What of the Me 410?

Udet said:

Instead of 40, 50, 60 or 70 Bf 109s flying top cover for the sturmgruppen no less than 300 escorts could have been available on every mission flown if German planners had bothered to attempt putting their stuff together.

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Thats just all the more potential targets for the 8th, 9th and 15th AF fighters to go after.

I repeat no less than 300 and even 400 Bf 109 G-6/AS against whatever number of the overhyped Mustangs you might want to come up with. Say 350 German escorts against what...500 P-51s?

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The P51 is overhyped?

7 or 8 "Kassels" per month; do not forget the guys of the 445th BG did belong in a side that is not good at swallowing high losses.

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And youre assuming that the Luftwaffee would not be taking losses? If anything, the Germans had little capacity to replenish pilot losses.

syscom:

The Luftwaffe will of course take losses, but those men would have been lost in battle flying single-engined fighters and not twin-engined crafts much less bombers.

The capacity of the USAAF to replace their dead has too been greatly exaggerated; again, the USA was not a tyranny where the lives of their men in the frontlines meant less than feces.

Are you going to deny that during the last part of 1943 the USAAF could not yet feel bold enough to claim victory was "imminent" in the air?

Several huge blows suffered by the USAAF in a brief period of time during 1944 and you put them to tremble.

Ahh and yes the P-51 is bigtime an overhyped plane.

No matter how good a single-engined fighter is, there is one 'theatre' where the twin is better and that is night-fighting. I agree that the Luftwaffe's general staff could have done better by disbanding the day twin units but I'm not certain about the night ones, which I think leaves us in the position of having perhaps enough fighters to combat the USAAF but not enough to combat the RAF at night.

Kiwi i completely agree with you, but if you notice i did say the production of twin-engined planes continues to maintain an adequate nachtjagdverbände.

Even in that respect the Germans behaved messy and disorganized...again -sorry for getting so repetitive- during the critical year of 1944 the NJGs had Ju 88 C, Bf 110 G, He 219 A and Do 217s as night fighters!!! Why so many types of planes during a time of critical shortages and urgent necessities? Why not only one type? Standardization, optimising of scarce resources!

Oh, I agree udet, I agree. Perhaps they should have stuck with the JU 88c or developed somewhat the HE 219 but one or (at the most) two would have been better than the 4 or so that they actually had, including some poor souls in 109Es for goodness sake!

Udet said:

The Luftwaffe will of course take losses, but those men would have been lost in battle flying single-engined fighters and not twin-engined crafts much less bombers.

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The LW did not have the capacity to replace the pilots. No fuel for training meant the LW was on borrowed time.

The capacity of the USAAF to replace their dead has too been greatly exaggerated; again, the USA was not a tyranny where the lives of their men in the frontlines meant less than feces.

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By the end of 1944, the US had more pilots than they knew what to do with. While the US was constantly expanding the size of the AAF, the LW was pretty much static.

Are you going to deny that during the last part of 1943 the USAAF could not yet feel bold enough to claim victory was "imminent" in the air?

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The allies didn't have the air battle won untill middle 1944.

Several huge blows suffered by the USAAF in a brief period of time during 1944 and you put them to tremble.

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And the question is whether the LW could make good on its loss's. The US could.

Ahh and yes the P-51 is bigtime an overhyped plane.

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Jealous of it?

syscom3 said:

The LW did not have the capacity to replace the pilots. No fuel for training meant the LW was on borrowed time.



By the end of 1944, the US had more pilots than they knew what to do with. While the US was constantly expanding the size of the AAF, the LW was pretty much static.



The allies didn't have the air battle won untill middle 1944.



And the question is whether the LW could make good on its loss's. The US could.



Jealous of it?

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syscom, have a nice weekend.

Udet said:

syscom, have a nice weekend.

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Its actually a good weekend here. Im preparing the garden for the veggies to plant next week.

Now answer my comments/questions.

small note, the idea of the LW not having the manpower/pilots is incorrect, the biggest set back was fuels, with a/c parked haphazardly on the fields making some pretty easy picking for US ground strafers. Sys as your questions are aimed at Udet I will say no more .....

