Operation Bodenplatte (German: [ˈboːdn̩ˌplatə]; "Baseplate"), launched on 1 January 1945, was an attempt by the German Luftwaffe to cripple Allied air forces in the Low Countries during the Second World War. The goal of Bodenplatte was to gain air superiority during the stagnant stage of the Battle of the Bulge so that the German Army and Waffen-SS forces could resume their advance. The operation was planned for 16 December 1944, but was delayed repeatedly due to bad weather until New Year's Day, the first day that happened to be suitable. It resulted in the destruction of almost 500 Allied airplanes.
Secrecy for the operation was so tight that not all German ground and naval forces had been informed of the operation and some units suffered casualties from friendly fire. British signals intelligence recorded the movement and buildup of German air forces in the region, but did not realise that an operation was imminent.
The operation achieved some surprise and tactical success, but was ultimately a failure. A great many Allied aircraft were destroyed on the ground but replaced within a week. Allied aircrew casualties were quite small, since the majority of Allied losses were grounded aircraft. The Germans, however, lost many pilots who could not be readily replaced.
Post-battle analysis suggests only 11 of the Luftwaffe's 34 air combat Gruppen (groups) made attacks on time and with surprise. The operation failed to achieve air superiority, even temporarily, while the German ground forces continued to be exposed to Allied air attack. Bodenplatte was the last large-scale strategic offensive operation mounted by the Luftwaffe during the war.
Background
The armies of the Western Allies were supported by the Allied Air Forces as they advanced across Western Europe in 1944. The Royal Air Force (RAF) and its Second Tactical Air Force—under the command of Air Marshal Arthur Coningham—moved No. 2 Group RAF, No. 83 Group RAF, No. 84 Group RAF and No. 85 Group RAF to continental Europe in order to provide constant close air support. The RAF harassed the German air, sea and ground forces by hitting strong points and interdicting their supply lines while reconnaissance units apprised the Allies of German movements. With Allied air superiority, the German Army could not operate effectively. The Luftwaffe, equally, found it difficult to provide effective air cover for the German Army. Although German aircraft production peaked in 1944 the Luftwaffe was critically short of pilots and fuel, and lacked experienced combat leaders.
The land battles moved towards the River Rhine, to the east of which lay the German heartland. Most of France had been liberated, as had the Belgian cities Brussels and Antwerp. Although Operation Market Garden had failed in 1944, by 1945 the Allies had overrun most of the southern Netherlands and the Scheldt Estuary. As the ground forces moved across Europe, the Allied tactical air forces moved into new bases on the continent, to continue providing close support. The only limiting factor for the Allies was the weather. As winter came, rain and mud turned airfields into quagmires, so large-scale air and land operations came to a halt.
The situation might well have continued until the spring thaw had the German High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) not launched the Battle of the Bulge on 16 December 1944. This land offensive was intended to improve the German military position by capturing Antwerp and separating the British Army from United States Army forces. Part of the planning for the German land operation required the attack to be conducted under the cover of bad winter weather, which kept the main Allied asset, the Tactical Air Forces, on the ground. It initially succeeded, but the weather also grounded the Luftwaffe for the most part. Nevertheless, the Luftwaffe did manage to put 500 aircraft into the air on 16 December, more than had been achieved for a long time. This first day had been the originally planned date for the strike against Allied airfields, named Operation Bodenplatte. However, the weather proved particularly bad and operations were shut down.
The offensive achieved surprise and much initial success. To counter the attack from the air, the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) handed operational control of its XXIX Tactical Air Command and part of its Ninth Air Force, under the command of Major General Hoyt Vandenberg, to the RAF and Arthur Coningham. On 23 December, the RAF Second Tactical Air Force provided the American forces with much needed support, and helped prevent a German capture of Malmedy and Bastogne. This left the Germans with only the logistical bottleneck of St. Vith to support their operations. The German attack faltered.
The Luftwaffe had been far from absent over the front in December. It flew several thousand sorties over the theatre. Its encounters with the RAF and USAAF had meant heavy losses in matériel and pilots. On the eight days of operations between 17 and 27 December 1944, 644 fighters were lost and 227 damaged. This resulted in 322 pilots killed, 23 captured and 133 wounded. On the three days of operations 23–25 December, 363 fighters were destroyed. None of the Geschwaderkommodoren expected any large-scale air operations by the end of the month.
Plan
In September 1944, Adolf Hitler resolved to recover Germany's deteriorating fortunes by launching an offensive in the West. On 16 September, Hitler directed Generalleutnant Werner Kreipe—Chief of the Luftwaffe's General Staff—to prepare the necessary aircraft for the offensive. On 21 October, Kreipe ordered the air fleet defending the Greater German Reich (Luftflotte Reich) to hand over seven Jagdgeschwader and Schlachtgeschwader to Air Command West (Luftwaffenkommando West) for a future offensive.
On 14 November, Hermann Göring—Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe—ordered the 2. Jagddivision and the 3. Jagddivision to prepare their units for a large-scale ground attack operation in the Ardennes. Preparations were to be complete by 27 November. The attack was to be carried out on the first day of the offensive.
Generalmajor Dietrich Peltz was to plan the operation having been appointed C-in-C of II. Fliegerkorps on 8 December. Luftwaffenkommando West had ordered all units—except Jagdgeschwader 300 and 301—to attend the main planning meeting in Flammersfeld on 5 December. On 14 December, Peltz officially initiated plans for a major blow against the Allies in northwest Europe. Peltz was not a fighter pilot; his combat record was as a dive bomber pilot, flying the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka. His experiences in Poland, in France, and during the early campaigns on the Eastern Front had moulded him into an outstanding ground attack specialist, making him an ideal candidate for planning Bodenplatte.
