Talk:Big Week

Text of chronology

Most of the table text is a verbatim copy of the cited source. I feel this needs attention. GraemeLeggett (talk) 12:33, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

strength of forces?

most other battle articles have a section describing the strength of the forces before the battle. this article needs one too. does anyone have the information? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.98.94.248 (talk) 09:46, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Please eliminate jargon

"they claim 14-5-6 Luftwaffe aircraft;" etc. This is meaningless to the average reader, needs to be stated in layman's terms. Rcbutcher (talk) 14:48, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

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Allied Victory?

Excuse me but what the fuck? I mean, the losses of about 2,000 Allied airmen killed against 250 German airmen lost means the Allies lost 10 times more men, also in the Aftermath section it is clearly stated that the effects over German industry were "fairly limited"; so how was this an "Allied victory" again? Because it seems like a German victory or an Allied PHYRRIC victory at most, perhaps a review (by someone really knowledgeable) and change of the outcome is in order.

--189.192.211.125 (talk) 20:41, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

See my new thread below. Quincefish (talk) 16:30, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

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Harris

" Arthur "Bomber" Harris resisted contributing RAF Bomber Command so as not to dilute the British "area bombing" offensive." - Harris had a pre-existing Directive and orders from the War Cabinet and the Chief of the Air Staff to carry out the Area Bombing offensive and any new requests that contradicted such orders required specific new orders to be given him whether he approved of the new requests or not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.55.68 (talk) 10:59, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

USAAF bomber sorties

I've been checking this section against a much more detailed breakdown on the USAAF sorties of Big Week on American Air Museum in Britain.

https://www.americanairmuseum.com/archive/mission/8th-air-force-226-big-week-day-1

While not proposing to change everything to align with details on the American Air Museum, some chages should be made to satisfy This section needs expansion with note.

Mission 226 1st Bomb Division, 2 aircraft with battle damage were Damaged Beyond Repair (DBR) - 4 KIA 8 WIA 6 RTD.

B-17G #42-31763 "Ten Horsepower", 352BG/510BS in which the pilot had been severely wounded and co-pilot killed. All of the crew baled out except the Navigator, 2LT Walter E. Truemper and Engineer/Ball Turret Gunner, SSGT Archibald Mathies, who made four desperate attempts to land the aircraft, but finally crashed and they and the pilot were killed.

B-17G #42-38109, 305BG/364BS Pilot, 1LT William R. Lawley was severely wounded but managed to return the battle damaged aircraft, 2 critically wounded airmen and a Waist Gunner to make a successful crash landing at Alconbury

Will amend Damaged Beyond repair figure to 2 GazzaLDN (talk) 14:54, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Table of USAAF missions of 24th do not line up with the Sorties of Big Week on American Air Museum in Britain. The numbers differ on the 25th Feb raids n Regensburg & Furth 290 v 267 & 196 v 172

https://www.americanairmuseum.com/archive/mission/8th-air-force-233-big-week-day-5 https://www.americanairmuseum.com/archive/mission/8th-air-force-235-big-week-day-6

The details on the American Air Museum in Britain do line up with another source used in the artical, which also contradicts the sorties table. https://web.archive.org/web/20080910114040/http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/Publications/fulltext/wwii_combat_chronology.pdf

2/24/44 Eighth AF 231 B-17’s bomb Schweinfurt ball bearing plant (11 losses suffered) while 238 B-24’s hit factory and A/F at Gotha (33 aircraft lost). 236 HBs attack secondary tgt of Rostock due to overcast at primary objectives of Poznan, Tutow, and Krzesiny. 61 HBs attack Eisenach, a T/O. RAF BC follows up with attack during 24/26 Feb of Schweinfurt.

2/25/44 Eighth AF 680 B-17’s and B-24’s bomb airplane factories at Regensburg, Augsburg, and Furth, and ball bearing plant at Stuttgart. This mission is flown in conjunction with Fifteenth AF attack on Regensburg and with major efforts by RAF against Schweinfurt during 24/25 Feb and Augsburg during 25/26 Feb. 31 aircraft are lost. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GazzaLDN (talk • contribs) 17:32, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

Statistics don’t work like that - forecast Allied losses

“Planners estimated that the Allies would lose between 7% and 18% of their aircraft every day; given that the campaign was to last six days, the expectation was thus that between 42% and 100% of all aircraft (981 bombers in total) would be lost.”