Erich said:

small note, the idea of the LW not having the manpower/pilots is incorrect, the biggest set back was fuels, with a/c parked haphazardly on the fields making some pretty easy picking for US ground strafers. Sys as your questions are aimed at Udet I will say no more .....

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Erich, you have to admit that as the fuel situation got worse, the number of hours the student pilots received for training got less and less.

From reading your posts in many different threads, I'm of the opinion that through 1944, the LW was still staffed with many competant pilots. Yet couldn't "grow" because so many students or low hour pilts were being shot down by allied fighters.

And since you are quite informed on the subject, please join in.

the eagerness was there and not at all from a 'nazi' point of view but for the defense of the homeland. so many crewmen were in the units that on the Ost front due to the fuel consumption problem they were given a K 98 and or a Panzerfaust and sent to the front lines. the case is true for both day and night fighter guys. and yet the oddity went on till the last day of the war: experimentations whether outside or in underground bunker facilities to perfect new and strange forms of aviatic flight

The replacement pool of pilots that the Jagdgruppen had to choose from was increasingly under-experienced novices who had never even fired their guns....

I remember reading recently in the Green Hearts/Dora book that Dortenmann went to the training staffel and took a few flights with some replacements, and came away disgusted and undermanned, as some pilots proficiency were so poor they couldnt hold standard formations together...

Fuel was a bigger problem, but the number of ZERO combat hour pilots of the luftwaffe that perished on their "maiden voyage" is staggering... Many brave youth took off simply to surrender their lives in the hope of doing their part for Mother Germany...

Giving the civilians that much longer to escape the Russians...

I lose sight of this topic for a day ... and already two pages to read through ... So sorry if I'm repeating what some of you guys have already said, I'm just going to give a short reply to Udet's comments.

So Udet,
my posts were to counter your arguments. The Me 410 was very succesful against the heavies as long as there were no escort fighters. But I have my own reasons to be against Zerstörer, and that is the production reason. So I simply disagree with the reasons that you provide, even though I can agree on your conclusion of cutting production of the Me 410.

Your main argument is fuel. Up to June 1944 the Luftwaffe used a third of its fuel in the Reichsluftverteidigung. Less Me 410s would mean more fuel for Bf 109s, that's true (Although I could argue the same thing for less Fw 190s...) but fuel wasn't the key issue here. The Germans didn't lose the Battle over Germany because of a lack of fuel.

They lost it because of a lack of well trained pilots. That makes your point of increasing Bf 109 production rather moot. If the German planes that were available to the Germans during Big Week were flown by pilots with the American number of flight hours Big Week would not have been the success it turned out to be.

Kris

lesofprimus said:

part for Mother Germany...

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Its the Fatherland my friend....

The Germans didn't lose the Battle over Germany because of a lack of fuel.

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U'll find quite an argument here with that statement pal... Pilots sat on the tarmac watchin enemy fighter bombers fly overhead, because they had no fuel to intercept them... Fuel was waaaay more important than pilot proficency at the end of the War...

Its the Fatherland my friend....

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Thats why I didnt say motherland...

Lesofprimus, the battle was already fought and lost by June 1944 when consumption overtook production. The attack on the chemical and synthetic oil industry just sealed its fate as there was no more hope of turning the odds no matter what planes or pilots were available.

Kris

Erich said:

small note, the idea of the LW not having the manpower/pilots is incorrect, the biggest set back was fuels, with a/c parked haphazardly on the fields making some pretty easy picking for US ground strafers. Sys as your questions are aimed at Udet I will say no more .....

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Erich you are right when you affirm the fundamental shortage endured by the Luftwaffe during the last year of the war was fuel.

I have neither suggested nor affirmed the Luftwaffe suffered shortages of pilots; there were some brief periods of time in early 1944 when such a thing came close to happen though.

