[Franek Grabowski]

Originally Posted by Christer Bergström

That goes without saying. I have to say that no single decision made by the Nazi government had a more disastrous impact on Germany’s war resources than the decision to invade the Soviet Union. Please - no discussions on the reason to the German invasion of the USSR! Please save that to a political forum, we all know that the clique who believes that Hitler acted in defence when he invaded the USSR has some followers among the members on the TOCH board, but please spread that gospel somewhere else!

Well, you forget to note it is CIA sponsored clique of mad imperialistic supporters tending to a unjustified war with the peace-loving Soviet Union.
If you give preemptive attack theory as a reason, why do you refrain from discussing it? Certainly it does not fit into La-7 thread but it is too serious not to be discussed at all.

Since you didn’t comment on that in your last post, I assume that you are satisfied with those random examples - two of which showed air battles where there were between 50 and 60 Allied aircraft against each Luftwaffe aircraft involved.

I did comment in Lw aces thread.

“I often found myself alone pursued by eight or ten Mustangs, and was able to survive only by mobilising all my flight skills, twisting and turning around small woods and church towers in low-level flight. I was aided by the lacking skills on behalf of the American pilots, since each one of them wanted to shoot me down, and thus they blocked each other.” Bob has included that in his memoirs too.

So I have to believe in that without any further research?

Prien quotes III./JG 3’s War Diary on 13 June 1944:
“Die zahlenmässige Überlegenheit des Gegners, abgesehen von der technischen, ist derart gross, dass Starts in Schwarm- oder Staffelstärke zu untragbaren Verlusten führen. . . . Eigene Verbände werden in kürzester Zeit in Luftkämpfe mit überlegenen Feindkräfte, die laufend Verstärkung erhalten.“ (Prien, ”III./JG 3“, German edition, p. 364.)

So?

Let’s first listen to our friend Don Caldwell, who in his excellent “JG 26 War Diary” writes on page 292 (dealing with 27 June 1944): “134 Fw 190 and 196 Bf 109 sorties during the day, in thirty-five ordered missions. It is probable that a ‘mission’ in this context represented an effort by one Gruppe; a Gruppe mission thus contained an average of fewer than ten aircraft”.

One further point. It was apparently enough three weeks to decimate Luftwaffe in Normandy. I suppose that by the end of the year Allied numerical superiority in France was tremendous. But it is not a proof in your case. At the start of the invasion Germans had more-less full strenghth units.

The largest single mission performed by the Luftwaffe over France on 27 June 1944 probably was that which involved I. and II./JG 27 in the evening, with approximately 20 Bf 109s. These were attacked by the Thunderbolts of 353 FG, and then Thunderbolts of 56 FG joined in, followed by the Mustangs of 352 FG and 355 FG. It is possible that the Mustangs of 339 FG also participated in the onslaught on I. and II./JG 27’s little formation, since this fighter group claimed a victory against a German fighter in the same area and at the same time, while there are no records of other German fighter units in the vicinity by the same time. However, it doesn’t matter whether I. and II./JG 27’s little formation was battered by four or five different US fighter groups; what matters is that the Bf 109 pilots stood no chance and lost nine Bf 109s (the Americans claimed 14 victories) while they only managed to shoot down two US fighters. (See Clark, book, p. 94, and CD for 27 June 1944.)

Why the assupmtion 339, 352 and 339 FGs participated? Dave's data do not allow such conclusion.
Nonetheless I agree, Luftwaffe stood no chance against highest quality Allied war machine that annihilated the enemy within few weeks.