Fliegerführer Irak at Mosul

On 13 May 1941 the first Messerschmitt Bf 110 heavy fighters and Heinkel He 111 bombers, bearing Iraqi markings on their wings, landed at the airfield of Mosul in northern Iraq. They formed the core of Fliegerführer Irak – “Air Command Iraq” – a small Luftwaffe group that Hitler had agreed to send to the aid of the government of Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, which had been fighting the British for eleven days. The aircraft had flown from Greece by way of Rhodes and the airfields of French Syria, which the Vichy government had opened to the Germans. On the same day the first train carrying arms from French depots reached Mosul from Aleppo in Syria. The Axis help that Baghdad had been awaiting since April had arrived at last, but it was late and so meagre that within two weeks almost nothing was left of the German group.

Berlin’s belated decision

From the outset Rashid Ali’s government had counted on the Germans. As early as April, after the coup in Baghdad, Berlin assured the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, and the Iraqi government that it would recognise the independence of the Arab countries and supply arms, if only a way could be found to deliver them. No way was found: the USSR would not allow transit, it was awkward to ask Turkey, and throughout the second half of April the German Foreign Ministry pondered what exactly to do. When, on 2 May, the British themselves – to the Germans’ surprise – opened the fighting at Habbaniya, Berlin was completely unprepared.

Only then did matters gather pace. On 3 May the foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, obtained Hitler’s consent to send Fritz Grobba, the Reich’s pre-war envoy to Iraq, secretly to Baghdad to direct the whole aid effort on the spot. It was soon decided that, since ground troops could not be moved there, Iraq would be helped from the air. On 6 May Colonel Werner Junck – a fighter ace of the First World War who in the 1920s had been an instructor at the secret German flying school at Lipetsk in the USSR – was ordered in Berlin to lead a small group of aircraft to Iraq. After a conversation with Hermann Göring he was appointed Fliegerführer Irak, and he received his instructions from the Luftwaffe chief of staff, General Hans Jeschonnek, who exercised general supervision over the operation. After its commander the group was also known as Sonderkommando Junck. Formally it was to form part of the German military mission in Iraq, but its men answered to the Luftwaffe command, not to the High Command of the Wehrmacht.

The forces allotted to Junck were token: a squadron (Staffel) of about twelve Bf 110s from 4. Staffel of the heavy fighter wing ZG 76, and a squadron of about twelve He 111s from the bomber wing KG 4, together with a dozen or so Junkers Ju 52 transports and a few four-engined Ju 90s to carry men and equipment. Most of the transports, moreover, had to be handed back almost at once, because the airborne landing on Crete was then being prepared in Greece. The British official history, drawing on German documents, states that 14 Bf 110s and 7 He 111s were planned. That was as much as the Luftwaffe could spare while it was simultaneously preparing the blow against Crete and moving its main forces east for the planned war against the USSR.

The route through Syria

Aircraft of limited range could reach Iraq from Greece only by staging, and the only airfields on the route lay in Syria and Lebanon, French mandates subject to the Vichy government. Here the Germans were helped by Admiral François Darlan, since February deputy prime minister and Pétain’s designated successor, who saw in rapprochement with the Reich a chance to ease the terms of the armistice: lower occupation costs, the release of some prisoners, freer movement across the demarcation line. At the beginning of May he held talks in Paris with the Reich’s ambassador, Otto Abetz, and by 6 May the Vichy government had agreed to the German plan of aid for Iraq. The French were to release part of the armament, aircraft included, from the depots in Syria sealed under the supervision of the armistice commission, to let arms shipments pass through their territory, and to make available to the Luftwaffe an airfield in northern Syria at which aircraft from Rhodes could land. In return Darlan demanded the recall of the German emissary Werner Otto von Hentig, whom the French suspected of working against their position in the Levant; he was replaced by the diplomat Rudolf Rahn, who was to organise a supply base in Syria for Iraq. The French High Commissioner in the Levant, General Henri Dentz, carried out Vichy’s orders. On 11 May Darlan discussed co-operation with Hitler at Berchtesgaden, and the agreements on Syria, Bizerta and Dakar, subsequently worked out in Paris, were signed on 27–28 May as the so-called Paris Protocols; the part concerning Syria, however, had been carried out since the beginning of the month.

