well, my point was, those guys were nothing if not logistics planners. They had a plan. And it worked for awhile. Sure it was 1942-43 but if anything aircraft were easier to maintain then, and the jump was only a couple hundred miles.

What happened was it went on too long, and everything degraded –the birds and crews wore out, Red Army encroached ever closer with more & better interceptors, and daily tonnage just went down and down. Sixth Army pretty much starved into submission.

But in the beginning, it was doable as all get-out. And those old Junkers trimotors were maintainable by two guys with some tacklebox tools.

Overconfidence in the airbridge had informed the decision to hold Stalingrad rather than breakout of a light encirclement while it still could. Then by the time the airbridge had to admit it couldn’t keep up, 6th Army was wintered in, weak, and the Red encirclement had grown five times stronger.

Result, total surrender, 200,000 top troops lost (half POWs, only a few thousand ever made it home, 5 or 10 years later) and dozens of divisions of best armor, transport, mech & arty, plus a thousand aircraft & crew.

Turning point of the Eastern front. What it took from German arms it gave to Russian. Whipping Fritz in a big battle –finally –set the whole Red Army and Russian people on fire for victory –rather than just survival another day.

Before Stalingrad, Hitler had the Reds back on their heels, a negotiated settlement his for the asking, which would’ve ceded him a Germany-sized hunk of Russia.

After Stalingrad, the German Army & nation were the ones wanting to survive, and the Reds wanted Berlin. Paris, Rome, London, and New York too, but that’s another story.

Hermann Goering, you see, had had that good plenary meeting, where ebullient and in fine voice, he had gained for his Luftwaffe the prize of being the savior of Sixth Army.