Night bombers interception in Western Europe in 1944

"WalterM140" wrote in message
...
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?


It shows the RAF were doing no worse than the USAF

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.


The Battle of Berlin was indeed a defeat, that was not the
entirety of the air war over Germany however and its provably
untrue to claim that ai operations over Germany were suspended.

Keith