ArtKramr wrote:

ubject: More long-range Spitfires and daylight Bomber Command raids, with
added nationalistic abuse (was:
From: (Guy alcala)
Date: 9/2/03 9:09 PM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

." Here's the sortie count and
bomb tonnage for the B-25 and B-26:

We never flew "sorties" We flew missions. Fighters flew sorties.

You, fighters and everyone else flew missions that involved a certain number of
sorties, effective and ineffective, and records were kept of both. If you want to
know what the average effective bombload per a/c was, just counting missions isn't
going to do it, because you need to know how many a/c flew on each mission for the
number to mean anything; in short, you need to know the number of sorties. The
figures I gave above are presumably either effective sorties (those assessed as
having dropped bombs), or at least those that were officially counted (i.e. you'd
crossed the enemy/occupied coast or whatever the criteria was in the particular
theater/timeframe).

Guy