The chapters in this section are primarily by Hubertus Hitschhold, Galland’s air-to-ground counterpart as General der Schlachtflieger and, like him, a cooperative subject of the APWIU’s work. Galland also contributes, for while he is usually associated with air-air combat, he started the war off in air-ground missions, flying Hs 123 biplanes in Poland in 1939, so he was aware of both the importance and the limitations of the Luftwaffe fighter force’s air-ground missions.
One of the key distinctions seen in this section is the difference between fighter-bomber and ground attack units and tactics. While the terms are often used interchangeably in English, reflecting USAAF and RAF practice in the Second World War, the Germans saw these as distinct missions and aircraft. Fighter-bombers also fell under Galland’s inspectorate responsibilities (which is why he writes about them and Bar provides his usual description of a typical fighter-bomber mission), while the specialized ground attack units were Hitschhold’s concern. There was, of course, considerable overlap between the two, and fighters would also carry out ground attack missions, as seen in the chapter by Gordon Gollob and in Galland’s repeated regrets that the fighter reserves he built up by 1944 were fed into the fighting in France after D-Day and lost without influencing the ground battle.
The air-ground mission required fighter aircraft; aircraft such as the Ju 87 Stuka dive-bomber that proved highly effective in the opening years of the war became increasingly non-survivable. As a result, there is little in this section about the early ‘Stuka years’ of German air-ground operations. These accounts do show that, far from being tied to the Army, as often portrayed in English-language sources, Luftwaffe air-ground operations were highly independent.