For the Common Defense

by Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski

  The 8th Air Force’s frustrations had many authors. Allied intelligence had underestimated the resiliency and unmobilized capacity of German industry; in 1943 German manufacturing had yet to hit its peak wartime productivity. The dispersion and hardening of factories (some even went underground) made them less vulnerable, and, as the Allies would eventually learn, bombs might destroy structures but not necessarily machine tools and assembly lines. The Luftwaffe also proved a hardy, sophisticated foe. With radar warning systems and centralized control of interceptor forces, the Luftwaffe could mass its fighters along the bombers’ routes. Once engaged, the German interceptors had a variety of techniques to blow holes in the B-17s’ formations of interlocking machine-gun fire. Head-on and underneath attacks exploited gaps in the B-17s’ firepower as daring German pilots, flying the agile Me-109 and FW-190, whirled through the American formations. Other stand-off German interceptors pummeled the bombers with rockets and cannonfire. The results were catastrophic.

  Undaunted, General Eaker reorganized his force for another maximum effort into Germany in October 1943. Reinforced with bomber groups redeployed from North Africa, the 8th Air Force once again flew unescorted into the heart of industrial Germany. Losses in the second week of “Black October” climbed, until the second mass raid upon Schweinfurt capped the slaughter. On October 14 a force of 230 B-17s flew into Germany and lost 60 aircraft; of the survivors, another 138 bombers suffered damage and casualties. The loss trends spelled disaster, for 8th Air Force crews were disappearing at a monthly rate of 30 percent. Luftwaffe pilots perished at half that rate. At his Schweinfurt debriefing a pilot stated one clear solution: “Jesus Christ, give us fighters for escort!”

  The combined effect of the bad weather and tenacious German air defenses created pressure upon the 8th Air Force to adopt urban-area bombing. The British, Eisenhower, and Arnold suggested that the USAAF should switch targeting concepts; but first Eaker, then Spaatz, still believed that industrial targets should be bombed. As one of their planners characterized terror-bombing, it was “a baby-killing plan of the get-rich-quick psychological boys.” Although the USAAF did participate in city-area bombing in Germany before the war’s end, most of its senior leaders held to the view that daylight precision bombing was the only sure way to defeat Hitler because it destroyed his ability to wage war.

  The reform of POINTBLANK in 1944 came from several sources, and in the first six months of the year the USAAF turned the tide against the Luftwaffe. In October the USAAF activated the 15th Air Force, a strategic bomber force flying from Italy that could reach targets in south-central Germany and the oil-refining targets in the Balkans; 15th Air Force attacks forced the Germans to defend against two major bomber threats during daylight. American aircraft production was finally meeting the USAAF’s needs, and the USAAF training establishment was producing increasing numbers of bomber crews and fighter pilots. In December 1943, the 8th Air Force mounted its first 600-plane raid.

  The bombers also received fighter escorts in increased numbers and ranges. For three months Arnold ordered all new fighters to the 8th Air Force, which meant a force of 1,200 operational fighters for escorts. Building on engineering projects in 1943, the 8th Air Force mounted wing and belly tanks on its P-38 Lightning and P-47 Thunderbolt fighters. The USAAF also discovered that by placing a new engine in the P-51 Mustang, a ground attack fighter-bomber, it had an optimal long-range escort fighter. In the meantime, the 8th Air Force had redesigned its formations for more accurate bombing and mutual self-protection; it had also made strides in defeating the cloud cover by using radar-guided bombing.

  With a new headquarters—U.S. Strategic Air Forces (General Spaatz)—coordinating 8th and 15th Air Forces raids, the American bombing campaign reached a new peak effort. Testing all its reforms in early February 1944, the 8th Air Force mounted a third Schweinfurt raid and lost only 11 bombers of 231; three other raids on the same day sent 600 bombers against Germany with minimal losses. The USAAF mounted six major raids during “Big Week,” the last week of February. With fighters that could fly beyond the Rhine and both protect bomber formations and sweep ahead to engage the Luftwaffe interceptors, the 8th Air Force formations reversed the loss ratio with the German fighter force; bomber losses fell well below 10 percent of each raiding force, and German pilot losses mounted to around 25 percent a month for six months. American bombs hit their targets, but monthly German fighter production climbed from 1,000 to 3,000 in 1944. The difficulty for the Luftwaffe was that it was running short of skilled pilots, for it could man only one-quarter of the new planes. Moreover, the Americans changed target priorities in May 1944 and concentrated on the petroleum industry. Fuel shortages squeezed the Luftwaffe, which curtailed pilot training to save fuel. The German fighters and flak could still be dangerous: 69 of 658 bombers fell in a March raid on Berlin. But the Americans could now make good the losses in planes and crews, and the Germans could not.

