In February 1944, however, the Germans started planning for what was termed the “Big Blow.”
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This would be an attempt to mass interceptor strength against part of a daylight bomber raid. Galland selected for his target the first U.S. daylight bombing raid on Berlin that he believed was coming. Fighters were brought in from throughout the Reich. Fighter groups were concentrated into larger formations capable of putting massed interceptor formations together. Over 1,000 sorties—perhaps as many as 3,000—could be launched at an incoming U.S. long-range attack.
The first “Big Blow” fell on the first U.S. daylight mission to Berlin on March 6, 1944. The battle turned into the largest of the war so far. The U.S. bombers fought their way through to the target and back, but several bomb group formations were either totally destroyed or reduced to a handful. Total losses far exceeded those that had halted the daylight air offensive in October 1943. Galland had found a way to maximize a key indicator: the number of German fighter sorties in defense of the Reich required for a bomber kill. In the 1943 battles the number had been about ten. Now, with qualitative improvements in the fighter force and the massing of formations, the number started to go down. The improvements in the air defense system meant that fewer sorties were wasted through failing to intercept the bombers.
The USAAF repeated its contribution to the Battle of Berlin twice more within the following week. Losses were high on both sides, but at the end, without long-range strategic fighters to take the initiative against it, the Luftwaffe remained master of the sky over Berlin, much as the RAF had over London in 1940. The USAAF, without strategic escort fighters to prevent the Germans from concentrating fighter forces, which made them more effective and allowed twin-engine fighters to pick off stragglers at their leisure, had conceded the operational initiative to the Luftwaffe.
With the heavy USAAF losses over Berlin and the RAF losses reaching their height over Nuremberg in March 1944, the strategic bombing offensive was largely shifted to targets in support of the upcoming invasion. This required moving the USAAF attacks away from German industrial targets—over the protests of the American airmen—and RAF attacks away from German cities—over the protests of the British airmen—and using them to hit transportation and tactical targets in France. While the German deemphasis of the V-weapons program limited the need to devote sorties beyond those absorbed by some decoy “No Ball” V-1 ramp sites, the preinvasion air offensive now assumed greater strategic importance. It was increasingly obvious that attacks on German industry would not limit the flow of munitions and fuel required by the German Army in the upcoming battle.
These defeats in effect undid the Casablanca decision to emphasize the bombing offensive. What they could not easily undo were the allied decisions, made largely in 1941-42, to invest heavily in the air war and in heavy bombers. Roosevelt, Churchill, the Combined Chiefs of Staff, and Eisenhower and his staff at SHAEF had never been of one mind about the wisdom of making the bomber offensive a cornerstone of strategy. The airmen running the bomber offensives had been, and so were given the opportunity to proceed in their own way. Now that it had resulted in heavy losses for small gain, with the political costs that entailed, Allied leadership refashioned its strategy. However, the switch to a preinvasion bombing campaign provided a respite for the Allies to rebuild. They could also plan for the resumption of the bomber offensive once the invasion was established ashore.
With the German fighter force now largely pulled back to defend the Reich itself, and beyond the reach of the Allied fighter force, it was thought that the preinvasion bombing offensive would force the Luftwaffe to return to bases within the range of Allied fighter cover. Because the Luftwaffe continued to become stronger since 1943 but had largely concentrated in Germany, air superiority would have to be secured after the invasion started rather than through the defeat of the Luftwaffe fighter force in the months before the invasion.
However, the increasing tempo of air operations over France and the likelihood of an invasion in the summer of 1944 led to a new division inside the German high command. Should the newly reinforced fighter force be held in reserve to continue the defense against the bombers once the strategic bombing offensive resumed, or should it be committed to contest air superiority over the invasion?
Defeat of the strategic bombers had allowed not only the fighters to join the fighting in Normandy. The Germans pulled large numbers of 88mm flak guns out of Germany and were able to move them toward the invasion. The defeat of the bomber offensive had even made the coastal defenses of Normandy stronger, for it freed steel and concrete for the use on the “Atlantic Wall” that would otherwise have been required to create hardened and underground facilities for German industry.
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Galland argued strongly to keep the fighters as a strategic reserve, that once they had defeated the strategic bombers they should not be committed simply to provide cover over the forces in the field. But he was overruled. It would have been impossible for the Luftwaffe to continue to claim a large percentage of the Reich’s resources and not join in what promised to be a decisive battle over France. But once they were committed, they were well within the effective range of the superior numbers of high-quality RAF and USAAF day fighters.
The Luftwaffe, undefeated by the bomber offensive, was ready to meet the 1944 D-Day landings in full strength, though most of its fighters and fighter-bombers had to deploy forward in the weeks after the invasion started. The resulting air battles over Normandy were the largest of the war. With both sides contesting control of the air and trying to concentrate air-ground assets at decisive points, the fighting resembled a much larger and more sophisticated version of the air combat over the Kursk offensive in 1943. The Germans were able to contest air superiority over Normandy throughout June and July, and German fighter-bombers were able to inflict considerable damage on the crowded beachhead.
But in the end the superior numbers of the Allied fighter force was significant. The “Big Week” had tried to bring the Luftwaffe fighter force to battle by attacking a target it could not abandon and defeating it by the fire of unescorted bombers. Over Normandy, the Allies found a target the Luftwaffe could not abandon—the German Army—but this time the mass of short-range but otherwise very effective Allied fighters were there to carry out the destruction effectively. The Luftwaffe fighter force was away from the integrated air defense system that it had successfully built to defend the Reich. Without the radar warning and fighter controllers, as the Battle of Normandy wore on the German fighters were increasingly forced to defend their bases in France. Even though the German decisions about their economy had narrowed a technology gap that otherwise would have been even more disastrous and overwhelming, the German fighter force was forced into a decisive battle over Normandy and, as Galland had feared, largely destroyed.
