On the morning of 1 January 1945 hundreds of German fighters flew low over the Low Countries and attacked Allied airfields in Belgium, the Netherlands and France. Operation Bodenplatte was meant to cripple Allied tactical air power during the Battle of the Bulge. It destroyed a large number of Allied aircraft, most of them on the ground, but the Luftwaffe lost so many pilots that its fighter force in the West never recovered.
A plan born in the Ardennes
Germany opened its offensive in the Ardennes on 16 December 1944, and the air attack was first planned for that same day. Bad weather forced one delay after another. By the time the skies cleared on New Year's Day, the Ardennes offensive had already failed, and the air attack had lost much of its purpose. The story of the ground battle is told in our article on the Battle of the Bulge.1
The plan was drawn up by Generalmajor Dietrich Peltz. According to the historian John Rickard, it replaced an earlier idea from Adolf Galland, the general of the fighter arm, who had wanted to mass his fighters against the American heavy bombers. Peltz chose instead a single surprise blow against the Allied tactical air forces on their own airfields. Many of the German pilots were inexperienced, so Ju 88 night fighters flew with the formations as pathfinders.2
The attack
The German formations struck more than a dozen airfields, among them Brussels-Evere and Melsbroek, Sint-Truiden and Asch in Belgium, Eindhoven in the Netherlands, and Metz-Frescaty in France. Some groups found their targets and caught rows of parked aircraft. Others failed to find their target (JG 6 never found Volkel), attacked the wrong airfield or ran into Allied fighters already in the air.3
The Royal Air Force Museum puts the German force at about 800 aircraft. John Rickard describes several groups losing aircraft before they reached their targets: JG 2 lost more than a dozen on the way in, and part of SG 4 came under flak fire before it reached its rendezvous point.4
Counting the losses
Allied losses are hard to pin down, and every total is an estimate. John Rickard gives official RAF and USAAF figures of about 173 aircraft destroyed and 137 damaged on the ground, which probably leave out some American losses, and a consensus estimate of about 300 destroyed and 200 damaged. The Royal Air Force Museum gives about 465 Allied aircraft destroyed or damaged. Because most were hit on the ground, Allied aircrew losses were small: Rickard counts about ten pilots killed in their aircraft.5
The German losses fell on the people the Luftwaffe could least afford to lose. Rickard gives 143 pilots killed or missing, 70 captured and 21 wounded. Among the casualties were three Geschwaderkommodore, five Gruppenkommandeure and fourteen Staffelkapitäne, the experienced leaders who held the fighter units together. The Royal Air Force Museum puts German aircraft losses at more than 220.6
Why it mattered
Bodenplatte achieved surprise, but poor training and poor coordination undid much of it. It did not give the Germans control of the air even for a few days, and the Allies replaced their lost aircraft quickly. Rickard calls the attack well planned but a costly failure, and a blow from which the German fighter force never recovered. In the last months of the war the Luftwaffe could no longer mount a serious challenge to Allied air power over the Western Front.7
Also on this day
- 1586: Battle of Santo Domingo. English soldiers and sailors led by Francis Drake stormed and captured Santo Domingo, the Spanish-held city on Hispaniola, in one of the first actions of the Anglo-Spanish War.