  Despite the hope that “Big Week” killed the Luftwaffe, the air battle over Germany continued with unabated ferocity through the first five months of 1944, but it produced the minimal objectives spelled out by the CCS. On D-Day the Luftwaffe did not menace the Normandy invasion, and the Allies enjoyed air superiority over the battlefield for the rest of the war. In the meantime, the remnants of the Luftwaffe fighter force battled with the RAF and the USAAF in the skies above the German industrial heartland. For American bomber crews the experience had a numbing sameness: pre-mission tension; the grip of cold and thin air; the scream of air battle as B-17s filled with machine-gun smoke and, too often, flames and electrical sparks; a safe return or a plunge to earth—all to be repeated in each mission. In 1944, however, the sacrifices seemed bearable and the risks diminished as German air defenses found fewer victims. Just the size of the American effort boosted confidence. From 600-plane raids, the 8th Air Force mounted first 1,000-plane, then 2,000-plane raids by the end of 1944. Surely, planners and aircrews reasoned, the Germans could not take the pounding.

  Yet the Combined Bomber Offensive paid limited and costly dividends. It definitely ruined the Luftwaffe and forced the Germans to allocate much of their industrial production to air defense and their transportation system. The 8th and 15th Air Forces lost over 29,000 crewmen killed and 8,237 heavy bombers in order to destroy the German petrochemical and transportation systems and thus cripple the Wehrmacht, but the destruction came too late to decide the battle for Europe. In sum, German war industry continued to produce war materiel until the last days of the war, but the Germans could not ship their fleets of Panzers and 88-mm guns to the front. Their munitions industry cried for chemicals and coal, and their vehicles ran low on gasoline. Weighed against its loss of 47,000 crewmen and 8,325 heavy bombers, RAF Bomber Command’s contributions were even more limited. Its night campaign of city destruction brought untold suffering to urban Germans and drove the survivors underground. Under Nazi control and conditioned to a life of privation by the gradual escalation of the bombing, the German people did not crack under the explosions and firestorms that swept their cities. Strategic bomber commanders complained that they did not have ample men and aircraft soon enough to make their doctrine work. They also argued that German air defenses diverted men and weapons from the land battle. Critics of the campaign, who judged the 600,000 civilian deaths disproportionate to the military results, thought that POINTBLANK had not affected the war’s outcome at all. Both extreme viewpoints ignored the doctrinal, organizational, and technical limitations of the Allied bomber forces as well as their ultimately awesome destructive power. In the war of attrition fought at 30,000 feet the Allies won another narrow victory that contributed to the final collapse of the Third Reich.

  Strategic Change in the Pacific

  With the general strategic outlines of the Pacific war established in 1943, the American armed forces massed in early 1944 for a year of climactic campaigning against the Japanese. As Admiral Yamamoto (killed by USAAF fighter pilots in April 1943) had feared, Jap
an could not stop the military might of an aroused United States. By the end of the year, the Americans had permanently ruptured Japan’s mid-Pacific defense perimeter and destroyed its ability to fight a conventional air-naval-ground war. The dual advance toward the western Pacific mixed long-range plans and strategic opportunism, a combination made possible by the sheer size of the American forces and their increasing operational skill. In 1944 the Americans won the major campaign of the Pacific war but did not yet win the war itself.

