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Originally Posted by Ruy Horta
1 vs 4 would be fairly regular, 1 vs 8 as well - wasn't 8 the basic fighting formation late in the war?
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Close to the battlefront that may have been the case, but in general that was not true. It would seem that Christer does not appreciate the basic principle of attack used by the Germans -- one that was equally popular with their air, ground, and naval services.
In reality, the Allied fighter escorts were dispersed over great distances whereas the Germans tended to
schwerpunkt, or concentrate their fighters at certain locations. For that reason, the majority of escort pilots did not see German planes. The Germans looked for gaps in the fighter coverage and failing that, they simply tried to overwhelm the fighter escorts at the point of attack (with numbers, not aerobatics). As a result the Allied fighter pilots were sometimes outnumbered locally.
In a perfect world, the Allies could magically predict exactly where the Germans would attack the heavy bombers and then all of the escorts would appear to meet them there. If that were possible, the Jagdwaffe would have been destroyed much sooner.