Inferno - Max Hastings [308]
Though the RAF inflicted huge damage on Germany, it was left to the USAAF to achieve the most important victory of the air war, in the early months of 1944, by means which surprised its own commanders. The Mustang long-range fighter, capable of escorting Flying Fortresses and Liberators all the way to Germany and outfighting any opponent when it got there, became available in large numbers. The USAAF embarked on a major campaign against aircraft factories, pounding them for six consecutive days during “Big Week” in February, and forcing the Luftwaffe to commit every available fighter to their defence. It quickly became plain that the ground destruction achieved by the bombers was less significant than the startling success of American pilots in air combat. In a single month, the Luftwaffe lost one-third of its fighters and one-fifth of its aircrew. In March, half the Germans’ remaining air strength was destroyed; in April 43 percent of residual capability, in May and June 50 percent.
German production remained remarkably high: as late as September 3,538 aircraft of all types were built, of which 2,900 were fighters. But the Luftwaffe’s total 1944 output of 34,100 combat aircraft was dwarfed by the Allies’ 127,300, of which 71,400 were American, and the Germans’ loss of pilots was calamitous. The USAAF thereafter began to address synthetic oil plants, the Reich’s principal source of fuel once the Russians overran the Romanian oilfields in April 1944, with an immediate impact on fuel supplies: the Luftwaffe found many of its planes grounded, aircrew training crippled. When D-Day came in June, Göring’s shrunken squadrons were unable to offer significant support to the Wehrmacht. Thereafter the air bombardment of Germany attained massive proportions, while RAF and USAAF losses fell. Whereas in a typical March 1943 attack, around 1,000 aircraft delivered 4,000 tons of bombs, by February 1944, average force size had tripled; by July, the Allies deployed 5,250 planes of all types against Germany, with a bomb capacity of 20,000 tons. In the course of that year and the first months of 1945, they reduced the Reich’s conurbations to rubble. By November 1944, attacks on the rail network had made it almost impossible to ship steel produced in the Ruhr to manufacturing plants elsewhere.
The moral effect of the USAAF’s daylight raids was immense: the German people were appalled to witness huge formations of enemy planes, their condensation trails searing the high air, parading with impunity over their homeland. “The white stripes moved slowly along the edge of the sky,” wrote an onlooker as bomb groups of the Eighth Air Force flew overhead, “calmly, on a straight course, unhurried. They came closer. When our eyes had got used to the bright lights we saw, bathed in the sunlight, the bright dots at the tips of the stripes; in neat squadrons they swept past—one, after a couple of minutes another, then a third, a fourth, a fifth … People alongside us started counting the tiny silver dots. They had already got to four hundred. But there was still no end to be seen.”
Varied weights of Allied attack fell upon 158 German cities. Braunschweig, a typical example, was the target of twelve raids which destroyed one-third of its buildings and killed 2,905 people. The steel centre of Essen experienced 635 “enemy aircraft approaching” warnings between September 1939 and December 1943, followed by a further 198 warnings in the ensuing nine months. Each one obliged Essen’s weary citizens to take refuge in their shelters and bunkers for hours. Germany’s rural population was subjected to deliberate air attacks only in 1945, but nowhere