by Unknown
Because doctrines, rather than research and development issues, were driving decision-making, there was no increased emphasis on the P-38 or modifications to the P-47 to allow them to carry twin drop tanks to extend the range of fighter escort. Drop tanks had been considered before the war and were seen as redundant.13 The heavy losses of 1943 were not seen as calling for fighter escorts beyond those already provided. Some indicted even those escorts then available—P-47s and Spitfires—as reducing the effectiveness of the bombers’ defensive armament. The bomber was going to get through to its target in daylight.
The RAF had long distrusted the concept of fighter escorts.14 It was also reluctant to commit its most advanced Mosquito night fighters to escort duties over Germany for fear of compromising their advanced radar systems once they were shot down, and because operating without their ground controlled intercept capability would have left them vulnerable to German night fighters. Even though the German bomber operations against Britain had been largely defeated by early 1944, the bulk of the night fighter force remained to defend against its resumption.
Compounding the problem was the long lead time inherent in fabricating modern weapons, organizing and training the fighting forces that used them, and in the research and development required both to keep existing weapons viable and to provide their eventual replacements and counters to enemy innovations. The decision to invest in the strategic bomber offensive long predated the Casablanca Conference. It was reflected in a wide range of U.S. and British decisions made throughout 1940-42. This meant that even if the bomber offensive were to be defeated decisively in 1944, the Allies would be unable to make a clean break from their investment in strategic bombing and reinvest it elsewhere. Ford’s massive Willow Run plant would still be turning out bombers, not landing craft, even though by 1944 landing craft were proving to be the great Achilles heel in translating economic capability into military force. Had the decision to curtail the bomber offensive been made earlier, some of the resources could have been available to address the Allies’ great strategic need—for landing craft, especially LSTs (landing ships, tank)—and a more responsive and flexible strategy might have been possible. The Allies had made the investment in strategic bombing long before the defeats of late 1943. To invest the resources that went into the bomber offensive into more LSTs and better rifle platoon leaders would have required that decisions were made long before then.
“Big Week” Leads to the Big Blow
The first opportunity the Germans had to demonstrate the improved capabilities for their integrated air defense system was in mid-February. Taking advantage of the week of good weather common in midwinter in northern Europe, the USAAF decided to announce its return to the offensive mission with a series of attacks on the German aircraft industry. The goal was both to push back the rising tide of German aircraft production and to force the Luftwaffe fighter force to impale itself on the defensive fire of the bomber formations.
Over the course of two weeks of maximum effort air battles that pushed both sides to the brink of exhaustion, considerable damage was done to several German factories, but without deep penetration fighter escort, the bomber rate of loss was even higher than in 1943. While German losses to the short-range escorts and the bomber guns were not inconsequential, without long-range strategic fighters that could take the war to the enemy fighter force, the bomber-destroying system that worked so well in 1943 would not only remain intact, but improve.
After the costly attacks of the “Big Week,” the USAAF shifted its objective again, to join with the RAF in the closing stages of the “Battle of Berlin,” as Harris had urged them to do since October. The planning for a series of long-range daylight attacks on Berlin was under way even as the Big Week ended. The Germans, aware that the RAF’s continued offensive against Berlin would likely pressure the USAAF to join in, were planning to meet it at the same time.
The Luftwaffe leadership did not perceive the defeat of the bomber offensive as simply the end product of an industrial process. They did not think that allocating greatly increased resources to the defense of the Reich would inevitably and of itself produce a large number of shot-down bombers. They realized that the operational skill that had made possible so many of their victories possible in the early years of the conflict had often been absent from the campaign against the bomber offensive. The command and technology changes made prior to 1943 enabled the Luftwaffe to implement initiatives in 1944 that they had been unable to use in earlier air battles.
The principles of mass and annihilation had been enshrined in the German way of war since the days of Gen. Alfred von Schlieffen and his study of the Battle of Cannae in the nineteenth century, but in 1943 the Luftwaffe was unable to apply these principles to defeating the bomber offensive. Though they could impose a general high level of attrition on the overall attacking forces, the Germans were concerned that this was a cost the Allies, with their superior manpower and industrial bases, could sustain if they had the will. The Germans had been able to inflict heavy losses, to be sure, but the goal of a Cannae-style air battle, leading to a decisive concentration against part of the enemy force and its destruction, was not within their grasp. If part of the enemy force was destroyed, rebuilding it would not simply be a matter of adding new replacements to an existing, if diminished, trained cadre. The German plan aimed at removing bomber groups from the enemy order of battle as thoroughly as ground battles could remove enemy divisions, what a later age would call targeting the enemy’s force reconstitution capabilities.
In February 1944, however, the Germans started planning for what was termed the “Big Blow.”15 This would be an attempt to mass interceptor strength against part of a daylight bomber raid. Galland selected for his target the first U.S. daylight bombing raid on Berlin that he believed was coming. Fighters were brought in from throughout the Reich. Fighter groups were concentrated into larger formations capable of putting massed interceptor formations together. Over 1,000 sorties—perhaps as many as 3,000—could be launched at an incoming U.S. long-range attack.
