soc.history.war.world-war-ii

On Mar 1, 5:34 am, Louis C wrote:
> 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.

Sorry, I may not have been clear. The requirements for strike against
well-defended naval targets would be more akin to the requirements for
the strike against England. Force packages would have to be planned
for, the strikes would need to assemble from widely dispersed bases
and would then launch - in many cases from improved fields - against
their target. The problem is that all requires time, which for
aircraft reduces endurance, a sognificant problem for the fighters.
That also means there is more time for aborts, which would not be
counted as sorties, further reducing the sortie rate. Further, at the
time that the BoB really heated up, in late July, the Luftwaffe had
come off of about six weeks of very intense operations, including
relocating virtually all their basing, while continuing operations
against England, albeit at a lesser intensity. I would expect the
operational states to be lower - and in fact they were - which also
directly effects sortie rate.

That seems to be the antithesis of the May-June operations in France,
which were launched - at least initially - from well-prepared bases,
along a front a fairly widely dispersed targets. The conditions were
such that I expect the sortie rates would have been optimal.

> > 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.

Again, my fault for posting too hastily. How about...

The higher sortie rate in May-June was also partly due to the higher
serviceability rates in place then - operational intensity had been
quite low for all except the Transport Geschwader in those units
operating against France and Holland. The lower sortie rate in the BoB
resulted from the high-intensity operations of spring and summer of
1940, although there was a slight operational lull in July, operations
were more or less continuous from May through October 1940.

Although I honestly think the first version *says* the same thing it
doesn't *read* the same way, I scratched my head on re-reading it
too. :)

> 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]?

Nope, not what I intended to say, but I do understand if you read it
that way. BTW, the operations against Denmark and Norway had little
effect on serviceability except in the Transport Geschwader, which
were heavily involved in both the "northern" and later "western"
operations by the Luftwaffe. But for the rest that participated in the
Norway operations, they did not participate in the campaign in the
west, so had no effect on serviceability or sortie rates there.

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

Probably because you don't use inverted sentence structures. Sorry. :)