History

Big Week Day 6, Feb 25, 1944, Plus 75 Years

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Today marks the 75th Anniversary of the sixth and final day of  Operation Argument  otherwise known as BIG WEEK.   On Friday, February 25, 1944 the 8th Air Force returns to Messerschmitt factories in Regensburg preceded by 15th Air Force there.   Other Messerschmitt fighter plants at Augsberg and Furth are also hit by 8th Air Force.   These raids mark the conclusion of the first major operation in the final battle for air superiority before the Normandy invasion scheduled for June 1944.

Day Six of “Big Week” Combat Results (Slide 1) from “Coming of Aerial Armageddon” by Dr. John Curatola
Day Six of “Big Week” Combat Results (Slide 2) from “Coming of Aerial Armageddon” by Dr. John Curatola

ETO Strategic Operations

Mission 235: In the final “Big Week” mission, 4 targets in Germany are hit; 31 bombers and 3 fighters are lost.

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  1. 268 B-17s are dispatched to aviation industry targets at Augsburg and the industrial area at Stuttgart; 196 hit Augsburg and targets of opportunity and 50 hit Stuttgart; they claim 8-4-4 Luftwaffe aircraft; 13 B-17s are lost and 172 damaged; casualties are 12 WIA and 130 MIA.
  2. 267 of 290 B-17s hit aviation industry targets at Regensburg and targets of opportunity; they claim 13-1-7 Luftwaffe aircraft; 12 B-17s are lost, 1 damaged beyond repair and 82 damaged; casualties are 4 KIA, 12 WIA and 110 MIA.
  3. 172 of 196 B-24s hit aviation industry targets at Furth and targets of opportunity; they claim 2-2-2 Luftwaffe aircraft; 6 B-24s are lost, 2 damaged beyond repair and 44 damaged; casualties are 2 WIA and 61 MIA.

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Escort is provided by 73 P-38s, 687 Eighth and Ninth Air Force P-47s and 139 Eighth and Ninth Air Force P-51s; the P-38s claim 1-2-0 Luftwaffe aircraft, 1 P-38 is damaged beyond repair; the P-47s claim 13-2-10 Luftwaffe aircraft, 1 P-47 is lost and 6 damaged, 1 pilot is MIA; the P-51s claim 12-0-3 Luftwaffe aircraft, 2 P-51s are lost and 1 damaged beyond repair, 2 pilots are MIA.

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Mission 236: 5 of 5 B-17s drop 250 bundles of leaflets on Grenoble, Toulouse, Chartres, Caen and Raismes, France at 21292335 hours without loss

 

MTO Strategic Operations

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Continuing coordinated attacks with the Eighth Air Force on European targets, B-17s with fighter escorts pound Regensburg aircraft factory; enemy fighter opposition is heavy. Other B-17s hit the air depot at Klagenfurt, Austria and the dock area at Pola, Italy. B-24s attack Fiume, Italy marshaling yard and port and hit Zell-am-See, Austria railroad and Graz airfield and the port area at Zara, Yugoslavia; 30+ US aircraft are lost; they claim 90+ fighters shot down.

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For extensive background, see this Wikipedia article, where the passage above came from:

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Week

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From Pickle Barrel’s to Radar Pattern Bombing of Cities

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In evaluating the WW2 Combined Bomber Campaign in Europe there is far more propaganda about “precision bombing” than actual accurate and precise bombing.   When using the Norden bombsite in test conditions, on a clear and still day, with an absolutely distinct against back ground target,  with a picked high skill aircrew, from less than 10,000 feet altitude,   you could get within a few hundred feet of the target.

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Things were far less then perfect in combat over Europe.   Bombing altitudes exceeded 20,000 feet and the number of days where cloud cover measured less than 4/10ths were few and concentrated in the summer.

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“Big Week” was fought in European winter.   Too fight then, the USAAF had to resort to the use of both British provided “H2S” 10 cm and hand built American “H2X” 3 cm wavelength radars carried on pathfinder bombers leading the USAAF bomber streams.

B-17 Pathfinder in Big Week with a hand built “H2X” Radar provided by the British Branch of MIT’s Radiation Laboratory  Source:    http://www.482nd.org/h2x-mickey

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“Governments behaving badly: The battle of our time is being waged right now”

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From a characteristically astute column by J.E. Dyer:

The point of the Treaty of Westphalia was not that religion is ugly and divisive, or that it must be subordinated to the political. The point was that the armed force of the nation-state, which is useful and does good service for the right purposes, must not be used to enforce universalist philosophies or settle their irreconcilable disputes.
 
The Westphalian commitment is that universalism will not take precedence over national sovereignty. Instead, national sovereignty will protect nations from movements for overweening universalism.
 
In 1648, the conscious commitment to this principle helped end the wars of Catholic and Protestant monarchs on the European continent (although the effect was not immediate). In the Napoleonic era, it was instrumental in beating back Bonaparte’s encroaching supranational vision: a hybrid of Roman imperial concepts and French revolutionary declarations.
 
