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Thing is most of those LW fighters had to engage the bombers only a few would engage the escorts.
Frontline strength doesn't really tell you an aweful lot though. The situation in the air at a certain time and point is where you are either outnumbered or not.
Lets not forget the contributions of the 15th AF (and to a far lesser extent the 12th AF) to the strategic fight over Germany.
But you cant be in two places at the same time.
??? true if you have 5 s/e fighters available instead of 500.
Either you concentrate against the 8th AF or the 15th, but you cant do both.
The LW was all about 'point defense' with mobilization to meet different threats from different directions. So, strictly speaking if Oberpfaffenhofen or Augburg was attacked from the south by 15th AF, the same JG3/JG27 units around Munich would be responding on that day as the ones opposing 8th AF at Schweinfurt or Erding or Augsburg or Leipheim the next day. The 8th and 15th did not, to my knowledge coordinate strikes to the same area to split LW defenses. Certainly not on a large scale basis
There were plenty of strategic targets in Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia that had to be defended, and the LW had a hobbs choice in deciding what allied mission(s) were going to be defended against.
One should also take into account the severe mental and physical strain on the experienced pilots of the reich. In the late winter of 1944 the eastern front had slowed down enough to be able to amass a little over 1600 fighters in Germany and the west. But this did little to help the strain of the pilots, especially in the west where the attrition of good pilots was high. JG2 lost two Kommodores in less the two months. From January to May 1944 around 1,850 Lw pilots had been killed. It was then that the order to ignore the fighters was issued leaving the alled fighters to fly with almost impunity to any corner of the reich.
Right up to Mid January the LW could and did put up local superiority - but as you pointed out below the real issue was dramatic difference in numbers of skilled pilots remaining for LW by mid to late 1944
The increasing losses, in turn, forced the training establishments to produce pilots even more rapidly. Once they had begun this vicious cycle, the Germans found no escape. One of the surest indicators of the declining skill of German pilots after the 1940 air battles was the rising level of noncombat losses. By the first half of 1943, they had reached the point where the fighter force suffered as many losses due to noncombat causes as it did to the efforts of its opponents. Thereafter, the percentage of noncombat losses began to drop. The probable cause of this was due less to an awakening on the part of the Luftwaffe to the need for better flying safety than to the probability that Allied flyers, in their overwhelming numbers, were shooting down German pilots before they could crash their aircraft.
By the beginning of 1942, the Germans had lost the equivalent of two entire air forces. The result was that the Germans had to curtail their training programs to meet the demands of the front for new pilots. By January 1942, of the pilots available for duty in the fighter force, only 60 percent were fully operational, while the number in the bomber force was down to 47 percent. For the remainder of the war, the percentage of fully operational fighter and bomber pilots available, with few exceptions, remained below, and at many times substantially below, the 70 percent level. Further exacerbating this situation was the fact that the Germans were forced lo lower their standards for a fully operational pilot as the war continued.
There is no doubt a large percentage of these errors could have been avoided if it had been possible to improve the training program. The reasons why improvement was not feasible have already been discussed here. We must bear in mind, though, that inadequate training was responsible not only for numerous losses occurring during flights which were totally unaffected by enemy action, but also for a good part of the losses sustained during operations carried out against the enemy
What was the effective strength of the Luftwaffe, though?
Hooton gives figures for Jagdkorps 1 sorties as 3315 in Jan 1944, 4242 in Feb, 3672 in March and 4505 in April.
Hop - that concurs with data that I have gleaned from other sources... but the sorties, while interesting, only reflect the attempts by the LW to intercept - not necessarily the actual 'effective' strength?
One of the USAF historical studies of the Luftwaffe says the same thing. Technical Training in the German Air Force http://afhra.maxwell.af.mil/numbered_studies/468178.pdf says that the quality of pilots declined, and gives as evidence aircraft losses for February 1944:
1,791 aircraft "lost" (see below)
1,319 (more than 70%) lost to other than enemy action, including
39.4% takeoff and landing accidents
7.4% other operational errors
9.7% taxiing accidents
6.1% collisions on the ground
9.9% accidents in bad weather areas despite previous weather warning
6.8% running out of fuel or losing orientation
(it says of "losses": the German Luftwaffe lost 21,288 aircraft during the course of the war due to reasons other than enemy action, of this total, only 11,411 were damaged so slightly that repair was possible.)
