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

[Paul Thompson]

Originally Posted by drgondog

Paul - interesting postulation. So, RAF and AAF had free roam and air superiority in early 1943? But Casablanca conference named the "dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic system" , code name POINTBLANK , as the primary goal of the Combined Bomber Offensive' While the conference was in January 1943 POINTBLANK did not begin in earnest until June 1943. The 8th AF tailored POINTBLANK objectives after Schweinfurt -ct 14, 1943, re-organized in December-January, 1944 and issued the focused directive of Destroy the Luftwaffe in the air and on the ground" as an essential pre-cursor to OVERLORD. The Luftwaffe was certainly not 'defeated in the minds of USAAF or RAF as the political pressures almost forced 8th AF to stand down on daylight strategic raids and join the RAF at night. The Luftwaffe brought daylight incursions beyond P-47 range to a halt until a few in January and early February - until Big Week February 20-25, 1944

The Allies did not yet have complete air superiority at the start of 1943, I may have over-emphasised this point! In the Mediterranean, the RAF did have something close to air dominance over western Libya and the USAAF had air superiority over eastern Algeria. The evolution of the situation over the course of 1943 can be tracked using data on page 143 of Ted Hooton’s ‘The Luftwaffe’ lists the following numbers of Luftwaffe losses to enemy action in the Western Mediterranean:
Q1 1943: 448
Q2 1943: 677
Q3 1943: 1,114
Q4 1943: 261
In short, once Allied air power had an established network of airfields around Tunisia, the Luftwaffe was rapidly obliterated and was to withdraw most of its forces out of Italy.

The Allied tactical operations in the West were largely uncontested even in early 1943. To use Ted Hooton’s book again, the RAF’s fighters flew 80,780 sorties in 1943 for the loss of just 554 aircraft (page 227). Pointblank and the various changes in plans affected mostly the strategic air forces, while the tactical forces were having plenty of success even before the directive was formulated, let alone implemented. There is a significant point about Allied casualty aversion to be made in this context. Eisenhower said that he would never have attempted the D Day landings without complete air dominance, which is best seen as a political, rather than a military requirement. Air dominance guaranteed low Allied casualty rates in all but the most exceptional cases. The body of historical writing does not make this explicit, but it is clear that Allied military and political leaders were not prepared to take the risk of suffering high casualty rates, even if these brought more rapid military success. A comparison of Allied casualties with the German casualties during the Wehrmacht’s offensives in 1940-1942 serves to underline this point. This is a very big topic which needs its own study, so to bring the discussion back to air force matters, the key point is that the RAF and USAAF sought and obtained a margin of superiority far in excess of what was strictly necessary for victory.

Originally Posted by drgondog

I would personally 'fine tune' the comment to - The LW could not afford to trade losses with Allied air and the twin engine fighters simply could not survive - but deadly when unopposed.

I agree. One quibble, the twin engine fighters only became really effective quite late, around the time of Schweinfurt. As a result, they did not have much time to enjoy success, since the Mustangs arrived soon after.

Originally Posted by drgondog

Yet the Zerstroyer Gruppe's remained effective defending eastern, southern and southeastern Reich out of range of the P-38s until the P-51B/C arrived in numbers . The P-38F was not effective in the ETO for at least three reasons. The Intercooler design was incapable of managing power demands in the very cold high altitudes of the ETO. The P-38J-15 and newer solved that (mostly). The P-38 was nearly 2X the size in area as the Bf 109. The 109 and 190 pilots could easily see them and make choices regarding tactics - fight or flee (not so with Mustang)' Last, the instant compressibility issue entering critical Mach from high speed level flight at 20K+ after entering a dive to chase German fighters was severe and while the 38J-25 had both dive flaps and boosted ailerons, the P-38 limit dive speed was still .68M - well below the 109 and 190 (and P-51/P-47). The F7F was superior but entered the war only in the PTO in last months of the war as a night fighter.

I agree here as well. It’s interesting to speculate whether the success of the Zerstorer units delayed the introduction of the Sturmbock concept, which would also prove successful for a time. Your analysis of the P-38’s flaws is very interesting, I would say they weren’t fully solved until the P-38L. As for the F7F, it was much like the de Havilland Hornet, a great aircraft which arrived far too late to be of any use. These two, the Twin Mustang and similar aircraft should be seen as part of the post-war generation of piston-engined designs. They certainly were a little too much for any Luftwaffe fighter to deal with.