On 15 December, this plan was worked out with the help of the Luftwaffe's Jagd-Geschwaderkommodore, among them Gotthard Handrick (Jagdabschnittsführer Mittelrhein; Fighter Sector Leader Middle Rhine), Walter Grabmann and Karl Hentschel, commanders of 3. and 5. Jagddivision respectively. It was originally scheduled to support the Battle of the Bulge, the German Army's offensive, which began 16 December 1944. However, the same bad weather that prevented the RAF and USAAF from supporting their own ground forces also prevented the Luftwaffe from carrying out the operation. It was therefore not launched until 1 January 1945. By this time, the German Army had lost momentum owing to Allied resistance and clearing weather, which allowed Allied Air Forces to operate. The German Army attempted to restart the attack by launching Operation Northwind (Unternehmen Nordwind). The Luftwaffe was to support this offensive through Bodenplatte.
The plan of Bodenplatte called for a surprise attack against 17 Allied air bases in Belgium, the Netherlands and France. The object was to destroy or cripple as many Allied aircraft, hangars and airstrips as possible. Every fighter and fighter-bomber Geschwader (Wing) currently occupied with air defence along the Western Front was redeployed. Additional night-fighter units (Nachtjagdgeschwader) and medium bomber units (Kampfgeschwader) acted as pathfinders. The strike formations themselves were mostly single-engine Messerschmitt Bf 109 and Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighters.
However, in a blunder, the planners had set flight paths that took many units over some of the most heavily defended areas on the continent, namely the V2 launch sites around The Hague. These sites were protected by large numbers of German anti-aircraft artillery (AAA) units. At the turn of 1944/45 Air Command West had 267 heavy and 277 medium or light AAA batteries, and in addition to this there were 100 Kriegsmarine AAA batteries along the Dutch coast. Most of these lay in the sector of the 16th AAA Division, with its control station at Doetinchem, 15 mi (24 km) northeast of Arnhem. Some of the AAA units had been warned about the air operation but were not kept up to date with developments about changing timetables and the flight plan of German formations. As a result, one quarter of the German fighter units lost aircraft to friendly fire before the attacks could be initiated.
After five years of war and heavy attrition many of the Luftwaffe's pilots were inexperienced and poorly trained, deficient in marksmanship and flight skills. There was a shortage of experienced instructors, and many of the training units were forced to fly front-line operations in order to bolster the front-line Jagdgeschwader. Aviation fuel supplies were also at a premium, limiting the duration of training. Long-range Allied fighters exacerbated this situation by shooting down many training aircraft. By late 1944 there were no safe areas in which pilots could be trained without the possibility of air attack. The result was a "vicious circle": poorly trained pilots were quickly lost in combat or accidents, and the need to replace them put more pressure on the training system. Allied personnel who witnessed the attacks remarked on the poor aim of the strafing aircraft, and many of the Luftwaffe aircraft shot down by Allied anti-aircraft fire were caught because they were flying too slowly and too high.
The plan called for strict radio silence and secrecy in order to maintain surprise. Maps were also only half complete, identified only enemy installations, and left out flight paths, lest the document fall into Allied hands enabling them to trace the whereabouts of German fighter bases. Most commanders were also refused permission to brief their pilots until moments before take-off. This created operational confusion. Commanders got across only the bare essentials of the plan. When the operation got under way, many German pilots still did not understand what the operation was about, or what exactly was required of them. They were convinced it was just a reconnaissance in force over the front, and were happy to follow their flight leaders on this basis.
Targets and order of battle
It is unclear whether all of the following were deliberately targeted. Evidence suggests that Grimbergen, Knocke and Ophoven were targeted in error, as was Heesch. In all, the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (OKL) deployed 1,035 aircraft from several Jagdgeschwader (JG—fighter wings) Kampfgeschwader (KG—bomber wings), Nachtjagdgeschwader (NJG—night fighter wings) and Schlachtgeschwader (SG—ground attack wings); of these, 38.5% were Bf 109s, 38.5% Fw 190As, and 23% Fw 190Ds.
Below is the German target list:
Codenames
Following the Operation Bodenplatte raids, the Allies retrieved several log-books from crashed German aircraft. In several of these, the entry "Auftrag Hermann 1.1. 1945, Zeit: 9.20 Uhr" was translated as "Operation Hermann to commence on 1 January 1945, at 9:20am." This led the Allies to believe the operation itself was named Hermann for Hermann Göring. Five further different codes were used for the attack:
- Varus: Indicating that the operation was "a go" and that it would take place within 24 hours of the Varus order being given.
- Teutonicus: Authority to brief the pilots and to arrange for the aircraft to be armed and ready at the edge of the airfield.
- Hermann: Giving the exact date and time of the attack.
- Dorothea: Indicating a delay in the attack.
- Spätlese ("late harvest"): Cancelling of the attack after formations are airborne.
Allied intelligence
Allied intelligence failed to detect the German intention. In Ultra transcripts, there were only a few indications of what was happening on the other side of the front. On 4 December 1944, II Jagdkorps had ordered stockpiling for navigational aids, such as "golden-rain" flares and smoke bombs. Allied intelligence made no written observations of this communication. They also disregarded communications to Junkers Ju 88 groups regarding the use of flares when leading formations. Intelligence concluded that these instructions were designed for a ground support mission rather than an interception operation. This was reasonable, but no indications of possible ground targets were given.
On 20 December, a 3. Jagddivision message was intercepted confirming that the locations for emergency landing grounds during a "special undertaking" had remained unchanged. This was a clear indication that something was amiss, but Allied intelligence did not comment on it. It also ignored more messages indicating that low-level attacks were being practised. Allied intelligence, by 16 December, had monitored the reshuffling of both German Army and Luftwaffe formations opposite the American-held front at the Ardennes. Yet nothing major was suspected.