He loses me as soon as he mentions heading straight to a target, they took off, formed up as a group then formed up with others and headed straight to a rendezvous at a certain time an place, then did what they had to do until someone else did it at another RDV. Even PR pilots flying alone didnt head straight to anywhere, they avoided flack and fighter bases and changed course regularly to avoid being intercepted. If you always head straight to where you want to go you give your opponents hours to prepare an attack. Oh and if you head straight to Berlin from most US bases in South East England you fly over all the heavily defended areas of Netherlands the Ruhr and Hanover. Duisburg, Mulheim, Essen, Dortmund, Hanover and Berlin are aligned pointing to England like the stones in Stonehenge.