Geoffrey Sinclair
Staff Sergeant
- 890
- Sep 30, 2021
An interesting discussion. Summary notes.
The best prediction of the future is usually the predictions will be wrong. In the first half of 1944 the plans for Overlord underwent major revisions, from 3 to 5 beaches, from using what landing craft were allocated to demanding landing craft to match requirements. The air plan probably underwent more changes and took longer to finalise as experience came in from operations over Italy and France. No one had tried to stop a rail system as big as the French one, there was a lot of learning to do.
A big issue was taking enough room to deploy the available troops backed by a working supply line, beaches and preferably ports not under artillery fire for a start. Every analysis came to a similar conclusion, the Germans could more easily move more troops to Normandy than the allies. That Hitler kept believing the deception plan obscures this. Look at how quickly the beach head was contained even with all that allied airpower interdicting movement, say 6 infantry divisions from 15th Army arriving in June enabling the Panzer divisions to pull out of the front line, no grand counter attack to the beaches possible but a lot more power to counter allied attacks, the forces would move from reserve. End July the US army had 18 divisions in France, after the airborne divisions had returned to Britain, the British had 13, plus the Canadian and Poles etc. US army divisions in Britain would go up to 6 in October and others sent to southern France due to the difficulties in landing them along with enough supplies for the troops already in northern France. To ship units from the US required working ports and lots of unpacking time, or else as was done, to Britain, unpack, then ferry across channel.
Supply was another issue, during the planning one supply officer wrote a parody called "Operation Overboard" with "The general principle is that the number of divisions required to capture the ports required to maintain those divisions is always greater than the number of divisions those ports can maintain." Cherbourg was mainly a passenger port, it was number 22 on the ranking of French Ports, cargo capacity at 900 tons per day pre war. While the Mulberry idea had advantages it had a built in disadvantage, inland transport links, the British Mulberry had poor roads to the beach and the railhead was 12 miles away, limiting its discharge ability, after all before the port arrived it was just another beach. Bad weather could stop almost all supply flow and storms could last for days.
As it turned out despite the US Mulberry being wrecked in the storm the Gooseberry block ships and the post D-Day decision to allow LST's and the like to dry out, ground themselves as the tide went out then unload, were far more effective than planned.
Strikes on rail marshalling yards turned out to be the least cost effective way to shut down the German army supply system through France, as it made the trains up in Germany for a round trip, the flip side was such strikes were very effective in stopping an economy. The heavy bombers could generally only do marshalling yard strikes and their effect on the fighting in France was mostly the damage to the usually co-located maintenance and repair facilities. Attacks on bridges etc. the lines themselves and the trains were best left to other bomber types. When it came to knocking out airfields the opposite was true, the heavies could drop far more bombs.
As usual all sorts of trade offs, nothing could be exactly right. The casualty rates in Normandy were higher than those in WWI.
Luftwaffe day fighter pilot losses. As Williamson Murray says pilots I am assuming that means they exclude other crew members in multi seat fighters and I am assuming it includes wounded, but so far no proof, it may be deaths, it may be all crew members, it must be all causes, all fronts. Galland was working from memory before we have someone changing aircrew casualties to pilots killed. Don Caldwell usually gives personnel casualties but that requires tabulating numbers from around 150 pages. Caldwell has entries for days when the 8th attacked non German targets, 5th, 14th, 21st January, 5th, 6th, 8th, 11th, 13th February for example, it is not just raids on Germany.
I understand the German definitions of losses on operations not due to enemy action and losses not on operations are similar to allied ones, but that comes from English translations, it would be good to check, they were high thanks to reducing training standards and so killed a lot of pilots.
The basic idea Leigh-Mallory followed was usually bomb Germany when there was no suitable target in France, it was not a ban on raids on Germany and open to the idea if the Luftwaffe was sitting out the raids on France see if the same applies over Germany, allied air operations in support of Overlord were a work in progress right through probably the first 8 or 9 months of the year. While the allies needed to attrition the Luftwaffe so the Luftwaffe need to inflict losses on the allies. We do not know what the Luftwaffe reaction would have been to no raids at all on Germany, it would at least try for interceptions in eastern France. No one on the allied side said they were going to ignore the Luftwaffe but they had to assume the Luftwaffe would ignore them to preserve strength for the big day if required. It helped the Luftwaffe split the fighter force so some carried bombs despite their lack of training, that upped losses, instead of doing pure fighter operations.
