A comparison of this raid with the Schweinfurt raids of
August 17, 1943, and October 14, 1943, reveals how the air war had changed. One
indication of the intensity of bomber versus fighter combat is the number of
fighters claimed by bomber gunners. The numbers claimed had no relation
whatever to actual German losses, but they did indicate the frequency of
attack, the activity of the gunners, and the ferocity and duration of the
attack perceived by the bomber crews. During the August 17, 1943,
Regensburg-Schweinfurt mission (Eighth Air Force Mission no. 84) 346 bombers
lost 60 of their own and claimed 288 German fighters destroyed, 37 probably
destroyed, and 99 damaged. In fact, The Germans lost 34 fighters shot down, 12
damaged beyond repair, and 25 damaged. On October 14, 1943 (Eighth Air Force
Mission no. 115), the 291 attacking American bombers again lost 60 of their own
number and claimed 186 German fighters shot down, 27 probably destroyed, and 89
damaged.
The Luftwaffe actually lost 31 destroyed, 12 written off, and 34
damaged. On March 6, the 730 American bombers lost 69 but claimed only half of
the number of Germans as in the earlier two contests: 97 German fighters
destroyed, 28 probably destroyed, and 60 damaged. A far larger force had
suffered a 9.5 percent loss rate (half of that of the two earlier missions) and
suffered far less contact with enemy fighters. Antiaircraft fire accounted for
one-third of the bombers lost in the Berlin raid, a much higher percentage than
in the Schweinfurt raids, that reveals the decline in German fighter
effectiveness.
As to escort statistics for the three raids, in August 1943,
VIII Fighter Command dispatched 240 short-range P-47s; they claimed nineteen
kills, three probables, and four damaged. In October, 196 P-47s newly outfitted
with small drop tanks, escorting their bombers as far as Aachen, claimed thirteen
kills, one probable, and four damaged. In the Berlin raid, however, the P-47s,
whose range had just reached its maximum in February 1944 with the employment
of new, larger tanks, claimed thirty-six kills, seven probables, and twelve
damaged. The P-38s, which had an ineffective day, claimed three kills and one
damaged. The P-51s, which defended the bombers over the target and during deep
stretches when desperate Luftwaffe pilots could no longer wait for them to
depart and had to attack before they themselves ran out of fuel, claimed
fourty-three destroyed, one probable, and twenty damaged. One hundred P-51s
bore the brunt of the battle and, in losing only five of their number, achieved
an 8-to-1 kill ratio. The claims of the American fighters were many times more
accurate than those of the bombers. Each American fighter came equipped with
gun cameras, which verified their scores by actually picturing bullet strikes
on German aircraft.
The war diary of the Luftwaffe I Fighter Corps, however,
only acknowledged that eighteen of its fighters had been destroyed and
thirty-nine had been more than 60 percent damaged. The I Fighter Corps claimed
that ninety-five bombers and fifteen American fighters had been definitely
destroyed and ten bombers probably destroyed. Obviously, aircraft combat claims
were subjective. The Germans had lost heavily enough that they offered no
concentrated opposition over the return route, even though they had sufficient
time to land, refuel, and rearm. Some of them managed to pick off several
stragglers.
Two subsequent raids on March 8 and 9 met less opposition,
even though the weather on March 8 allowed visual bombing and, therefore,
excellent conditions for Luftwaffe takeoffs, landings, and air-to-air
interceptions. The Americans lost 37 bombers and 18 fighters, while their
fighters claimed 79 destroyed, 8 probables, and 25 damaged, plus 8 destroyed, 4
probably destroyed, and 7 damaged on the ground. In this attack, few
twin-engine fighters presented themselves, presumably because they had suffered
severely two days earlier. The March 9 mission, conducted in complete cloud
cover all the way to, over, and from Berlin, encountered only 15 interceptors.
The Germans did not wish to expend their force in questionable takeoff and
landing conditions. For the week, the Eighth wrote off 153 heavy bombers lost
attacking Berlin, only 25 fewer than during Big Week.
By the end of March 1944, the Eighth had written off 349
heavy bombers- 23.3 percent of its force. Ominously for the Germans, so heavily
had the Eighth been reinforced that this figure represented a sortie loss rate
of only 3.3 percent-a drop from both January and February. The AAF official
history claimed that "by April 1, 1944 the GAF was a defeated force."
The events of April 1944, a black month for the Eighth, tend
to refute that claim. The weather in April, as in March, proved poor.
