5th Flak Division

On 1 June 1938, the Air Defense Command West (Luftverteidigungskommando 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.^[1]: 317 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.^[2]

On 1 September 1941, the 5th Air Defense Command was designated "5th Flak Division".^[1]: 317 At this time, it contained the Flak Regiments 29 and 49, the Flak Searchlight Regiments 109 and 119, and the 5th Air Signal Battalion.^[2] On 18 April 1942, Georg Neuffer took command of the division; he was replaced by Julius Kuderna on 13 November 1942. Kuderna remained in charge until September 1944, though he was briefly interrupted by a tenure by Adolf Wolf that started on 27 November 1942 and ended in early December.^[2]

In December 1942, the division was sent to the Ploiești area in Romania, where the 10th Flak Division had previously served.^[3]: 21 A major United States Army Air Forces attack against Ploiești ("Operation Tidal Wave") took place on 1 August 1943.^[3]: 24 On 3 August 1943, senior German and Romanian leaders in Romania held a joint conference following the major air raid by the USAAF, which Kuderna attended.^[3]: 81

After a brief stay on the Italian theater in 1943, the 5th Flak Division returned to Romania in 1944.^[1]: 317

The 5th Flak Division was the primary anti-aircraft formation on the ground that opposed the USAAF air raid against Ploiești on 5 April 1944. It did so armed with 48 heavy flak batteries (mostly German-made, though with Romanian and Bulgarian support), over 40 medium and light flak batteries, and eight searchlight batteries.^[4]: 219 As of 15 August 1944, the 5th Flak Division was part of Luftflotte 4, along with 1st Air Corps and 15th Flak Division.^[5]: 165f.

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.^[5]: 180 The German force, under the initial overall command of Alfred Gerstenberg, who happened to be besieged by Romanian troops and thus trapped inside the German embassy in Bucharest [ro], along with Erik Hansen and German ambassador Manfred von Killinger, also included the 5th Flak Division.^{[6][7]: 749f.} Due to Gerstenberg's state of siege, command over the German intervention force was passed instead to Horst Hoffmeyer [de] of the Waffen-SS. Hoffmeyer soon sent out the vanguard of the 5th Flak Division from Ploiești.^[5]: 180 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.^[7]: 749f. By 26 August, elements of the division were in combat at Ploiești against Romanian tanks and were eventually encircled.^[7]: 756f. 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.^[7]: 764

In late August 1944, the 5th Flak Division was annihilated in the Ploiești area.^[1]: 317 The remnants of the division surrendered to the Red Army on 31 August 1944, though some remnants managed to join the 15th Flak Division.^[2] Both the divisional commander Julius Kuderna and his operational chief Hans-Joachim Schulz were captured.^[5]: 190 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.^{[7]: 770–775}

A new 5th Flak Division, then under the title 5th Flak Division (W) (5. Flakdivision (W)), was recreated on 1 November 1944 in Meschede to coordinate V-1 flying bomb attacks on the Western Front.^[1]: 317 The divisional commander of this new V-1 staff was Walter Kathmann.^[2] 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.^[1]: 317 The final commander was Max Wachtel, who had assumed command on 6 February 1945.^[2]