Agreed JG2 and JG26 did a lot of interceptions of raids to German targets as well as defence of France and I suspect there are probably a few examples of Luftflotte Reich fighters intercepting raids on France. The point I should have made clearer was losses were not just when Germany was attacked, not trying to create a separate category.
General Spaatz was offering the reality the Luftwaffe day fighter force was willing to fight hard over Germany and the theory the bomb damage there could seriously impact overall German fighting power, but would do little otherwise to support Overlord. The army was offering the proven reality the ultimate form of air superiority is your tank on their runway, economic superiority your soldiers in their factories.
Spaatz was taking more casualties by fighting over Germany. Taking 1 September 1944 as the day the continental airfields became available for emergency landings. In the period to 31 August 1944 some 2.7% of B-17s listed as lost to fighters made it back to allied territory, versus 6.4% of those listed as lost to flak. For the period 1 September 1944 to the end of the war the figures become 5.8% and 16.6%. Clearly then there would also be B-17s that would have been lost without friendly continental airfields, but landed and were ultimately repaired.
The primary mission of the 8th and all other air forces was to be part of a combined plan that maximised the effectiveness of allied military operations. The more effective Overlord the quicker Germany is defeated and the quicker things like invasion shipping can be moved to other theatres, starting with the landings in Southern France onto the defeat of Japan, but also intermediate objectives like regaining the natural rubber output of South East Asia given the US investment in synthetic rubber was comparable to the Manhattan Project, one of the few important war resources the allies lacked and had to pay a premium for. Putting the Burma back to being a major rice exporter in a food scarce world.
As of early 1944 in the ETO, the rules became the less impact on helping Overlord the lower the priority, Spaatz (and Harris at least), were trying to minimise the impact of these on their forces but using a theoretical view of a better tomorrow would come as a result.
8th AF January to May 1944, Richard Davis figures, 112,003.1 tons of bombs, 71,149.3 tons on Germany, 35,074.7 tons on France
Airfields 22,361.5 tons, 7,361.7 on Germany
Aircraft industry 19,113 tons, 17,432.6 on Germany including 5,732.5 tons on Bf110 plants.
Industrial Area (usually means radar bombing) 10,840.7 tons, 10,505.2 tons on Germany
Marshalling Yards (usually means radar bombing in Germany) 16,971.1 tons, 10,095.1 on Germany
Government areas (Berlin) 8,683.2 tons
V weapons 16,110.3 tons
Oil 4,222 tons, 3,911.5 on Germany
Ports in Germany 2,170.6 tons
Target of opportunity 4,455.4 tons, 4,096.4 on Germany
U-boat yards in Germany 2,859.3
Bearing plants in Germany 2,223 tons
The 8th was pursuing a main air force aim, defeating the enemy air force, dropping 1 in 8 of its bombs on Germany on the administrative areas of Berlin shows that, so does about 10% of the bombs dropped on airfields there, while individual targets could be heavily damaged the effort was too diffuse to cause lasting damage to the economy, the output of around 36 million workers. The bombs had near zero effect in making Overlord less risky and German fighter production went up as more effort was put in.
The main 8th AF targets in France were V weapons at 16,110.3 tons, Airfields 13,257.8 tons, Marshalling Yards 4,427.6 tons, the first two fairly evenly spread January to May, Marshalling yards were 554.3 tons in April and 3,693.3 tons in May.
