Allied air superiority in 1944: P-47 D Razorback decided it?

[Paul Thompson]

Originally Posted by drgondog

Paul - Don C does include casualties in Table B "Reich defense force missions against the 8th AF" and Table D for the 15th AF.

Some more food for thought. The Defense of Reich sorties against US escort for March, April and May, 1944 was 40,422...

Bill, got that, thank you for reminding me. I am not quite sure that crewmembers of twin-engined aircraft are counted in the overall casualty totals. They are definitely reported for individual days, as you will be aware.

The Luftwaffe sortie numbers did increase very sharply, as you have recounted. The context was that Allied sortie rates were increasing even faster, with some 115,000 in March-May 1944, of which 34,000 were by USAAF fighters (data from Ted Hooton's 2010 book Luftwaffe: A Study in Air Power). I'll send you an email with more detailed information and some thoughts on the subject.

Regards,

Paul

[drgondog]

Agree your points Paul - Not sure how Don Caldwell extracted KIA/MIA statistics but his table does itemize the t/e and single engine fighter losses by type within unit in detail throughout the book - in what looks like excel formatted tables (like my own). I suspect that unless he was maintaining two sets of 'books' to differentiate the t/e and s/e crew fatalities that it would be very difficult to separate them.

The only point I am making about Caldwell's sortie statistics is the incredibly steep gradient in the Feb-May timeframe for LW Sorties vs US Fighters is that the gradient for losses due to Mustangs was equally steep despite proportionately fewer Mustang sorties when compared to P-47.