Demyansk: Supply the Pocket From the Air?
, nicknamed Fritz, is summoned urgently to the Eastern Front. A career officer who came up through the flying schools and instrument flying, he has the reputation of a methodical organiser of the Luftwaffe's transport units. The 's winter counter-offensive has just closed a ring around the German 2nd Army Corps: nearly 100,000 soldiers are cut off in the Demyansk pocket, south of Lake Ilmen, severed from every overland supply route.
The orders from Berlin are absolute: hold the position. has promised that the Luftwaffe will feed the pocket from the air, and the task falls to Morzik. The arithmetic is harsh. The encircled troops need hundreds of tonnes of food, ammunition and fuel every day. The available are few, worn out, scattered between the schools and other fronts; the airstrips are frozen, snowstorms frequent, and Soviet fighters are beginning to prowl the approach corridors.
Morzik must decide how to direct the transport effort. He can concentrate the entire Ju 52 fleet on the single Demyansk axis to sustain the pocket at all costs; split his aircraft between Demyansk and the equally encircled garrison at Kholm, further south; or judge the airlift unsustainable over time and press the command for an overland breakout before the reserves run dry.
Demyansk, February 1942, chief of air transport of Luftflotte 1: how should the 100,000 encircled men be supported from the air?
Morzik mounted a large-scale airlift centred on Demyansk. His formations flew more than 33,000 sorties and delivered nearly 65,000 tonnes of supplies and 30,500 reinforcements, flying out tens of thousands of wounded in return. When Soviet fighters intensified, he had his Ju 52 fly in tight groups at higher altitude under escort. The pocket held until an overland corridor was re-established on 18 May 1942. The success came at a price: about 265 aircraft lost, including 106 Ju 52, and 387 airmen. Morzik received the Knight's Cross in April 1942. But this successful resupply of some 100,000 men, lightly contested in the air, forged a false precedent: in late 1942 Göring invoked it to promise the same rescue for the 6th Army encircled at Stalingrad — a disaster where the Luftwaffe would fail catastrophically.
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