Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

Piercing the Fog
to the Mediterranean and Soviet Union. Having risen from just under 300
fighters in early 1942 to more than 500 by fall, the Luftwuffe ended the year
with 435 fighter aircraft in the west.165
Another reason for the optimism that characterized early Eighth Air Force
operations was the exaggerated claims of enemy aircraft shot down during
bomber missions. Air-to-air combat between multiengine bombers and swarms
of fighters was a new phenomenon. The British had only limited experience
with it before they turned to night operations. The Americans had little to refer
to when they established procedures to review, record, and report the results of
these air battles. It was impossible to reconstruct completely events that
occurred in the swirling melee of aerial combat with numerous gunners firing
at fast-moving, dangerous fighters. By any standards, the figures from the early
missions should have raised eyebrows. Even Carl Spaatz, less inclined to false
optimism than many, wrote to his former A-5, Colonel Berliner, that American
air forces in Europe had destroyed 1,200 German aircraft by March 1943.’66
In December, Hap Arnold suggested that Eaker take a closer look at the
numbers and methods for recording claims, reminding the latter there was “too
much at stake” to be ina~curate.’~~ The increase in intelligence officers qualified
to debrief returning aircrews, the greater experience of the crews themselves,
and the implementation of stricter parameters for determining verified fighter
kills reduced the discrepancies between claims and actual losses, but the latter
remained well below the former. Eaker, fully aware of the confusion of combat
and also the importance of morale among the men he had to send day after day
into those air battles, never seemed as concerned with this issue as others did.’@
In a letter to General Stratemeyer, then Chief of Air Staff, on the latest criteria
for kills, he could relate the tongue-in-cheek story of the gunner who refused to
claim a German fighter which exploded in front of his gunsights because “I
didn’t see the s.0.b. hit the ground.”16Y With better ULTRA information, the
importance of aircrew claims would become less significant in an intelligence
sense. The importance of morale would not.
The early miscalculations of the GAF and aircraft industry, and their
significance, would not become obvious until the summer and fall of 1943.
From the beginning, these errors influenced the way in which the AAF sought
to achieve its objectives in Europe. In December 1942, Arnold wrote to Spaatz
that evidence of a decline in the GAF indicated “the necessity of forcing
Germany if it is possible into an air war of e~termination.”’~~ Senior intelligence
officers in the theater contributed to this focus on “extexmination.” In a special
report on German and Italian air OBs, Colonel McDonald, still Eighth Air Force
A-2, noted it was becoming increasingly evident that the GAF was conserving
fighters while it built up its strength. “The above confirms,” he concluded, “that
our policy during the winter months should more and more be directed to force
the enemy into combat in order to continue our policy of attrition of the
G.A.F.”17’
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