The increasing intensity of the U. S. daylight heavy-bomber
offensive and the new tactics of the fighter escorts posed an insoluble problem
to the Luftwaffe's day-fighter forces. These forces already labored under the
self-imposed handicaps of faulty organization and incompetent higher
leadership. From October 1943 through March 1944, Goering, Commander in Chief
of the Luftwaffe, attempted to cope with the deteriorating air situation by
strictly enforcing a policy of ignoring the fighter escort and attacking the
heavy bombers. Maj. Gen. Adolph Galland, who commanded the Luftwaffe day
fighter force, protested vociferously against this directive, claiming that it
unnecessarily handcuffed his pilots. German pilots under orders to avoid
American fighters were put on the defensive and robbed of the aggressiveness
needed for successful fighter-to-fighter combat.
Other German wartime critics advocated attacking the escorts
at the earliest possible point to force them to jettison their drop tanks and
reduce their range. This apparently simple stratagem demonstrated the depth of
the German defensive problem. The Luftwaffe did not base substantial numbers of
fighters in France for three reasons: they would be vulnerable to harassing
raids from medium bombers and fighter-bombers, their bases would require
additional manpower for heavy antiaircraft defenses and for ground defense
against partisans, and their supply dumps would stretch logistical links as
well as offer targets to air raids. To catch incoming U. S. fighters, German
fighters would have to scramble from western Germany or eastern France.
Provided enough of them avoided and survived the RAF fighter sweeps vectored
precisely by radar and "Y" Service, and provided they distinguished
American from hunting British groups, the German fighters would then have to
compel all the Americans to strip (jettison) their tanks. Otherwise an American
group would leave behind one squadron to deal with the few penetrating Germans
and continue onward. Of course, all Luftwaffe fighter aircraft committed to
this operation would be unavailable to attack the heavy bombers over Germany.
If the Luftwaffe had waited until the RAF was out of range
to begin its attack on the U. S. fighters, much of the advantage of forcing the
stripping of tanks would have evaporated. In any case, the Eighth's fighter
groups actively sought combat with the Luftwaffe, whether flying to or
departing escort duty. It is difficult to see what the tactic of forcing the
Eighth's fighters to jettison early would have accomplished other than to play
directly into Spaatz's and Doolittle's hands by provoking air battles not only
within range of all AAF fighters but within the reach of short-range RAF
fighters as well. If the Luftwaffe wished to begin the battle over France
instead of deep over the Reich, all the better. Given the growing technical
inferiority of German aircraft, the relative lack of training and experience of
German fighter pilots, and the superior numbers of Allied fighter aircraft,
such a policy could have only one result: even greater disaster for the Luftwaffe.
To some extent the charges against Goering were typical of
the postwar scapegoating indulged in by German generals. Goering and Hitler
presented obvious, large, and defenseless targets. After March 1944, when the
Luftwaffe's situation had worsened, Goering authorized one fighter group from
each fighter division to attack and divert American escorts. Granting
permission for diversionary operations instead of all-out attacks on American
fighters did not, of course, return the initiative to the German fighter
pilots, but it showed more flexibility on Goering's part than his subordinates
tended to attribute to him. Also at the end of March, Goering responded to the
pleas of his subordinates by consolidating the three defensive air commands
facing the American bombers. He gave operational control of three of the most
important of the Reich's western air defenses to the Luftwaffe's I Fighter
Corps. Before then the I Fighter Corps, (responsible for northern air defense
sectors, coastal areas devoted to naval operations, the Berlin area, and
industrial districts of the Rhineland, Westphalia, and central Germany), the
7th Fighter Division (responsible for the defense of southern Germany,
especially the industrial areas of Frankfurt-am- Main, Mannheim, Stuttgart, Nuremberg,
Munich, and Augsburg), and Fighter Command Ostmark, (charged with defending
vital Austrian targets such as Vienna, Wiener-Neustadt, Steyr, and Linz) had
operated semiautonomously. Each had forces inadequate to defend its sector, but
there was no central operational control mechanism capable of forcing the
commands to cooperate with each other. This was an important factor in the
Luftwaffe's inability to concentrate all of its defensive strength on the
attacking U. S. forces. The shortage of fighters to apply against its opponent
was as much a function of the Luftwaffe's own inefficiency as it was of the
heavy losses inflicted by the Americans.
