New Lessons Learned

American airmen in Britain are still talking about their last raid on Bremen (TIME, April 26). Then, as never before, they took it on the chin: 16 Flying Fortresses and 144 highly trained men . went down, other planes and crews were badly shot up. At one base, the night after the raid, an entire barracks was empty. The loss was serious, its effects were prolonged. Replacements had to be whipped into shape, squadrons and crews had to be broken up to scatter the experienced survivors among the newcomers. Until May 1, when new crews were trained, damaged planes repaired, the Bomber Command of the Eighth Air Force made no more raids.

The Bremen losses testified to the strength of Germany's defensive fighter forces. One bomber pilot who got back said that most of the time he was under attack by seven enemy planes; he had seen other Fortresses surrounded by as many as 15 Nazi fighters. Sixty-three Germans were shot down; but that was not enough.

Luftwaffe on the Defensive. The Germans have devised new tactics to get at the heavily armed daylight bombers. As part of its general swing to the defensive, Germany has shifted the preponderance of its plane production from bombers to fighters. Of the Nazi planes now stationed in western Europe (about one-third of the entire Nazi air force) at least 60% are fighters. They combine mass, smothering attack with concentrations on single planes and stragglers, and they have figured out approaches which to some extent nullify the fire of the bombers' guns. The Flying Fortresses can take on the enemy 3-to-1 and come through with light losses or no losses at all; but when the ratio goes up to 7-, -8-or even 10-to-1, even their concentrated fire cannot always break down the Nazi attack.

All this means a kind of hell for the bomber crews which the bare loss figures do not convey: old friends suddenly gone from the Red Cross snack bars, destruction and blood and death in many of the planes which limp home. It definitely does not mean that U.S. daylight bombing is to be abandoned or diminished, but it does mean that the price of such bombing must be high until the Eighth Air Force finds an answer to the Nazi fighter system.

Trickle to Stream. One answer is to increase the number of bombers in each raid, thus reducing the proportion of enemy fighters to each bomber. The U.S. until recently has had very few big bombers in England, and American bombing operations have been on a small scale as compared to the massed night raids of the R.A.F. But the U.S. force is steadily increasing: correspondents last week were allowed to report the arrival of bombers and fighters in impressive numbers.

Soon, if this increase continues, the Americans will be able to send over several hundred planes at once, and the relative losses should decline: with 500 Flying Fortresses, for instance, the U.S. might lose no more or even fewer than a flight of loo, because of the concentrated fire and the lowered odds of the German fighters.

Fighter escort is another answer. Long-range bombers cannot be limited to the shorter ranges of fighters, but on long trips they can have protection through the first lines of Nazi air defense and can be met again on the way back. On shorter forays fighters can escort them all the way, protect them over the target while the bombers make their run. Another device is to approach targets just at dawn or dusk, make half of the trip in the cover of darkness.

Tactics Applied. An Eighth Air Force raid on Antwerp last week showed which way the wind was blowing. The Fortresses roared out from England with a superb cover of fighter planes,* arrived at their target just before the sun went down. When the Focke-Wulfs came in to attack, Allied fighters drove them off. The bombers made their run without harassment by the enemy, and left their targets blazing. When they returned to base, they had not lost a bomber. Some of the gunners did not have to fire a shot.

*Including U.S. P47 Thunderbolts, in their first announced combat.

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