If you lose 7% each time then you are left with 93% of what you set out with; every day. Therefore after six days the remaining proportion is 

.93x.93x.93x.93x.93x.93=.65 - so a loss of 35%.

With 18% it is 82% left, so after six raids multiply .82 by itself six times to get 30% left, ie 70% losses.

The original article is in Dutch so I can’t check it, but it can’t possibly have come up with the numbers in the Wiki page! Or if it did then it was wrong.

Either way this needs sorting - I propose “the expectation was that a significant proportion would be lost” Quincefish (talk) 12:59, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

And also - citations from Brinkhuis’ book seem a bit out - Brinkhuis reports that available allied bombers amount to 981. If you add up the number of US bombers reported on this article to have been put up on the final Friday 25th, there are over 900 aeroplanes. Plus a further sortie in which we are not told how many were put up but we are told that thirty were lost. Given the losses earlier in the week, there were way more than 981 reportedly available at the start of Big Week.

And this is before we include the British planes the article says were sent out on the night of 24th 25th where a whopping 1070 sorties are reported.

So there are over 2,000 bombers available at the *end* of Big Week after 350 have been shot down (according to this article).

Either Brinkhuis is wrong or whoever got the information out of it is wrong. Quincefish (talk) 13:59, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Ok let's check. Brinkhuis (1984), p. 31, my translation: (Frederick L.) Anderson was convinced that in the next months, preceding the invasion of France, the Allied air force should be considered capable of obstructing (verhinderen) 75% of the German fighter production. He was even prepared to sacrifice three quarters of his forces to achieve this goal. That was so much that many were rather sceptical of it. This loss would be equal to 736 bombers! So, what appears to have happened is that the total forces at Anderson's disposal were calculated on the basis that 75% of them represented 736 bombers, therefore 100% were 981 bombers. 981 x 0.75 = 735.75 (rounded 736). The calculation seems correct, but is the number of 981 bombers correct?

Harvey 2012 p. 37 wrote: The first raid of “Big Week,” for example, involved 941 bombers and 832 fighters (...). This is compatible with the claim that there were 981 bombers in total at the beginning, though we can't prove or disprove it yet.

Van Esch 2012 stated about the third day: On the morning of 22 February 1944, when Captain William Schmidt and his crew, accompanied by almost 1000 bombers from the Eighth Air Force, lifted off from Bungay Airfield in Suffolk, England, to bomb deep in Nazi-held Germany, they unknowingly initiated the catastrophic chain of events. 'Almost 1000 bombers' is also pretty close to 981.

Van Esch 2012 quoted Haywood S. Hansell as saying: Hansell describes the launch of Operation Argument as ‘one of the crucial command decisions of the war’. Hansell, p. 180. The force assembled for Operation Argument was ‘the largest in history of the American strategic forces: sixteen combat wings of heavy bombers, numbering over 1,000 planes and Sixteen RAF fighter squadrons’. So we do not know the exact number of bombers, but the U.S. bombers and U.S. fighters together were over 1,000 planes, to which we need to add Sixteen RAF fighter squadrons’. Am I correct that a 'combat wing' consists of both fighters and bombers? If so, not all of those over 1,000 planes were bombers. Assuming that's all, we're never getting to over 2,000 bombers available at the *end* of Big Week, unless additional bombers arrived during the operation that were not available before it was launched on 20 February 1944.

Where did you get the figure of over 2,000 bombers available at the *end* of Big Week from, anyway? It's not in the article, nor in any of the sources I've looked at.

