luftwaffe(west german) vs east german airforce

iopener

if it all kicked off back in day the skies over germany either east or west would be the main area for aerial warfare and these two sides would have been going head to head, who would come out on top? forgetting about the rest of nato and soviet block

Geekness1234

Be specific,"back in the day" lasted from the early fifties to the nineties..

iopener

1988 a year before the wall came down.

tac foley

Bearing in mind that about 80% of the Luftstreitkräfte der Nationalen Volksarmee was obsolete by 1989, I think that the Luftwaffe would have wiped them off the face of the earth in very short order. Given that the most up-to-date aircraft in the inventory, the MiG-29, was shown to be a total lemon - the engines seem to have had an in-service life of around twelve hours before needing to be replaced - all the Luftwaffe REALLY had to do was to make a few feints to encourage them to take to the air a few times in any 24-hour period and they were toast. In any case, they only had 24 of them to start with.

I lived in Berlin for three years at the beginning of the 80's, and was part of BRIXMIS, the British Military Mission to the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, and spent a lot of time observing the NVA and their airforce at first-hand and often VERY close-up and personal. Although I was in the Army, and therefore far less susceptible to being impressed by demonstrations of airmanship, I was VERY unimpressed by the EGAF on every occasion I saw them performing in the air. The words 'remote control pilots' come to mind....

All in all, it's a win for the Westies and a definite null points for the opposition.

tac

iopener

If it came down to the real deal ww.3 in the eighties using your logic NATO would have air superiority over the Warsaw pact countries.I thought the soviets gave the east Germans the best military hardware everyone else got second rate material.not that the air war would last to long before the nukes would have been used.thank god it never happened.

Stovepipe

Hi all,
Not too long ago, there was a feature in AF Monthly about a meeting between West German and East German pilots, as part of a formal review of all the equipment absorbed from the old East. The Western pilots were well impressed by the actual flying standard of the EGAF pilots, ie, well able to fly precisely and very technically aware (Russian training has always been heavy on technical matters, especially about individual subsystems of an aircraft, compared to Western training) but they were quite rigid in their tactical flying and less developed in their individual initiative. The Western pilots had respect for the MiG 29 and the Su-22 but regarded their own equipment as superior. EGAL pilots also had significantly less fast jet hours per year and less flight hours over all.One thing that was obvious was that both sides felt a bit odd, to say the least, about the prospect of killing fellow Germans.

regards
Stovepipe

tac foley

iopener wrote: »

If it came down to the real deal ww.3 in the eighties using your logic NATO would have air superiority over the Warsaw pact countries.I thought the soviets gave the east Germans the best military hardware everyone else got second rate material.not that the air war would last to long before the nukes would have been used.thank god it never happened.

Please read my post again. The East German AF only had 24 of the latest aircraft, and each of them needed at least five times more on-the-ground hanger time than their West German opposition. Engines supplied to them were often not fit to be installed as received, if you read the long thread story of the evaluation of the MiG-29 in service with the Luftwaffe after unification.

It is also VERY unlikely that all 24 would ever have been in the air at the same time, even further reducing their alleged air-superiority. Their fittest Luftwaffe opposition, OTOH, consisted of 247 Tornados, including 35 ECR variants.

Of course, as a no doubt avid reader of aeroplane magazines, you have the advantage of me - I was only actually there on the ground watching them doing their 'thing' in CAP and on the gunnery/rocket ranges and reporting my observations up the COC.

tac

banie01

tac foley wrote: »

It is also VERY unlikely that all 24 would ever have been in the air at the same time, even further reducing their alleged air-superiority. Their fittest Luftwaffe opposition, OTOH, consisted of 247 Tornados, including 35 ECR variants.

tac

Agreed!
Soviet/Warsaw pact aircraft of the late Cold war period had notoriously short operational periods between total engine overhaul.
The Soviets at the time built fantastically rugged and capable airframes unfortunately in their rush to adopt Turbofan technology they limited themselves greatly.
The problems they encountered with the RD-33 of the Mig-29 were very similar to the issues the Americans experienced with the f-14s TF-30 engines that almost saw that aircraft cancelled(Engine was not at all suitable for use in a dynamically manuevering fighter aircraft without modification).
In real world terms the Soviets were @18yrs behind the West in Turbofan tech at the time.

The low number and serviceability of top class aircraft available to the East Germans versus the West German with at the time @300 Tornadoes including Marineflieger airframes, @175 F4-F Phantoms(not counting the @90 RF4-E variant) along with upto 1987 the availability of the capable(but not that I'd like to fly it low level) F-104 in large numbers aswell as a huge and very capable multi layer Air defence system along the border.

