Why was the Fokker D VII A Good Plane?

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004 21:37:43 +0900, Gernot Hassenpflug
wrote:

Dan, I don't have the background to decide whether you made a typing
error or not. The original poster asked about the biplane Fokker
D.VII, not the monoplane D.VIII.

Arggh!

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com
Viva Bush! blog www.vivabush.org

On 14 Apr 2004 10:27:56 GMT, (WalterM140) wrote:

That the Germans are clearly on record that the USAAF hurt them far worse than
the RAF did.

The point I was making was that the "Fortress" was unable to protect
its crews as the USAAC (and other air forces) had fondly believed
before the war, and that aerial bombardment in WWII by and large
failed to live up to the hopes and fears of the generals, at least
until Little Boy made accuracy irrelevant.

By the way, the WSJ online page got an email from a reader who picked
up on my mention of bombing the wrong country. He said he was one of
18 crews who bombed a Swiss factory instead of a German one--in a
B-26! First I ever heard of that one.

The review is now posted on my own website:
www.wardbirdforum.com/airpower.htm


all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com
The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com
Viva Bush! blog www.vivabush.org

Rule 4: Integrity is not negotiable!

"Matthew G. Saroff" wrote in message
...
Looking at the stats, it seems fairly ordinary for late
WWI fighters, but it's always described as dominating the skys
over the Western Front.
--
--Matthew Saroff
Rules to live by:
1) To thine own self be true
2) Don't let your mouth write no checks that your butt can't cash
3) Interference in the time stream is forbidden, do not meddle in
causality
Check http://www.pobox.com/~msaroff, including The Bad Hair Web Page

??? What's the connection? The German defences against night bombers
were not the same as those used against day bombers.

Night fighters need fuel. Night fighter pilots need training. It was the USAAF
that largely deprived the GAF of fuel.

Walt

The point I was making was that the "Fortress" was unable to protect
its crews as the USAAC (and other air forces) had fondly believed
before the war, and that aerial bombardment in WWII by and large
failed to live up to the hopes and fears of the generals, at least until
Little Boy made accuracy irrelevant.

Anyone who relied solely on your review would not have a very good picture of
what USAAF bombers actually accomplished over Europe.

Walt

The point I was making was that the "Fortress" was unable to protect
its crews as the USAAC (and other air forces) had fondly believed
before the war.....

I don't think anyone could possibly dispute that!

and that aerial bombardment in WWII by and large
failed to live up to the hopes and fears of the generals

The "Strategic Bombing Survey" conducted after the war came to the
same conclusion. German production actually increased during the war.

It appears the most valuable service provided by the 8th Air Force was
not in damaging German war production, but by shooting down LW
fighters in preparation for the invasion. Without air superiority, the
Allied ground forces would have had a much tougher time, if indeed the
invasion could have succeeded at all.

That may even have been the real intent of the raids. On one
occasion, Doolittle walked into a bombing unit ready room, saw a sign
saying "The job of the fighters is to bring the bombers safely home."
(Or words to that effect.)

Doolittle shouted, "Take that goddam sign down! The job of the
fighters is to destroy the Luftwaffe!"

vince norris

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.

Also any effects on pilot training happened in the third quarter
of 1944 and ignores the way pilot training took a year. The
lack of avgas did little to nightfighter pilot strength, in one of the
counter effects of the fuel reductions (and the jamming) meant
a bias towards sending up the better crews, an average increase
in quality.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

This will probably appear in the wrong place thanks to a buggy news server.

WalterM140 wrote in message ...
I read your review on the WSJ of "A Long Way to Bombs Away".

It's true as far as it goes to say that, for a time, 63% of B-17 crew failed to
complete their tours. It's true that the USAAF largely joined the RAF in terror
bombing in 1945.

Incorrect, once the USAAF adopted radar as a method for dropping
bombs their accuracy became comparable with the night bombers
on those raids. The USAAF started using radar in late 1943, initially
with less accuracy than the Butt reports figures for night bombers in
1941, the sort of expected result as the new idea was tried.

As for terror raids the answer is up to the individual, the bombers
hit things and people.

It is also true:

That the Germans are clearly on record that the USAAF hurt them far
worse than the RAF did.

Walter has a careful selection of quotes from a few Germans to "prove"
this.

That during 1944 over 1/3 of 8th AF bombs hit within 1,000 feet of the aiming
point using visual means.

Walter likes to highlight what he perceives as the best USAAF results,
if this means ignoring the problems or using non typical raids so be it.

Percentage of bombs dropped by the 8th Air force using visual sighting,

1943 56.5
1944 41.2
1945 41.5
overall 42.1

In good visibility according to the USSBS, 8.5% of bombs dropped over
3 miles from the target in the period September to December 1944.

That B-17's made made up a very important part of a "strike package" to which
the Germans could find no answer.

In 1943 the Germans found the answer, the USAAF response in 1944
inflicted a defeat on the Luftwaffe day fighters, in 1945 the Luftwaffe
response was really beginning to worry the USAAF, the Me262.

That the Germans denuded other fronts of day fighters to combat the unescorted
B-17's, when the 8th AF was only sending a few dozen on any given raid.

Walter likes to run this line, last time he tried to do this he simply
counted the Luftwaffe training units in Germany as proof of the
concentration of fighters.

The first 8th Air force raid on Germany sent 72 bombers, apparently
6 is "few", the next was 91 bombers sent, both in January 1943, so
the claim is the Luftwaffe "denuded" the "other fronts" around January
1943.

That on three days during May 1944, the USAAF reduced German synthetic oil
production by 50%.

