Eastern Front Airpower

I am wondering how air power was distributed on the eastern front. For instance, the Germans had three army groups when they launched Barbarossa. Did each one have airpower under their control, or were they dependent on a different Luftwaffe command structure? About how many operational air fields would each army group have in its area? Were the air fields spread out thinly along the whole front, or were they centralized for more efficient logistics? Who made the decisions to distribute airpower to the various armies and army groups?

Same questions for the Soviets, except they had fronts instead of army groups.

Basically, how did airplanes get doled out to specific missions? Did ground commanders submit requests for air sorties, or did higher commanders assign resources which the ground commanders then put into their plans.

Information for other fronts (Pacific, N African, Western, etc) would also be useful.

Thanks, Buell Gray

The German command system was seriously flawed with regard to army-Luftwaffe cooperation. The Luftwaffe was an independent arm of the Armed Forces. It was only very, very rarely subordinated to army command (as, for example, in the Balkans, where the local army commander was actually an Air Force officer