Juvat wrote:

After an exhausting session with Victoria's Secret Police, Art Kramer
blurted out:

You are only saying that because you never had to fly the Schweinfort mission.
If you had there would be no way in hell you would call it typical.

Begging your pardon Art, this is what Guy posted:

As far as tactics, techniques, and weapons used, Regensburg/Schweinfurt was
quite typical of deep penetration missions to Germany in the summer and fall of
1943, well beyond fighter cover.

So how Regensburg/Schweinfurt was atypical...besides the losses
incurred. What was done differently (tactics/techniques) or what new
weapons were used? 8th AF Bomber Command had hit targets beyond the
range of fighter escort before (and would again). The mission was in
daylight, a max effort, doesn't that seem typical?

Normal procedure was to only fly 3 out of a group's 4 squadrons on a mission; indeed,
that seems to have been the reason that American bomber groups were given a four
squadron organization (late war, the B-29 groups only had three squadrons,
individually larger than the earlier squadrons). On the Regensburg/Schweinfurt
mission, the 9 Groups in the 1st BW (the Schweinfurt force), who would normally make
up 3 combat wings each consisting of three 18 a/c "groups", used their fourth
squadrons and extra crews and a/c to form an additional 3 composite groups, i.e. the
equivalent of one more combat wing. At that time, the combat wings were still
provisional; they didn't become official organizations until September, when the 1st,
2nd and 4th Bomb Wings were redesignated the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Bomb Divisions,
respectively.

Middlebrook, referring to Regensburg/Schweinfurt, writes:

"The true 'maximum effort' was a very rare event [Guy note: at least at that time]
and this was probably the first time it had been used. The result was that
individual planes were added to formations wherever possible [Guy note: This was in
addition to the composite groups mentioned above]. The availability status of the
1st Bombardment Wing for the evening of 16th August shows that 238 B-17s were
operational and capable of being prepared for the raid next morning. The groups
planned to dispatch 231 of these, while several more were to be sent up as 'air
spares' to replace a/c which had to turn back because of operational difficulty."

So, instead of the standard three combat wings each of 54 a/c, the Schweinfurt force
(as dispatched) consisted of the following (in order, lead/high/low group)

101st CW: 91st BG, 18 aircraft / 101st Comp. Group, 19 acft. of 91st, 351st and 381st
BGs / 381st BG, 20 acft.

Composite CW: 351st BG, 21 acft. / 306th Comp. Gp., 20 acft. of 92nd, 305th and 306th
BGs / 384th BG, 19 acft.

102nd CW: 306th BG, 21 acft. / 305th BG, 20 acft. / 92nd BG, 20 acft.

103rd CW: 379th BG, 18 acft. / 103rd Comp. Gp., 17 acft. of 303rd and 379th BGs /
303rd BG, 18 acft.

The 4th Bomb Wing (Regensburg force) only had 7 Groups in it at the time, making it
difficult to form three full combat wings, each of three groups. LeMay, the 4th BW
commander, arranged the force a bit differently. LeMay didn't like ad hoc composite
wings, so organized his 7 groups into one wing of three groups and two wings of 2
groups. However, he had each group attach an extra three a/c element to the high
squadron, more as combat attrition spares than to boost the total bomb tonnage. So,
each group dispatched 21 a/c vice the normal 18, plus air spares for aborts prior to
crossing the occupied coast. The 4th BW had 189 a/c operational the evening before,
but only planned to dispatch 147 of them plus spares, well short of a 'maximum
effort.'

The mission prep
and execution were typical...the results (big losses) not so typical.

snip

The scale of losses was a record at that time, but percentage-wise (16% total, 16.4%
for Regensburg, 15.7% for Schweinfurt) it wasn't all that much greater than the
losses for un-escorted deep penetration missions in the next two months.
Regensburg/Schweinfurt was the deepest penetration mission into Germany at that time,
but succeeding missions in September and the week of October 8-14th 1943, culminating
in Second Schweinfurt ("Black Thursday"), showed that losses equal or greater than
10% could be _expected_ on un-escorted deep-penetration missions into Germany. For
example, the mission to Stuttgart on 6th September suffered 45 losses out of 338
dispatched (I need to check this; one source says 407 dispatched, but only 262
arrived in the target area owing to lousy weather), i.e at least 13.3% losses.
October 8th - Bremen (relatively shallow penetration) 30 out of 378 dispatched (357
effective), or 7.9%. October 9th, 378 a/c dispatched to targets in Poland and East
Prussia, fortunately most of the trip was over the North Sea and Baltic to points
well beyond the main fighter and flak defenses; even so the defenses were able to
shoot down 28 out of 378 (352 effective sorties), or somewhere between 7.5 and 8%.
October 10th, Munster (relatively shallow), 30 out of 274 dispatched, 10.9%. And
then Second Schweinfurt on October 14th, 60 out of 291 that actually crossed the
defended coast, 20.6% (less if you count the aborts, but I don't have that figure
handy.

Guy