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

AIR SUPERIORITY
at very short ranges.*3o During and after the invasion, signals intelligence,
including ULTRA, often provided warning of impending enemy raids before
they were launched and picked up on radar. What little effort the Luftwaffe
could mount against the beachhead, principally at night, was blunted, at
least partly, because of good signals intelligence.
Intelligence estimates of enemy aircraft production were poor. (See
Figure 6-7) Early on in the war, Air Ministry intelligence tended to overestimate
German aircraft output, sometimes by a considerable margin. By
mid-1943, the situation had improved dramatically, and Air Ministry
assessments of production and first line strength were remarkably accurate.
In 1944, especially after the heavy attacks on production in February,
the estimates went badly awry. The Air Ministry, for example, thought that
the average monthly production for the first six months of 1944 amounted
to 1,870 aircraft, down from 2,115 in the last half of 1943. In fact, German
production actually rose to an average of 2,811 per month, almost 1,000
aircraft more than the intelligence figure. Almost all of this error was to be
found in estimates on single-engine fighter production.l3l
Some wildly optimistic assessments of the effects of the BIG WEEK
attacks were made at USSTAE General Spaatz thought that fighter production
had been cut in half for at least one and maybe two months.132 As we
have already seen, Colonel Hughes, USSTAF’s chief planner, believed that
FIGURE 6-7
Allied Intelligence Estimates
Compared to Actual German Aircraft Production
3.000
2,500
2,000
1,500
1,000
500
0
Jun 1941 Dec 1941 Jun 1942 Dec 1942 Jun 1943 Dec 1943 Jun 1944
Actual German Aircraft Production
Allied Intelligence Estimates of German Aircraft Production
3 10