Re: Opinions please (impact Allied fighter bombers on D-day)
 

If you want to see the effectiveness of Allied bombers and fighter-bombers and fighters on German forces, take a look at the thread on friendly fire and you will see the effect of those same a/c on Allied forces. It is my contention that while the Allied attacks against the Germans were not as effective as initially believed, it doesn't really matter because they were good enough to win the war, and after all, that's what it's all about.

Re: Opinions please (impact Allied fighter bombers on D-day)
 

The problem is, I think, that people seem to get confused between efffectiveness in general, and effectiveness in tank-busting. The fighter-bombers were poor at the latter, but very good indeed at the former - which mattered far more.

Having said that, it would have been nice to have an Allied equivalent of the Hs 129 roaming the NW battlefields...

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

Re: Opinions please (impact Allied fighter bombers on D-day)
 

Well, the article is by Niklaas Zetterling who wrote a book covering Normandy, and that was published by Fedrowitz. Nonetheless I do not think that text becomes any better or reliable when printed on paper.
In regard of opinions presented by Zetterling, you should discuss this with him, not me.
Nonetheless, I cannot find any substantial flaws with his reasoning, though, perhaps a number of Panthers destroyed should be compared to tanks directly destroyed by Allies only. This would result with a little bit more than 6% of inflicted losses, the same in regard of other damage inflicted. The question is if the effort put into air support was justified by actual losses inflicted. I think it should be viewed in a perspective of development of ground support tactics and equipment - neither success nor failure but very promising.
One thing I would like to note, is that we have several views and opinions presented by German army officers, German crew, Allied TAF airmen, Allied airmen of other branches, Allied army men, etc., all of them trying to prove their points. This tends to confuse rather than clear the general view of an otherwise unresearched subject. The latter proves once again my thesis, that the history of WWII is to be written.

Re: Opinions please (impact Allied fighter bombers on D-day)
 

Hello Drgondog
the effect of the attacks against railway connections were less than it seemed after first look. IIRC according to Murrey’s Luftwaffe Strategy of Defeat, or something like that, and the memories of the RAF’s chief scientific adviser, IIRC his nickname was Sully, anyway a baboon specialist from South Africa, who by the way was one of the main architects of the “Transport Plan”, the effect of the attacks to traffic volume was dramatic but German Army could by drastically curtaining French civil traffic and non-essential military traffic usually satisfy the imminent needs of the front line troops. Of course the attacks caused delays and hindered the build up of stocks.

Regards
Juha

Re: Opinions please (impact Allied fighter bombers on D-day)
 

I agree with your opinion that this is an interesting subject with a lot of conflicting statements that need to be sorted out. Some very good work has been done already on the subject, for example the book by Gooderson. There are a lot of good sources to work from, but I don't think this article is a good source.

The Zetterling article takes selective sampling from OR reports without any context, and selective sampling from loss records again without context, and then discounts the testimony of any and all German commanders that disagree with the thesis. He then goes on to state that this was the result of a grand conspiracy to blame the LW for all of their defeats. This kind of accusation is inappropriate considering the slim evidence presented.

I think this is yet another example of why you can't believe everything your read on the internet. We will have to agree to disagree on this point.

Re: Opinions please (impact Allied fighter bombers on D-day)
 

Well, frankly, I do not see a point with it being not signed if it was (and is) originally published on Zetterling's website.
Zetterling is a researcher who got some reputation and I would not dismiss his claims easily. Please note that he puts testimonies of German officers in doubt based on nothing other but documents of their respective units.
I cannot comment on ground forces but a very similar situation is with aviation over Normandy. You may read in any German account that they were grossly outnumbered. Indeed it is true in total numbers but in actual combat it was not so, and even the opposite. Based on my research of some days of the Campaign in June 1944, I would say the problem was in quality of German crew, based on wrong training and poor cadres' managment.
You know, it was everything Hitler's fault.

Re: Opinions please (impact Allied fighter bombers on D-day)
 

This thread looks to have gone a tad of the mark, the initial question was as to the effectiveness of Allied Fighter Bombers during and just after D Day.
Simply, it was massive...forget numbers of tanks destroyed / damaged or trains shot full of holes, if some poor bloody infantry were stuck in a hole due to a German mortar, MG or dug in Anti Tank Gun they had a squadron of Typhoons or P47's that on request would take it out. The Germans did not have this option in 1944.

Were they effective ? For Allied moral a definate yes.

Not that effective against the Germans ? Pity we can't ask the thousands killed by Allied Fighter Bombers for their opinion....but i think i know what they would say !

Re: Opinions please (impact Allied fighter bombers on D-day)
 

oh my dear,
how often i have read those or similar words especially from native english speaking people.
maybe its part of the english language culture.:)

" ask the victims" if someone doubts the effectiveness from something.

just the causer changes most of the time.

Note: no offense here, jon, just an observation ;)

Re: Opinions please (impact Allied fighter bombers on D-day)
 

I disagree with comments that jabo attacks in Normandy were purely psychological. Here is one personal account that describes actual damage from jabo attacks. Interview with Panzer commander Fritz Langanke who led breakout from Normandy:
http://historynet.com/wwii/blnormandy/index.html
QUOTE
Then our route was taken care of -- after the first attacks, the road was blocked for good. The planes could then, quite calmly, pick target after target. Since there was no defense, it must have been a picnic for those guys in the air. For us on the ground it was terrible. To make it even worse, artillery started shelling us. Here we were with quite a bit of combat capacity and no chance to use it, just being smashed. Our division lost about two-thirds of its weapons and equipment in the pocket. When all was over in the afternoon, I guess the same number of vehicles as were destroyed could still have moved.
UNQUOTE

Here is a summary of air action in Normandy. It has some pretty fair conclusions about the actual effectiveness of air action. One quote from this summary may be relevant to the current discussion, since it seems "fashionable" for some researchers to discount the effects of air action as psychological only:
Summary of air action in Normandy by W.F. Craven and J.L. Cate:
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/III/AAF-III-7.html
QUOTE
Since the war it has become the fashion to give the infantryman more of the credit he so richly deserves and at times to deprecate the air arm, perhaps in revulsion against earlier extravagant claims. But by whatever standards the Normandy landings be judged, the simple fact remains: their success with moderate losses was possible only because of the absolute air domination won by the AAF and RAF in the months before D-day.
UNQUOTE

Re: Opinions please (impact Allied fighter bombers on D-day)
 

Jon
Nobody questions psychological part of warfare, nonetheless the thread is about general efficiency. Simply said, we may ask those thousands but where they are? Proofs are needed and not opinions.
Two nice stories.
In one of old issues of the Aeroplane or Fly Past I have found a letter by a Kittyhawk pilot. He mentioned a meeting with an army soldier, who had plenty of negative remarks of air support. Asked if he is so certain of that, he nodded and added that he was accidentally straffed by red nosed Kitties and they were not able to hit anything. (I write from a memory)
Another is of a friendly man, concentration camp inmate, who described how they put their striped uniforms on top of their lorries to avoid Allied straffers. It worked.
Also, he mentioned of how Thunderbolts chased their German guards when on a march.

Josh, really I do not know, what your point is.