Another 'Gem' from Greg - just released.

[pbehn]

With a large organisation you can always find documents that show a good appreciation of the situation and an unrealistic one, careful selection can therefore make the organisation look very good or very bad.

That is true, but people make judgements about appreciation of the situation based on what they know today, not what was known in mid 1943. The results of the Schweinfurt Regensburg raid are now known, how long did it take to collect those results from UK and North Africa into one report? It became increasingly obvious that US gunners claims were massively overstated, more in proportion to the number of eyes watching than the number of actual losses. If those results are ignored or discounted then so must any estimate of enemy strength. The enemy's response was a guess, and so was any evaluation of whether that was their best effort, their normal effort or whether they could or would do much better.

 

[33k in the air]

These started as part of an effort to record the bomb load for each aircraft sent on an operation by a squadron, along with recording other important mission data stated in the squadron ORBs. I haven't been able to work on this project in awhile, but I hope to get back at some point. I have quite a list of squadrons I want to go through and document.

For anyone interested, I posted a copy of this file in this thread.