Nevertheless, the Eighth launched strikes of more than 400 heavy bombers on
fifteen of the month's days, thirteen of the attacks on targets inside Germany;
nine of those strikes employed, for at least some of the groups involved,
visual methods of sighting. The first raid of the month, on April 1, set the
tone for the entire month-it was a fiasco. Of 440 heavy bombers dispatched,
only 165 bombed targets, and some of those bombed the town of Schaffhausen in
neutral Switzerland, angering the Swiss and causing both the AAF and the U. S.
government a great deal of expense and embarrassment. Half of the force ran
into heavy weather and turned back. The remainder scattered widely throughout
southwestern Germany and bombed targets of opportunity; some bombed 120 miles
south of their assigned objectives. Luckily, the weather played no favorites
and prevented the Germans from taking full advantage of the Eighth's scattered
formations-only 12 bombers failed to return. The Germans may also have chosen
to conserve their fighter forces depleted in March's air battles.
On April 22, the Germans initiated a new tactic by
infiltrating the bomber stream as it approached its bases to land and shooting
down fourteen late returnees as they tried to touch down in the dark. This
tactic, fortunately not repeated, sent a chill throughout the Eighth, which
feared that the Germans had finally begun to take advantage of the heavy
bombers at their weakest moments-when they milled about, out of formation, in
the air over their congested airfields waiting to land in the evening or to
form up in the morning. These periods, sometimes hours long, were clearly
visible to the Germans on their radar equipment.
On April 29, the Eighth lost sixty-three heavy bombers over
one of the Reich's most heavily defended targets, Berlin. In this raid, as in
others, the heaviest losses were taken by groups that failed to meet their
escorts. Brig. Gen. Orvil A. Anderson, the Eighth's operations officer, had an
immediate first impression that the April 29 mission was "the poorest
operation . . . I've seen during the year . . . I've been here." Calling
the mission "poorly executed all the way through," Anderson said,
"It can go down on the records as one of the dumbest ones we've done. From
the point of execution it just didn't click nothing clicked." The last
major raid of the month had proved more costly and just as poorly managed as
the first.
The Eighth embarked on a more successful tack when it
initiated the practice of flying fighter sweeps in weather unsuitable for
bombers. On April 5 and 16, hundreds of fighters attacked airfields in western
and central Germany. Spaatz, reporting to Arnold on previous sweeps, said,
"Eighth Air Force fighters inaugurated a series of sweeps against
airdromes, transportation, and Flak towers, which will be increased in scope
and should prove very demoralizing to the Hun." A week later, Spaatz
instructed the AAF Public Relations Office in Washington:
In order to destroy
the Luftwaffe it is essential that emphasis be given to the destruction of
planes on the ground as well as in the air and that our pilots be encouraged in
strafing operations by official and public credit for their accomplishments. .
. . Recommend that Public Relations policy in US be adjusted to support present
need for emphasis on strafing.
In an account of April 5, Spaatz emphasized to General Giles
that properly conducted fighter sweeps inflicted real attrition on the
Luftwaffe by destroying its aircraft on the ground and demoralizing personnel.
Spaatz added,
Inasmuch as the pilots are briefed to shoot up any
moving target within Germany, [emphasis added] 750 or 1000 fighter aircraft
roaming deep into Germany is evidence to the German people of the GAF's
weakness and no amount of Goebbels' propaganda can counteract this impression.
It is my plan to keep this type of attack going.
The rise in the number of claims of enemy aircraft damaged
or destroyed on the ground by Eighth Air Force fighters amply illustrates the
increasing use of the counterair sweep; from 1 plane in the last two weeks of
January to 40 in February, to 113 in March and 712 in the first twelve days of
Apri1. This tactic was not employed without cost. Combined with fighter attacks
in support of preinvasion operations, it sent fighter losses up from 232 in
March to 338 in April to 475 in May. Many of the best of the Eighth's fighter
pilots lost their lives or spent the rest of the war in prisoner-of-war (POW)
camps because of the intense light antiaircraft fire they encountered. Although
they were hated by their pilots, these missions increased Luftwaffe attrition.
In April 1944, the Eighth Air Force wrote off as lost or not
repairable 422 heavy bombers, more than in any other month of the air war over
Europe. This represented a loss of about 25 percent of the heavy bombers on
hand in tactical units, an increase of 1.3 percent over March's figures. Despite
the addition of 6 new heavy bombardment groups, which raised the Eighth to a
total of 39 heavy bombardment groups and 1,872 heavy bombers, the sortie loss
rate climbed to 3.6 percent from March's 3.3 percent. The heavy-bomber losses
of the Fifteenth Air Force jumped from 99 to 214, many of those the result of
POINTBLANK missions. German losses remained high, too. Some 447 Luftwaffe
fighter pilots, 20 percent of the total force, would never fly combat again,
nor would 43 percent of their fighter aircraft. The Luftwaffe's home fighter
command lost 38 percent of its pilots. These figures had declined from the
previous month, but the loss of trained pilots could never be made good.
No comments:
Post a Comment