Luftwaffe period During 1942 the Soviet aircraft industry produced 25,000 aircraft, solely for use against the Germans The VVS also took significant deliveries of Western fighters starting late in the year Total Allied production that year was over 71,000 aircraft By comparison, the Germans produced just 15,000 aircraft of all types, and spread them over three active fronts: North Africa and the Mediterranean, the German homeland, and the Eastern Front The Luftwaffe upheld a wholly tactical support role in the east, while scrambling to develop or replace an air transport capacity it sorely lacked Its loss rate was so high that it never fully replaced its losses The Germans thus lost air superiority around Leningrad and Briansk over the course of 1942 At Kursk, 400 German aircraft faced over 2,000 VVS planes By mid-1943 Soviet aircraft and pilots had closed the early technical and training gaps with their German counterparts Luftwaffe crew skills deteriorated further as Göring and Hitler insisted on replacing combat losses by throwing trainer aircraft and instructors into active service From mid-1943 many Luftwaffe fighter Geschwader were drawn away from the east, to be instead attrited by Western air forces in the Mediterranean, over France, and above Germany The process began well before the Normandy campaign, as the Western Allies made engagement of Luftwaffe fighters and destruction of Germany’s fighter production a top priority of their Combined Bomber Offensive The bulk of German fighters and anti-aircraft artillery, which consumed vast quantities of ammunition, were defending the Reich by September 1943 Hence, despite ramping up production to 25,000 aircraft in 1943, hardly any increase was experienced on the Eastern Front German fighter losses in France and over Germany were so great that by mid-1944, despite greatly expanded production in the most efficient year of the war for the German aircraft industry, the Luftwaffe was no longer a major combat factor on the Eastern Front Similarly, by mid-1944 half of all artillery tubes were located in the homeland, in use as anti-aircraft guns against Western Allied bomber streams The Luftwaffe was on the defensive everywhere; airfields and factories were pounded by enemy air forces that seemed to have more and better planes every month As pilot and crew casualties mounted, the Luftwaffe faced better and more experienced enemy pilots in the east as well as in the west None of that prevented intense personal conflict within its top ranks, or with other armed services of the Wehrmacht An extreme example was the suicide by Göring’s chief of staff in 1943, on grounds that he could no longer work with the erratic Reichsmarschall Göring was indeed impossible to work with, a fact that severely retarded new aircraft designs and impeded production of older ones throughout the war Hitler’s personal interventions and odd theories—for instance, in favor of jet bombers—further aggravated severe irrationalities in aircraft design and production schedules This problem was eased somewhat from 1943 by the succession of Erhard Milch to the position of chief of staff Milch was a technically competent man who greatly increased fighter production into 1944, when Albert Speer took over the aircraft industry and stretched production to even greater levels Improved production was achieved by cutting back on bombers and transports, in favor of ramping up output of earlier model fighters that were already outclassed 686