This will probably appear in the wrong spot thanks to a buggy news server.
WalterM140 wrote in message ...
Night fighters need fuel. Night fighter pilots need training. It was the
USAAF that largely deprived the GAF of fuel.
I suggest people actually look up the Speer oil reports, they
show the credit for the reduction in avgas production was
much more evenly shared between RAF and USAAF raids
than Walter prefers.
I suggest that the people check what the leader of the RAF said:
Before going on to note the holes in one of Walter's pet quotes, you
can see his preferences. Speers day by day reports of the effects
on avgas production of the allied raids are to be ignored, they are
facts, they show the combined offensive working, and giving credit
to the RAF for some effective raids from June 1944 on. Instead we
switch to the RAF's chief of air staff, during wartime stating an
opinion, a possibility.
Walter prefers the opinions and possibilities, if they fit his fiction,
"But for the favorable air situation created by the Americans, said
Portal, "it
is possible that the night blitzing of cities, would have by now have
been too
costly to sustain upon a heavy scale.'
This quote is run through the Walter translator, so "it is possible"
becomes "it is certain", and "heavy scale" becomes "any scale"
Here was a remarkable admission from
the British Air Chief of Staff--that it was only the success of
American air
policy which had spared Britain from visible and humiliating defeat.
Not
surprisingly, Harris totally rejected Portal's criticism of the area
campaign.
He now asserted flatly that he had no faith in selective bombing, 'and
none
whatever in the this present oil policy'.
--"Bomber Command" P. 380-384 by Max Hastings
Hastings, like Walter, simply over states what Portal was saying and
ignores the multiple factors tat drove down the loss rates from July
1944 onwards.
Bomber Command was defeated over Germany in the spring of 1944. It was the
Oil Campaign, largely pursued by the Americans that deprived the GAF of fuel
and that allowed the RAF back over Germay with any chance of not being shot to
pieces.
When flying to Germany the percentage of effort devoted to oil
strikes looks like this,
Table is date, 8th Air Force bombs on Germany, tons / % of those bombs
on oil targets // Bomber Command bombs on Germany, tons / % of those
bombs on oil targets.
May-44 19880 / 12.89 // 9479.8 / none
Jun-44 13120.5 / 34.01 // 5443.5 / 83.82
Jul-44 29838.3 / 22.33 // 14670.1 / 26.14
Aug-44 23597.4 / 26.07 // 16119.3 / 11.49
Sep-44 34818.4 / 21.12 // 22955.3 / 19.56
Oct-44 43552.2 / 11.74 // 57679.1 / 7.09
Nov-44 37798.8 / 42.39 // 58870.2 / 24.20
Dec-44 41092.1 / 7.23 // 51132.1 / 14.54
Jan-45 38551.3 / 7.40 // 33218.9 / 27.55
Feb-45 51187.2 / 11.93 // 50891.2 / 28.69
Mar-45 72951.1 / 13.06 // 74969.8 / 28.28
Apr-45 35646.1 / 4.61 // 38103.1 / 14.80
Bomber Command matched the 8th Air Forces percentage of efforts
in three of the first 4 months of the offensive when flying to Germany,
despite having to reserve a greater amount of the better weather for
strikes to support the invasion. The difference in August 1944 appears
to be from outside requests, a series of raids against German ports
including Konigsberg by Bomber Command, and SHAEF requests
to the 8th and Bomber Command for strikes on German vehicle
production.
Remember Spaatz declared oil the number one priority. If you add
up the tonnages from June 1944 to September 1944 then the result
is the percentage of effort on oil targets when flying to Germany, 8th
Air Force 24.3%, Bomber Command 24.9%. Note these figures are
for Germany only. In effect the air forces matched each other's
percentage efforts, which means any claims Harris diverted effort
need to be made about Spaatz as well. In terms of absolute effort
the 8th dropped 24,629.2 tons, Bomber Command 14,740.9 tons
on oil targets in Germany in this period.
You see folks, Walter does not actually look at the German reports
about what raids did what damage. This would mean having to
understand how wrong he is about how the Germans were deprived
of avgas.
Arthur Harris' despatch on war operations has a graph for heavy
bomber losses over Germany, the missing rate. Walter needs to
explain the dramatic drops in the missing rate in July 1944, after
the capture of a Luftwaffe night fighter with all the latest radar and
radar homing devices, and in September 1944, when the allied
armies in the west over ran much of the coastal radar network and
the night fighter airfields outside Germany.
Bomber Command's Harris had to be ordered to bomb oil targets and
sloughed that off whenever he could.
Walter simply ignores the reality of the amount of effort involved,
and the fact Harris' personal preferences were an effect at the
margins. Harris was not so stupid as to not put in the effort and
then be set up to take the blame when the plan failed as he
expected it to. See Harris and bombing Atlantic ports earlier
in the war and the help to the invasion forces, lots of protest,
orders were followed. See above for the effort against German
targets.
Walter likes to think the oil campaign was an end in itself, ignoring
the war would go on until Germany was occupied. Strikes to help
the invasion and oil were a means to that end, it was not a
competition.
Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.
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