Super vrs Uber

[OttoJespersen]

Originally posted by Meyer
That could be true until Kursk.... after that most of the Lw planes (specially the fighters) were in the west...

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/2072/LW_OBs.html

No. On 1 April '44 the Jagdwaffe disposition was about 50/50 east/west. Out of a total strength of 1675 109's and 190's 850 were in the Defense of the Reich. The vast majority of the Luftwaffes other assets (bombers, recce etc.) were in the east. So at least two thirds of the Luftwaffes total strength was in the east at that time.

[Meyer]

Well, I just did a fast calculation with the Lw OOB of may 31 of 1944, and even taken Scandinavia and the Balcans as the "east", the west units had more planes (something like 2700 west vs 2200 east)

The difference is even bigger if we only calculate the combat types.

[Angus]

Ahemm
"The LW had 'real success' in the West. Not only against bombers but fighters as well.

30 LW pilots 'out scored' the top Ami pilot, this only considering their scores against Ami aircraft.

Eder scored 56 kills against the Amis alone; twice the number of the top Ami.

Not to mention the number of 100 kill Experten scored against Western Allied aircraft. The top LW Spitfire killer, Priller, shot down 68 Spits."

They had no success except a nice looking scoreboard and then again also a completely lost game.
The LW failed in their western offensive, then turned mostly to the east while keeping a steady guard on the west with stunning scores in both cases. Then the Allied western offensive began, where the LW could cause a lot of attrition while stopping very little.
It went to the desert as well, where the LW lost again, drawing resources to the sands, both in the Stalingrad fight, then at the fight of Kursk, - those events matching with operation Torch and then Sicilyt. Anyway....
Suck on scores and count the aces, it doesn't really matter. What the real gritty life was for a LW fighter pilot in the late war meant being intruded all over the LW airspace. What the gritty side for the allied pilot meant was that you could possibly toast a Luftwobble some hundreds of miles into enemy territory.
This seems to be a very convenient forgotten case when scores are suddenly brought up to the highlight.

BTW, I presume that Mr.Bruno is a German, - owing the recognition to the famous "ami" remark

[Squire]

"Overlord" by Hax Hastings:

The entire allied air strength in the West, 6th June 1944, which included:

RAF Bomber Command
ADGB (Fighter Command)
2nd TAF
8th USAAF
9th USAAF
 
Was 9901 a/c of which 7774 were effective strength (crews available). Thats for the entire western front, the bombing of France and Germany, Air Defence, all of it.  

Allied OOB for France consisted of the RAF 2nd TAF with @ 1254 combat a/c total (bombers and fighters), and USAAF 9th TAC with @ 2339 combat a/c total (bombers and fighters). Of that, about 2790 were effective strength (had crews).

"On 6 June 1944, the Allies had a total of 13,000 aircraft ready to support the Normandy invasion"

Maybe if you included every single a/c in Britain, from every RAF, RCAF and USAAF command, including liason and transports (C-47s, Piper Cubs ect), and only gave totals, as opposed to operational, you might get a bloated # like that.

[Bruno]

They had no success except a nice looking scoreboard and then again also a completely lost game.
The LW failed in their western offensive, then turned mostly to the east while keeping a steady guard on the west with stunning scores in both cases. Then the Allied western offensive began, where the LW could cause a lot of attrition while stopping very little.
It went to the desert as well, where the LW lost again, drawing resources to the sands, both in the Stalingrad fight, then at the fight of Kursk, - those events matching with operation Torch and then Sicilyt. Anyway....
Suck on scores and count the aces, it doesn't really matter. What the real gritty life was for a LW fighter pilot in the late war meant being intruded all over the LW airspace. What the gritty side for the allied pilot meant was that you could possibly toast a Luftwobble some hundreds of miles into enemy territory.
This seems to be a very convenient forgotten case when scores are suddenly brought up to the highlight.

The LW didn't 'loose' in any theater alone.  The Wehrmacht (entire German Armed Forces) lost due to the overwhelming superiority of the Allies in the air and especially on the ground. Both the 'desert' and Western Europe were secondary theaters to the East. What happened in the East dictated how the entire war would go. The LW didn't loose Stalingrad because of the 'LW'. Stalingrad was lost the minute Adolf ordered his 2 armies split and because he failed to destroy several Soviet Bridgeheads Southwest of the Don. It was from these Bridgeheads that the Soviets launched the northern pincer. Re-supplying 6th Army by air was a pipe dream even if the LW faced no VVS. The Wehrmacht was also engaged in the Central sector defending against Operation Mars, which was a sound defeat for the Soviets on the same scale as Stalingrad.

