World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF GERMANY: Less Loss by Day

The time had come for a change of daylight tactics. The old way was terribly expensive. The Regensburg-Schweinfurt raid had cost 59 planes; the second Schweinfurt raid had cost 60. Percentage of casualties had gone up to over 10%. No matter how precious the targets, the flyers and the fleets could not stand such losses. The Germans had come up with new rocket-bearing fighters which could lurk outside the range of U.S. .50-caliber machine guns. Flak was getting thicker.

Being attacked by the enemy under these conditions had become a nightmare of exploding planes and disappearing friends. Lieut. Colonel Beirne Lay Jr. described the sensations and sights of the Regensburg raid in last week’s Saturday Evening Post: “A shining silver rectangle of metal sailed past over our right wing. I recognized it as a main-exit door. Seconds later, a black lump came hurtling through the formation, barely missing several propellers. It was a man, clasping his knees to his head, revolving like a diver in a triple somersault, shooting by us so close that I saw a piece of paper blow out of his leather jacket. He was evidently making a delayed jump. . . . A B-17 turned gradually out of the formation to the right, maintaining altitude. In a split second it completely vanished in a brilliant explosion, from which the only remains were four balls of fire, the fuel tanks, which were quickly consumed as they fell earthward. . . .”

A Better Way. Up to last week, the daylight bombers had depended mainly on their own fire power for defense. But the U.S. Eighth Air Force worked out new tactics. Last week it tried them and found them good. They involved a combination of two principles: fighter escort all the way to the target, coordination with a whole pattern of associated attacks.

The day of the trial broke clear and sunny, with high-riding white clouds over the English Channel and western Europea fine day for finding the way and losing the enemy. The pattern began with a feint at France, in the form of Marauder and Spitfire attacks on airfields at Tricque-ville and St. André-de-1’Eure. This sucked fighters away from the Lowlands in time for 550 Fortresses and Liberators—the largest U.S. heavy bomber force ever used—to cut for Wilhelm shaven with upwards of 1,200 tons of bombs. With that huge force were U.S. fighter types which made the escort possible—450 Thunderbolts and long-range Lightnings, all carrying belly tanks. As this mass attack returned and German fighters settled again on Lowlands fields, Marauders hit them there—at Schiphol near Amsterdam.

Then the R.A.F. promptly took up the flail. A force hit Cologne at about 8 p.m. A few minutes later another force, much bigger, hit Düsseldorf for 27 minutes, during which more than 2,000 tons were dropped.

In all that terrible day only 26 bombers and five fighters were lost. In the heavy Wilhelmshaven raid only five of 550 bombers did not return. Two days later another coordinated series of punches, climaxed by another massive Fortress-Liberator raid on the synthetic oil center of Gelsenkirchen, cost the Allies only ten heavies, two Marauders and five fighters. Again two days later a somewhat smaller raid on Düren, coordinated with diversionary attacks, was accomplished without the loss of a single bomber.

Winter Promise. The new tactics had limitations. The maximum reach of fighter-escorted raids from Britain was probably no more than 400 miles, taking in the Ruhr industrial area but not much more. Even with the creation of the Fifteenth

Air Force in the Mediterranean, it would take some time to mount raids on a grand scale from Italy.

Nevertheless, within their scope the new tactics were a great improvement and a promise for the winter. Five planes of 550 at Wilhelmshaven was a lot better than 60 of some 400 at Schweinfurt.