The number of sorties doesn't say much about how many aircraft were involved in those sorties. Obviously, every aircraft that is not lost during a sortie could theoretically conduct another sortie in the future. Going by sorties alone cannot reliably establish how many aircraft were involved (though it can give some circumstantial indications). NLeeuw (talk) 18:29, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Brinkhuis p. 25, my translation: The Intelligence Section of the Combined Operational Planning Committe (sic), which had designed the plans for Operation Argument, estimated the losses to its own planes to 7 to 18% per day! That meant that, of one force of 620 bombers in one attack, 48 could be shot down! This is a bit of a strange example. 620 x 0.07 = 43.4 (44 rounded); 620 x 0.18 = 111.6 (112 rounded). Mathematically speaking, any number between 43 and 112 could theoretically happen, so I'm not sure what Brinkhuis was trying to say by mentioning '48'. Nor with '620', for that matter. These numbers seem to come out of nowhere, although because it is only a hypothetical example, it is meaningless.

More important, however, is that the expectation was thus that between 42% and 100% of all aircraft would be lost can only be correct if we assume that the percentages of 7 to 18% per day keep referring to the initial force at the start of the operation (6 x 7 = 42; 6 x 18 = 108, but you can obviously only lose 100%), and not to whatever is left of the force at the start of each new day. In the latter scenario, your calculation is correct for an overall estimated loss of 35 to 70%. This is well within the bounds of the three quarters that Anderson was allegedly prepared to sacrifice. Either way, we might just delete the the expectation was thus that between 42% and 100% of all aircraft would be lost part, as it is ambiguous how it should be interpreted, and it is only about what might have happened, and not what actually happened. NLeeuw (talk) 18:47, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I've removed it. Thanks for pointing it out. What the total number of bombers, fighters and aircraft in general was, however, remains unclear at this point. Brinkhuis gives extensive details on every formation that bombed the four Dutch cities on 22 February 1944, visualising them all in diagrams, but I do not see him giving a full order of battle of the whole Operation Argument. He only gives an order of battle for 22 February on p. 29, which I have presented in full at Big Week#Allied order of battle. No other source seems to be able to provide that many details, but even this is evidently incomplete, as it was only for the third of the five days in all. NLeeuw (talk) 18:59, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

p. 31 provides a very brief account of 20 and 21 February. On the 20th, for example, the 3rd Bombardment Division had not succeeded in finding the objective of that day, the Tutow complex, because it was hidden under a long-hanging cloud covering. The division had diverted to the indicated second target: Rostock. The other two Divisions of the '8th AF', the 1st division and the 3nd, also had not been able to find their targets, and bombed other places. The second day, the 21st, things did not go much better. None of the 924 bombers which had departed bombed their original targets, but had diverted to other targets. Interestingly, the figure mentioned here is again relatively close to 981.

So to recap:

• Hansell reports 'over 1,000 planes' on day 0, but not all of those were bombers; it included fighters.
• Van Esch reports 'almost 1000 bombers' on day 0.
• Brinkhuis indirectly reports 981 bombers on day 0 ('736 bombers' representing 'three quarters' of the total force Anderson was allegedly willing to sacrifice).
• Harvey reports 941 bombers (and 832 fighters) on day 1.
• Brinkhuis reports 924 bombers on day 2.
• Brinkhuis reports about 621 bombers on day 3. (The 333 bombers of Curtiss LeMay abandoned the mission early. Elsewhere he states that 'Each bombardment group usually consisted of three squadrons with a total of 36 bombers', and lists 8 bombardment groups (apart from the LeMay division) on 22 February. So that would have been 36 x 8 = 288 + 333 = around 621 bombers, assuming the 36 average per BG. This might be why Brinkhuis mentioned '620' earlier.)
• This Wikipedia article reports a combined number of over 900 planes on day 5, but not all of those were bombers; it included fighters.

Overall, this seems pretty close together. A gradual decline in the number of bombers from day to day, as some were either lost, or damaged beyond (immediate) repair to take part again on subsequent days, or other reasons. 621 would have been quite low compared to the two previous days, however, but it's just a rough estimate based on the number of participating BGs and the average reported as 36. But the numbers are quite consistent within a certain margin of error and uncertainty. But 2,000 bombers do not appear to have been available at any point during Operation Argument. NLeeuw (talk) 19:33, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I am only going on the Wikipedia article, looking at the tables under 'Operations' -

USAAF Friday 25 February:

Mission 235

1. 268 B17s to Augsburg

2. 290 B17s to Regensburg

3. 196 B24s to Furth

Mission 236

4. 5 B17s to France with leaflets

5. 191 B26s to Venlo and other airfields in France

6. 164 B26s to military targets in France, recalled owing to bad weather

7. "MTO Strategic operations" unspecified number B17s and B24s to Regensburg, Austria, Itlay and Yugoslavia, but 30 are lost. Assuming 10% losses, that makes 300 more.

