B-24

The 3d Bomb Division, commanded by Gen Curtis LeMay, was scheduled to attack Schweinfurt. While clear skies were expected over the target area, overcast conditions at home bases caused several bombers to collide during the formation rendezvous. As a result of the weather, miscommunication, and confusion, LeMay had to call off his command’s raid altogether. The 2d Bomb Division’s B-24s were scheduled to attack production facilities at Gotha, but this too had to be recalled as the weather precluded formation flying with aircraft strung out for miles. However, some B-24s made it as far as Germany and hit targets of opportunity. 74 bombers of the 2d Division misidentified the Dutch cities of Arnhem, Nijmegen, and Deventer as German and unfortunately killed many civilians in the occupied country. Another 64 B-24s found targets in Denmark but overcast and obscuration resulted in a no drop.

The 1st Division also experienced bad weather and was forced to hit most targets of opportunity. However, parts of the 1st Division were successful in hitting the Ju-88 plant at Aschersleben causing a 50 percent reduction in production for two months. A navigator on the Aschersleben raid reported the city doesn’t exist anymore. Our bombs made a beautiful bull’s eye smack on that plant, we had a clear shot and the bombardiers certainly made the most of it. An attack on Bernberg also affected the Ju-88 production by destroying 70 to 80 percent of the assembly buildings.

Losses for the 8-AAF included 41 bombers out of a sortie total of 430 with the 15-AAF losing 14 bombers out of 183. However, US fighters claimed 60 German fighters while losing only 11 of their own. While some bombers made the most of the situation, as a result of bad weather, only 99 out of 466 8-AAF bombers launched, hit their primary targets, and only 255 planes bombed any target.

After three days of continuous operations and seeing the assessments and losses coming in, Doolittle became concerned for his aircrews and contacted his higher headquarters at the USSTAF. Complaining to Anderson at USSTAF, Doolittle argued that his crews were surviving on Benzedrine and sleeping pills. The three days of flying, dying, and fighting was beginning to be too much. Despite Doolittle’s protestations, Anderson continued to order planes in the air. Understanding that this situation was a key moment in the air war, Anderson reportedly had to tell the commander of the 8-AAF, to shut up and carry out his orders.

Wounded B-24

DAY 4

On Feb 23, weather precluded the 8-AAF from launching bomber formations, giving Doolittle’s crews the rest they needed and a respite from flying. After three days of sending over 800 or more bombers into combat, the stand-down was welcome. The high-pressure system that provided the relatively clear air over Germany had dissipated. But Dr. Krick analyzed the situation and forecasted that clear air would return to the European continent the next day. However, the weather on Feb 23, did not affect the 15-AAF as it launched 102 bombers. The target for the day was the Walzlagerwerke in Steyr, Austria, that produced ball bearings. Results were good as the raid destroyed 20 percent of the plant area, resulting in a 10 to 15 percent drop in overall production for the factory.

The price was high as the attacking force lost 17 bombers. The Steyr raid made a lasting impression on B-24 crews flying that day. A tail gunner observed, never before or since did I see the enemy so wildly aggressive, pressing their attacks in very close. I could actually see debris fly from the nose and cowl of a Me-109 as I fired point blank. I thought he might collide. The gunner further remembered thinking If I don’t get this bastard he’s gonna kill me. The German’s fire was just above my head. I think he hit the top turret … the enemy attacked almost to a man from the rear and not too high, and they just lined up and bored on in … we were in a good place in the formation, but three or four planes behind us were shot down so we became ‘tail end Charlie’ and getting a drubbing when the attack finally broke off.

ME-109

DAY 5

Thursday, Feb 24, the clear air that Dr. Krick had forecasted returned. The 8-AAF was also back in the air again, launching over 800 bombers and 700 fighters. Remembering what has happened four and six months earlier, aircrews of the 1st Bomb Division were chagrined to learn that Schweinfurt was their target for the day. Earlier, in August and October 1943, the 8-AAF crews suffered horribly while attacking the city’s ball-bearing production factories. In both the August and October raids, the 8-AAF lost approximately 20 percent of the bomber force, equating to a total of some 1200 airmen lost. As one crew member remembered It’s a death sentence for some of us. Everyone looks grim. Some are obviously frightened. A fellow next to me covers his face and mumbles that he wishes he’d written his wife last night.

