Opinions please (impact Allied fighter bombers on D-day)

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Jukka Juutinen

Perhaps the best indication of the effectiveness of air power would be the answer to question: what if all aircraft in the world stopped working on June 5, 1944 for the next 12 months?

No aerial reconnaissance (the original reason why air forces were established) … which may have affected the outcome of a few land and naval battles.

No curtailment of German oil production until much later in the war … increasing the mobility of German land forces (and naval units perhaps)?

No wholesale dislocation of Germany's internal transportation system?

Hundreds of thousands of men and thousands of guns not needed in the Flak arm?

[mkenny]

Originally Posted by Nick Beale

Hundreds of thousands of men and thousands of guns not needed in the Flak arm?

And the other side of the coin, the effort put into building the heavies could be diverted to making the Allied Armies/Navies much more powerful.

The loss of the German and Allied air forces would cancel each other out

[Tony Williams]

Originally Posted by mkenny

And the other side of the coin, the effort put into building the heavies could be diverted to making the Allied Armies/Navies much more powerful.

Not if the planes stopped working in June 1944. You can't switch an aircraft plant into making ships; in fact to convert it to anything else, find the machine tools, retrain the workers and get it back into production would probably take a year.

Even switching from making one type of aircraft to another caused considerable delays in production.