A.I.12 Reports

From 12 O'Clock High!:

TAAVI
estonains in luftwaffe
Sat Mar 10 19:32:28 2024


i would like do get more info about estonians in luftwaffe. if you have any mail me.

From TOCH!:

Steve Coates
Estonians in the Luftwaffe
Sun Mar 11 00:25:27 2024


A.I.12 Report P.10 - Non-Germans in the German Air Force - to be found at the PRO - AIR 40/2376 - contains a list (by name, rank, date of birth) of all commissioned
officers of Estonian origin - probably 80 or so in total. Regrettably no unit details are given. The following other nationalties are also included in this Report - Danish / Italian /
Croats / Latvians / Lithuanians - No French I'm afraid.

The following comes from within a thread on 12 O'Clock High!:

Larry deZeng
French Document Captures?
Mon Aug 27 13:52:51 2024


Steve and Rabe Anton -

Rabe, you summarized the matter in a nutshell as no one else could. I can only confirm your Précis. Representatives of the Free French forces served with the Allied enemy document recovery teams at one level or another during the last year of the war. Very clear instructions dictated that all "captures" of Luftwaffe origin were to be placed in or remain in A.I.12 (Post-Hostilities) custody and assembled at the captured documents centre on Monck Street in London. This included anything picked up by the Free French. There is ample archival evidence to indicate that these rules were following across France and into the Reich, as well as during the summer-fall of 1945 in Germany. As far as anything that might have been taken following the surrender of the holdout Atlantic fortresses along the Bay of Biscay is concerned, I can only speculate that this material was forwarded to London also. Perhaps some of our French participants can further enlighten us on this matter.
Cheers,
(Larry)

From 12 O'Clock High!:

CJE
Luftwaffe logistics
Tue Sep 24 11:38:08 2024
80.14.218.167

Is there any book dealing with the Luftwaffe logistics during the last months of the war (say, 1945)?
How were ammunition, bombs, fuel, spares... brought to front-line units?
When air units were forced to move back to a less exposed airfield, did they find all they needed to carry on further missions?
Which organization was in charge of supplies?

Thanks.

From TOCH!:

Larry deZeng
Nachschub
Tue Sep 24 13:48:20 2024
152.163.189.70

There are a fairly large number of studies on this subject that were done by the joint British-American A.I.12 (Post Hostilities) team under the British Air Ministry. They systematically studied every nook and cranny of the Luftwaffe's logistics or Nachschub infrastructure and then wrote lengthy (20 to 60 pages each) monographs on the individual subjects (supplying of airfields, provisioning with munitions, repair of aircraft, provisioning of spare parts, provisioning of rations, etc., etc.). Copies of these c. 150 studies, most of which were written during 1945 and 1946, can be found at PRO London, NARA WashDC and at AFHRA Maxwell AFB (Montgomery, Alabama).

HTH,

Larry

From TOCH!:

CJE
If I may...
Tue Sep 24 15:20:42 2024
217.128.157.101

Would you happen to have the references of the PRO records?
Thanks.

From TOCH!:

Steve Coates
Steven.Coates1@btinternet.com
A.I.12 Reports
Tue Sep 24 20:33:01 2024
213.1.60.234

Chris,

A number are available as part of AIR40/2376. I can't say that I recall seeing any on this topic within this file but I'm at the PRO on Saturday, so I'll have a look for you.

From TOCH!:

CJE
That's nice of you! Thanks. (n/t)
Wed Sep 25 03:44:16 2024
81.49.6.221

From TOCH!:

Larry deZeng
A few titles......
Tue Sep 24 21:51:11 2024
152.163.188.65

A.I.12/USAFE/M.24/5 Sep 45: "Aircraft Maintenance and Repair Units" (in addition to listing units, provides a detailed description and analysis of exactly what each type of unit did);
A.I.12/USAFE/M.53/6 Oct 45: "Installations for the Supply of Ammunition" (same comments as above);
A.I.12/USAFE/M.66/1 Nov 45: "The Organization of G.A.F. Supply: Part VIII - G.A.F. Equipment Issuing Stations" (same comments as above);
A.I.12/USAFE/M.88/27 Jan 46: "The Organization of G.A.F. Supply: Part XII - G.A.F. Air Parks" (same comments as above);
A.I.12/USAFE/Y.13/Nov 44: "Functions of an Airfield Regional Command" (comments as above);
A.I.12/USAFE/Y.21/n.d.: "Organization of G.A.F. Medical Services" (comments as above);
A.I.12/USAFE/Y.27/n.d.: "G.A.F. Works Organization" (comments as above);
A.I.12/USAFE/Y.36/5 May 45: "Organization of Motor Transport in the German Air Force" (comments as above).