So that makes 1,144 American sorties plus the other unspecified bombers, say a further 270 making 1,414. As they are daylight raids and it is winter, it doesn't seem likely that anything attacking Germany/Italy/Yugoslavia made two trips; it's possible that points 5 and 6 are the same aeroplanes, but my gut says probably not - though I'm happy to be corrected.

RAF on the night of 24th/25th

1. 734 aircraft on Schweinfurt

2. 15 to the Netherlands

3. 8 to Kiel

4. 7 to Aachen

That's 764 British (and presumably Empire) aircraft. Wikipedia mentions 1,070 sorties. As this is night bombing I doubt any of these went twice.

That makes 1,144 + 764 definite bombers = 1,908. And 1,414 + 1,070 possible = 2,474 bombers - possibly sorties, not bombers.

If Brinkuis is right and there are 981 on the first day, then assuming 5% losses daily we would be down to 981 x .95x.95x.95x.95x.95 = 759 left for the sixth day.

If we assume the 2,474 are sorties, not individual planes then if divided by 759 would mean that each bomber had flown over three missions on one day! Only Ryanair would demand that of their planes. It's 600 miles from London to the German targets, 700 from Lincolnshire. At a cruising speed of 200 mph that's a six to seven hour round trip. You can't get two trips like that in. And the Yanks were at it during the day and the RAF at night.

Brinkhuis is therefore miles out - or I suppose the rest of the article could be rubbish instead. The RAF managed a 1,000 bomber raid in 1942 - and by 1944 the Yanks had turned up with their huge fleet of aircraft, it beggars belief that between the two of them they could manage only 981 aeroplanes at the start of Big Week.

So let's look for the original sources

Here you are, directly from the USAAF official military history, confirmation that the US alone had over 1,000 bombers at the start of the week: https://web.archive.org/web/20080910114040/http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/Publications/fulltext/wwii_combat_chronology.pdf -

"2/20/44 Eighth AF Over 1,000 HBs are dispatched to bomb German ftr aircraft production centers. Nearly 900 HBs attack assigned tgts or T/Os. This mission, the first in which the Eighth dispatches over 1,000 planes, begins ‘Big Week’ attacks on German aircraft plants and A/Fs."

And here's the RAF equivalent official history, confirming 734 in a single raid on Schweinfurt.

"24/25 February 1944

734 aircraft - 554 Lancasters, 169 Halifaxes, 11 Mosquitos - carried out the first Bomber Command raid on Schweinfurt, home of Germany's main ball-bearing factories." Quincefish (talk) 16:07, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

This was a resounding Allied Victory

The Allies launched Big Week in order to help to destroy the Luftwaffe in order that the Luftwaffe would be unable to stop D-Day. The Luftwaffe were absent on D-Day. The Germans didn't even manage to have reconnaisance planes up in the air to see D-Day was about to happen.

The Allies could afford to lose 2000 men without noticing - most of them were not pilots anyway. The Germans could not afford to lose pilots at all. New German pilots were coming to the front with 100 hours' flying experience and then going into battle. They had limited fuel, limited space for training and the shortage of pilots meant the newly trained were sent to the front too early. Allied pilots had 300 hours' flying training and were then introduced gently to fighting. The Germans reportedly lost 20% of their experienced pilots in this.

This was a resounding Allied victory and an absolute disaster for the Germans. Quincefish (talk) 16:36, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree. The infobox is heavily cluttered and just needs ONE result, it was not mixed. Civilians whether allied or axis are sadly collateral, so this needs to change. Eastfarthingan (talk) 17:12, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

In response to Eastfarthingan's "I agree. The infobox is heavily cluttered and just needs ONE result, it was not mixed. Civilians whether allied or axis are sadly collateral, so this needs to change. Eastfarthingan (talk) 17:12, 17 June 2024"

1. I agree. As it is NLeeuw has made it worse by linking to Aftermath which he has written in a wholly negative manner. Up until NLeeuw's edits of December 2022 - you can see the effects here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Big_Week&diff=1128250004&oldid=1127212193 it was recorded as the Allied victory that it was. NLeeuw is really not in line with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view

2. This is also when NLeeuw introduced all Brinkhuis' rubbish about the Allies having only 981 bombers, and NLeeuw's complete misinterpretation of how statistics work (see thread above "Statistics don’t work like that - forecast Allied losses"); it was also the first time the unreliable Brinkhuis book was cited in this article.

