The idea of air supply dates back at least to the siege of Kut Al Amara in 1916, and the German Air Force was involved in transportation operations from the start of the Second World War (indeed even before that German aircraft carried Franco's troops from Africa to Spain in the Spanish Civil War). Early supply missions were primarily as components of airborne operations, with paratroops, gliderborne, or air landed troops seizing airfields and other objectives, then being supplied from the air (for a short time) until they could be relieved - key features of the invasions of Norway and Holland in April and May 1940. The capture of Crete in 1941 was the largest German airborne operation, and so costly it was not repeated, though supply operations continued in North Africa and the Mediterranean.

The real prototypes for Stalingrad were Kholm and Demyansk in early 1942. German ground forces (around 3,500 at Kholm, 100,000 at Demyansk) were encircled, and the decision was taken for them to hold out with supplies provided by air. This was a shift, from planned operations with a clear purpose to reactive measures that should have been recognised as a stopgap at best. By transferring aircraft and aircrew from training schools, an average of around 300 tons of supplies per day were flown in between February and May 1942 until the troops were relieved, but at considerable cost - 265 aircraft were lost in the process. Perhaps worst of all it planted the idea that the even larger force of 300,000 at Stalingrad could be kept supplied by air, never a realistic proposition; the Demyansk effort, carried out in favourable conditions, was unsustainable, let alone a much larger operation in the face of fiercer opposition, with Luftwaffe transportation also in great demand in Tunisia.

The use of air supply for cut-off ground troops was a perfectly sensible proposition provided that sufficient aircraft and crew were available, they could operate from suitable airfields without excessive losses, and efforts were made to re-establish ground supply as rapidly as possible - the Allies used air supply to great effect at Kohima and Imphal during the Burma campaign. Stalingrad did not fulfil those criteria, and was inevitably a failure.