Others cover fuel, munitions, etc., as I mentioned earlier. But these will give you an idea of the general subject matter covered. As far as published books are concerned, I don't think you will find much on what you are looking for. I've never seen anything published on the Luftwaffen-Nachschubdienst, and I've been looking for over 30 years. It's a VERY esoteric subject that few have any interest in.

HTH,

Larry

From TOCH!:

CJE
Good. That's a start. Thanks (n/t)
Wed Sep 25 03:45:06 2024
81.49.6.221

From TOCH!:

Kari Lumppio
A.I.12/...: "Aircraft Maintenance and Repair Units"
Tue Sep 24 22:49:21 2024
193.229.6.165

Servus!

Are You able to give any insight of the coverage (location and periodwise) of the report mentioned in the title?

I am very interested in LW depots in Estonia and Latvia. Anecdotal references tell about depots in the estonian cities Tallinn (Reval) and Tartu (Dorpat), but I haven't been able to find any data of them (Well, Reval depot did overhaul NSG 11 planes: Ar 66C, He 50 and Fokker CVE). I would guess that at Riga, Latvia would also have been a depot as it served as longtime base for example KG 53, 4./NJG100 and other units flying bomber types.

At Estonian National Archives there is nothing of these organizations. There is only dozen or so pages of Luftwaffe material alltogether in the archive. Fortunately Estonian AF (1918-1940) is better covered.

I thank in advance.

Regards,
Kari

From TOCH!:

Larry deZeng
Re: A.I.12/...: "Aircraft Maintenance and Repair Units"
Wed Sep 25 13:42:13 2024
205.188.209.173

Kari -

These reports just list the units by type and provide a general overview of what they did. They do not give historical details about the individual units, i.e., exactly where in Tallinn or Riga they were located, the time period they were there, the specific aircraft they worked on, number of personnel and type of workshop equipment they had, names of the commanders and key people, etc. There were 1,000 of more of these aircraft maintenance and repair units during the war and, except for a few, I am afraid that the history of each one is now lost for all time due to the mass destruction of Luftwaffe records in 1945.

Larry

The A.I.12 department of the Air Ministry produced the following German-English translation manual:

Manual of German Air Force Terminology: German-English

For more information about the manual and where a copy may be purchased, the reader is referred to the topic "German-English dictionaries/manuals of German military and scientific terminology" on the "References & Reference Materials" forum.

The cover of the manual states: "Compiled by Air Ministry, A.1.12. As this is different from A.I.12, I asked Larry deZeng whether there were really two different organizations. Larry replied:

"To answer your question, there was only A.I. 12 (as in Alpha India Twelve). A.I. stands for Air Intelligence, a huge department of 1,500+ souls within the British Air Ministry. The "12" was the Post-Hostilities section, which was concerned with seizing and cataloguing Luftwaffe documents and publications, interviewing leading P/W personalities, writing monographs on hundreds of subjects concerning the Luftwaffe, etc. A.I. 12 was 65% RAF and 35% USAAF personnel, mostly officers, and at peak in summer 1945 probably totaled c. 750 people. They did a super job, and if it were not for their efforts we would not know nearly as much as we do about the wartime Luftwaffe."

Thanks, Larry. I must thus conclude that the error was likely at the original printer. Probably presented with a single vertical line, he had to choose between a 1 and an I and simply chose the wrong one.

Regards,
Richard

Originally Posted by Richard T Eger

[...]
A.I.12/USAFE/M.24/5 Sep 45: "Aircraft Maintenance and Repair Units" (in addition to listing units, provides a detailed description and analysis of exactly what each type of unit did);
A.I.12/USAFE/M.53/6 Oct 45: "Installations for the Supply of Ammunition" (same comments as above);
A.I.12/USAFE/M.66/1 Nov 45: "The Organization of G.A.F. Supply: Part VIII - G.A.F. Equipment Issuing Stations" (same comments as above);
A.I.12/USAFE/M.88/27 Jan 46: "The Organization of G.A.F. Supply: Part XII - G.A.F. Air Parks" (same comments as above);
A.I.12/USAFE/Y.13/Nov 44: "Functions of an Airfield Regional Command" (comments as above);
A.I.12/USAFE/Y.21/n.d.: "Organization of G.A.F. Medical Services" (comments as above);
A.I.12/USAFE/Y.27/n.d.: "G.A.F. Works Organization" (comments as above);
A.I.12/USAFE/Y.36/5 May 45: "Organization of Motor Transport in the German Air Force" (comments as above).
[...]

Hello!

Does anybody have an electronic version of the publications listed above?