Strategic bombing campaign in Europe: No long range escorts

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I agree substantially with tomo on this discussion. I would concede that if the battle had been comcentrated on a specific area or part of Germany where shorter ranged escort could be provided, then results worth obtaining could be possible. i agree that concentrating on tactical battles over the battle front or just behind it miight force the LW to fight over those front lines, but all these alternative strategies have limits to them, and actually play to German strengths, and not ours. The Germans were good at providing air cover and air support over battlefields.....their air force was designed for that purpose, and they never lost the ability on the eastern front to do great things with a little airpower. We would have faced a similar challenge if we gave the Luftwaffe breathing space (both time and geography) from where they could retreat to, recover and return to battle. thats the great contribution of the long range escort.....it allowed the Allies to take the fight anywhere, and force the LW to continue fighting past the point of exhaustion. No rest, no space for recovery, fighting for a target they absolutely could not let pass.

Thinking about it, I dont think the allies could lose, with or without lr fighter escorts.....it would just be a whole lot more expensive, and longer to achieve victory
 
parsifal said:
Thinking about it, I dont think the allies could lose, with or without lr fighter escorts.....it would just be a whole lot more expensive, and longer to achieve victory
Click to expand...

from what i have been coming across lately i would have to agree with you for the most part. germany did have a lot of certain resources available...even to the point of almost doubling their production of ac dispite the continuous bombing of those factories. the one resource they severly lacked was trained pilots. long range fighters were a cataylist that accelerated things ...contributing to even higher pilot attrition at a break neck pace and negating some tactics that the LW had used to success. found this article while doing some research on "big week".... am interested to hear what you guys think of it.

Attrition and the Luetwaffe
 
Well, in Korea and Vietnam, weren't some captured US aircrew brought to USSR and interred?
 

I personally think it is a very good piece... and agree with most of the conclusions and opinions.
 

That's all taken from Williamson Murray's larger work "Strategy for Defeat - The Luftwaffe 1933-1945" which I recommend highly.

Cheers

Steve
 
The American choice to bomb in daylight was costly until fighters could escort the streams. All this is well known so, I wont go on.
Maybe if the USAAF had joined the RAF in night bombing raids the losses would not been as high?
What do you think?
I suppose its all relative as crew losses were horrendous night or day....
Cheers
John
 
I agree one likely outcome would have been a switch to a night bombing campaign for the USAAC. But this would have left the LW untouched in much of Europe, and thats a problem for other major operations, such as overlord, IMO
 
But could they have not expended more effort on the areas that were covered by escort?
Or were all those low hanging apples picked?
 

It would have changed the balance of the Luftwaffe differently. The joint offensives by the RAF and USAAF converted the Luftwaffe into primarily a defensive posture and its equipment reflected this.
The massive effort that went into producing day fighters and their command and control systems in order to counter the USAAF daylight campaign would have been diverted to the nightfighter forces and their support structures.
Nightfighters enjoyed considerable success against the RAF as it was,there is no reason to believe an expanded force would not have enjoyed the same against the USAAF.

Cheers

Steve
 
Either that or fly within the existing fighters range. The P47 was a good option till the arrival of the P51.
The Spitfire could give a good account of itself too...but, not for long over Europe.
Whichever allied tatic was adopted the LW was destined to eventually loose.
Cheers
John
 
Readie said:
Whichever allied tatic was adopted the LW was destined to eventually loose.
Cheers
John
Click to expand...

I just noticed that you are posting again John,welcome back.

I think that you are right.
It is the argument put forward convincingly by Williamson Murray in the book mentioned earlier. His argument is not particularly radical and is by no means unique. Given the historical strategy of the German government (meaning the RLM) and the Luftwaffe it is difficult to see a more positive outcome for the Luftwaffe.
Cheers
Steve
 
Between losses and bad weather, the 8th Air Force scheduled relatively few deep penetration missions from Dec. 1943 through early March 1944. This is the time period in which the first P-51B units were first introduced to combat, but they were far outnumbered by P-47 units, and roughly matched by P-38 units. (The P-38 could fly deep penetration missions but was hampered at this time by cold cockpits and mechanical bug-a-boos relating to fuel incompatibility.) The P-47D-23 had additional internal fuel, and with better drop tanks had a combat radius of around 750 miles. It's tough making the theoretical arguments about plane availability, because even if a plane could have been available, that doesn't meant that it would have been available and combat-ready in practice. Also, the drop tanks would have had to have been available in quantity to match the planes. Still, it appears that the P-47 could have flown deep penetration missions by April 1944, not long after the Mustangs were available in quantity.

I'm definitely in the camp of people who think the P-51's role in achieving air superiority in Europe was overstated and the P-47's role has been understated. I don't think it would have been fatal to the American bombing campaign to focus on shorter (or night) missions until adequate escorts were available for long-range strikes.
 

I'm with you on the P-47. It should and could have had suitable drop tanks much sooner.

Were substantial numbers of US bomber crews trained for night time bombing missions? When the RAF first attempted it the result was effectively a big fat zero. They couldn't find there way to any target by night. Why would the USAAF be any different?

Cheers

Steve
 
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