3. The aim of Big Week all historians agree was to move towards air superiority and this goal was achieved. Whether the aim was to achieve this by destroying the German aircraft industry, German fighter aircraft or the German pilots can be argued about; we will probably never know exactly what was planned or why. In this context then it was an unqualified success. A few Dutch deaths, a few Allied deaths, and the loss of a few Allied planes are absolutely inconsequential. As Eastfarthingan points out civilians are collateral damage during war, and the Allies had an unlimited supply of aeroplanes and pilots - whilst the Germans did not.

4. Moreover, NLeeuw has indicated that his command of English is fairly poor; this is not a complicated sentence. "Because of the large crews of their four-engine bombers the Americans lost almost as many aircrew in six days as the Germans lost in more than three months in the Battle of Britain, but replacements were arriving in a constant stream from across the Atlantic, and since the object of both campaigns was to weaken the enemy’s air defenses, “Big Week” can be counted as a significant — though costly — victory, not a defeat as the Battle of Britain had been for Germany. This is a really long sentence, and I had to read it like 5 times until I understood that Harvey meant 'a significant — though costly — [Allied] victory'." This may be why he does not realise the subtleties of

5. This article doesn't need 59 (or any?) references to Brinkhuis, and it doesn't need two paragraphs on the Humanitarian impact - there was a bigger humanitarian impact on the families of the Allied crew members. Quincefish (talk) 17:18, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

@Quincefish I've reverted your last edit. You're arbitrarily changing the summary of cited reliable sources. You've got no justification for that. NLeeuw (talk) 17:12, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

The infobox said Allied bombing of German aircraft industry ineffective{{sfn|Brinkhuis|1984|p=31}}.

You changed that to Allied bombing of German aircraft industry of limited effectiveness{{sfn|Brinkhuis|1984|p=31}}.

Why? On what grounds? For what reason? Have you read Brinkhuis 1984 p. 31? Can you even read Dutch? NLeeuw (talk) 17:17, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

The whole point of Big Week's air campaign was to enable the Allies to gain air superiority before D-Day. The aim was to cause as much destruction to Luftwaffe on the ground and in the air. Many historians have argued that it was one of the turning-point aerial engagements of World War II & have all agreed that air superiority was achieved and therefore the Luftwaffe was a spent force when the D-Day campaign began. Industry was not the main target. Eastfarthingan (talk) 21:01, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

The aim was to cause as much destruction to Luftwaffe on the ground and in the air. Says who? Just destroying a few aircraft on the ground means nothing if hundreds more can be produced in the factories next to it.

Many historians have argued Which?

have all agreed that air superiority was achieved No.

Industry was not the main target. It wasn't? I'm gonna quote from Brinkhuis now, p. 23 (my translation):

The factual cause of the bombings of 22 February can be traced to a plan that was already conceived in October 1943. This plan, operation Argument, was the largest Allied air action thus far. The ambitious operation had the total destruction of the German aircraft industry as its goal. In six or seven days time, both the RAF and USAAF would therefore put all available aviation materiel into the air. (...) As primary targets, the most important aforementioned industrial 'complexes' were identified. The foremost of these was Leipzig, obviously because of its gigantic production capacity of the Messerschmitt 109 and an important ball bearing factory. Immediately after that came the complexes of Oschersleben, Aschersleben, Gotha (the targets of 22 February 1944), Halberstadt and Bernburg, where one- and two-engine fighters were manufactured or assembled. NLeeuw (talk) 22:44, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

“The ambitious operation had the total destruction of the German aircraft industry as its goal.”

