rank.
- Luftwaffe Insignia (part 2, PDF) Low level enlisted, officer & NCO candidates, Engineering Corps.
- Luftwaffe Admin colors (PDF) Color flashes behind rank marks used to denote what branch within the Luftwaffe they are in, administrative officers.
- Luftwaffe Badges (PDF) Pilot wings, AA badges, patches and so on to show qualifications within the German Air Force.
- Luftwaffe Chain of Command (PDF) Organization chart of the of a typical Luftflotte.
- Luftwaffe High Command structure (PDF) Showing the organization as from the German Air Ministry organization.
- German Aircraft Production World War II Webpage Format
- German Aircraft Losses (JPG)
As time permits other technical and statistical data about the Luftwaffe will be placed within this section. The same will be done for the 8th Air force type information and will be laid out in the same pattern.