The regular night fighter units known claims by day, mostly B-17 or B-24, January 1943 to May 1944, 1, 5, 4, 3, 1, 2, 2, 16, 2, 36, 6, 4, 56, 32, 9, 8, 0. Peaks in August and October 1943 as expected, then in the winter. NJG1 claimed 31, NJG2 11, NJG3 58, NJG4 7, NJG5 33, NJG6 28, NJG101 17, NJG102 3 and NAG13 1. According to the Luftwaffe quartermaster Luftflotte Mitte/Reich night fighter losses in air combat were, June 1943 to May 1944, 9, 10 (+1 MIA), 26+4, 20+1, 26+4, 6, 18+4, 55+6, 19+3, 30+3, 25, 24+1, day and night, which comes to 268 in air combat, 27 MIA, another 88 were destroyed on the ground by enemy action, 6 by other causes, 323 lost on operations not due to enemy action and 209 lost not on operations. Wartime night flying was hazardous. All up 929 losses, under a third by the enemy in the air. The deployment of night fighters to France followed the night bombers, that is March/April 1944
In early 1944 Spaatz was advocating theoretical longer term benefits while the number of targets in France mandated the heavy bombers take part, the experience of actual bomb damage done meant plenty of follow up raids were required, 2nd TAF and 9th AF were the force primarily tasked with army support, Overlord needed a lot more.
The best prediction of the future is usually the predictions will be wrong. In the first half of 1944 the plans for Overlord underwent major revisions, from 3 to 5 beaches, from using what landing craft were allocated to demanding landing craft to match requirements. The air plan probably underwent more changes and took longer to finalise as experience came in from operations over Italy and France. No one had tried to stop a rail system as big as the French one, there was a lot of learning to do.
A big issue was taking enough room to deploy the available troops backed by a working supply line, beaches and preferably ports not under artillery fire for a start. Every analysis came to a similar conclusion, the Germans could more easily move more troops to Normandy than the allies. That Hitler kept believing the deception plan obscures this. Look at how quickly the beach head was contained even with all that allied airpower interdicting movement, say 6 infantry divisions from 15th Army arriving in June enabling the Panzer divisions to pull out of the front line, no grand counter attack to the beaches possible but a lot more power to counter allied attacks, the forces would move from reserve. End July the US army had 18 divisions in France, after the airborne divisions had returned to Britain, the British had 13, plus the Canadian and Poles etc. US army divisions in Britain would go up to 6 in October and others sent to southern France due to the difficulties in landing them along with enough supplies for the troops already in northern France. To ship units from the US required working ports and lots of unpacking time, or else as was done, to Britain, unpack, then ferry across channel.
Supply was another issue, during the planning one supply officer wrote a parody called "Operation Overboard" with "The general principle is that the number of divisions required to capture the ports required to maintain those divisions is always greater than the number of divisions those ports can maintain." Cherbourg was mainly a passenger port, it was number 22 on the ranking of French Ports, cargo capacity at 900 tons per day pre war. While the Mulberry idea had advantages it had a built in disadvantage, inland transport links, the British Mulberry had poor roads to the beach and the railhead was 12 miles away, limiting its discharge ability, after all before the port arrived it was just another beach. Bad weather could stop almost all supply flow and storms could last for days.
As it turned out despite the US Mulberry being wrecked in the storm the Gooseberry block ships and the post D-Day decision to allow LST's and the like to dry out, ground themselves as the tide went out then unload, were far more effective than planned.
Strikes on rail marshalling yards turned out to be the least cost effective way to shut down the German army supply system through France, as it made the trains up in Germany for a round trip, the flip side was such strikes were very effective in stopping an economy. The heavy bombers could generally only do marshalling yard strikes and their effect on the fighting in France was mostly the damage to the usually co-located maintenance and repair facilities. Attacks on bridges etc. the lines themselves and the trains were best left to other bomber types. When it came to knocking out airfields the opposite was true, the heavies could drop far more bombs.
As usual all sorts of trade offs, nothing could be exactly right. The casualty rates in Normandy were higher than those in WWI.
