Battle of Stalingrad but Paulus – ordered not to surrender by Hitler – did not respond. The German High Command informed Paulus, "Every day that the army holds out longer helps the whole front and draws away the Russian divisions from it." The Germans inside the pocket retreated from the suburbs of Stalingrad to the city itself. The loss of the two airfields, at Pitomnik on 16 January 1943 and Gumrak on the night of 21/22 January, meant an end to air supplies and to the evacuation of the wounded. The third and last serviceable runway was at the Stalingradskaya flight school, which
Bombing of Stalingrad flank of the German advance to the Caucasus oilfields. Fiebig's superior's, "Generaloberst" Wolfram von Richthofen’s "Luftflotte 4" held a 1,600 kilometer eastern frontage in July and concentrated its efforts on Stalingrad, with the air support missions in the Caucasus under Kurt Pflugbeil's "Fliegerkorps IV" and at the Voronezh battle being given a lower priority. Logistics for "Fliegerkorps VIII" received the highest preference, as Richthofen saw the capture of Stalingrad as the key to German success on the entire Eastern Front. Richthofen requested additional Junkers Ju 52 transport groups from "Oberkommando der Luftwaffe" and transferred Pflugbeil's groups, as well as his