Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

OPERATION OVERLORD
I
FIGURE 6-4
The Attack on German Aircraft Production
12,000
10,000
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
1943 1943 1943 1943 1943 1943 1944 1944 1944 1944 1944 1944
Bombs Dropped on German Aircraft Industry (Tons)
German Aircraft Production
program of expansion. This had the effect of “backing up” and “filling”
the production pipeline for the surge in production that began to
occur right in the middle of the heaviest attacks in the first four months
of 1944.72
The dispersal of the industry made it a much less profitable target.
Some individual manufacturers had begun dispersal on their own in 1943,
but it was not until late February and early March 1944 that governmentordered
dispersal was begun. Dispersal had its costs; the USSBS Aircraft
Division believed that dispersal might have cost at least as much production
as bombing destruction did. It greatly increased overhead labor costs;
made the handling of engineering and program changes more difficult;
shortened production runs, increased tool and jig requirements, and, above
all, greatly increased the industry’s dependence on the transportation net.
When the transportation system came under increasing attack in the late
summer and autumn of 1944, the Germans were forced to revert to industrial
concentration, this time in underground factories. In the interim, however,
the dispersal of production significantly increased both the number of
targets and the difficulty in identifying them.73
There were some shortcomings in the type of weapons employed by
the attackers. The standard bomb used by the Army Air Forces in most of
these attacks was the 500-pound general purpose (GP). It was quite simply
too small for the job. It tended to do a relatively good job of destroying
buildings while leaving valuable machinery much less damaged. Larger
293