"Biggest ETO air battle?" Topic

What/when/where was the biggest air battle in the ETO? What kind of planes were involved?

The Club guys were trying to figgure that out….
Thanks!

Possibly Operation Bodenplatte in 1945: link

Cheers
Mark

I imagine they would be some of the 1,000+ bomber raids over the Reich.

They start off with the British 1,000 bomber night raid on Hamburg, and then continue on with attacks on the Ruhr, and Berlin, during both night and day.

During the waning months of 1945, I seem to recall mention of 1,000+ American bombers, and 500 – 600+ American fighters during the large daylight raids, plus whatever the Luftwaffe could scrape together to launch.

Bodenplatte is an interesting, large-scale tactical battle though, with lots of German fighters in the air.

I would say it was the air battle the took place during "Big Week" 20 Feb. 1944 to 25 Feb. 1944. Over 3500 sorties were made during the week by the US 8th and 15th Air Forces. Losses were significant to both sides, The US lost 7% of it aircraft but to the Luftwaffe it was a major loss in pilots with 17% KIA during the week. The US could readily replace both pilots and aircraft while the Luftwaffe could not.

US aircraft used in the operation were B-17, B-24 B-26, P38, P47 and P51.

German aircraft were BF109, B110, BF410, and FW190. there were significant losses to the BF110 and BF410 twin engine Zerstörer units.

Terry

So how do these late war battles compare (size wise) with the height of the Battle of Britain?

What about D-day ? I would assume that had plenty as well?

By D-Day, there wasn't much left of the Luftwaffe in the area. I would tend to agree with the "Big Week" answer.

Big Week was the largest battle.

D-Day had thousands of sorties by the Allies, but the Luftwaffe only got something like 80-90 sorties in the air. Not much of a battle when one side can't show up.

The massive 1945 bomber raids were also rather one sided. Luftwaffe pilots report in their memoirs they did not have to search for the Allies; they just looked for the columns of aircraft that stretched a couple hundred miles long.

Single morning event, Dieppe was pretty largish?

In the 1945 daylight bombing raids, the Americans put up about 2,000 aircraft for a raid, and the Germans several hundred in defense.

Losses to the US Army Air Corps were negligible, due to their much higher ratio of aircraft in comparison to the defenders, e.g. usually less than 1%.

Here's a link to the 1945 raids page for the 8th Air Force, which provides info on a day by day basis, for targets, and aircraft dispatched:

8thafhs.org/combat1945.htm

Note, in many cases, two or three targets might be attacked on the same day during the latter stages of the war, as bombing tactics grew more sophisticated, and fewer targets were available (either due to being already neutralized, or since they were captured by ground forces).

If you click the icons at the top of the page, you can see details of raids for other periods as well.

I would also be tempted by Dieppe, advent of the (underpowered at altitude) Mustang, the FW190 and lots of other nasty engagements. A big show.