[George Hopp]

The imagination runs wild when you are unexpectedly attacked from above, so I would pare the US numbers down by a factor of about ten. That said, I would tend to think they were being bounced by no more than a single group of aircraft -- perhaps P-47s and maybe not, depending on the time frame. As you said, drgondog, there were never that many US fighters covering any one part of the bomber stream. Later there would be several groups flying ahead of the bombers to break up any assembling German fighter formations, but even then, I would think they would only send down single groups of fighters to attack smaller German formations.