The three air divisions of the 8-AAF took to the skies. The 3d Division targeted aircraft plants again in the north, unescorted by fighters, and proceeded to Tutow to bomb the FW-190 factory. However, upon arriving at the target, the bombers were forced by cloud cover to divert to their secondary target near Rostock. Also similar to Monday, the B-17s again met enemy resistance even though the split operations were intended to draw the enemy to the other inbound divisions. After the bombing, the departing formation took a route over the North Sea and eventually found safety over the open waters, away from the ground-based defenders. As a result of the raid and enemy defenses, the division lost five out of 236 aircraft.

The B-24s of the 2d Division attacked the Me-110 plant near Gotha and other targets of opportunity. Attacked by German defenders en route, the Liberators found their targets and dropped their bombs in the clear air above the target. Once the bombers cleared the defending FLAK barrage, the Luftwaffe fighters appeared again, taking a toll on the Americans. When the 2d Combat Wing cleared the target area, B-24s were again set ablaze by the Luftwaffe defenders. One crewman remembered seeing men bailing out randomly from positions in these planes, nose to bomb bay to tail … some chutes opened right away … some came very close to our planes … the sky was a mass of parachutes and I estimated 25 all around us.

The results of the Gotha raids were exceptional as almost every building in the factory was damaged and the eastern half of the plant, where most of the aircraft assembly took place, was destroyed. A post-war analysis found that the raid cost the Germans six to seven weeks’ worth of production, the equivalent of some 140 aircraft. However, the Division paid a heavy price as 33 out of 213 sortied bombers were lost.

In the meantime, the 1st Division launched 266 bombers against Schweinfurt and initially received little enemy resistance while inbound to the target. Bombing accuracy on the Schweinfurt plant was very good and reduced production by ten percent. However, by 1944 the Germans had dispersed much of their ball bearing production industry, so the strategic effects were negligible. During the mission, the division lost 11 aircraft of the 238 that actually reached the target with a loss of only 4.6 percent – a far cry from the 20 percent loss experienced from the earlier 1943 raids. Additionally, the American fighters also experienced success that day as they claimed 38 German fighters for a loss of ten.

Bf 109G assembly line

The 15-AAF again struck the same general location near Steyr in Austria, but now targeted the Daimler-Puch aircraft component factory. Although 114 bombers took off, only 87 B-17s from the 15-AAF made it to the primary target area due to weather, and these bore the brunt of Luftwaffe attacks. German fighters fired long-range rockets, dropped aerial bombs, and conducted coordinated fighter attacks on single bombers using four to six planes. On this day, the Germans focused their efforts entirely on the 2d Bombardment Group which made up the last assembly in the 15-AAF bomber formation. Ten of the 17 planes lost for the 15-AAF came from this group. Tragically, the ten losses represented the entire 2d Bombardment Group’s compliment for the raid.

DAY 6

Feb 25 was the last day of the operation. As the weather cooperated with the American plans, all units were able to bomb their primary targets with generally good accuracy. The three 8-AAF bomb divisions initially traveled together, in what must have been a spectacular sight, with an escort of almost 900 fighters. Unlike the previous few days, every bomber group hit its primary target on the last day of the operation. With clear weather over Germany, both the 8 and the 15-AAFs coordinated attacks and again struck the large Messerschmitt factories in the Regensburg area. This was the first time both Air Forces coordinated a maximum effort attack on the same city on the same day. The clear weather allowed great accuracy by the bombardiers and the one-two punch of the two raids had a good effect. When Gen Carl Tooey Spaatz, head of the USSTAF, looked at the post-strike photos he remarked, I consider that superior results were obtained … the 15-USAAF accomplished a superior job of bombing … in the face of
heavy air attack
.

