BOMBS STRIKING THE BALL-BEARING FACTORIES at Schweinfurt, Germany, October 1943. Flak over the target was intense but good visibility enabled the bombers to make an accurate run and more than 450 tons of high explosives and incendiaries were dropped in the target area. Heavy damage was inflicted on the major plants. The cost to the attackers was also severe. Sixty-two bombers were lost and 138 were damaged. Personnel casualties were 599 killed and 40 wounded. Such losses could not be sustained and deep penetrations without escort were suspended. Schweinfurt was not attacked again for four months and the Germans were given a chance to take countermeasures, which they did with great energy and skill.
GERMANY
HEAVY BOMBERS ON A MISSION over southwestern Germany, December 1943. Planes at upper level are Boeing B-17’s; those at lower level are Consolidated B-24’s. After the Schweinfurt raid unescorted bomber raids were discontinued until 1944 when long-range fighters equipped with wing tanks were able to provide fighter escort for the B-17’s and B-24’s as far as Berlin. By 1944 the Luftwaffe, although still offering a formidable defense, basically had decayed and was very vulnerable to Allied air power that was being concentrated against it. By April 1944 the Allies had achieved air superiority which permitted full-scale air attacks on Germany, an indispensable prerequisite for the invasion of Normandy.
GERMANY
B-17’s DROPPING BOMBS OVER BREMEN, December 1943. Control of the air started with an attack on the Focke-Wulf plant at Bremen in April 1943, but the main attacks did not get under way until that summer. On six successive days in late July Allied air forces attacked the German aircraft industry so successfully that the production rate started downward. It was not until February 1944 that the decisive air battle came, when for a period of six days of perfect weather a continuous assault on the widely dispersed German aircraft-frame factories and assembly plants seriously reduced the capabilities of the Luftwaffe. Subsequent attacks affected the entire aircraft industry and it never fully recovered.
ENGLAND