Fortunately the Wikipedia article does not agree with Brinkhuis so we need look no further. “The planners intended to attack the German aircraft industry to lure the Luftwaffe into a decisive battle where the Luftwaffe could be damaged so badly that the Allies would achieve air superiority and would ensure success of the Normandy landings later in 1944.”

Order yourself a copy of James Holland’s Big Week for a rather more up-to-date understanding of this action. Quincefish (talk) 22:48, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

To add, the strategy was to attack the aircraft factories as this would force the Luftwaffe to respond. The bombers were to be the bait for the German fighters and the fighters would only respond in sufficient numbers where the target was sufficiently important.

Thus the Allies attacked the aircraft factories and then shot down the defenders. There is no doubt that greater destruction of the factories would have been even better, but that was a secondary objective - after destruction in the air of the Luftwaffe. Quincefish (talk) 22:53, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Let's try again. page 135 has an original official document in English, you should be able to read it.

Intelligence Annex to Field Order No. 213, HQ. 2nd Bomb Division. 22 February 1944

1. Information.

A. Enemy

PRIMARY TARGET: GOTHA WN. PLANT.

(...) This factory produces 1/3 of the German T/E A/C ME 110's and ME 410's.

Can you see and read the text that I am quoting here on page 135 (p. 133 of the PDF)? NLeeuw (talk) 23:00, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I can’t read any Dutch. But if you read my thread above in Talk “Statistics don’t work like that” it is clear that either Brinkhuis was mad, or utterly wrong, or is completely outdated, or has been completely misunderstood by whoever it is who interpreted his Dutch writings originally and presented them in English. As this is English Wikipedia, and it is clear his numbers as quoted in this article are off-the-scale wildly inaccurate, I propose all references to his book be removed from this article in the grounds of being completely unreliable and we English cannot understand his book. There’s no benefit to having references that cannot be verified.

If he really does claim that dropping bombs on aircraft factories (that hit the factories) was ineffective then I suspect he (or the person who wrote the Wiki article referencing his book) is pushing a revisionist pro-Nazi line.

Or pushing a warped view of history that is influenced by the (very sad) bombing of the Netherlands as a part of this. If you do want to push that point then fewer Netherlandish people died than did Allied airmen and Big Week was a turning point in the war. Quincefish (talk) 22:45, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

It seems that you are still a beginner on Wikipedia (151 edits so far), and do not know how some things work around here. Per WP:NONENG, Citations to non-English reliable sources are allowed on the English Wikipedia. Just because you can't read it doesn't mean it's completely unreliable.

Brinkhuis is not pushing a revisionist pro-Nazi line at all; he is very clear in his condemnation of the Nazi occupation. He was actually 10 years old when the bombing of his neighbourhood in Enschede happened on 22 February 1944, where some civilians that lived close to him were killed. Decades later as an adult, he and several well-known Dutch and foreign historians together studied all the available evidence of what really happened on that fateful day. Not in order to exaggerate it for some sort of revisionist agenda, nor to ignore it as had been done for several decades (for many, it was too painful to talk about, amongst other reasons). It was trying to get an honest view of history of what happened, not what the propaganda of either side wanted people to believe. If you think there can only be 2 views of history, namely This was a resounding Allied Victory (quod non), and that everything anyone else says is pro-Nazi revisionism, then I'm afraid Wikipedia is not the place for you to make your arguments, because here we observe a WP:Neutral point of view.

(And the point is not how many Dutch civilians died versus how many Allied airmen died; frankly, I don't care about that ratio, because this is not a "game" of "who sacrificed the most", and Wikipedia is not a forum). NLeeuw (talk) 23:28, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

1. Except you do care about ratios, as you have written in your newly composed "aftermath" that the Allies lost more airmen than did the Germans, and you write this to reinforce your idea that this was less than a resounding victory for the Allies. This is why I thought it worthwhile pointing out to you that more Allied airmen died than Dutch civilians - the number of dead is irrelevant and I am glad that you agree with me on this. In the context of 50 million deaths in the war, the aftermath of Big Week is not about the deaths, but about the effect it had on the overall war, and on the Normandy Invasion in particular. The 'aftermath' needs completely rewording as it currently suggests that this was something other than a resounding victory for the Allies.