The raids affected aircraft production significantly as it fell from 435 planes in January to just 135 in March and did not recover full-scale production until the summer. The 15-AAF also sent bombers to the ports of Fiume and Zara on the Adriatic coast, the rail yards at Zell-am-See in Austria, and the airfield at Graz-Thalerhof. Unfortunately for the 15-AAF, the Luftwaffe focused much of its efforts on the Italian-based bombers as it lost 33 of the 116 bombers sortied on the Regensburg raid for a loss rate of almost 28 percent. Regarding the heavy losses by the 15-AAF, Spaatz remarked the results far outweigh the losses. The 8-AAF’s 3d Division arrived about an hour after the 15-AAF and did not meet the same level of resistance, but was hammered by defenders as soon as they flew into German air space. While some B-17s were shot down en route, those making it to the target experienced a less ferocious defense as many enemy fighters were still refueling or rearming from the earlier raid. The 3d Division lost 12 out of the 267 effective sorties for a loss rate of 4.5 percent over Regensburg.

In addition, the 1st Division from the 8-USAAF attacked the aircraft plant at Augsburg and the SKF Ball Bearing plant at Stuttgart. The Augsburg raid was largely successful as 500 tons of bombs demolished 30 buildings, reduced production capacity by about 35 percent, and destroyed one-third of machine tools and 70 percent of the stored materials. The lead bombardier on the raid reported the bombing was very good … we knocked out at least three-quarters of the factory, we had a good formation and made an ideal bomb run, laying our bombs in a tight pattern, all we could see was smoke when we turned to head back.

While the raid was devastating, the plant was back in production in a month. In these raids, the 246 sorties experienced a loss of 13 aircraft or approximately five percent. The 2d Division, with 161 B-24s raided the Me-110 assembly factories at Furth and lost six Liberators. Fighter operations were not as successful on the last day as the planners had hoped. Both the VIII and IX Fighter Commands launched almost 900 fighters but at day’s end, claimed only 26 kills with a loss of three.

B-24 bombers from the 453rd Bombardment Group took off from Old Buckenham Airfield in England for a bomb run over Hamm, Germany

ANALYSIS

8th US Army Air Force15th US Army Air ForceFor the entire operation, the 8-USAAF launched over 3300 bombers while the smaller 15-USAAF launched over 500. Over 6000 bombing sorties were generated and both commands combined dropped more than 19.000 tons of bombs on 18 German airframes and two ball bearing factories. Tonnage dropped in this one week and surpassed the 8-USAAF’s total amount for all of 1943. In the conduct of combat, the 8-USAAF lost 137 heavy bombers with the 15-USAAF lost 89, a combined loss rate of about six percent.

While six percent was still high, it did not come close to the ten percent experienced in the previous year. In total, the Americans wrote off 299 bombers as a result of the operation and resulting in the 8-AAF losing a fifth of its combat power! For the fighters, the VIII Fighter Command launched 2548 aircraft, 712 from the IX Fighter Command, and 413 from the 15-AAF. From all these sorties, the USAAF lost only 28 fighters and would claim some 600 Luftwaffe fighters – a vastly exaggerated claim. Overall American personnel losses for the campaign totaled 2600 seriously wounded, killed, or missing.

On the German side of the equation, the losses were equally staggering. Despite the claims of the USAAF, the Luftwaffe lost only between 225 and 275 aircraft during the week. While actual losses pale in comparison to the USAAF claims, the number was still significant. This figure equated to a third of the Luftwaffe’s single-engine fighters and 18 percent of its scarce pool of pilots. More importantly, given the Luftwaffe’s paucity of trained and seasoned fighter pilots, the Germans could hardly recover from such losses. While the US forces suffered at the hands of the Luftwaffe, the Americans were in a much better position to absorb such punishment and could easily replace losses in both planes and pilots. In fact, by the end of the Big Week, the VIII Fighter Command received 90 percent more P-51s than the number with which it began.

Overall German fighter production numbers would fall for a short time, but astonishingly, would rebound strongly. In January 1944, the German aviation industry produced some 1316 single-engine fighter aircraft and the figure dropped to only 1016 for the month of February. But by March, the figure again rose to 1377 and would continue to rise about 300 additional aircraft a month up to a peak of 3031 in September! In fact, the US Strategic Bombing Survey conducted after the war reported that the German aircraft industry produced 39.000 aircraft of all types in 1944 and that strength in units at the end of the year was almost unchanged from the January figure. American planners failed to realize that sufficient surge capacity existed within German aircraft production and that the industry was not initially operating at 100 percent of capacity. After the Big Week, American intelligence ofcars overvalued their effect on the Germans when they estimated that the Germans produced only 655 fighters per month when on average they were producing 1581! While bomb damage analysis would at times claim that 70 percent of an aircraft industry building was damaged or destroyed, the machinery and lathes in these buildings often remained in working condition and could still be operated or moved to another location. In addition, the Germans assigned a labor pool of over 300.000 workers to repair the damaged infrastructure. As a result, the German aircraft industry proved surprisingly resilient and would later cause many military planners to reassess the idea of strategic bombardment and its effect.