Luftwaffe day fighter pilot losses. As Williamson Murray says pilots I am assuming that means they exclude other crew members in multi seat fighters and I am assuming it includes wounded, but so far no proof, it may be deaths, it may be all crew members, it must be all causes, all fronts. Galland was working from memory before we have someone changing aircrew casualties to pilots killed. Don Caldwell usually gives personnel casualties but that requires tabulating numbers from around 150 pages. Caldwell has entries for days when the 8th attacked non German targets, 5th, 14th, 21st January, 5th, 6th, 8th, 11th, 13th February for example, it is not just raids on Germany.
I understand the German definitions of losses on operations not due to enemy action and losses not on operations are similar to allied ones, but that comes from English translations, it would be good to check, they were high thanks to reducing training standards and so killed a lot of pilots.
The basic idea Leigh-Mallory followed was usually bomb Germany when there was no suitable target in France, it was not a ban on raids on Germany and open to the idea if the Luftwaffe was sitting out the raids on France see if the same applies over Germany, allied air operations in support of Overlord were a work in progress right through probably the first 8 or 9 months of the year. While the allies needed to attrition the Luftwaffe so the Luftwaffe need to inflict losses on the allies. We do not know what the Luftwaffe reaction would have been to no raids at all on Germany, it would at least try for interceptions in eastern France. No one on the allied side said they were going to ignore the Luftwaffe but they had to assume the Luftwaffe would ignore them to preserve strength for the big day if required. It helped the Luftwaffe split the fighter force so some carried bombs despite their lack of training, that upped losses, instead of doing pure fighter operations.
Agreed JG2 and JG26 did a lot of interceptions of raids to German targets as well as defence of France and I suspect there are probably a few examples of Luftflotte Reich fighters intercepting raids on France. The point I should have made clearer was losses were not just when Germany was attacked, not trying to create a separate category.
General Spaatz was offering the reality the Luftwaffe day fighter force was willing to fight hard over Germany and the theory the bomb damage there could seriously impact overall German fighting power, but would do little otherwise to support Overlord. The army was offering the proven reality the ultimate form of air superiority is your tank on their runway, economic superiority your soldiers in their factories.
Spaatz was taking more casualties by fighting over Germany. Taking 1 September 1944 as the day the continental airfields became available for emergency landings. In the period to 31 August 1944 some 2.7% of B-17s listed as lost to fighters made it back to allied territory, versus 6.4% of those listed as lost to flak. For the period 1 September 1944 to the end of the war the figures become 5.8% and 16.6%. Clearly then there would also be B-17s that would have been lost without friendly continental airfields, but landed and were ultimately repaired.
To me that is the equivalent of the army stating its mission was diluted by the need to provide AA guns, it is an air force problem to stop raids. There is also a twist in that the most effective strikes on the German economy were transport ones, ignore the factories, stop the movement between them.
The primary mission of the 8th and all other air forces was to be part of a combined plan that maximised the effectiveness of allied military operations. The more effective Overlord the quicker Germany is defeated and the quicker things like invasion shipping can be moved to other theatres, starting with the landings in Southern France onto the defeat of Japan, but also intermediate objectives like regaining the natural rubber output of South East Asia given the US investment in synthetic rubber was comparable to the Manhattan Project, one of the few important war resources the allies lacked and had to pay a premium for. Putting the Burma back to being a major rice exporter in a food scarce world.
As of early 1944 in the ETO, the rules became the less impact on helping Overlord the lower the priority, Spaatz (and Harris at least), were trying to minimise the impact of these on their forces but using a theoretical view of a better tomorrow would come as a result.
8th AF January to May 1944, Richard Davis figures, 112,003.1 tons of bombs, 71,149.3 tons on Germany, 35,074.7 tons on France
Airfields 22,361.5 tons, 7,361.7 on Germany
Aircraft industry 19,113 tons, 17,432.6 on Germany including 5,732.5 tons on Bf110 plants.