  General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz organized their forces for extended and unrelenting operations in their theaters. MacArthur’s ground forces combined American and Australian infantry divisions, supplemented by additional artillery and logistical units. MacArthur eventually formed two American field armies (6th and 8th), which he used for the western drive into the Philippines, while the Australians continued the ground operations against the isolated Japanese bases in the southwest Pacific. MacArthur’s land-based Far East Air Forces (FEAF) included Lieutenant General George C. Kenney’s U.S. 5th Air Force and elements of the Royal Australian Air Force; this force provided the full range of air support from interdiction bombing to battlefield close support. MacArthur’s navy was the U.S. 7th Fleet, task-organized for amphibious operations, but Admiral King made sure that MacArthur would not control the fast-carrier task forces. Instead Nimitz remained responsible for directing the major naval campaign, which would occur in the central Pacific theater. Although Nimitz’s warships and amphibious task forces left the war only for essential refitting and brief rests, his naval forces fell under two different commanders, Admiral William F. Halsey (3d Fleet) and Admiral Raymond A. Spruance (5th Fleet). While one commander conducted operations, the other planned the subsequent offensive. Nimitz’s command also included the USAAF 7th Air Force and land-based Navy and Marine aircraft. His ground forces for 1944 included four Marine divisions and a separate Marine brigade and four Army infantry divisions, all amply supported with artillery and other supporting arms, organized as two amphibious corps commanded by Marine generals.

  The Americans in the Pacific had by 1944 also developed a logistical system capable of supporting continuous operations. In MacArthur’s theater the system was traditional, for it depended upon eleven major fixed bases and the forward shuttling of supplies by ship and plane, which moved from island to island behind the fighting forces. Shipping shortages, exacerbated by limited port and storage facilities and inefficient management and manpower, plagued MacArthur. Working from fixed bases in the jungle islands, his forces had a voracious appetite for supplies. FEAF was an especially heavy consumer, since its commanders kept it in continuous action against Japanese shipping routes and isolated bases. In the central Pacific Nimitz’s fleet depended upon a sea-based logistical system capable of replenishing warships at sea and of utilizing extemporized bases among the captured atolls of the theater. Islands with suitable anchorages and airstrips were the key objectives of the central Pacific war, first to deprive the Japanese of their use, then to develop them for fleet operations. The service force that supported the 3d, 5th, and 7th Fleets grew to 3,000 vessels in 1945. It included specialized ships of all sorts: tenders, fast oilers, ammunition and stores ships, floating dry docks, and hospital ships. The Navy also formed special construction battalions (“Seabees”) to build new facilities with their bulldozers and scrapers as soon as the former occupants had ceased to exist. Logistical demands accelerated throughout 1944, but the Navy and Army service commands managed to keep pace, thus assuring a high tempo of operations the Japanese could not match.

  Still uncertain about the intentions of the Japanese fleet and their own ability to operate without superior land-based air power, MacArthur and Nimitz opened their dual advance in conservative fashion. Nimitz started the campaign with amphibious assaults upon the Tarawa and Makin atolls in the Gilbert Islands in November 1943. Despite suicidal Japanese resistance, the two American divisions took their objectives in only four days; Japanese air and naval forces did not contest the landing except for sporadic air and submarine raids. The Marine landing at Tarawa demonstrated that amphibious assaults still needed refinement. Japanese fixed defenses needed the special attention of pinpoint, methodical air and naval gunfire bombardment if landing force casualties were to be reduced. In addition, the assault troops required amphibian tractors to cross the coral reefs that barred the way to troops and supplies. In February 1944 the central Pacific amphibious forces showed they were quick learners, for the assault on the Marshalls occurred with greater sophistication. One Marine division and part of one Army division overwhelmed Kwajalein atoll. Both divisions were relatively inexperienced, but both profited from improved fire support, more numerous “amtracs” (amphibian tractors), and their own enthusiasm for close combat. Again the Japanese fleet did not come out. Impressed by the 5th Fleet’s ability in amphibious operations and confident that his fast carriers would best the Japanese, Nimitz scrapped his original timetable and ordered an additional February assault a thousand miles to the west. In a week’s time a landing force of one Marine and one Army regiment seized Eniwetok, another anchorage and air base. The ratio of American to Japanese dead in these assaults climbed to well over one to ten, a more than acceptable price for the Americans. In addition, the seizure of Kwajalein and Eniwetok allowed Nimitz to isolate the four remaining Japanese base complexes in the Marshalls. These bases were bombed and starved into impotence by Marine and USAAF aircraft throughout the rest of the war.

