German Luftwaffe fighter jet in India

  • last year

Or is this just an Eurofighter typhoon fighter, as viewer sohag tiger tells us it is!?

Luftwaffe is the aerial warfare branch of the German Armed Forces. The term luftwaffe is also the generic German term for an air force and it is the name of both the Wehrmacht air force as well as the post-World War II Bundeswehr air force. The first Luftwaffe was founded in 1935 with many of its leaders having served in the World War I-era Luftstreitkräfte which had been disbanded under the term of the Treaty of Versailles. After the defeat of the Third Reich the Luftwaffe was disbanded in 1946. A new Bundeswehr Luftwaffe was founded in 1956 and remains as the German air force to the present day.

The German Luftwaffe was one of the strongest, most doctrinally advanced and most battle-experienced air forces in the world when World War II started in Europe in September 1939. Officially unveiled in 1935, in violation of the Treaty of Versailles, its purpose was to support Adolf Hitler's "Blitzkrieg" across Europe. The aircraft that were to serve in the Luftwaffe were of a new age and technically superior to that of most other nations in the 1930s. Types like the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka and Messerschmitt Bf 109 came to symbolise German air power.

The Luftwaffe became an essential component in the German military campaigns. Operating in support of ground forces, it helped the German armies to conquer the bulk of the European continent in a series of short and decisive campaigns in the first nine months of the war. It experienced its first defeat by the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the Battle of Britain in 1940. Despite this setback the Luftwaffe remained formidable and in June 1941 embarked on Hitler's quest for an empire in Eastern Europe by invading the Soviet Union, with much initial success. However, the Luftwaffe's striking victories in the Soviet Union were brought to a halt in the Russian winter of 1941--42.

Having failed to achieve victory in the Soviet Union in 1941 or 1942, the Luftwaffe was drawn into a war of attrition which extended to North Africa and the Channel Front.

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