Geoffrey Sinclair
Staff Sergeant
- 1,265
- Sep 30, 2021
No idea about the personalities and biographies tend to either liking or disliking the subject. Troops usually prefer generals who lead from the front compared to those who lead from the rear. Colonels regularly flew.
No idea what the various intelligence official histories note on Eaker, if he was never Ultra cleared he would not feature very much. The details come from Ultra Goes to War by Ronald Lewin, written just after the secret was revealed, citing interviews with Eaker and Spaatz amongst others. Eaker gets a "generous assistance" mention as well. The Burke story from Combined Fleet Decoded by John Prados.
I would refer back to the way Ultra was new, sharing with the US even newer, the system was a work in progress and since the material was disguised so it could be passed to non cleared people as required that is what mattered more at the time.
No we are not.
In message 247 is the idea Eaker had only had loss reports, along with "we know" about German pilot losses, incorrect claims about numbers lost to the 8th Air Force and total pilot supply, and asking what else could Eaker do.
In message 251 comes the idea Eaker could be commander or Ultra cleared, rather than could be commander as he saw his duties or Ultra cleared.
In message 252 we have bombing targets in fighter range will not achieve anything, without defining what that range was. Not even building experience and conserving 8th Air Force strength while awaiting fighters and drop tanks in numbers. Then instead of 8th Air Force it is now the USAAF "taking an unrecoverable toll on the Luftwaffe fighter force"
In message 255 comes claims people are using hindsight, claims better information was not available and announcing Eaker telling command the self defending bomber was not working, time to recast things, was not an option, only a binary choice was available. So we move onto the Luftwaffe Chief of Staff suicide and Eaker's state of mind. The data on Luftwaffe losses is ignored, no details on what the bombing achieved.
This comes across as ignore disagreeable data so original views can be maintained.
8th Air Force command knew it was taking unsustainable losses before it went on deep raids or reached the desired strength, even losses to French targets were consistently close to the danger level. It had the option of switching to fully escorted raids, recasting the target list. It is interesting the idea the raids should continue as the Luftwaffe was losing too much in the air combats with the USAAF heavies persists today. This ignores the losses needed to be large enough that Luftwaffe fighters would decline across the board and that was not showing up in the known deployments. It is further interesting no one picked the fatal flaw in the soft centre defence idea. If the raids were really going to do the expected levels of damage the Luftwaffe could and certainly would double or triple the fighter numbers based in Germany, being able to do so in days.
Up until 27 September 1943 the 8th Air Force was a clear weather operator and for months afterwards mostly clear weather given the lack of H2X sets. That imposed plenty of gaps between raids. Part of the hidden story of the Battle of Britain is the weather imposed rest days helping the defenders, by flying higher and going further the 8th reduced the number of bombing weather days compared with the 1940 Luftwaffe.