Diplomats and scouts reached Iraq first. Grobba, travelling under an assumed name, flew in via Aleppo and was in Baghdad on 11 May. Three aircraft of the reconnaissance party of Major Axel von Blomberg, son of the former war minister Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg, landed at Damascus airfield. Blomberg was to prepare for the arrival of Junck’s group, co-ordinate its operations with the Iraqi command and organise a unit of volunteers from the Arab countries under German command. On 11 May he flew to Mosul, and the next morning, as his He 111 came in low to land at Baghdad, Iraqi soldiers opened fire on it from the ground. The aircraft landed, but Blomberg was dead, shot in the head. That is the date of his death given by the British official history and some German literature; more recent English-language publications give 15 May. The death of the liaison officer from an Iraqi bullet before the group had even begun operating was an ill omen for the whole undertaking.

Mosul

The main force flew to Iraq in several waves via Rhodes, Aleppo, Damascus and the oasis of Palmyra. According to a summary cited in the literature, the transfer took about 36 hours and covered nearly 2,000 kilometres. On 13 May the core of the group was at Mosul, several hundred kilometres north of Baghdad, where the Germans took over the Iraqi air force’s airfield. That same day a British aircraft for the first time encountered a German fighter over Mosul, and the command at Habbaniya received confirmation of reports that the Germans had appeared at Syrian airfields. More aircraft arrived over the following days. On 14 May two overloaded He 111s with damaged undercarriages had to be left at Palmyra, where British fighters strafed them, and on 15 May Junck himself flew into Mosul with further aircraft. By the end of that day he had 12 Bf 110s, 5 He 111s, 3 Ju 52s, a few light liaison aircraft and a platoon of anti-aircraft guns. All the machines bore Iraqi markings, to keep up the pretence that this was an Iraqi war in which Germany took no part. Rashid Ali needed the help all the more because his only success in those days remained recognition by the Soviet Union, which brought no military support whatsoever.

The first arms train also arrived at Mosul on 13 May. Rahn accompanied it himself from Aleppo; the railway ran across the north-eastern tip of Syria, and part of the route passed through Turkish territory. According to one summary, in this and subsequent deliveries the Iraqis received well over ten thousand rifles with millions of rounds, more than two hundred machine guns, a dozen or so guns with artillery ammunition, grenades and lorries. Rahn, however, returned to Damascus with grim impressions: Iraq had no bombs, no spare parts, no fuel and no effective, resolute command. He managed to send a few more shipments; the last got through at the last moment before the railway bridge in the north-eastern corner of Syria was blown up and traffic stopped. Rahn blamed “British agents”, but according to the British official history the bridge was blown by a handful of enterprising Frenchmen.

Two weeks of fighting

By the time the Germans arrived, the decisive moment of the war had already passed. The Iraqis, who had been besieging Habbaniya since 30 April, came down from the plateau above the base on the night of 5–6 May, and the Iraqi air force had been all but destroyed on the ground in the first days of fighting. A British relief column, Habforce, was crossing the desert from Palestine, with its advanced group, Kingcol, which crossed the Iraqi frontier on 13 May and was at Rutba by the evening. Junck knew of this by 15 May and that day sent a single He 111 to find and bomb the column. On 16 May he drove to Baghdad himself, where with Grobba, Rashid Ali and the chief of staff of the Iraqi army, General Amin Zaki, he settled what the air group was to do: stop Kingcol before it reached Habbaniya, and then give air support to a new Iraqi attack on the base. The Germans also wanted, as it was put, to “stiffen the backbone” of the Iraqi army, whose soldiers were in mortal dread of British air attack.

On 16 May six Bf 110s and three He 111s struck Habbaniya. The attack took the British by surprise: several airmen were killed and two aircraft burned on the ground, while the Germans lost one Heinkel. On 17 May three Bf 110s strafed the Kingcol column strung out across the desert, though they did little damage; a day earlier, when the British lorries were bogged down to their axles in sand, they could have done far more. The British responded at once. On 14 May the Chiefs of Staff had agreed that the RAF might attack German aircraft on Syrian airfields too, even at the cost of destroying French ones, and Blenheims began bombing Palmyra, Rayak and Damascus. On 17 May two long-range Hurricanes, sent unannounced from Egypt, and six Blenheims attacked Mosul airfield, destroying two German aircraft and damaging four; on the same day two Gladiators from Habbaniya shot down two Bf 110s taking off from Rashid airfield near Baghdad. By 18 May Junck had lost roughly a third of his strength: he was left with 8 Bf 110s, 4 He 111s and 2 Ju 52s.

