Probably because its untrue

The simple fact is that during March 1944 bomber command flew a total
of 9031 sorties with a loss rate of under 4%. Nuremburg was indeed a
disaster
but an isolated one.

The RAF definitely was defeated over Germany by the Luftwaffe in the
Spring of
1944. Being put onto invasion targets has obscured this fact.

"Bomber Command had lost 4,160 aircraft missing and crashed in England.
Harris's failure to bring Germany to her knees, and the cost of his
failure,
had become embarrassingly evident to every man but himself.


Bull**** - losses in the first 4 months of 1944 were as follows

Month Lost Crashed %Loss
January 314 38 5.6
Febuary 199 21 5.2
March 283 39 3.6
April 214 25 2.4


During this period the B-17's of US 8th AF were suffering very
similar loss rates.

So what? What has that got to do with the RAF?

And during the first 4 months of 1944, the USAAF was seriously attriting the
Luftwaffe. The RAF was not. The Spitfires didn't have the range to help out
over Germany. That's where the Luftwaffe was.


And in a letter to
the Air Ministry on April 7, 1944, he came as close as ever in his life to
conceding that he was in deep trouble:

'The strength of the German defenses [he wrote] would in time reach a
point at
which night-bombing attacks by existing methods and types of heavy bombers
would involve percentage casualty rates which in the long run could not be
sustained...we have not yet reached that point, but tactical innovations
which
have so far postponed it are now practically exhausted....'


So in fact in the spring of 1944 he is saying he has NOT been defeated,

Harris was in denial. As Hastings points out, he was the only one not saying
that.

If you watch the World At War episode, "Whirlwind", you'll hear Harris say that
the Battle of Berlin was not a defeat. But it was, and a bad one.



This was a preamble to a demand for ten suadrons of night fighters to
support
his bombers. It was the final admission of defeat for the Trenchard
doctrine....Now Bomber Command had discovered that even night operations
against Germany could no longer be continued on their existing basis
unless the
enemy's night-fighter force could be crippled of destroyed."



On the contrary it was a way of ensuring that he got his night fighters,
and it worked.

"In January the British losses rose to 6.15 percent of all sorties against
Berlin and to 7.2 per cent against Stettin, Brunswick and Madgeburg. But the
effectiveness of the German defenses was not confined to destruction. Harrassed
all the way to their distant targets with bombs on board, many of the bombers
were forced to turn back in a damaged condition. Combat and evasive action
scattered the remainder over the sky so that they no longer arrived on the
target as a coherent force. Much as Berlin and the other cities suffered from
the bombing terror of the winter of 1943/44, they were spared the total
extinction that had been the enemy's prognosis.

To quote from the British
official history, "The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany":

"Bomber Command was compelled, largely by the German night-fighter force, to
draw away from its primary target, Berlin, to disperse its effort and to persue
its operations by apparently less efficient means than hitherto. ... The Battle
of Berlin was more than a failure. It was a defeat."

Luftwaffe War Diaries, p.339 by Cajus Bekker

And consider this text from "The Berlin Raids" by Martin
Middlebrook:

"Fauquier [the master bomber] devoted most of his efforts to encouraging
the Main Force to press right on into the target and not to release their bombs
prematurely. It was not easy. He could deride the flak, but Main Force crews
harrassed by fighter attack were not always inclined to listen."

-- "The Berlin Raids p.65 by Martin Middlebrooks


"The raid proceded in no better, no worse, manner than so many raids beyond
the range of oboe. Enough of the 49 pathfinder
backers-up and re-centerers arrived to produce a steady supply
of green TIs. The planned route from the south east was never
achieved. It is clear from the evidence of bombing photographs, that once
the early raid markers and bombs were seen to go down, both the pathfinders
backers-up and the main force swung in from due south, neither being
prepared to spend the extra time in
the target area flying to a theoretical turning point futher on."

They were not prepared to fly further to the briefed point because they
were being heavily engaged by night fighters. Middlebrook makes that plain.

"Many of the Main Force crews were bombing the first markers they saw, instead
of the centre of the markers as ordered, or were dropping short of the markers;
a long 'creepback' developed. The night was clear. Bomber Command's
Operational Research Section later examined 468 bombing photgraphs and
concluded that only five aircraft had bombed within three miles of the correct
Aiming Point, that only a quarter of the force bombed the vulnerable area of
Berlin, and that most of the remainer bombed lightly built up suburban areas."

Ibid p. 66


The RAF was not only getting shot to pieces, they were ineffective.


snip

To get back on target, so to speak, the Americans got back over Germany by
adding the long range fighter (and new commanders) to the mix. The RAF
had no
such solution.


Horsefeathers.

What allowed Bomber Command to continue sending German cities to Harris'
bonfires was the favorable situation brought on by the Americans. That's what
Portal said.


Walt