ABSTRACT
The Spanish Civil War was, by any reckoning, the most important single military air power event in the period between the world wars. Although air power has been used in numerous conflicts, the Spanish War saw large-scale sustained air operations with the latest military aircraft for three years (July 1936–March 1939). Spain was the first major operation of the reborn German Luftwaffe and has often been referred to as the Luftwaffe’s ‘testing ground’ for equipment and tactics. This is an apt description of the Luftwaffe’s experience in Spain. During three years of war the Luftwaffe developed the tactics and evaluated the equipment it would use in the first years of the Second World War. Much of the its success from 1939 to 1942, and some of its failures, can be traced to lessons that were learned, or not learned, during the Spanish Civil War.
