Big Week and Air Superiority

The losses over Schweinfurt in October 1943 exposed the weakness of deep bomber operations without fighter protection. German fighters could wait beyond the range of the escorts, assemble against the bomber formations and attack repeatedly before the Americans reached their targets or turned for home.

By February 1944 that situation had changed. P-51 Mustangs could accompany the bombers deep into Germany, while P-47s and P-38s covered other stages of the route. Under James Doolittle, fighter groups were also given greater freedom to leave the bomber formations, sweep ahead and engage German aircraft before they reached the bombers. Pilots were encouraged to pursue enemy fighters and attack them around their airfields when circumstances allowed.

During Big Week, the bomber offensive against the German aircraft industry brought the Luftwaffe up to defend factories at Leipzig, Regensburg, Augsburg, Gotha, Brunswick and other production centres. The escorts were waiting for them. Every interception now risked a prolonged fight with American fighters far inside Germany.

The factories remained important targets. Their destruction and disruption were part of the operation. Their defence also forced German fighter units into battles the Americans increasingly wanted to fight.

Doolittle took the Eighth in January 1944 and within days ordered the fighter groups off close escort. The bomber crews hated it: the sight of friendly fighters alongside was what they flew with, and now they were alone in the formation while the Mustangs went hunting. A sign at fighter headquarters saying the first duty of the fighter force was to bring the bombers back was taken down and replaced with one saying its duty was to destroy German fighters.

On the German side Galland had been arguing since 1943 that the fighter force should be concentrated for defence of the Reich and fed with trained pilots rather than numbers. He got the aircraft: production roughly doubled through 1944 under Speer's dispersal programme. He did not get the fuel or the training hours, so the replacement pilots arrived with a fraction of the flying time of the men they replaced and were killed in their first sorties.

The German decision that mattered most was not made in the Luftwaffe at all. The oil campaign that started in May took away the aviation fuel, and by then the pilots who might have used it were dead.

The Mustang with a Merlin engine and drop tanks had a combat radius of about 850 miles, against 375 for the Thunderbolt and 475 for the Lightning. Berlin is 600 miles from the East Anglian bases. That is the whole of it: a fighter that could be over the target and still have fuel to fight.

Against it the Germans put up heavier and heavier interceptors. The Fw 190 Sturmböcke carried armour and 30 mm cannon to break up bomber formations, and the extra weight made them nearly helpless against escorts. Once the Mustangs were free to hunt, a Sturmgruppe attacked at its own risk.

Big Week cost the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces about 250 bombers and 28 fighters over six days, roughly six per cent of sorties flown. That rate was survivable for a force being reinforced from the United States at the pace of 1944; the same rate in October 1943 had stopped operations.

German losses in the four months from February to May 1944 were around 2,200 pilots, which is more than the Luftwaffe's entire single-engined fighter pilot strength at the start of the period. Aircraft were being built faster than ever; the men to fly them were not.

The measure of the outcome is 6 June. The Luftwaffe managed two fighter sorties over the invasion beaches that day, flown by Josef Priller and his wingman, in an area where the Allies flew over 14,000.

Craven and Cate's volume three covers Argument and the spring campaign from the American records. The German side rests on the Quartermaster General's loss returns at Freiburg, which are the only reliable count of aircraft written off and pilots killed, because the claims made by both sides in air fighting were routinely two or three times the truth.

The Strategic Bombing Survey's aircraft division report is the source for the finding that airframe production continued to rise while the force that flew the aircraft was destroyed.