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Aviation History
1944
1944 - 0707.PDF
APRIL 6TH, 1944 FLIGHT 367 CONTINENTAL AIR TRANSPORT services, scheduled or otherwise, are operated between the two remaining edges of the Axis, Germany and Ja£an, and no Axis-controlled airlines operate on any overseas routes except those maintained by Japan. While thus Germany's transatlantic services ceased to exist with the outbreak of war, her overseas air empire crumbled down only gradually. That this empire was by no means negligible may be realised from the fact that at the time of the breaking-up of German air transport enterprises in the period between i939-I94i» a net of .9,000 route miles in South America were operated by German-controlled or affiliated enter prises, or companies run by German nationals. In Peru alone the Deutsche Lufthansa Succursal Peru operated internal lines over 1,210 miles, and in 1940, 128,821 miles were flown. On the European continent Germany still continued to maintain a relatively considerable net of air services. In the first eight months of 1939 there was a notable expansion of the Lufthansa activities in an endeavour to tighten-up the link with the newly captured territories. Hew services were established to Austria, Danzig, Bohemia lind the Saar; the night mail routes Berlin ? Frankfurt, Berlin-Cologne and Breslau-Vienna were newly equipped, DENMARK RUMANIA SWEDEN SWITZERLAND K 0 'K. K 1936 H-fta ^ ^ • *"\ 1941 • • • K Comparison of passenger traffic. Each symbol represents about md carried on national air lines. and the important Belgrade-Sofia-Istanbul service was opened. For the first time, too, Focke-Wulf 200 and Ju 903 ap peared in larger numbers* Nevertheless, in the summer of 1939 as many as 49 Lufthansa services were operated with Ju 52 ; four with Fw 200 ; seven with Ju 160, and the rest with Ju86, He 111, Ha 139, Do 26, G.38, FW58, MeM-20, JuF.13 and G.31. With the outbreak of war all night mail services of the Lufthansa were suspended. The centre of gravity of German air transport shifted from the Reich proper to thb area of dominated Europe, and inside Germany the network was drastically thinned out to make possible the operation of lines to war-important countries such as Italy, Scandinavia, South-East Europe and, for a time, Russia. While in June, 1939, out of a total of about 81 passenger and mail services operated by the Lufthansa, 53 were inter-German connections, by 1942 70 per cent, of the net work was situated outside the Reich proper. In the summer of 1939 the Lufthansa served about 22 European countries, and 12 of these services were operated in pool with non-German companies. The mileage of services inside the Reich amounted to about 21,000 miles, whereas that of services to centres outside Germany totalled almost 12,000 miles. The 1942 summer time-table shows that the Lufthansa served 33 large European centres, but only seven of these were cities in Germany proper, as against 32 German cities linked up to the Hansa system in June, 1939. The two most important war routes are the Berlin- Munich-Venice-Rome and the Berlin-Stuttgart-Lyons-Mar seilles-Barcelona-Madrid-Lisbon, linking up at Stuttgart with the Swiss service to Zurich. Both the Balkans and Turkey are connected to the Lufthansa network, and, north ward a service leads from Trondheim via Bodo-Narvik- Tromso-Hammerfest to Kirkeness (920 miles). In 1943 the network was reduced still further, but foi military and administrative reasons a skeleton schedule was still maintained. By June of that year the German network showed a high intensity of services on the south east axis, the main centres of traffic, apart from Berlin, being Vienna, Budapest and Bucharest. Vienna is, in fact, the main junction for Germany's air services to the Balkans, to the Protectorate of Bohemia and to the Rumanian network. The connection from Berlin to Fin land via Danzig, Konigsberg, Kaunas (Lithuania), Riga (Latvia), and the route to Norway continued to operate, as well as the western connection to Italy and Lisbon. Lufthansa or Luftwaffe? It is extremely difficult to draw a line between the official courier services which are likely to predominate, the civilian lines and the transport system maintained by the Luftwaffe. In war generally, and in Germany in particular, regulations, priorities and the monopolising of accommodation have altered the normal aspect of civil air transport. Not even all members of the diplomatic corps can make full use of the Lufthansa services as illustrated by a report in the Slovak (3.2.44) stating that newspapers take a week or ten days to reach the Slo- vakian Legation in Germany from Bratislava, It is known that, in conformity with German war plans, a substantial section of Lufthansa personnel and equipment was militarised to build up the Luftwaffe's transport organisation. According to a Russian estimate one- third of Germany's transport aircraft were taken over by the Luftwaffe before the attack on the U.S.S.R., and it is safe to assume that the pro portion has since increased. During the first 131 days after the attack on Russia, transport aircraft in service with the Wehrmacht-^-many of them on loan from the Lufthansa-^— covered more than 12,750,000 miles and forwarded a total of about 60 million lb. of supplies. As the militarisation of Lufthansa's personnel and equip ment was effected on a basis of a financial agreement with the Luftwaffe, in some way it made up for the loss of other traffic. It is significant that in the first year of war the Lufthansa revenue from flying and other services was smaller by only 4.1 per cent, than in 1938, and had been mainly derived from so-called charters to the Luft waffe. Another feature of the militarisation of the Lufthansa wa.s the taking over of the maintenance and repair workshops by the Luftwaffe, which produced a revenue 41 per cent, higher than in 1938! The Case of a Neutral Swiss national air transport achieved in 1938 the dis tinction of an average number of passengers per aircraft of 7.9, a density higher than that in the U.S. The downward trend caused by the war is best shown by the fact that, compared with the last year of peace, as much as 80 per cent, of the Swissair fleet was lying idle in 1941- Among other difficulties the problem of aviation fuel, priority for which is given to the needs of the air force, has contri buted to a further deterioration of the civil air transport. In 1941 a modest schedule of operations was maintained on the Zurich-Munich route, later expanded to Zurich- Stuttgart-Berlin. The reopening of the Locarno-Rome service remained, however, within the sphere of projects. A typical wartime feature is the jump in the ratio of direct subsidies to total revenue of from T2 per cent, in 1939 to 28 per cent, in 1940. 10,000 passengers
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