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.