Originally Posted by drgondog

I agree - but point back to Luftwaffe adapting tactics to retreat the twin engine day/night fighter interceptions to middle and deep Germany - which only the Mustang truly defeated based on tactical footprint in excess of the P-38 until the J-15 with the extra 110 gallons of fuel.

That’s right, of course. The other side of the coin is that once the Luftwaffe withdrew, it had no ability to come back and defend north-west Europe, so in that sense largely uncontested Allied landings were possible even in mid-1943.

Originally Posted by drgondog

The number of German aircraft destroyed was more important only in context of a.) the re-direct priorities which were later increased greatly by Milch in early 1943 - based primarily on Galland's and Speer's warnings concerning the potential threat of AAF Daylight bombing in late 1942, early 1943, and b.) loss of fighter pilots. If you look at TO&E of all Defense of the Reich units there are always a big % (10-20) unavailable for combat based on both damage as well as lack of replacements during the first half of 1944.

What I do agree on relative to 1940 through 1942 is that attrition of the talented core of the pre-war LW was heavily assaulted on all fronts. Ditto RAF and VVS but the replacement and training program for LW was inferior. Having said that, the squadrons diverted from OST and SUD from late summer 1943 through May 1944 were from experienced units. The Americans by contrast had superior flight training and conditions relative to new LW replacements but less combat experience.

I would put the emphasis slightly differently here. Having lost the ability to contest Allied strength almost everywhere, Milch and company finally decided to concentrate on fighters. This gave them an impressive numerical strength over Germany, for a while. However, this was a strictly limited achievement because the quality of these units was low.

The Luftwaffe’s attrition became unsustainable in late September 1940, because formation leaders had largely come from the pre-war air force. The RAF was in a considerably better position, at least in Fighter Command, because it stood on the defensive. In the 1940-1942 period, the RAF emphasised training and new technology, while the Soviet air force simply focused on production. As a result, the Luftwaffe could cope successfully with the large numbers of badly trained Il-2 and Yak pilots on the Eastern front, at least for a time. In the West, the combination of improved Spitfires and well-trained pilots was much more dangerous. In my judgement, by 1943 no German unit could truly be considered experienced, because of the effects of accumulated attrition. I would go so far as to say that Lincoln’s comment before Bull Run can be applied here to the early USAAF-Luftwaffe contest, “you are all green alike”.

Originally Posted by drgondog

Agreed - though I would characterize that more as withdrawal rather than destroyed - as the Allies captured ground.

That’s true to an extent, but for example on Sicily and in southern Italy hundreds of aircraft were lost or abandoned, with very being withdrawn intact.

Originally Posted by drgondog

Also agreed. IMO another huge issue is that the LW high command emasculated LW units in the West by demanding that they 'only attack the bombers' That resulted in conserving Some LW pilots in a battle of attrition but the unforeseen, unplanned consequences were that raw US pilots with good flying skills gained rapid combat experience without extraordinary losses and encouraged incredible aggressiveness to attack, attack, attack.

This issue is very important, thank you for mentioning it. Part of the reason is that they did not know what to do with the heavy bombers. Galland and Goering’s reaction to the B-17s over Sicily in 1943 is instructive, neither one had any idea what to do about these bomber formations.

Originally Posted by drgondog

It has been good to debate Paul - we remain with differences of opinion but the actual metrics are hard to arrange given the fluidity of the air war.

My last closing point to emphasize the first one above about POINTBLANK. If the LW was destroyed by early to mid 1943 - why didn't RAF discontinue night raids, or US continue deep penetrations after the cumulative losses from Late July through October 14, 1943.

It has indeed been a pleasure to discuss this! I will try to dig out some of the metrics when I write my own work.

The Luftwaffe night success against Bomber Command was extraordinary, even more so than Schweinfurt-Regensburg. There is a long set of issues about RAF and USAAF policy to discuss here, but to summarise my view, the Allies managed to find the only strong point the Luftwaffe had! If Allied strategic air power was melded with the tactical forces more effectively, the results could well have been different.

Regards,

Paul