The Allied strategic bomber forces over Normandy, were frequently committed to support of the ground forces. Despite the spectacular concentration of firepower that could be delivered by large-scale carpet bombing in front of ground attacks, difficulties with coordination of forces often led to disappointing results or, worse, fratricide. The failure of the strategic bomber offensive did not free up the Allied bomber forces to redress the balance of the ground war. The Allied heavy bombers proved to be poorly suited for that.
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The use of the strategic bomber force against interdiction targets in France proved more effective. While, in the absence of strategic bombing against the transportation industry in Germany, the dispersed and increasingly integrated war economy was able to produce the goods and resources, getting this to the fighting forces in Normandy proved difficult. The Allied interdiction effort, though reinforced with strategic bombers, could never cut off the German forces in Normandy. But they could prevent the Germans from ever massing enough reserves of fuel, ammunition, or replacements to take advantage of the repeated Allied tactical setbacks, go on to the offensive and throw the invasion into the sea.
Despite the failure of the bomber offensive to defeat either Germany’s cities, industry, or air force before D-Day, the Allies were still able to make the invasion of Europe a success. The Allies succeeded despite the fact that the bomber offensive had consumed vast amounts of resources in the United States and especially in Britain, in terms of money, industrial production, research and development, and allocation of quality manpower. As it was, the main problem with the Allied forces in Normandy was not a lack of matériel and resources, but the ability to turn them into a sustained operational success other than through a series of battles of attrition. While the deemphasis on the bomber offensive provided some higher quality manpower for Allied ground combat forces, this benefit was limited by an inability to train the manpower to its full potential. Having the bombers available for tactical support because they were not engaged in striking Germany did not increase the fighting capability of Allied ground forces. Rather, it made them demand the bombers as part of any offensive operations despite their poor performance.
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The German Army was able to Withdraw from Normandy in good shape. There was sufficient fuel coming from the strategic synthetic oil plants and the Soviets were still a long way from the Ploesti oil fields. With sufficient fuel, even the Allied interdiction campaign was unable to deprive Germany’s mechanized units of their tactical mobility.
The German Army had been pushed back to the boundaries of the Reich by the autumn of 1944, but few thought the war would be over by Christmas. With the bomber offensive defeated, Germany went into the decisive battles of 1944-45 with its air force having suffered heavy losses over France but the backbone of the Reich’s integrated air defense system unbroken. More significantly, the German war machine did not have to devote a large percentage of its total output to defend against the bombers. Industry and infrastructure alike were largely preserved from destruction and disruption. German morale, protected from the impact of bombing, remained high.
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The impact of this was first felt on the Eastern Front. The bomber offensive had been intended to provide a “second front,” as the only major Anglo-American offensive in western Europe before D-Day. Its inability to make an impact on the German war machine had been reflected in high casualties and slowed advances for the Soviets in 1943-44, though the bulk of the Luftwaffe was still concentrated in the defense of Germany.
The Allies were in a position to return to the bombing campaign after the breakout from Normandy. The refusal to develop and employ long-range escort fighters was now less critical, with the availability of forward bases and the German loss of their forward radars reducing the warning time available to the integrated air defense system. The potential seemed to be there for the Allies to reverse their earlier setbacks and resume the bomber campaign the airmen envisioned.
What prevented that—and turned the resumption of the bomber offensive into an even costlier setback than those that had occurred earlier—also had its roots in the rationalization of the German war economy. This had allowed rebuilding the air defense of the Reich with Me 262 jet day and night fighters.
The Me 262 had begun full production in May 1944. It was the best example of what the rationalization of the German war economy could produce in the absence of effective bombing. Increased investments in research and development had extended the service life of the Junkers Jumo engines to twenty-five hours. This was hardly an engineering triumph, but it meant that the new fighter could be mass-produced.
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The new fighter still had many teething troubles, but with the R4M rocket developed with it, the Me 262 proved to be an order of magnitude more effective as a bomber destroyer than even the best piston-engined fighters. That there were now fighters over Germany meant much less to the fast-moving Me 262, which, if skillfully flown, could fly past escort fighters to get to the bombers.
The Me 262s were soon inflicting crippling losses on the daylight bomber raids, but the main German goal was to build up an effective force of Me 262s before the daylight bombers could carry out their campaign against the oil and transportation industries on which Germany’s war economy depended. Galland again decided to emphasize the principles of mass and concentration for an improved version of the “Big Blow” before the bomber offensive started inflicting substantial damage.
The jet-powered version of the Big Blow followed the successful pattern of the first, concentrating on an 8th Air Force raid on oil refineries at Leipzig, generating several thousand sorties, and destroying several hundred American bombers. However, only the superior performance of the Me 262 made this Luftwaffe victory possible, for the piston-engined German fighters found it increasingly difficult to hold the Allied fighters, now based on the continent, at bay. But with the Me 262/R4M weapons system, the Germans had the counter to B-17/B-24 class bombers flown in tight formation. It combined speed and lethality in a way none of the piston-engined fighters, single or twin engined, had done. At night the Me 262B night-fighter was highly lethal, regularly shooting down the Mosquito pathfinders that Bomber Command depended on for its increased accuracy.