The first “Big Blow” fell on the first U.S. daylight mission to Berlin on March 6, 1944. The battle turned into the largest of the war so far. The U.S. bombers fought their way through to the target and back, but several bomb group formations were either totally destroyed or reduced to a handful. Total losses far exceeded those that had halted the daylight air offensive in October 1943. Galland had found a way to maximize a key indicator: the number of German fighter sorties in defense of the Reich required for a bomber kill. In the 1943 battles the number had been about ten. Now, with qualitative improvements in the fighter force and the massing of formations, the number started to go down. The improvements in the air defense system meant that fewer sorties were wasted through failing to intercept the bombers.
The USAAF repeated its contribution to the Battle of Berlin twice more within the following week. Losses were high on both sides, but at the end, without long-range strategic fighters to take the initiative against it, the Luftwaffe remained master of the sky over Berlin, much as the RAF had over London in 1940. The USAAF, without strategic escort fighters to prevent the Germans from concentrating fighter forces, which made them more effective and allowed twin-engine fighters to pick off stragglers at their leisure, had conceded the operational initiative to the Luftwaffe.
The Preinvasion Bombing Decision
With the heavy USAAF losses over Berlin and the RAF losses reaching their height over Nuremberg in March 1944, the strategic bombing offensive was largely shifted to targets in support of the upcoming invasion. This required moving the USAAF attacks away from German industrial targets—over the protests of the American airmen—and RAF attacks away from German cities—over the protests of the British airmen—and using them to hit transportation and tactical targets in France. While the German deemphasis of the V-weapons program limited the need to devote sorties beyond those absorbed by some decoy “No Ball” V-1 ramp sites, the preinvasion air offen
sive now assumed greater strategic importance. It was increasingly obvious that attacks on German industry would not limit the flow of munitions and fuel required by the German Army in the upcoming battle.
These defeats in effect undid the Casablanca decision to emphasize the bombing offensive. What they could not easily undo were the allied decisions, made largely in 1941-42, to invest heavily in the air war and in heavy bombers. Roosevelt, Churchill, the Combined Chiefs of Staff, and Eisenhower and his staff at SHAEF had never been of one mind about the wisdom of making the bomber offensive a cornerstone of strategy. The airmen running the bomber offensives had been, and so were given the opportunity to proceed in their own way. Now that it had resulted in heavy losses for small gain, with the political costs that entailed, Allied leadership refashioned its strategy. However, the switch to a preinvasion bombing campaign provided a respite for the Allies to rebuild. They could also plan for the resumption of the bomber offensive once the invasion was established ashore.
With the German fighter force now largely pulled back to defend the Reich itself, and beyond the reach of the Allied fighter force, it was thought that the preinvasion bombing offensive would force the Luftwaffe to return to bases within the range of Allied fighter cover. Because the Luftwaffe continued to become stronger since 1943 but had largely concentrated in Germany, air superiority would have to be secured after the invasion started rather than through the defeat of the Luftwaffe fighter force in the months before the invasion.
However, the increasing tempo of air operations over France and the likelihood of an invasion in the summer of 1944 led to a new division inside the German high command. Should the newly reinforced fighter force be held in reserve to continue the defense against the bombers once the strategic bombing offensive resumed, or should it be committed to contest air superiority over the invasion?
Defeat of the strategic bombers had allowed not only the fighters to join the fighting in Normandy. The Germans pulled large numbers of 88mm flak guns out of Germany and were able to move them toward the invasion. The defeat of the bomber offensive had even made the coastal defenses of Normandy stronger, for it freed steel and concrete for the use on the “Atlantic Wall” that would otherwise have been required to create hardened and underground facilities for German industry.16
Galland argued strongly to keep the fighters as a strategic reserve, that once they had defeated the strategic bombers they should not be committed simply to provide cover over the forces in the field. But he was overruled. It would have been impossible for the Luftwaffe to continue to claim a large percentage of the Reich’s resources and not join in what promised to be a decisive battle over France. But once they were committed, they were well within the effective range of the superior numbers of high-quality RAF and USAAF day fighters.
The Invasion
The Luftwaffe, undefeated by the bomber offensive, was ready to meet the 1944 D-Day landings in full strength, though most of its fighters and fighter-bombers had to deploy forward in the weeks after the invasion started. The resulting air battles over Normandy were the largest of the war. With both sides contesting control of the air and trying to concentrate air-ground assets at decisive points, the fighting resembled a much larger and more sophisticated version of the air combat over the Kursk offensive in 1943. The Germans were able to contest air superiority over Normandy throughout June and July, and German fighter-bombers were able to inflict considerable damage on the crowded beachhead.
