Air Defense Command West On 1 June 1938, the Air Defense Command West () was established in
Frankfurt to coordinate anti-aircraft warfare measures along the
Westwall (Allied parlance: "
Siegfried Line"). When the air defense commands were numbered, Air Defense Command West received the number 5. It was designated to defend the
Koblenz—
Mannheim—
Kassel area, then redeployed to
Darmstadt and adjusted to defend the Frankfurt—
Mannheim—
Saarbrücken area. The initial head of the staff was
Karl Kitzinger, who was succeeded by
Job Odebrecht on 15 October 1939, by
Wilhelm von Stubenrauch on 5 October 1940 and by
Kurt Menzel on 5 May 1941.
5th Flak Division On 1 September 1941, the 5th Air Defense Command was designated "5th Flak Division". A major
United States Army Air Forces attack against Ploiești ("
Operation Tidal Wave") took place on 1 August 1943. As of 15 August 1944, the 5th Flak Division was part of
Luftflotte 4, along with
1st Air Corps and
15th Flak Division. Following the
1944 Romanian coup d'état on 23 August 1944, desperate orders were given out around midnight by
Adolf Hitler and the Wehrmacht high command to available German forces to crush the putschists. Due to Gerstenberg's state of siege, command over the German intervention force was passed instead to of the
Waffen-SS. Hoffmeyer soon sent out the vanguard of the 5th Flak Division from Ploiești. The division was assigned to
crush the coup in
Bucharest, an operation that started around 07:30 on 24 August and by 11:30 was reported by Gerstenberg to have run into stiff resistance, leading to German requests to urgently redeploy German infantry from the front to Bucharest. By 26 August, elements of the division were in combat at Ploiești against Romanian tanks and were eventually encircled. On 29 August, the 5th Flak Division reported the loss of Ploiești at 14:30. The attempts by the nearby
Kampfgruppe Stahel formation under
Rainer Stahel to reach the 5th Flak Division (in which case Stahel was to take command of all remaining troops, including 5th Flak Division) failed. In late August 1944, the 5th Flak Division was annihilated in the Ploiești area. The remnants of the division surrendered to the Red Army on 31 August 1944, though some remnants managed to join the 15th Flak Division. Both the divisional commander Julius Kuderna and his operational chief Hans-Joachim Schulz were captured. The division's surrender was not reported to its superior formation, which laconically noted the continued absence of reports from
Kampfgruppe Stahel as well as 5th Flak Division for several days in early September 1944.
5th Flak Division (W) A new 5th Flak Division, then under the title 5th Flak Division (W) (), was recreated on 1 November 1944 in
Meschede to coordinate
V-1 flying bomb attacks on the
Western Front. The divisional commander of this new V-1 staff was
Walter Kathmann. It contained the Flak Regiment 155 (W) and the Flak Regiment 255 (W). In the final days of the war, the 5th Flak Division was in the South Hamburg—
Bad Segeberg area. The final commander was
Max Wachtel, who had assumed command on 6 February 1945. == References ==