Cobras, Mustangs, Thunderbolts, Eastern vs Western front, Franek vs ...

[drgondog]

Originally Posted by kalender1973

As I already mention, I am very careful with the statements of former LW stars.
From the technical and tactical point of view I am agreed with you, but I am disagree with the consequences. Not a Mustang was a key issue, but a further splintering of the german forces. If not a landing in Normandy, if not an advance of soviet army into Romania( with cutting of 45% of german oil supply) and deep in German, all efforts of USAAF were without any result, as Beeg Week, bombing of ball-bearing industry etc.
The german would able to manage also the oil crisis, as they managed all other. The would reallocate the syntethic fuel production under ground. In june 45 Speer planed delivery of 30000 to fuel from underground facility

The most important target in Europe was Ploesti - which started without escort and continued until production was hovering around 10% when Red Army overran it. The first Major raid was the low level mission in August 1943.

The 'results' of the 8th and 15th AF missions to Rumania, Austria, Czechoslovaki and Germany had two major effects on Germany's ability to wage war. One, it killed the skilled core of the LW Day Fighter Command, including all the re-inforcements from Ost Front. Second it inflicted huge blows on rest of German petroleum/Chemical targets - all before D-Day. This was much more important than the Ball bearings, Transportation and aircraft factories.

What is absolutely true is that the Germans were tenacious about restoring limited production until USSR over ran the rest of the refineries from the East.. but there was never hope for the Germans to restore enough fuel to support flexibility in offense. The Battle of the Bulge was the final gamble and drew heavily upon reserves from Russian Front -

Speer was far more concerned about diverting feed stock supplies to Chemical plants to make enough fertilzer for Spring than he was in keeping Luftwaffe in air in March 1944.

The less critical but still important effect was that it forced LW into drawing on it's strategic reserves, and greatly reduced the flying time students had when assigned to combat - lessening the effectiveness of Luftwaffe even further, ditto for fuel to armor and motorized infantry units in defense.

Last these same daylight raids killed many NJG pilots and crews, and destroyed many specially equipped Me 110's, 410's and Ju 88s on the ground - helping the RAF reduce night losses.

The Mustangs were the principal 'messenger' over Germany during the critical months of January, 1944 through D-Day and grew in strength until all but one P-47 group was replaced with Mustangs by December 1944.

When the Invasion occurred much of LuftFlotte Reich was deployed westward in an attempt to wrest air superiority away from Allies and finally came into range of EVERY fighter based in England. Finally the RAF and USAAF TAC and rest of 8th AF P-47s were able to engage the LW once again in large numbers.