Inspector of the Air Force
The Inspector of the Air Force is the commander of the Air Force of the modern-day German Armed Forces, the Bundeswehr. The Inspector is responsible for the readiness of personnel and materiel in the German Air Force, in that function reports directly to the Federal Minister of Defence. The current Inspector is Ingo Gerhartz, appointed on 29 May 2018.
Inspector of the Air Force
Image: Bundesarchiv Bild 146 2005 0033, Josef Kammhuber retusche
Image: Bundesarchiv Bild 146 1997 041 03, Johannes Steinhoff
Image: Bundesarchiv Bild 183 J1112 0206 004, Günther Rall
The German Air Force is the aerial warfare branch of the Bundeswehr, the armed forces of Germany. The German Air Force was founded in 1956 during the era of the Cold War as the aerial warfare branch of the armed forces of West Germany. After the reunification of West and East Germany in 1990, it integrated parts of the air force of the former German Democratic Republic, which itself had been founded in 1956 as part of the National People's Army. There is no organizational continuity between the current German Air Force and the former Luftwaffe of the Wehrmacht founded in 1935, which was completely disbanded in 1945/46 after World War II. The term Luftwaffe that is used for both the historic and the current German air force is the German-language generic designation of any air force.
This Canadair CL-13 is preserved at the Military History Museum in Berlin.
An Alpha Jet A in 1996
One of 212 Panavia Tornado IDSs delivered to the Luftwaffe
A Luftwaffe MiG-29