Stalingrad

fundamental flaws in the whole project condemned it to failure from the start.
    General von Richthofen had warned that they would need six full-sized airfields within the
Kessel
, not just one, and also properly trained ground staff. His fear about the shortage of runways was rapidly justified under bad weather conditions. The best day had been 19 December, when 154 aircraft landed with 289 tons, but good flying days were rare indeed. Weather was not the only problem. The airfield at Pitomnik attracted all the enemy’s attention, so shot-up and crashed aircraft frequently made it unusable for short periods. Their burnt-out metal carcasses were pushed out into the snow beside the runway, forming a ‘widely strewn machine graveyard’. Landing by night was doubly dangerous. The air-defence batteries at Pitomnik had an almost impossible balance to maintain. They needed to use searchlights to pick out Soviet night bombers, but the base of their beams provided a target for Russian artillery.
    The strain on Luftwaffe aircrew was intense. ‘Young and inexperienced aircrews were badly shaken’ by the sights at Pitomnik, above all the miserable condition of the wounded waiting by the side of the runway for evacuation, and the piles of frozen corpses, left by the field hospital there because the ground was frozen too hard to bury them.
    Whatever the Sixth Army’s gratitude for the Luftwaffe’s efforts, exasperation was inevitable. When one consignment was opened and found to contain only marjoram and pepper, Lieutenant-Colonel Werner von Kunowski, the Sixth Army’s Quartermaster, exploded: ‘Which ass was responsible for this load?’ An officer with him joked that at least the pepper could be used in close-quarter combat.
    After the Soviet attack on Tatsinskaya, the transport fleet was greatly reduced, leaving a much smaller pool from which serviceable aircraft could be tasked. Also, the new Ju-52 airbase at Salsk, just over 200 miles from Pitomnik, was close to the maximum operational range, so any aircraft whose engines burned up oil could not be used. In desperation, some of the Luftwaffe’s largest four-engined aircraft – the Focke-Wulf 200 Condor, which could take up to six tons, and the Junkers 290, which could manage a load of up to ten tons – werebrought into service, but they were vulnerable and lacked the solidity of the old ‘Tante Ju’ trimotor. Once Salsk also came under threat, in mid-January, the remaining JU-52S had to move north-west to Zverevo north of Shakhty. This new airfield consisted of a packed-snow runway on open agricultural land. There was no accommodation, so ground crew, control staff and aircrew lived in igloos and tents.
    Icing became an even greater problem in the air, while on the ground, engines became harder and harder to start. Heavy snowfalls often brought bases to a halt, since every plane had to be dug out of drifts. There were few anti-aircraft defences at Zverevo, and on 18 January, Soviet fighters and bombers, coming in eighteen waves during the course of the day, managed to destroy another fifty JU-52S on the ground. This was one of the few really effective operations by Red Army aviation, whose pilots still lacked confidence.
    Richthofen and Fiebig had felt from the beginning that they had no choice but to make the best of a doomed job. They expected little understanding from above. ‘My trust in our leadership has rapidly sunk below zero’, Richthofen told General Jeschonnek, the Luftwaffe chief-of-staff, on 12 December. A week later, on hearing that Goering had told Hitler that the supply situation in Stalingrad was ‘not so bad’, he had written in his diary: ‘Apart from the fact that it would do his figure a power of good to spend a little time in the
Kessel
, I can only assume that my reports either are not read or are given no credence.’
    While Goering did nothing to stint his appetite, General Zeitzler, in a gesture of solidarity with the starved troops in Stalingrad, reduced his own rations to their level. According to Albert Speer, he lost twenty-six pounds within two weeks. Hitler, informed of this diet by Martin Bormann, ordered Zeitzler to return to normal eating. As a concession, Hitler banned champagne and brandy at Führer headquarters ‘in honour of the heroes of Stalingrad’.
    The vast majority of civilians in Germany had little idea of how close the Sixth Army was to final defeat. ‘I hope that you’ll break the encirclement soon,’ a