The LW didn't 'loose' Kursk either. The Soviets knew the entire German plan at Kursk, had time to build defense rings 100s of miles deep. The Soviets defeated the Germans at Kursk on the ground.

While all this was going on the LW only kept 2 Geschwaders in the west to face the Western Allies going into mid '44, only 1 defending the Reich until late '43. The LW's only goal in the west was to hold the line until the situation in the East could be resolved. The Western Allies only established clear Air Superiority late in the war, at which time the war was all but decided on the ground.

Early in the bomber campaign the LW was ordered not to engage allied fighters at all but to attack bombers. With the industrial capacity and un-ending supply of new pilots the Western Allies got control of the air through attrition.

You brought up 'kill counts' by saying the following:

Well on the eastern front the LW really had success,

Don't try to squirm out of it by now saying 'well Germany lost'. Germany lost in the East as well. Now you bring up 'Suck on scores and count the aces' in the quote above. The fact is LW pilots were able to be successful on all fronts. The LW doesn't bare the responsibility of losing the war alone any more the the Allied Air Forces alone are responsible for winning it. Wars are won on the ground, and World War 2 was no exception.

[Bruno]

Originally posted by Squire
"Overlord" by Hax Hastings:

The entire allied air strength in the West, 6th June 1944, which included:

RAF Bomber Command
ADGB (Fighter Command)
2nd TAF
8th USAAF
9th USAAF
 
Was 9901 a/c of which 7774 were effective strength (crews available). Thats for the entire western front, the bombing of France and Germany, Air Defence, all of it.  

Allied OOB for France consisted of the RAF 2nd TAF with @ 1254 combat a/c total (bombers and fighters), and USAAF 9th TAC with @ 2339 combat a/c total (bombers and fighters). Of that, about 2790 were effective strength (had crews).

"On 6 June 1944, the Allies had a total of 13,000 aircraft ready to support the Normandy invasion"

Maybe if you included every single a/c in Britain, from every RAF, RCAF and USAAF command, including liason and transports (C-47s, Piper Cubs ect), and only gave totals, as opposed to operational, you might get a bloated # like that.

Read the quote carefully:

On 6 June 1944, the Allies had a total of 13,000 aircraft ready to support the Normandy invasion. The Luftwaffe had 1,300 aircraft at its peak (reached on 10 June) in France.

It includes all aircraft available to the allies in support of the Normandy landings. The LW number 1300 includes all aircraft in direct opposition.

The effect of Allied numerical superiority in the air over Normandy in 1944

The November 1944 battles between the Luftwaffe and the US Air Force

[Angus]

HEHEHEHE
BRUNO:
"The LW didn't 'loose' in any theater alone"

Yes they bloody well did.

The BoB

Can't blame that one on the Wehrmacht can you

[Angus]

And for theaters, well, Where did the LW win? Blimey, I sort of get the feeling that they lost most ..... or all.
The Eastern front.
The desert war
The western front with the bombing campaign

However, success was insured together with the Wehrmacht's success in the Blitzkrieg. LW's hayday was parallell to Guderian's

[Squire]

Thats fine, as long as we are talking about combat types to combat types, and are including relevent commands.

Your 13,000 quote is for the entire air component (combat types and transports) of the allies in Britain, nothing more, and it has little to no bearing on a discussion regarding the strengths of combat types facing each other in France.

I could quote the entire military a/c strength of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1944 and then compare it to deployed, operatonal, LW fighter groups in Poland too, and it would be just as meaningless.

[Bruno]

Originally posted by Angus
HEHEHEHE
BRUNO:
"The LW didn't 'loose' in any theater alone"

Yes they bloody well did.

The BoB

Can't blame that one on the Wehrmacht can you

That was a 'battle' not a theater. There were many battles fought in one theater...

And for theaters, well, Where did the LW win? Blimey, I sort of get the feeling that they lost most ..... or all.
The Eastern front.
The desert war
The western front with the bombing campaign

The LW wasn't designed to 'win wars' alone...

