USAAF vs Luftwaffe..

[Smut]

You'll get yer TA-152 right after I get my P-47M...

<stir, stir, stir the pot>

-Smut

[Hangtime]

>>Assuming that 700ish is the base number from which we're working, if you knock off all the aircraft destroyed on the ground, shotdown on the first or second sortie, lost in Bodenplatte (I think the LW lost about 250 pilots with Bodenplatte so the aircraft count is obviously higher), and so forth, you've probably got about 4-500 190Ds that 'effectively' saw combat.<<

"Bodenplatte"' What is this?? 250 pilots lost??? Could you tell us what happened at 'bodenlatte'.. where it is, why it was significant?

Hang



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PALE HORSES
"I looked, and behold; a Pale Horse, and it's riders name was Death, and Hell followed with him" Rev 6.8

[funked]

Yep SnakeEyes, it depends on how you define it.  Anyways were are on the same wavelength - if it was in production we wanna fly it!

Hangtime:  Bodenplatte was a crazy Jabo raid in January 1945.  Galland had saved up a lot of fighters to try and cripple the 8th AF bombers.  But he was forced to squander them on an attack against Allied airfields on the continent.  

They destroyed a lot of Allied planes but lost just as many of their own, plus a lot of pilots.

A lot of 8th AF bomber crews had their death sentences revoked on that day.  Hallelujah!  

[Jekyll]

Juzz, no need to remove the George due to limited construction, when we have the C.205V.

According to my records, a mere 289 C.205V were produced.  By the time of Italy's surrender, only 177 had been delivered to aircrews, of which only 66 were on strength!!!

Some of these aircraft later served with the Allied co-Belligerent Air Force after the armistice.

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C.O. Phoenix Squadron www.users.bigpond.com/afinlayson/index.htm
'feel the heat .......'


[This message has been edited by Jekyll (edited 12-10-1999).]

[Fishu]

Only that low count of C.205s?
all right, wheres my Ta-152, no more numeric excuses

[juzz]

Is that H or C?  

[Hristo]

Stop dreaming, Fishu. We will be very lucky if we ever get the Dora modeled correctly.

[Jekyll]

Operation Bodenplatte was probably the last great attempt by the LW to wrest control of the skies from the Allies.

Galland's original idea, "Der Grosse Schlag", (The Big Blow) would have pitted nearly 1000 LW fighters against the Allied bombers.  If successful, it might have brought down as many as 400 bombers, and significantly affected the course of daylight bombing over Europe.

Fortunately for the allies, most of the aircraft were siphoned off to support the Battle of the Bulge.

Operation Bodenplatte involved some 900+ LW aircraft attacking allied airfields at low level.  A combination of bad luck and bad navigation saw the LW lose over 100 planes to its own ack, and they lost a further 300 or so aircraft in the actual attacks.

The results??? About 500 Allied fighters were destroyed on the ground, but most importantly only about 25 pilots were lost.  The LW, on the other hand, lost over 200 of their most experienced pilots.

It was a mission from which the LW never recovered.

------------------
C.O. Phoenix Squadron
www.users.bigpond.com/afinlayson/index.htm
'feel the heat .......'

[Hangtime]

Re Bodenplatte..

Ahhh.. yes; heard of the raid, didn't recognise it by that name, thought it was an adjunct to the Bulge effort. Recall that the low level weather was atrocious and the LW missed or aborted most JABO targets with lotsa friendly fire losses. had no idea they nailed so many allied AC on the ground.

Wasn't there a big showdown over berlin during this .. allied intelligence got a read on LW intent & supposedly doubled escorts? As I recall they managed to keep them for the most part outta the bomber stream but at a high price.. we suffered our worst single day fighter losses during this I think..  Its all muddled now; damn I'm gettin old.

Kinda makes yah wonder about how things would of turned out if guys like Galland did the planning instead...  

thanks!

Hang

------------------
PALE HORSES
"I looked, and behold; a Pale Horse, and it's riders name was Death, and Hell followed with him" Rev 6.8

[funked]

Hang, if guys like Galland did the planning, they wouldn't have started such a foolish war in the first place!