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Bob Spurdle also wrote this about F/F;
"One of the wing's pilots painted a white star on his machine adding it to his string of swastikas. He was told to remove it.
The squadron commanders of the wings under A.V.M. Broadhurst's [2nd TAF] control were assembled at Eindhoven for a general briefing on future operations on the war's progress. the A.V.M., in passing told us that if our aircraft were subjected to anymore bouncing by our gallant allies, we could retaliate no enquiry or disciplinary action would be taken. An extraordinary scene followed - cheering, back-slapping, laughing pilots surrounded our popular commander.
We'd had more than enough of this sort of aggravation."
Oh no its is not meant like that at all. Rather that the (well recorded) Anglophobia of some senior US officers probably contributed towards them not putting strong efforts into avoiding B on B incidents, obviously just not something they cared about much.
Adm King comes to mind for 'Anglophobia', Patton comes to mind for 'Monte' phobia (as well as many English officers). What else do you have documented?
I have studied ETO airpower extensively and nothing I have seen regarding Anglophobia approaches USN vs USAAF - what do you have to present?
Not blaming the pilots so much as criticising the system and the senior officers.
Senior officers in 8th AF remembered RAF Spits doing the escorting for the first seven months of 8th AF ops. They sure weren't irritated at RAF. Which senior officers are you referring to and how did they influence 8th FC fighter pilots to whack RAF targets?
Again and again in the literature you get many instances where complaints from the RAF were made to to the USAAF, but nothing was done. So by omission of strong action at the senior levels the problem ended up being far larger than it should have been.
There was always going to be some of course, but it definitely seems that it was far larger than it should have been.
I mean, what about the gun camera footage. In a fair few cases you'd expect it to show the pilot had made a rather serious mistake.
Taking strong action against the pilots on that basis alone would have made everyone far more careful.
But time and time again nothing was done.
If got so bad that 2nd TAF responded as it did, then it must have been pretty awful and far more common than we think today by reading the literature.
And long before that point there would have been many official (and unofficial) complaints, almost certainly to the highest levels.
Given that, then the USAAF senior people either were criminally incompetent or just didn't give a s@!t.
After Sept 44 when the armies got quite separated, pretty easy to give instructions not to engage any aircraft within certain areas and that anyone who broke that would be court marshaled.
BS flag. Name the sources you think argue for criminal incompetency?
Post #9:
"Bob Spurdle also wrote this about F/F;
"One of the wing's pilots painted a white star on his machine adding it to his string of swastikas. He was told to remove it.
The squadron commanders of the wings under A.V.M. Broadhurst's [2nd TAF] control were assembled at Eindhoven for a general briefing on future operations on the war's progress. the A.V.M., in passing told us that if our aircraft were subjected to anymore bouncing by our gallant allies, we could retaliate no enquiry or disciplinary action would be taken. An extraordinary scene followed - cheering, back-slapping, laughing pilots surrounded our popular commander.
We'd had more than enough of this sort of aggravation.""
There is absolutely no way that someone of Broadhurst's rank, experience and (generally) good relationships with his US counterparts would say something like this, unless he had been provoked beyond any reasonable level and had absolutely no success through official or even unofficial channels.
There is another description for something getting this bad "total stupidity", but I prefer "criminal incompetence", after all people were dying because of it. It was obvious the pilots had more than enough.
Now the motivations for this level of incompetence can be speculated about, but I struggle to think of a better term for it.
Now the gun cameras of the US planes would have shown, in quite a few (maybe many) cases that it was a Spit, Tiffie, Mosquito, etc that had been shot at.
Why wasn't disciplinary action taken against those pilots? Obviously some people at higher levels were turning a blind eye.
After all, every claim was supposed to be backed by gun camera results.
Repeat again -"Senior officers in 8th AF remembered RAF Spits doing the escorting for the first seven months of 8th AF ops. They sure weren't irritated at RAF. Which senior officers are you referring to and how did they influence 8th FC fighter pilots to whack RAF targets?"
At the Battle of Mortain, the TAF wouldn't agree to help out unless no US planes came anywhere near them. So the US tactical forces were kept well away to block any Luftwaffe attempts.
That was a sensible measure that, if applied elsewhere, could have prevented a lot of problems, so why not?
Unlike in Normandy they were well separated by this time, there was no reason for any US TAC air, or escorts returning from escort missions, to be in the area at all.
If they were US TAC air they weren't doing their job of looking after their own troops, which means they were well out of their normal operational areas, which again should have meant disciplinary action.
If they were escorts returning they should have had clear instructions to avoid certain areas.