Walter does not like to actually look at the Speer reports that
shows the first group of USAAF synthetic oil raids cut avgas
production from around 5,850 tons/day to around 4,850 tons/day.

The second group of strikes cut production from around 5,550
tons/day to around 2,800 tons/day.

This is avgas, all not synthetic oil. Walter likes to simply ignore the
difference.

By September, largely due to raids by USAAF heavy bombers,
the Luftwaffe was receiving 1/15th of its required fuel allocation.

The Speer reports reproduced in the RAF history give the daily
avgas output for May, June, July and September 1944. They
show production drops after RAF and USAAF raids, for example
after the RAF attack of 12 June avgas production drops from
around 2,100 tons/day to 1,100 tons/day, the RAF raids of 22 June
dropped production from around 1,250 tons.day to 600 tons/day.

And so on for the various raids, the drop in production to 120 tons/day
in late July 1944 was after a group of USAAF and RAF raids.

That without this havoc wreaked largely by the USAAF, RAF Bomber
Command could not have operated over Germany at all.

Walter ignores the reality RAF Bomber Command was operating
over Germany long before the USAAF appeared. He has a careful
selection of quotes that tries to "prove" his claim.

Arthur Harris' despatch on operations has a graph of missing rate
for heavy bombers sorties against targets in Germany. The war peak
is in June 1944, there is a dramatic drop in mid July, after the capture
of a night fighter showing the latest Luftwaffe radar and radar homing
devices, and another dramatic drop as the coastal radar network
and associated western airfields were lost in September 1944.

That B-17's are offically credited with shooting down more German aircraft than
all other USAAF aircraft types COMBINED (including fighter types). Though B-17
gunner claims were wildly inflated, they were still very deadly and dangerous.

When I ran a basic back of the envelope calculation it looked
like in 1943 the Luftwaffe lost 2 fighters shot down by the bombers
per 3 B-17/24 it shot down. In early 1944 the ratio was 1 to 2.

At least two high scoring German aces were killed in combat with B-17's. A
high scoring night fighter ace, whose aircraft had not been touch in months in
combat with the RAF, was killed in his first combat with B-24's.

Apparently this is all the justification to claim the USAAF bombers
were really heavy fighters in disguise.

Without a fleet of B-17's in place in England at the start of 1944, no invasion
of Europe would have been possible. This because the Germans showed
they would only fight for the type of targets that could only be struck by B-17's,
and her stablemate, the B-24.

Walter likes to have the B-17 in the spotlight alone if he can. He simply
ignores the reality that either the Luftwaffe fought for control of French
airspace in early 1944 or it would not be able to intervene effectively
against the invasion. Unless it could keep the allied air forces away
from its airbases it could not conduct effective operations. So either
the Luftwaffe does not fight, and the result is basically as per history,
or it does fight, and therefore loses more quickly because more allied
fighters could make it to France than Germany.

As Dr. Russell Weigley notes in "Eisenhower's Lieutenants", during the spring
and summer of 1944 the Allies held victory through air power in their grasp,
but did not persevere for the kill.

This gives an idea of Walter's search for quote, Weigley wrote a history
about the land campaign, but it is such a nice quote Walter will keep
repeating it.

But that is no fault of the B-17/B-24's or their crews.

However later on Walter will attempt to denigrate the crews by over
claiming their successes, rather than accurately recording what they
did or could do.

Back in December 2003

a) Walter managed to write the words "Err Staff" instead of air staff.
b) accused me of writing them
c) decided someone who wrote such a word invalidated themselves
as a source on the air war in question.

The fun thing about it is

a) Walter is at best either completely confused about what he says or
at worst is into rewriting history, and too foolish enough to realise how
he keeps presenting the evidence against himself.
b) Unable to correct the record when shown to be wrong,
c) Is manufacturing the most trivial excuses to try and avoid coping
with the gap between reality and his preferred fiction. Think about it,
a totally trivial complaint, after all Err will pass through a spell
checker.

http://groups.google.com/groups?dq=&...=400b1ea1.3858
47%40news.pacific.net.au&prev=/groups%3Fsafe%3Dimages%26
ie%3DISO-8859-1%26as_ugroup%3Dsoc.history.war.world-war-ii%26lr%3D%26hl%3Den

It is message 133 in the "Oil campaign against Germany" thread.

The actual paragraph written by Walter,

"I don't know that these city strikes were launched on bad weather days.
You don't either. What I do know is that the Err Staff thought Harris was not
properly applying his force, and they -did- know the weather day by day."

By the way the Air Staff complaint was in January 1944, Walter was
trying to prove it related to the third quarter of 1944.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

"WalterM140" wrote in message
...
??? What's the connection? The German defences against night bombers
were not the same as those used against day bombers.

Night fighters need fuel. Night fighter pilots need training. It was the
USAAF
that largely deprived the GAF of fuel.


The destruction of the oil plants was a joint effort prosecuted by
both the USAAF and the RAF

Keith

(WalterM140) wrote in message ...
??? What's the connection? The German defences against night bombers
were not the same as those used against day bombers.

Night fighters need fuel. Night fighter pilots need training. It was the USAAF
that largely deprived the GAF of fuel.


Well, the night-fighter force remained active to the end of the war so
they evidently weren't stopped. Fuel shortages didn't curtail
Luftwaffe defensive operations until late in the war, by which time
Bomber Command had been bombing Germany for four years or so, with
increasing accuracy and effectiveness. To say that they couldn't have
done so if it weren't for the daylight bombing is a gross
exaggeration.

Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
Discussion forum at: http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/