Luftwaffe Luftwaffe Officers as Service

[Paul R]

Luftwaffe Officers at Service (Offiziere zur Dienstleistung)

This branch was established on 9Apr1938. This was meant to separate officers and medical officers who are awaiting posting. Unfortunately, there is no other information that I have been able to find, thus far. These men were also referred to as Half Pay Officers, as they only drew 1/2 the pay of other members of their paygrade, until they were in a permanent position(and took their proper branch waffenfarbe)

[Paul R]

Uniforms/Insignia

Men temporarily assigned to this specialty title were prescribed the usual LW uniforms and equipment. The prescribed waffenfarbe for this group was orange. This was reflected on the collar tabs and on the underlay of the shoulderboards.

The allowed cyphers were silver toned, instead of the normally associated gold. The cyphers possible were:

Medical Officers- Caduceus

Officers at Service of the RLM- "RLM"

All other officers at service- were indicated by the Roman Numeral of the member's (Air Area) Luftkreis and later by the number of the Air Disctrict Command(Luftgaukommando).

Officers of the Air District Command(Sea) wore the Latin "S"

Insignia are from the Garth Thompson Collection

[Paul R]

I do not have much information about this obscure section of the Luftwaffe. If anyone has anything to add... photos, insignia, documents, anything... please do so!

[Mike Dwyer]

Paul,

Not my field at all, but are you saying these poor guys had to have collar tabs and shoulderboards on their uniforms that were only going to be there temporarily and then they had to have them all changed out?? What a pain!