The Westphalian commitment to respect for national sovereignty was also a key enabling factor for the success of the United States, once we established the “national” and “sovereignty” conditions. America is not possible without Westphalianism.
 
And in the 20th century, it was the continued commitment to the Westphalian nation-state that allowed the free West to face down ruthless, radical, universalist Communism, even though the latter expanded with each decade into more and more territory, and became equipped with vast conventional armies, nuclear weapons, and seats in the United Nations. The UN was useless for defeating state-armed Communist aggression. It was a specific group of nations acting in their own right, led by the United States, that achieved that goal.
 
In 2019, the confrontation is in some ways harder to discern than in earlier centuries. It isn’t between nations; it’s within them. Urban “elites” align with each other across borders, the leaders of the biggest cities consciously identifying not with their compatriots from the hinterlands but with the leaders of foreign megalopolises. Conversely, many of the people outside the “elite” circles, wherever in the world they are, take to the streets cheering America’s Donald Trump. His brand of politics cares about them.
 
The nation-state is what makes the protection of liberty and rights possible. Undermining the nation-state is the project of today’s universalist collectivism, and the government crises in the U.S., UK, and France are visible signs of that battle being waged. This is not a battle over theory or mere programmatic choices. It’s a battle for the future of mankind.

In a way that seems psychologically analogous to price trends in financial markets, the civil war is what’s happening now while people focus on lurid predictions that don’t materialize.

Read the whole thing.

Peak Stupid

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No, I don’t think will ever reach Peak Stupid; just as we will probably never reach Peak Oil, either since there appears to be an inexhaustible supply of the former, and more of the latter than the gloom’n’doom crowd apparently thought. But Deity on a Trisket, the farrago of Stupid on display just this past week is just plain mind-blowing. And I read a lot of history, so it’s not a total surprise to me that individually and en masse, humans are capable of the spectacularly moronic; things like Tulip Mania in 17th century Holland, pursuance of the Flat Earth theory after trips into space, and the Billy Jack movie series, not to mention the whole disco era in general.
So the Jussie Smallett supposed hate-crime on the below-freezing streets of Chicago on the coldest day of the year thus far (hey, it’s only February, I am confident that the remaining ten months of 2019 will bring us ever more bountiful levels of stupidity) has fallen completely apart much as the intelligent and logical portion of the blogosphere had predicted upon being made aware of the specifics. Yes, a planned with an astounding level of stupidity even for an actor hate crime, intended to leverage a pay raise, and garner oodles of that sweet, sweet milk of sympathy for a victim. And the National Establishment Mainstream fell for it, hook, line, sinker and whatever else in an appealing sob story, not to mention quantities of gullible media celebrities, and gullible political celebrities. Oopsie. The most decent of them appear to have the nous to be resoundingly pissed with Mr. Smolett over how their sympathies were exploited. The indecent are lying low and doubtless waiting for the next shiny, flashy supposed hate crime to bubble up to the top of that pond of scum which appears to be our national thought leaders. Live and learn, people there exists a long, long, long history of faked hate crimes. The most recent of which happened not two weeks previously, with the Covington Catholic students. Memories are short in the National Establishment Media gene pool; measured in hours, I would guess. Possibly this is a variety of genetic defect.

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Big Week, Day 5, Feb 24, 1944, Plus 75 Years

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Today marks the 75th Anniversary of the fifth day of  Operation Argument  otherwise known as BIG WEEK.   On Thursday, February 24, 1944 the 8th Air Force returned to major operations in the battle for air superiority before the Normandy invasion scheduled for June 1944.    The 8th Air Force’s emphasis includes revisiting  Schweinfurt.
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The 15th Air Force attacks Steyer again this day.
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The RAF Bomber Command flies an area bombing raid on  Schweinfurt with indifferent results.
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Day Five of “Big Week” Combat Results (Slide 1) from “Coming of Aerial Armageddon” by Dr. John Curatola
Day Five of “Big Week” Combat Results (Slide 2) from “Coming of Aerial Armageddon” by Dr. John Curatola
Other ETO Strategic Operations
Missions 237, 238 and 239 are flown against targets in France; 7 B-17s are lost. Heavy clouds cause over half the bombers dispatched to return without bombing.
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Mission 237: 49 of 81 B-24s hit the Ecalles sur Buchy V-weapon sites; 1 B-24 is damaged. Escort is provided by 61 P-47s
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Mission 238: 258 B-17s are dispatched against V-weapon sites in the Pas de Calais; 109 hit the primary target, 10 hit a road junction E of Yerville, 7 hit a rail siding SW of Abbeville and 6 hit targets of opportunity; 7 B-17s are lost and 75 damaged; casualties are 5 WIA and 63 MIA. Escort is provided by 81 P-38s, 94 P-47s and 22 P-51s; 1 P-38 is damaged beyond repair; the P-51s claim a single German aircraft on the ground.
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Mission 239: 5 of 5 B-17s drop 250 bundles of leaflets[clarification needed] on Amiens, Rennes, Paris, Rouen and Le Mans, France at 20232055 hours without loss.
RAF Bomber Command in Operation Argument
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Bomber Command directly contributed to the attacks on the aircraft industry in Schweinfurt. Some 734 bombers were dispatched on the night of 24/25 February, and 695 struck the target.[1]  Of the bombs dropped, 298 hit within three miles and 22 hit inside the target area. Little damage was done.