Industrial Area (usually means radar bombing) 10,840.7 tons, 10,505.2 tons on Germany
Marshalling Yards (usually means radar bombing in Germany) 16,971.1 tons, 10,095.1 on Germany
Government areas (Berlin) 8,683.2 tons
V weapons 16,110.3 tons
Oil 4,222 tons, 3,911.5 on Germany
Ports in Germany 2,170.6 tons
Target of opportunity 4,455.4 tons, 4,096.4 on Germany
U-boat yards in Germany 2,859.3
Bearing plants in Germany 2,223 tons
The 8th was pursuing a main air force aim, defeating the enemy air force, dropping 1 in 8 of its bombs on Germany on the administrative areas of Berlin shows that, so does about 10% of the bombs dropped on airfields there, while individual targets could be heavily damaged the effort was too diffuse to cause lasting damage to the economy, the output of around 36 million workers. The bombs had near zero effect in making Overlord less risky and German fighter production went up as more effort was put in.
The main 8th AF targets in France were V weapons at 16,110.3 tons, Airfields 13,257.8 tons, Marshalling Yards 4,427.6 tons, the first two fairly evenly spread January to May, Marshalling yards were 554.3 tons in April and 3,693.3 tons in May.
Luftwaffe ability to interfere required three things, trained units, operational airfields within range and supplies. Bombing France removed 2 of the 3 factors, the third was tied to the losses the air units took. By 1944 everyone knew you had to keep hitting a target, as they were rarely destroyed and usually repaired, efforts had to start well before the invasion and continued. If you like the damaged train could not be moved until the track was repaired and the bridge made safe and then ended up where the repair facilities were themselves damaged, make sure there are multiple problems. The stakes for Overlord were too high, it was a case of prove the damage had happened in France before doing something else.
JG300 were cat's eye fighters, meant to intercept over the target, a viable enough idea in summer but lots of non combat losses in winter, being instrument trained they could share the bad weather interception duties with some night fighters, the latter being noted in 1943 as not usually worth it thanks to their extra weight and lack of formation training, the twin engine day fighter units and JG300 series units took over.
The regular night fighter units known claims by day, mostly B-17 or B-24, January 1943 to May 1944, 1, 5, 4, 3, 1, 2, 2, 16, 2, 36, 6, 4, 56, 32, 9, 8, 0. Peaks in August and October 1943 as expected, then in the winter. NJG1 claimed 31, NJG2 11, NJG3 58, NJG4 7, NJG5 33, NJG6 28, NJG101 17, NJG102 3 and NAG13 1. According to the Luftwaffe quartermaster Luftflotte Mitte/Reich night fighter losses in air combat were, June 1943 to May 1944, 9, 10 (+1 MIA), 26+4, 20+1, 26+4, 6, 18+4, 55+6, 19+3, 30+3, 25, 24+1, day and night, which comes to 268 in air combat, 27 MIA, another 88 were destroyed on the ground by enemy action, 6 by other causes, 323 lost on operations not due to enemy action and 209 lost not on operations. Wartime night flying was hazardous. All up 929 losses, under a third by the enemy in the air. The deployment of night fighters to France followed the night bombers, that is March/April 1944
Salerno and Anzio main defect was the size of the landing force relative to the number of defenders. Cobra launched on 25 July, VIIth corps commander Lawton Collins (who had fought on Guadalcanal and so quickly adapted to Bocage fighting) committed the armour on 26 July and confirmed the break out, on 28 July orders became to drive beyond Avranches (reached on 30 July) and Mortain, Patton entered the scene on 28 July as an "advisor" and began turning the break out into a devastating pursuit, on 1st August 3rd Army became operational.
Everyone's land logistics were tied to the rail system, tactical supply and movement was more horse drawn, the Germans built the army structure their economy could support, weapons and fuel. Whatever the choke points would be the air forces had to mid 1944 not done anything like the damage required to cause choking and Overlord could not wait. The 8th Air Force mid way point for bombs on Germany was mid November 1944, Bomber Command end September 1944, along with friendly airspace to the German border, allowing the arrival of fighter, light and medium bombers, that made a big difference to what the bombers could do and what the Germans could repair in the time.
In early 1944 Spaatz was advocating theoretical longer term benefits while the number of targets in France mandated the heavy bombers take part, the experience of actual bomb damage done meant plenty of follow up raids were required, 2nd TAF and 9th AF were the force primarily tasked with army support, Overlord needed a lot more.