Legioneod Posted April 12, 2019 Posted April 12, 2019 (edited) 28 minutes ago, Sublime said: On your first point youre right. The escorts had to do "close escort". This was popular with the bomber crews but ineffective. When the fighters were "freed" its said the bomber crews almost mutinied against Doolittle (IIRC) until the Luftwaffe losses began to be telling. The new policy allowed fighters to chase and harass German fighters whereever encountered and prioritised destroying the enemy over loss prevention. (So naturally the bomber pilots weremt pleased - though a winning strategy it also took some time) its also quite possible the Germans did joke at the US escorts expense about this not realizing said escorts were bound by orders to not chase after the Luftwaffe attackers. I was literally going to post that. I think a lot of the P51 losses came from it having to do fighter bomber missions and it was apparently particularly vulnerable to ground fire especially the radiator. Its telling most of the great US aces over Western Europe were killed or shot down and captured by flak - not fighters. This apparently was one of the great things about the F4 Corsair as well - a honking big radial engine that was able to survive more damage than other types (plus a strong airframe especially to land on carriers too) Yep, the 56th was actually one of the first groups to use this tactic, it was called the "Zemke Fan" after Hubert Zemke, later the 8th AAF adopted a version of this for all FG. Edited April 12, 2019 by Legioneod 1
Bremspropeller Posted April 12, 2019 Posted April 12, 2019 The 354th was glad when they re-converted back to P-51s in spring of '45. They were the only really dedicated P-51 fighter group of the 9th AF at the time, after the 363rd became a recce outfit. It's all relative. The 10th TRG seemed to like their F-6C/D Mustangs for the job, too.
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