However, in order to thwart the bombing of its large production centers in the future, the Germans started a large-scale dispersal program and divided 29 aircraft production centers into 85 different locations, and spread power plant production to 249 sites. As a result, targeting and bombing the German aviation industry became much more difficult, but the spreading of the production capacities did reduce overall efficiency by 20 percent. While the diaspora of German aviation had its inefficiencies, the Germans also mobilized their workforce by imposing a seven-day work week with double shifts in the factories. Even with this increase in aircraft production, the German industry could not compete with Allied manufacturing capacities and continued to fall behind despite industrial miracles in a bombed-out landscape.

While aircraft production would climb in subsequent months despite the Allied strategic bombing effort, the building of airplanes was meaningless if there was no pilot to fly the plane. The attrition of the air war began to take its toll as seasoned pilots were killed and the overall quality of the German pilots began to wane. In the next month, March 1944, Germany would lose another 22 percent of its single-engine fighter pilots. While replacement was the answer, new Luftwaffe pilots did not receive the same quantity or quality training that their predecessors enjoyed years earlier. While the Luftwaffe pilots received over 75 hours of training in their operational aircraft in the first years of the war, by 1944 the average new Luftwaffe pilot received only about 25 hours. This was especially relevant as their USAAF counterparts received over 100 hours in 1944 – and this was exacerbated as the number of Allied fighters in the air climbed appreciably. Forced on the defensive, Luftwaffe Gen d. Flieger Adolf Galland admitted our units forgot how to conduct a dogfight. Now it had come to banking and diving away. Naturally, any cohesion of the unit was lost and singly our fighters were finished off the by the enemy who outnumbered us greatly.” This attrition of Luftwaffe pilots continued. A shortage of fighter pilots became so bad that Galland requested that experienced pilots from bomber and ground attack units be used in the fighter arm. After the war, Galland admitted that when the US fighters went on the offensive, Germany lost the air war.

The change in fighter doctrine and tactics also played a role. In going after the Luftwaffe in the air and on the ground, German losses began to mount. Free to roam and hit Luftwaffe airfields, US fighter pilots wreaked havoc on the German bases. In March a secret Ultra message was intercepted that recognized the USAAF’s change in fighter tactics by stating … in the west, the enemy has recently put aside a part of the escorting force to attack aircraft taking off and forming and has achieved success. On Feb 20, 1944, a newly operational Me-110 Zerstorergeschwader squadron launched a group of 13 aircraft with a group of three more taking off minutes later. When the group of three arrived at the designated rendezvous point to meet with the other 13, there was not much left of the first group. By the time the latter three arrived, 11 of the 13 Me-110s from the first group were already shot down. While the Me-110s were busy in the sky, American fighters attacked the Zerstorergeschwader home airfield and damaged nine more aircraft. Losses of this nature continued for the Germans even after Operation Argument’s offensive.

However, it should not be concluded that Operation Argument and the air battles that ensued during that week in Feb 1944 constituted a complete victory over the Luftwaffe. Both air forces would continue to slug it out over the skies of Europe for months to come. The next month the 8-USAAF alone wrote off another 349 bombers and the damage inflicted upon the command would remain at this level until May. What the Big Week signed was the beginning of a decisive, attritional campaignin the skies. Both sides were massing their airpower in ways never done before. The weight of the Allied onslaught eventually ground down the Luftwaffe making it a hollow force incapable of mounting an effective defense. In the spring and summer of 1944 Allied airpower succeeded in removing the Luftwaffe as a signicant threat. While still capable of providing some point defense and harassing raids, the Luftwaffe was on the ropes by summer 1944. This reduction of the Luftwaffe was a result of the aerial battle of attrition that began during the Big Week.



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