ArtKramr wrote:

Subject: More long-range Spitfires and daylight Bomber Command raids,
From: Guy Alcala

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,

Missions that involved sorties???? What does that mean?. I flew all missions.
No sorties.

As explained by another poster, a sortie is one flight by one a/c. X number of
a/c in a squadron, group or what have you can all fly a single mission, which will
count as X number of sorties total. Think of a sortie as the aircraft equivalent
of a man/day. If you have a job that is supposed to take 10 man/days to complete,
then to do it you can (ignoring any practical difficulties that might preclude
some of the combinations) either use 1 man for ten days, 2 men for 5 days, 5 men
for two days, or 10 men for one day. Sorties work similarly: 1 a/c flying ten
missions, 2 a/c flying 5 missions, 5 a/c flying two missions, or 10 a/c flying one
mission, all count as ten sorties.

because you need to know how many a/c flew on each mission for the
number to mean an

We flew 56 Marauders on every mission. Max effort every time.

Which is 56 sorties. But medium units didn't always fly 56 a/c. At least in
1943, it was usual to fly 36 a/c group formations (group UE was increased later)
in the ETO, and fighter and heavy bomber units had different establishments and
flew different formations consisting of different numbers of a/c. the typical
heavy bomber group in 1943 would put up between 18-24 a/c for a single mission,
i.e. 18-24 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).


Yeah, that was a bad habbit of ours. We always crossed into enemy territorry
and dumped 4,000 pounds of bombs all over them. We called these missions. Not
sorties.

Art, not every a/c that took off crossed into enemy territory. There are
inevitably aborts for various reasons. Depending on where the abort occurred, it
might or might not count towards completing the tour requirement. The USAAF
usually defined an effective sortie as one which dropped bombs on a target. So,
for instance, on the Regensburg-Schweinfurt Raid, the 4th Bomb Wing dispatched
146* B-17s on VIIIth BC Mission Number 84, to Regensburg, or 146 sorties (*sources
are a bit schizophrenic, as most say 146, but detail 147). Of that number, 11
aborted over England or the North Sea for reasons other than enemy action, but
four were replaced by airborne spares, making 139 that crossed the coast. None of
the crews of a/c which aborted for these reasons prior to crossing the Dutch coast
were allowed to count this mission towards their tour.

By the time they got to Regensburg, fourteen more had been shot down, two more had
left the formation, dumped their bombs and were hoping to cut the corner and catch
up, and one a/c had remained in formation but had had to jettison its bombs. The
crews of these a/c were allowed to count the mission towards their tour, but none
of these sorties were counted as 'effective', because they didn't/couldn't put
bombs on target. The remaining 122 a/c were all able to bomb, so 4th Bomb Wing
recorded 146 sorties dispatched (not counting spares), but only 139 combat sorties
consisting of 122 effective and 17 ineffective sorties. Being able to bomb a
secondary or tertiary target or a target of opportunity, rather than just
jettisoning bombs, would usually be counted as an effective sortie (depended on
the time and theater); a/c which were unable to bomb an allowed target for any
reason would count as an ineffective sortie.

Guy