How were the Hs 123s supplied in Poland?

In the Polish campaign of September 1939, one of the most notable roles in German air support fell to a unit specialised in ground attack: II.(Schlacht)/LG 2, equipped with Henschel Hs 123A-1 biplanes and assigned to Luftflotte IV. Around 37 Hs 123s flew out from Alt-Rosenberg to attack concentrations of Polish troops. Their mobility was extraordinary for the time: in a very brief campaign they first used Alt-Rosenberg, then Witkowice, then Wolborz and later four other bases, including Piastow and Zalesie-Uleniec.

A close-support aircraft is only useful if it can operate near the front, and that required moving everything it needed along with it. According to the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aviation, ground personnel, spare parts, fuel, oil and ammunition were transported on Junkers Ju 52/3m to each new base immediately after the German advance. The trimotor, born as a 17-seat airliner and adopted by the Luftwaffe as its basic transport, thus allowed the Hs 123s to jump from airfield to airfield without waiting for the ground columns.

The Polish campaign was also the Ju 52's first major combat use in the Second World War, in which it also took part in the bombing of Warsaw. The scheme of supplying advanced units by air would be repeated on a larger scale: in the invasion of Norway in 1940 the Ju 52s flew 3,018 sorties and carried 29,280 people, and in May of that year, in the Netherlands, they landed directly on enemy territory with assault troops. Its great limitation was always the same: with a top speed of only 265 km/h, half that of a Hurricane, it needed escort whenever it flew over a combat zone.