  In the southwest Pacific General MacArthur in early 1944 combined the final stages of the isolation of Rabaul with the first moves toward the Philippines. In February he too found the Japanese reluctant to fight more than a delaying action when he sent three American divisions into the Admiralty Islands. Covered by his own air strikes and deep raids by Nimitz’s carriers, MacArthur accelerated his own operations along the coast of New Guinea. With relatively light casualties, he leapfrogged westward from Hollandia and Aitape (April 1944) to the island of Morotai (September 1944), which placed him within air range of the Philippines. The Japanese rushed aircraft south to contain the American advance, but the FEAF had become too numerous and skilled for the Japanese to best. In addition, the Japanese learned that the Americans had mounted simultaneous operations against the Marianas, so the force that might have inconvenienced MacArthur returned to the north to face the more menacing offensive.

  In June–August 1944 the 5th Fleet dealt the Japanese armed forces another critical defeat by capturing Saipan, Tinian, and Guam and destroying the enemy’s naval aviation force at the Battle of the Philippine Sea (June 19–20). As the American amphibious forces (523 vessels, 127,000 troops) approached the twin objectives of Saipan and Guam, Admiral Spruance sent Task Force 58, which included his fast carriers, west of the Marianas, since he expected a major effort by the Japanese against the invasion force. The four carrier task groups (fifteen carriers and their escorts) ranged north and west of Saipan. On June 15 the amphibious assault forces (two Marine and one Army divisions) plunged ashore at Saipan and engaged the Japanese army in a hard-fought ground battle that included mountain fighting, mass suicide attacks, and artillery barrages given and received in a magnitude not faced in the jungle and atoll fighting. So fierce was the fighting that Nimitz postponed the landing on Guam. In the meantime the Japanese fleet sortied from its western Pacific bases for another major engagement with the U.S. Navy. American radio intelligence and reconnaissance by aircraft and submarines prevented any surprise, and, despite Spruance’s cautious conduct of the battle, the 5th Fleet’s aviation annihilated its Japanese counterpart. With better aircraft and radar and more experienced pilots, the American carrier forces and escort vessels downed 480 Japanese aircraft and lost only 130 aircraft and 76 airmen. In addition, the Americans sank three large Japanese carriers of the nine engaged. “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot” ended the threat of Japanese naval aviation in the Pacific. Secure from enemy attack from the sea, the amphibious expeditionary
forces took Saipan, then Guam and Tinian. The USAAF immediately began to turn the Marianas into an air base complex for its B-29s.

  The Pacific commanders moved quickly to exploit the Marianas victory, scrapping their previous timetables. Admiral King wanted a move directly to Formosa, but he lost the argument to MacArthur, who wanted the next effort (as planned) against the Philippines. The Americans did not have the fresh amphibious forces and logistical shipping for an operation so near China and the Japanese home islands. When Admiral Halsey’s 3d Fleet raids into the western Pacific revealed the Japanese shortages of aircraft, the JCS and MacArthur agreed to bypass Yap in the western Carolines and Mindanao and to strike directly at Leyte in the central Philippines. In October 1944 MacArthur’s 6th Army (six divisions) and the 7th Fleet—with Halsey’s 3d Fleet carriers in support—attacked Leyte. The Japanese navy made one more effort to inflict a decisive defeat upon the Americans but failed at the Battle of Leyte Gulf (October 23–25). The Japanese fleet approached the Americans from three directions. The center force, running a gauntlet of submarines and air attacks, actually passed through the San Bernardino Strait and engaged the escort carrier groups of the 7th Fleet. Lured past Luzon by reports of large carriers in the Japanese northern force, the 3d Fleet could not rescue the invasion force, which fought back so fiercely that the Japanese retired. To the south an American task group of surface warships caught the Japanese southern force in the Suriagao Strait and demolished it in a classic night bombardment. Successive attacks by Japanese planes based in the Philippines could not turn the tide. The defeat spelled the end of the Japanese fleet, which lost four large carriers, three battleships, nine cruisers, eleven destroyers, and 500 more aircraft. The 3d and 7th Fleets, by contrast, lost only two small carriers and three destroyers. The Marianas pattern then reemerged ashore. The isolated Japanese army fought with skill and devotion and perished. True to his word, MacArthur had returned in considerably greater strength than he had left in 1942.