But in the end the superior numbers of the Allied fighter force was significant. The “Big Week” had tried to bring the Luftwaffe fighter force to battle by attacking a target it could not abandon and defeating it by the fire of unescorted bombers. Over Normandy, the Allies found a target the Luftwaffe could not abandon—the German Army—but this time the mass of short-range but otherwise very effective Allied fighters were there to carry out the destruction effectively. The Luftwaffe fighter force was away from the integrated air defense system that it had successfully built to defend the Reich. Without the radar warning and fighter controllers, as the Battle of Normandy wore on the German fighters were increasingly forced to defend their bases in France. Even though the German decisions about their economy had narrowed a technology gap that otherwise would have been even more disastrous and overwhelming, the German fighter force was forced into a decisive battle over Normandy and, as Galland had feared, largely destroyed.
The Allied strategic bomber forces over Normandy, were frequently committed to support of the ground forces. Despite the spectacular concentration of firepower that could be delivered by large-scale carpet bombing in front of ground attacks, difficulties with coordination of forces often led to disappointing results or, worse, fratricide. The failure of the strategic bomber offensive did not free up the Allied bomber forces to redress the balance of the ground war. The Allied heavy bombers proved to be poorly suited for that.17
The use of the strategic bomber force against interdiction targets in France proved more effective. While, in the absence of strategic bombing against the transportation industry in Germany, the dispersed and increasingly integrated war economy was able to produce the goods and resources, getting this to the fighting forces in Normandy proved difficult. The Allied interdiction effort, though reinforced with strategic bombers, could never cut off the German forces in Normandy. But they could prevent the Germans from ever massing enough reserves of fuel, ammunition, or replacements to take advantage of the repeated Allied tactical setbacks, go on to the offensive and throw the invasion into the sea.
Despite the failure of the bomber offensive to defeat either Germany’s cities, industry, or air force before D-Day, the Allies were still able to make the invasion of Europe a success. The Allies succeeded despite the fact that the bomber offensive had consumed vast amounts of resources in the United States and especially in Britain, in terms of money, industrial production, research and development, and allocation of quality manpower. As it was, the main problem with the Allied forces in Normandy was not a lack of matériel and resources, but the ability to turn them into a sustained operational success other than through a series of battles of attrition. While the deemphasis on the bomber offensive provided some higher quality manpower for Allied ground combat forces, this benefit was limited by an inability to train the manpower to its full potential. Having the bombers available for tactical support because they were not engaged in striking Germany did not increase the fighting capability of Allied ground forces. Rather, it made them demand the bombers as part of any offensive operations despite their poor performance.18
The German Army was able to Withdraw from Normandy in good shape. There was sufficient fuel coming from the strategic synthetic oil plants and the Soviets were still a long way from the Ploesti oil fields. With sufficient fuel, even the Allied interdiction campaign was unable to deprive Germany’s mechanized units of their tactical mobility.
The Return to Strategic Bombing
The German Army had been pushed back to the boundaries of the Reich by the autumn of 1944, but few thought the war would be over by Christmas. With the bomber offensive defeated, Germany went into the decisive battles of 1944-45 with its air force having suffered heavy losses over France but the backbone of the Reich’s integrated air defense system unbroken. More significantly, the German war machine did not have to devote a large percentage of its total output to defend against the bombers. Industry and infrastructure alike were largely preserved from destruction and disruption. German morale, protected from the impact of bombing, remained high.19
The impact of this was first felt on the Eastern Front. The bomber offensive had been intended to provide a “second front,” as the only major Anglo-American offensive in western Europe before D-Day. Its inability to make an impact on the German war machine had been reflected in high casualties and slowed advances for the Soviets in 1943-44, though the bulk of the Luftwaffe was still concentrated in the defense of Germany.
The Allies were in a positio
n to return to the bombing campaign after the breakout from Normandy. The refusal to develop and employ long-range escort fighters was now less critical, with the availability of forward bases and the German loss of their forward radars reducing the warning time available to the integrated air defense system. The potential seemed to be there for the Allies to reverse their earlier setbacks and resume the bomber campaign the airmen envisioned.
What prevented that—and turned the resumption of the bomber offensive into an even costlier setback than those that had occurred earlier—also had its roots in the rationalization of the German war economy. This had allowed rebuilding the air defense of the Reich with Me 262 jet day and night fighters.
The Me 262 had begun full production in May 1944. It was the best example of what the rationalization of the German war economy could produce in the absence of effective bombing. Increased investments in research and development had extended the service life of the Junkers Jumo engines to twenty-five hours. This was hardly an engineering triumph, but it meant that the new fighter could be mass-produced.20 The new fighter still had many teething troubles, but with the R4M rocket developed with it, the Me 262 proved to be an order of magnitude more effective as a bomber destroyer than even the best piston-engined fighters. That there were now fighters over Germany meant much less to the fast-moving Me 262, which, if skillfully flown, could fly past escort fighters to get to the bombers.