If you really knew anything about Guderian you would know that.

But that's enough of your strawmen.

The sequence of replies went as follows (obviously you can't follow a straight line):

Well on the eastern front the LW really had success, and LW veterans have often said that it was tougher in the air on the western front.

LW success in the east can only be defined in their kill counts, after all the defeat in the East was epic. The worst military defeats the world has known (occurring on both sides depending on the time frame) took place in the east. Not a single one was determined by air power alone.  So since its you who brought up success, and in your opinion the LW lack of success in the west I only replied to that nonsense. If,  like you have done in the east, we define success in the context of this line of discussion as 'kill counts' then its clear  LW experten were 'successful' every where they went, after all in all theaters they out scored their opponents, whether they be Tommy, Ami, or Ivans.

If you don't care to address those points, or are incapable of, at least build a better strawman.  The 'ole 'well the German's lost' is played out.

Squire

Your 13,000 quote is for the entire air component (combat types and transports) of the allies in Britain, nothing more, and it has little to no bearing on a discussion regarding the strengths of combat types facing each other in France.

Read the quote again. The '13,000' is for all aircraft 'supporting' the allied invasion.

Who brought up only 'combat types facing each other in France'? That quote was provided just to show the quantitative superiority of allied aircraft in comparison to the LW.

See page 3 of the article I linked:

Figures for the air war over Normandy in June 1944

Here are the aircraft loss figures for the air war over France during the period 6 June 1944 - 30 June 1944:

2nd TAF: 322 aircraft (Clark, "Angels Eight", p. 170)

9th AF: 302 aircraft (Rust, "The 9th Air Force in World War II", p. 90)

8th AF: 359 aircraft (137 bombers, 222 fighters) (Freeman, "The Mighty Eighth War Diary", pp. 259 - 283 - only losses in France included)

Total losses by 2nd TAF, 9th AF and 8th AF in France 6 June 1944 - 30 June 1944: 983.

Since losses sustained by ADGB, RAF Bomber Command (which alone lost over 300 bombers in June 1944, many of them over France), and other commands must be added to the figures above, the total number of Allied aircraft lost over France during the period 6 June 1944 - 30 June 1944 definitely exceeds one thousand, I would say approximately 1,200 Allied aircraft were lost over France during this period.

During the same period, the Luftwaffe lost 646 fighters, fighter-bombers and medium bombers in France. (Clark, "Angels Eight", p. 170)

Thus, while almost two Allied aircraft were lost for every German aircraft loss, these losses should be compared with each side's numerical strength. During this period, the Allied air forces performed 99,000 sorties over France (Clark, p. 98 ), while the Luftwaffe only flew 13,315 sorties over France (Prien, "JG 1/11", p. 1051). Thus, the Allied loss rate was only around 1 % while the German loss rate was almost 5 %.

Out of a total of 13,000 Allied aircraft on 6 June 1944, less than 10 % were lost over France between 6 and 30 June 1944. Out of 1,300 Luftwaffe aircraft in France (the peak number, reached on 10 June), around 50 % were lost between 6 and 30 June 1944.

[lasersailor184]

Any badmouthing I ever did against the F4u4, I take back.

I went out and absolutely DOMINATED La7's, B24's and P51's.  I'm a convert.

[Angus]

So, again which theatre or campaign was won by the LW?

[Bruno]

The LW wasn't designed to 'win wars' alone...

Which did RAF win? VVS? USAAF etc...

More stupid strawman by you...

[Captain Virgil Hilts]

Exactly what theater of operations was it where the Luftwaffe did not surrender AIR SUPERIORITY, with air superiority defined as the ability to have control over the skies and prevent the enemy from being able to launch successful major operations?

[HoHun]

Hi Hilts,

>air superiority defined as the ability to have control over the skies and prevent the enemy from being able to launch successful major operations?

From http://en.wikipedia.org:

Air superiority: "That degree of dominance in the air battle of one force over another that permits the conduct of operations by the former and its related land, sea, and air forces at a given time and place without prohibitive interference by the opposing force."

Air supremacy: "That degree of air superiority wherein the opposing air force is incapable of effective interference."

The problem with the latter is that it fails to define "effective" :-)

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)