soc.history.war.world-war-ii

Rich wrote:

> Exactly, but if the Luftwaffe was going to execute a planned strike on
> a US carrier force they would perforce have to do similar planning and
> preparation as that done for the attacks on Britain.

Agreed.

Or like what the Allied air forces did in their own air campaigns
against Germany.

What I don't quite get is why the Luftwaffe sortie rate was a problem
in that context.

> And the higher sortie rate in May-June was also partly due to the
> reduced servicability resulting from the operations in the spring and
> sumer of 1940, although there was a slight operational lull in July,
> operations were more or less continuous.

Agreed about the operations being generally continuous but I'm afraid
I don't understand the part running to "1940" in the above sentence.

The fact that the May-June Luftwaffe generated more sorties than the
Allies was partly due to [presumably its own] reduced serviceability
from the spring operations [presumably over Norway]?

How does reduced serviceability help boost sortie rate? There's
something I don't get, here.


LC