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For extensive background, see this Wikipedia article, where the passage above came from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Week

The 56th Fighter Group’s Private War with the USAAF Bomber Generals
The highest scoring 8th Air Force Fighter Group in World War 2,   in terms of strictly air-to-air kills, was the P-47 armed 56th Fighter Group.   Led by  Colonel Hubert “Hub” Zemke (March 14, 1914 August 30, 1994)   it fought a war with the Bomber Generals running 8th Air Force as well as the the Luftwaffe.
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See:
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In July, when a bomber  group  took over Horsham Saint Faith, Zemke’s men relocated to a half-built base at Halesworth Suffolk. Upset with the second-rate treatment his command seemed to be experiencing, Zemke joined a  group  of Eighth Air Force bomber commanders in a gripe session. The 4th Bomb Wing’s Colonel Curtis LeMay (chief of the postwar Strategic Air Command) complained that the only  fighters  he had seen so far ‘all had black and white crosses on them,’ but declared his bombers would carry on ‘with or without  fighter  escort.’

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Later, in the officers’ club, another bomber general stated he ‘wouldn’t pay a dime a dozen for any  fighter  pilots.’ Zemke hurled his pocket change at the man’s feet:

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‘Here, General, this is all I have handy at the moment,’ he responded. ‘Any time you have a couple dozen  fighter  pilots handy send them my way. We can sure use them.’ Then he jumped in his Jug and buzzed the place.

Big Week, Day 4 Feb 23, 1944, Plus 75 Years

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Today marks the 75th Anniversary of the fourth day of  Operation Argument  otherwise known as BIG WEEK.   On Wednesday, February 23, 1944 the 15th Air Force went after the Luftwaffe in the skies over Germany — with the 8th Air Force operations grounded by fog — in the battle for air superiority before the Normandy invasion scheduled for June 1944.

Like the previous day, the 15th Air Force lacked fighter escorts.

 

Day Four of “Big Week” Combat Results from “Coming of Aerial Armageddon” by Dr. John Curatola

ETO Strategic Operations

Mission 232: 5 of 5 B-17s drop 250 bundles of leaflets on Rennes, Le Mans, Chartres, Lille and Orleans, France at 21:3622:32 hours without loss.

MTO Strategic Operations

B-24s bomb the industrial complex at Steyr, Austria. Other heavy bombers are forced to abort because of bad weather; the bombers and escorting fighters claim 30+ aircraft shot down.

For extensive background, see this Wikipedia article, where the passage above came from:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Week

 

From the Pre-War “Conveyor-Protector” to Long Range Escort Fighters

One of the most troubling parts of the US Army Air Force “P-51 Narrative” that the “Bomber Generals” pushed   after “Big Week” was that the USAAF had learned nothing from the 1940 “Battle of Britain” about the need for fighter escorts.

It turns out that the US Army Air Corps had not missed that obvious point at all.   They utterly got that point.   In fact, tab #4 for the AAF’s first Air War Plan (AWPD-1) written in August 1941 called for specialized escort fighters.    See this link from Ryan Crierie’s   web site —

http://alternatewars.com/WW2/VictoryPlan/Air_Force_Requirements.htm

What they did with that insight was utterly squandered by the factional politics of the “Bomber Mafia” between 1940 and the failure of the  second Schweinfurt raid   on 14 October 1943.

The need to avoid accountability for that failure — like hiding the real range of the P-47D with 150 gallon drop tanks after “Big Week” — was why this institutional lie was told.   The motive being to preserve the reputations of General H. H, “Hap” Arnold and a lot of Bomber Generals who founded the independent US Air Force.

And like any other claims of conspiracy in high places, great claims require great big heaping piles of evidence that they are true. In July 2017 my research partner found  the official memorandum chain that constitutes that  great big heaping piles of evidence. (See appendices  one thru four at the end of this post)

This is how Ryan described this  official memorandum chain to me:

 I found a memorandum chain in a folder today at NARA titled  unconventional  escort  fighters“, which was full of stuff like the XP-85 Goblin parasite, and a few gems like early consideration of the Northrop XP-79 as a parasite  fighter, but at the end of the folder was some stuff circa  September 1941  on Long Range Bomber Escort.

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Basically, blah blah, European war experience shows the need for longer range  fighters; and it suggested a bunch of studies be done on various heavy bombardment aircraft to turn them into convoy escorts — the beginning of the XB-40/XB-41 program — and they suggested that the B-29 and B-32 be studied as convoy escorts.
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They also suggested studying aircraft like the XP-67, XP-58, and XA-26 with an interest towards making a  fighter  with extreme range.

You all can go read the memo chain below, but a short form is as follows —

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