Ever larger numbers of American long-range escorts succeeded
in wrecking the combined interceptor tactics the Germans had developed to
combat deepbomber penetrations. Before February 1944, the Germans almost always
waited to attack until the escort had left the bombers to return home, which
happened on any deep-penetration raid in 1943. Waiting to attack until the
escort left allowed for basing deep within Germany, and for defensive aircraft
to be concentrated after the bombers had committed to a specific route and
probable destination. Fighters could concentrate without being attacked. During
the Schweinfurt missions and later, German twin-engine fighters had stayed
beyond range of the bombers' defensive armament and shelled them with 210mm
rockets, adapted from the German rocket mortar and known by the ground troops
as the "screaming meemie." When the bombers loosened their positions
to avoid rocket explosions, the single-engine fighters would attack the
attenuated formation. In the face of vigorous escorts this tactic did not work.
Not only were concentration areas liable to attack, so were home airfields. The
performance of the American single-engine fighter escorts so outclassed that of
the twin-engine German heavy fighters as to make the latter virtually helpless.
If the Germans wished to employ their heavy fighters at all, their light
fighters had to escort the twin-engine fighters, much to the detriment of
German morale and firepower directed against the bombers. By the end of March,
the twin-engine fighters seldom arose to defend against American daylight
raids.
The increasing numbers of American escorts forced the
Luftwaffe to modify its single-engine fighter tactics. As early as mid-December
1943, map exercises at I Fighter Corps Headquarters had demonstrated that
commitment of individual single-engine fighter groups alone had little chance
of success. A single group would become too involved in fighter-to-fighter
combat with the escorts. On December 29, 1943, I Fighter Corps ordered future
attacks on Allied heavy bomber formations to employ a wing formation of at
least three closely aligned groups to ensure that at least one group of
fighters penetrated to the bomber stream. These larger formations required
longer time to marshal, offered targets that were easier for Allied air
controllers to identify, and proved difficult for increasingly inexperienced German
fighter pilots.
Throughout March and far the rest of the air war against
Germany, U. S. fighter escorts so efficiently accompanied their bombers that
large U. S. losses resulted only when navigational or timing errors by either
bombers or fighters caused them to miss their rendezvous, or when a small
contingent of the escorts was overwhelmed by large numbers of enemy fighters,
which then broke through to attack the bombers. The March 6, 1944, Eighth Air
Force mission to Berlin, which will be discussed in detail below, illustrates many of the tactical and operational changes involved in the increased use of
escort fighters.
The harsh weather of the winter of 1943-1944 continued
unabated in March. It allowed only two days of visual bombing over Germany-on
March 8, when the Eighth lost 37 of 623 bombers dispatched against the Erkner
Ball Bearing Works in Berlin and on March 18, when it lost 43 of 738 bombers
that attacked airfields and aircraft assembly plants in central and southern
Germany. The 80 bombers lost in those two days made them, aside from the 69 of
730 lost in the March 6 mission on Berlin, the worst two days of the month. A
lack of visual bombing opportunities did not prevent the Eighth from launching
full-scale efforts of 400 or more heavy bombers on fifteen of the month's days.
The Eighth had attempted to launch two large missions
against Berlin on March 3 and 4. Bad weather had stopped both in their tracks,
but not before fighters, which missed the recall, appeared over Berlin on March
3 and a lone wing of B-17s (the 13th Combat Wing from Curtis LeMay's 3d
Bombardment Division), became the first of the Eighth's bombers to hit the
German capital by pushing through heavy clouds on March 4. These efforts
alerted the Germans to the Eighth's intentions.
On March 6, a total of 730 American bombers, taking three
hours to assemble and climb to bombing altitude (24,000 to 27,000 feet), formed
up over England and headed due east to Berlin. German radar spotted them and
their RAF Spitfire escort as soon as they left their bases and tracked them for
the entire mission. American escort consisted of 801 fighters (thirteen Eighth
Air Force and four Ninth Air Force groups). Eleven groups of P-47s (615
aircraft) provided the second leg of the penetration escort. Three groups of
P-38s (86 aircraft), one of which turned back because of an excessive number of
engine failures, supplied medium-range escort, and four groups of P-51s (100
aircraft) flew deep escort. Three groups of the P-47s flew two missions, providing
return escort on their second flight. For the far reaches of the trip the
bombers had none too many escorts.
Seventy miles east of the Dutch-German border, at the
practical P-47 range limit, the B-17s of the 3d Bombardment Division grouped in
a sixty-mile-long column of combat wing pairs and ran smack into the middle of
a concentration of perhaps 150 German single-engine fighters. The small number
of P-38s operationally available for that leg of the relay left the bombers
underescorted. German ground controllers, having detected an escort gap in the
center of the column, sent small forces to the head and tail of the U. S. force
to distract and pin the escort, and then threw the remaining 100 fighters at
the momentarily unprotected center. In less than thirty minutes the aggressive
German attack downed perhaps twenty bombers of the 3d Bombardment Division.