Combat losses were only part of the problem. The group had arrived without a support echelon: it had few mechanics, few spare parts, no sand filters and no tyres for soft ground, and the engines overheated in the heat. Bombs and ammunition were short, and Iraqi petrol could not be used in aero engines without modification, which was carried out in makeshift fashion. There was no air reconnaissance and no proper maps. The supplies and reinforcements on which Junck was counting did not arrive, because in those very days the Luftwaffe threw everything it had in the south into the airborne assault on Crete. When the British seized the Euphrates crossing at Fallujah on 19 May, the Germans managed only to bomb and strafe Habbaniya, destroying a few aircraft; during the Iraqi counter-attack at Fallujah on 22 May there were no German aircraft over the battlefield, and when they strafed the British positions in the town three times the following day, it was already too late. Ever more desperate requests for reinforcements of every kind went to Berlin. On 23 May Hitler signed Directive No. 30, in which he called the Arab national movement “Germany’s natural ally against England” and promised it support, but by the time it was signed some of its provisions were already out of date.

The Italians and the end

Italy too wanted to send aircraft to Iraq, but at the beginning of May the French, always distrustful of the Italians, raised difficulties, and the Germans, who were seeking more important concessions from Vichy, backed the French. Only in the second half of the month did the Germans themselves ask for Italian fighters, which were to operate under their command. Thus was formed the Squadriglia speciale Irak under Captain Francesco Sforza, built around the 155th Squadriglia of the Regia Aeronautica: a dozen or so Fiat CR.42 biplane fighters in a version with additional fuel tanks, together with transport and auxiliary aircraft of the SM.79, SM.81 and SM.82 types. The British official history and most studies state that twelve CR.42s arrived at Mosul on 27 May; according to some Italian sources there were eleven, and the squadron was ready for operations a day later. Their only known clash with British fighters took place on 29 May near Khan Nuqta, on the road to Baghdad: they attacked British Audaxes escorted by Gladiators and shot down two Gladiators for the loss of one of their own aircraft. It was the last air combat of the Anglo-Iraqi War. Churchill later wrote that the Italian aircraft achieved nothing, and in essence he was right: they arrived when the war had already been decided.

On 28 May the German Foreign Ministry’s representative in Baghdad, signing himself Gehrke – the name Grobba was using – sent an alarming telegram to Berlin: the British were attacking with more than a hundred tanks (in reality they had none), and Junck had two serviceable Heinkels, four bombs and not a single serviceable fighter. The British columns were closing on the capital. Some of the aircraft that were still due to fly to Mosul were recalled, because there was no fuel for them in Iraq. On the night of 29–30 May the German military mission withdrew from Baghdad, abandoning its unserviceable machines, and the remnants of the group flew out via Syria and Rhodes. According to the British official history, in two weeks Fliegerführer Irak lost fourteen Bf 110s and five He 111s – practically all its combat aircraft – and the Italians three CR.42s; a few surviving Italian machines were evacuated to Aleppo and Rhodes at the beginning of June.

Place in the war

Fliegerführer Irak was Germany’s only attempt to give direct support to an Arab rising against the British, and it ended in failure. Rashid Ali, who fled from Baghdad to Iran at the end of May, later reckoned up bitterly that the arms from Syria had been useless and that ten tanks would have decided the fate of Habbaniya, and he blamed his allies for his downfall. The Germans, for their part, explained to the Italians that they had intended to help effectively but had been thwarted by transport difficulties and the rapid collapse of the Iraqis’ will to resist. The truth was that in May 1941 Hitler was thinking above all of the attack on the USSR and was putting the Middle East off until later; the few dozen aircraft sent to Iraq were a gesture, not a plan of war. The British official history concluded that Axis help had been paralysed because the British acted quickly while the Germans and Italians were unprepared.

The political consequences proved far more serious. The passage of German aircraft through Syria showed that the Vichy government was prepared to open its overseas territories to the Axis, and Syria, hitherto an “uncertain and somewhat sinister neighbour”, became for the British a direct threat in the rear of Egypt and Palestine. As early as 18 May General Charles de Gaulle, in a broadcast from Brazzaville, called for revolt against those who were handing the empire over to Germany, and pressed for an offensive. A few days after the capitulation of Baghdad, on 8 June 1941, British, Australian, Indian and Free French troops entered Syria and Lebanon, and after five weeks of hard fighting against the Vichy army occupied both countries. Vichy never ratified the Paris Protocols, but the part concerning Syria had already been carried out, and it cost France the Levant. For Iraq itself, the Luftwaffe’s intervention meant that the British, to guard against its repetition, kept their troops in the country for many years, and Iraq became a base for their operations in Syria and Iran.