Coupled with their Soviet inspired doctrine of ubér strict CGI for air combat removing much initiative from their pilots would have led to significant losses against a force with both technical and training superiority(West German participation in Red Flag and other near real training was huge)
And unlike their Eastern brethern, West german pilots were trained to take initiative and exploit opportunity.
i.e rather than be given a set of tasks to be accomplished in a set order with stated tactical approach,
They were given a mission goal and left to achieve it how best they saw fit within their ROE.
Operational planning was kept much closer to the frontline units than it was in Soviet trained forces.
Think of Israeli AF vs Arab(Soviet trained and equipped) Air forces for a likely outcome....

The point remains though that an air force is useless without airbases, and a tank on an airbase is one sure way to put it of action.
NATO wargamers expected Western Europe to be mostly overrun and the war to go nuclear within 7 days of an Warsaw pact attack.
But given the OP's question refers to a solely east\west German conflict.
I think it would be a serious ass kicking for the East.

Stovepipe

Hi there,
Given the woeful serviceability of even the best Russian units' tanks, I doubt very much if they'd have even got out of Germany, let alone get near France or Benelux. Conversely, as has been pointed out many times, the Russian aircraft engines don't have to last long because their in-combat service life wouldn't have been long, anyway. Cynical but true. Western combat aircraft do tend to require huge manhours of maintenance per flight hour. I reckon that the only aircraft left to fight after the first few days would be Harriers, SU-25s and helicopters, as every hard runway would have been knocked out and the survivors would be flying off grass strips and motorways. Someone reckoned that if it had kicked off, a NATO tank would have had a combat life of 4 hours, which doesn't say much for less-capable Russian armour. As one British cynic pointed out on Arrse, as a Milan operator, his lifespan was reckoned at 25 seconds, which was the maximum time of controlled flight of a Milan missile. He reckoned he'd knock out one tank before being killed by the next T-72...

regards
Stovepipe

banie01

Stovepipe wrote: »

Hi there,
Given the woeful serviceability of even the best Russian units' tanks, I doubt very much if they'd have even got out of Germany, let alone get near France or Benelux. Conversely, as has been pointed out many times, the Russian aircraft engines don't have to last long because their in-combat service life wouldn't have been long, anyway. Cynical but true. Western combat aircraft do tend to require huge manhours of maintenance per flight hour. I reckon that the only aircraft left to fight after the first few days would be Harriers, SU-25s and helicopters, as every hard runway would have been knocked out and the survivors would be flying off grass strips and motorways. Someone reckoned that if it had kicked off, a NATO tank would have had a combat life of 4 hours, which doesn't say much for less-capable Russian armour. As one British cynic pointed out on Arrse, as a Milan operator, his lifespan was reckoned at 25 seconds, which was the maximum time of controlled flight of a Milan missile. He reckoned he'd knock out one tank before being killed by the next T-72...

regards
Stovepipe

I agree with you Stovepipe.
But the the point I was making was at the end of my post was in regards to what NATO's publicly released operational planning entailed and expected.
Not what I believed the outcome would be.

In hindsight nowadays, knowing what the actual Russian capabilities and standards were it is easier to dismiss them...
However in the 1980's when the majority believed in the Russian steamroller and their numerical superiority it led to a whole different set of expectations.
What with their every unit being airborne and their Spetsnaz infiltration units everywhere taking over all the infrastructure ala Red Dawn! haha
I also agree with you that it would have boiled down to Heli's, Harriers and frogfoots with perhaps a good show from the Jaguar's too.

Personally I think it would have gone nuclear fairly early in any case with at least tactical warheads and while the Yanks had huge forward deployed assets in Europe at the time.
I think they would have been hard pressed to actually shift over reinforcements in the face of a concerted effort by the soviets to flood the atlantic with anti-ship and anti-air assets.
I think it would have been a 2nd battle of the Atlantic, and while I think that NATO would have prevailed....
It would have been at a huge cost attrition wise.
And in any case the Russians would have been held up most likely in Germany but long before any major thrust westwards by a combination of superior NATO equipment, logistics and tactics compared to the Soviets.

But I'm getting away from the OP's question of a solely East/West Germany slugfest now

Geekness1234

Was it not the overarching goal of the British Military in Europe to last long enough for nuclear exchange to take over,peace talks or massive American reinforcements to flood Europe (before the Russians could)?