[8] The air war on the Western Front received the most attention in the annals of the earliest accounts of military aviation, since it produced aces such as Manfred von Richthofen, Ernst Udet, Oswald Boelcke, and Max Immelmann.

Hundreds of Luftwaffe pilots and technical personnel visited, studied, and were trained at Soviet Air Force schools in several locations in Central Russia.

[9] Roessing, Blume, Fosse, Teetsemann, Heini, Makratzki, Blumendaat, and many other future Luftwaffe aces were trained in the USSR in joint Soviet-German schools that were set up under the patronage of Ernst August Köstring.

[10] The National Socialist Flyers Corps (Nationalsozialistisches Fliegerkorps or NSFK) was formed in 1937 to give pre-military flying training to male youths, and to engage adult sport aviators in the Nazi movement.

Wilberg remained in the air staff, and under Walther Wever helped draw up the Luftwaffe's principle doctrinal texts, "The Conduct of the Aerial War" and "Regulation 16".

In World War I, the Fliegertruppe's initial, 1914–15 era Feldflieger Abteilung observation/reconnaissance air units, each with six two-seater aircraft apiece, had been attached to specific army formations and acted as support.

[17] Luftwaffe "Regulation 10: The Bomber" (Dienstvorschrift 10: Das Kampfflugzeug), published in 1934, advocated air superiority and approaches to ground attack tactics without dealing with operational matters.

Despite this Udet helped change the Luftwaffe's tactical direction towards fast medium bombers to destroy enemy air power in the battle zone rather than through industrial bombing of its aviation production.

Many in the Luftwaffe command believed medium bombers to be sufficient power to launch strategic bombing operations against Germany's most likely enemies; France, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.

The Sudeten Crisis highlighted German unpreparedness to conduct a strategic air war (although the British and French were in a much weaker position), and Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe be expanded to five times its earlier size.

It was not always feasible for the army to move heavy artillery over recently captured territory to bombard fortifications or support ground forces, and dive bombers could do the job faster.

Udet merely conveyed the OKL's own dive-bombing capability request to Ernst Heinkel concerning the He 177, who vehemently opposed such an idea, which ruined its development as a heavy bomber.

It has been suggested that the bombing of Guernica was carried out for military tactical reasons, in support of ground operations, but the town was not directly involved in any fighting at that point in time.

"[74] The Luftwaffe defended German-occupied Europe against the growing offensive power of RAF Bomber Command and, starting in the summer of 1942, the steadily building strength of the United States Army Air Forces.

This was particularly apparent with the Sturmböck squadrons, formed to replace the increasingly ineffective twin-engined Zerstörer heavy fighter wings as the primary defence against USAAF daylight raids.

Steadily increasing numbers of the superlative North American P-51 Mustang single-engine fighter, leading the USAAF's bombers into German airspace defeated first the Bf 110 Zerstörer wings, then the Fw 190A Sturmböcke.

[96] The greatest failure for the Kampfgeschwader, however, was being saddled with an aircraft intended as a capable four-engined heavy bomber: the perpetually troubled Heinkel He 177, whose engines were prone to catch fire in flight.

The then-contemporary Blohm & Voss BV 138 Seedrache ("seadragon") flying boat became the Luftwaffe's primary seaborne maritime patrol platform, with nearly 300 examples built; it had a 4,300 km (2,670 mi) maximum range.

The Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor – developed as a civilian airliner – lacked the structural strength for combat maneuvering at lower altitudes, making it unsuitable for use as a bomber in maritime patrol duties.

At the same time Göring regarded any other branch of the German military developing its own aviation as an encroachment on his authority and continually frustrated the navy's attempts to build its own airpower.

The spring 1942 Amerikabomber programme sought to produce strategic bomber designs for the Luftwaffe to directly attack the United States from Europe or the Azores.

The RLM's apparent lack of a dedicated "technical-tactical" department, that would have directly been in contact with combat pilots to assess their needs for weaponry upgrades and tactical advice, had never been seriously envisioned as a critically ongoing necessity in the planning of the original German air arm.

On the front-line combat side of the issue, and for direct contact with the German aviation firms making the Luftwaffe's warplanes, the Luftwaffe did have its own reasonably effective system of four military aviation test facilities, or Erprobungstellen located at three coastal sites – Peenemünde-West (also incorporating a separate facility in nearby Karlshagen), Tarnewitz and Travemünde – and the central inland site of Rechlin, itself first established as a military airfield in late August 1918 by the German Empire, with the four-facility system commanded later in World War II by Oberst Edgar Petersen.

[99] 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,[100] something that the much-anticipated Bomber B design competition was intended to address.

[108] Such "coupled powerplants" were the exclusive choice of power for the Heinkel He 177A Greif heavy bomber, mistasked from its beginnings in being intended to do moderate-angle "dive bombing" for a 30-meter wingspan class, heavy bomber design – the twin nacelles for a pair of DB 606s or 610s did reduce drag for such a combat "requirement", but the poor design of the He 177A's engine accommodations for these twin-crankcase "power systems" caused repeated outbreaks of engine fires, causing the "dive bombing" requirement for the He 177A to be cancelled by mid-September 1942.

[98] Moreover, Luftwaffe leadership from the start poached the training command, which undermined its ability to replace losses,[59] while also planning for "short sharp campaigns",[113] which did not pertain.

[167] Luftwaffe soldiers frequently executed Polish civilians at random with baseless accusations of being "Bolshevik agents", in order to keep the population in line,[168] or as reprisal for partisan activities.

[173] Eugen Hagen, head doctor of the Luftwaffe, infected inmates of Natzweiler concentration camp with typhus in order to test the efficacy of proposed vaccines.

[180] Two attempts, in 1978 and 1983, to prosecute individuals for the bombing of the Wieluń hospital were dismissed by West German judges when prosecutors stated that the pilots had been unable to make out the nature of the structure due to fog.

Several prominent Luftwaffe commanders were convicted of war crimes, including General Alexander Löhr[187] and Field Marshal Albert Kesselring.