I wonder what 'damage severity class' was used as irrepairable - from most documentation ~ 60% was the threshold. Ours would have been Cat E or Cat 5)
The study continues:
It takes a year to train a fighter pilot. Any improvement in the Luftwaffe's performance later in the war therefore required a vast expansion of the training programme in 1942 at the latest. But the Luftwaffe were always behind the curve, they could not afford to reduce front line strength in 1940, 1941 or 1942 to strengthen the training programmes.
What we don't know about the accidents from the above presentation is how many pilots were Killed or disabled due to the accidents.
As to a/c losses, we found out after the war that while our strategic assault on aircraft industry produced a lot of damage, it never achieved a strategic chokepoint on actual number of fighters delivered to front lines until perhaps March/April 1945.
As you re-emphasized, the critical choke point was fuel and training of replacement pilots.
It was a vicious circle, in which each factor was automatically followed by the next - inadequate training led to high losses in aircraft;these losses resulted in a lack of aircraft at the front and because of the need for aircraft at the front, there were none available for assignment to the training program. There was little use in the training program's meeting its established goals in terms of numbers of students, ao long as these students lacked the very thing which might have enabled the German air units to hold their own against the numerical superiority of the Allied air forces - the training required to mold then into good-quality crews.
Until some time in 1944 aircraft were also a choke point for the Luftwaffe.
Murray gives figures for Luftwaffe fighter strength in 1943, in each case the figures are for the last day of the month:
Month - Authorised - Present - Percent
Feb - 1,660 - 1,336 - 80.5
Mar - 1,712 - 1,535 - 89.7
Apr - 1,848 - 1,582 - 85.6
May - 2,016 - 1,786 - 88.6
Jun - 2,172 - 1,849 - 85.1
Jul - 2,172 - 1,528 - 70.3
Aug - 2,228 - 1,581 - 71
Looking at the graph, seems like the Allies drop more bombs, the Germans produce more planes.
The figures seem a bit odd to me, but I am quite sure that cause for variation in fighter strenght was not production - see the monthly production below, it seems to me unlikely that in mid-1943, when production was at peak at 1000+ 109s/190s a month, they would be loosing more and production was not covering the losses.
Ie. in June 1943 234 daylight fighters were withdrawn from units to enemy action, 297 without enemy action, 219 for overhauls, a total of 750.
In the same month 507 aircraft were received from factories, 218 from repair centres, a net gain of 44 aircraft (263 received to, 219 sent away from DLF units) were received from other units a total of 769.
True - and irrelevant to local air superiority, is it not?
Goering emasculated his fighter pilots with the stupid orders to 'evade' the fighters. Can you imagine telling the Wermacht to 'only go after armor'?? and ignore the infantry.
Ie. in June 1943 234 daylight fighters were withdrawn from units to enemy action, 297 without enemy action, 219 for overhauls, a total of 750.
In the same month 507 aircraft were received from factories, 218 from repair centres, a net gain of 44 aircraft (263 received to, 219 sent away from DLF units) were received from other units a total of 769.
Jeschonnek and his staff had ignored the mess that Udet made
of production and had as a result voiced no alarm about continued production
stagnation as the Luftwaffe prepared to attack Russia. The growing gap between
German and Allied production began to emerge in devastating form in the attrition
battles of summer 1943. Since late 1942, Milch had indeed done wonders with
German production. In 1943, the aircraft industry produced 64 percent more aircraft
than in 1942, with a dramatic increase of 125.2 percent in fighter production and
31.4 percent in bombers. By May 1943, industry produced 1,000 fighters for the
first time; by July, production reached 1,263 . It was not enough . The attrition
was such that for the first half of the year, there was a slow but steady increase in
fighter and bomber strength . However, in July and August, despite production
efforts, the number of aircraft in frontline units began to decline noticeably. In
addition, the percentage of authorized aircraft also began to fall.
As had happened in 1942, increased production made little difference ; losses at the
front swallowed what industry produced .