The attack singled out the 100th Bombardment Group. In
fierce air combat at 24,000 feet and at 43 degrees below zero the group took a
fearful beating. As it had so often before and would again, the sky over
Germany filled with the carnage of air battle. Bf 109s and FW19Os dived and
twisted through the bombers' formation, whose gunners tried futilely to keep
them at bay. At one point an attacking Bf 109 dived through the formation,
apparently enveloped in flames. Three gunners on three different bombers
claimed and were awarded a sure kill.
After diving below the clouds, the German pilot landed his slightly
injured aircraft at his home field.
As the fight continued, the American pilots, sweating
profusely despite the cold, in leather clothes and restrictive oxygen masks,
dared not try any but the slightest wobble of evasive action for fear of
crashing into each other in formation. Once a bomber spouted smoke or flames
and, laboring, fell back from the safety of the formation, the fighters
finished it off like predators stalking a herd.
The crew of a fatally injured bomber had little time to
escape before hundreds of gallons of fuel or six thousand pounds of bombs
exploded. If the bomber began to spin, the centrifugal force it generated
trapped the crew within it. Many airmen were crushed and broken by the tail
surfaces of their own bombers when the slipstream grabbed them as they exited
and brutally pushed them to the rear. Anyone who bailed out started a five-mile
descent to ground by falling through other bomber formations, perhaps meeting
grisly death on props and leading wing edges. Soon the sky filled with falling
men, loose hatch covers, ejected shell casings, and spinning pieces of debris.
Parachutes-white U.S. and brown German, either of which could be collapsed by
the close passage of aircraft--dotted the sky.
The Germans did not have things all their own way. When the
slow twin-engine Bf 110s and Me 210s, made even clumsier by the large racks and
rockets carried under their wings, attempted to close within rocket range of U.
S. bombers, American escorts sliced through their formations killing or
scattering the Zerstorers (destroyers), leaving the survivors shaken. On March
6, Zerstorergeschwader Horst Wessel scrambled nine aircraft: two aborted
because of mechanical problems, one was damaged, five were lost in air-to-air
combat (with one pilot killed and four wounded), and the unit's commander landed
his damaged plane at a different airfield. When the single-engine FW 190s and
Bf 109s formed up to assault the bombardment divisions, squadrons of P-51s struck
them first, disrupting their attack formations and pursuing them as they
sought, as ordered, to avoid the escort and close with the bombers.
As the fighters dueled, a P-51 stuck on the tail of an FW
190, shredding it with bullets from its six .50-caliber machine guns. The
German pilot huddled behind the armor in his cockpit, finally abandoning his
ruined aircraft. Back in England, review of P-51 gun cameras clearly showed the
German leaving his plane, which blew up a few moments later. The American pilot
gained a kill and another small brightly painted swastika on the side of his
plane. Eighth Air Force public relations officers passed the film to the press,
which recorded for the American home front the death of another of the Nazi's
vaunted fighter planes.
The 2d Bombardment Division, just behind the 3d, saw only
two German fighters in the same defensive area. Over Berlin the Germans
concentrated seventy- five twin-engine day and night fighters, escorted by
about twenty-five single- engine fighters. They attacked the leading elements
of the 1st Bombardment Division, the first division over the city, and
attempted to saturate the defending escort. They were the only heavy opposition
and they ceased as the 1st left the target area.
One of the bombers lost over Berlin that day carried to
earth with it the Commander of the 4th Combat Wing, Brig. Gen. Russ Wilson. In
all, enemy fighters accounted for 41 bombers, 4 more landed in Sweden, and the
remaining 24 fell victim to antiaircraft fire or accidents. Six more heavy
bombers had sustained enough damage to be not repairable. The totals amounted
to 75 heavy bombers lost or not repairable, 347 heavy bombers damaged, and 11
escort fighters lost. Nor had the bombing been accurate; most of the 1,648 tons
of bombs and 2,448,000 propaganda leaflets fell on areas other than their
primary targets, the industrial suburbs. USSTAF admitted, "Generally poor
results were obtained in Berlin area." Spaatz reported to Arnold that the Eighth had
hit none of its primary targets. Perhaps its crews were tired or rattled by
their losses. An Allied intelligence report aptly summed up the day:
"Thus, on this occasion, due no doubt to skillful handling, a good
appreciation of our intentions, and good flying weather, the Luftwaffe gave few
of the expected indications of rigor mortis." On the return trip American
fighters claimed 1 German aircraft destroyed and 12 damaged on the ground. Ten
hours after takeoff the bombers landed back in England.
