Quote:
Originally Posted by mars
I am a little confused, what USAAF combat boxes ? I think we were talking about Luftwaffe low level attack US airbases in the night, all of USAAF heavy bombers would be on the ground that time.
And as far as I know, in WWII it was not possible to maintain large formation in night time flying, any large scale of German night time attack would have to go in small group, two or three at best, at first they would suffer losses, possible very high losses, in the hand of British AAA and night figters, if the survivors were lucky enough to find the USAAF airport which I highly doubt, they had to go into attack one or two aircraft a time, there would be no coordination among each other, and would not cause any nearly serious damage.
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(1) the thread has been discussing various ways the heavy bomber threat might have been countered. This has included air-to-air tactics and pre-emptive raids on allied bases
(2) The raid on the Corsican bases actually happened and the results are well documented. None of the factors you mention prevented that isolated success. I do not think a similar result was impossible to achieve over England in early 1944 if the defenders were expecting another raid on London, for example.