My point here Erich is that in addition to the fighters that fought in the several JGs in the west, much more single-engine fighters planes could have been in frontline units to slam the USAAF; you know many many top-ranking officers and pilots in the Luftwaffe would say over and over again "we need more fighters, more fighters or we are lost!!!"

Les:

I have also read Hans Dortenmann´s account, but also i have the chance of hearing Luftwaffe vets that the training of the rookies coming to serve in combat, although indeed shortened, it was sufficient and that several of them rookies scored their first kills real fast.

lesofprimus said:

U'll find quite an argument here with that statement pal... Pilots sat on the tarmac watchin enemy fighter bombers fly overhead, because they had no fuel to intercept them... Fuel was waaaay more important than pilot proficency at the end of the War...

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That could a very interesting thread right there Dan. Some good debates on that one.

Civettone said:

I lose sight of this topic for a day ... and already two pages to read through ... So sorry if I'm repeating what some of you guys have already said, I'm just going to give a short reply to Udet's comments.

So Udet,
my posts were to counter your arguments. The Me 410 was very succesful against the heavies as long as there were no escort fighters. But I have my own reasons to be against Zerstörer, and that is the production reason. So I simply disagree with the reasons that you provide, even though I can agree on your conclusion of cutting production of the Me 410.

Your main argument is fuel. Up to June 1944 the Luftwaffe used a third of its fuel in the Reichsluftverteidigung. Less Me 410s would mean more fuel for Bf 109s, that's true (Although I could argue the same thing for less Fw 190s...) but fuel wasn't the key issue here. The Germans didn't lose the Battle over Germany because of a lack of fuel.

They lost it because of a lack of well trained pilots. That makes your point of increasing Bf 109 production rather moot. If the German planes that were available to the Germans during Big Week were flown by pilots with the American number of flight hours Big Week would not have been the success it turned out to be.

Kris

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Civettone:

I have not doubts the Me 410s were a nightmare if intercepting a box of heavy bombers lacking fighter protection.

But as i said, i have yet to find undisputable evidence it was "piece of cake/sitting duck" when confronting enemy fighters. I insist: the fact the Me 410s took high losses in action does not mean it was a piece of junk if entering combat with enemy fighters, or do you disagree with this view?

Seeing the record of Major Eduard Tratt is one can be informed he shot down 3 P-38s in the same combat mission, one at 12:50 hrs, the second at 13:00 hrs and the third at 13:10 hrs. How would that be possible when flying a "sitting duck"?

Also interesting to note is that another enemy fighter he shot down flying the Hornisse on February 10, 1944 was a P-38 above 7,000 meters.

7,000 meters? That is what you´d call significant altitude.

I do not care how good Tratt might have been as pilot; put the most skilled and experienced fighter pilot in the cockpit of a "sitting duck" (is there an accepted definition for what a sitting duck is?) and i am sure his chances will be scarce to say the least....

I am sure syscom will burst out and say "those were just claims and not precisely kills..."

I am referring to efficiency in the management of human and material resources. You can not deny Germany behaved like a rich spoiled wannabe lady when the hard facts were proving otherwise, and that is the idea apparently being missed here.

Now, there must be something i have missed here for i thought you had said to me you believed the twin-engined fighters were still necessary for Germany during 1943? In the last posting you said "i have my own reasons to be against zerstörer, and that is the production reason".

Well, isn´t it production reasons what i am trying to bring forward here to illustrate the German mismanagement of their resources? The 2 Daimler-Benz engines fitted to a Bf 110 or Me 410 would have helped producing two Bf 109s.

Finally you are right: fuel is extremely important.

Even if we know how things happened, meaning things did not happen in a different manner, is that i ask you:

You really believe the raw materials to produce the fuselages, engines, equipment and spare parts for the bombers that carried out Unternehmen Steinbock could not instead have been allocated to produce Bf 109s and/or Fw190s? Now add the fuel the ~550 bombers that comprised the assambled force consumed during the rough 5 months the operation lasted. Finally add the number of pilots and crewmen that were lost during such operations.

This is just one example of the idea i am trying to get through here.