2. This was unquestionably an enormous strategic success for the Allies; it destroyed the Luftwaffe. *That* is the neutral point of view. To suggest otherwise is either misguided or Nazi revisionist. There's a lot of Nazi revisionist history on Wikipedia; much of it backed up by 'history' books written by retired German generals in the 1950s and 60s who managed to capture the momentum of history and continue to be the drivers of lazy modern interpretations.

3. And it did result in deaths in the Netherlands, which was very sad and regrettable, and I (for what it is worth, eighty years on) offer my condolences to you and your nation. I think that writing that makes me sound very pompous, but I don't want you to think that I don't care; I do; but Big Week was about destroying the Luftwaffe. There is a separate page for the Nijmegen disaster, it should not be the main driver of the Big Week Wikipedia article, it is the result of 14 bomber sorties out of a total of 3000 bomber sorties flown that week - let alone the thousands of fighter sorties.

4. If you look at my other thread on "Statistics don't work like that" you can see the evidence of unreliability of Brinkhuis as a source. He was, after all, only an amateur historian, and the book was vanity-published by a second-hand bookshop in Nijmegen. Thank you though for the link to his book. On page 31 he states that 75% of the force was 736 bombers. This implies an overall force of 981 bombers (as referred to in the Wiki article). He is miles out! There were 2,000 bombers sent out on the last day, even after 350 bombers had been lost earlier in the week. He wrote the book in 1984, based on current thinking of the time. Historians have moved on, and this article references him far too much. I'm just waiting to have my copy of Holland's Big Week returned and then I shall add some better citations. There have been four books published on Big Week recently. Three of the titles make it quite clear what the end result was. Dildy "Big Week... and the breaking of the Luftwaffe"; Hammel "Big Week: the Bombing Offensive that Broke the Luftwaffe"; Yenne "Big Week: Six Days that Changed the Course of World War II"; and Holland's "Big Week".

4b. I never said that Brinkhuis should be removed because he wrote in Dutch; I said he should be removed as he is clearly unreliable. Moreover whoever made reference to him in this article has added further mistakes (see my 'statistics' thread), and (see point 6 below) has completely made facts up, relying on the fact that as it is in Dutch nobody will check.

5. I do not know what the relevance is to this discussion of the field order on Brinkhuis p135 to which you refer. It states a number of military targets for a bombing raid. Please would you elucidate.

6. Reference [14] (the first sentence of 'Aftermath') makes reference to p31 of Brinkhuis. I have run p31 through Google translate and so far as I can see he makes no comment on either air superiority or the impact on the factories. Perhaps you'd have a look please.

7. Anyway, this Wikipedia article relies too heavily on the work of a vanity-published amateur historian from 40 years ago whose grasp of numbers is poor and his words have been garbled and fabricated by whoever put them into this article. The world has moved on in recent years and the article is desperately in need of some better quality facts! Quincefish (talk) 17:10, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Alright, I'll take a look at the statistics section above. Perhaps there has been an error in either Brinkhuis' calculation, its translation or interpretation. NLeeuw (talk) 17:27, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

@Nederlandse Leeuw you wrote "@Quincefish I've reverted your last edit. You're arbitrarily changing the summary of cited reliable sources. You've got no justification for that. NLeeuw (talk) 17:12, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

The infobox said Allied bombing of German aircraft industry ineffective.

You changed that to Allied bombing of German aircraft industry of limited effectiveness.

Why? On what grounds? For what reason? Have you read Brinkhuis 1984 p. 31? Can you even read Dutch? "''

I've now found out why I did this. I had every justification for doing this. I was quoting the Wikipedia article in which you have put in Brinkhuis p31 against the observation that literally says the results were limited.

Bombing results

The damage to the German aircraft industry was fairly limited. [Brinkhuis - and others]''

Moreover, p31 of Brinkhuis makes no reference whatsoever to the impact on the German aircraft industry that I can see using Google translate - so your reference is wrong. Quincefish (talk) 17:24, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Going on from what I have said, I have changed the infobox result in a need to keep the WP:Neutral point of view. However I need to point out the historians Bill Yenne, Steven Zaloga, James Holland, Douglas C. Dildy, Glenn Infield, to name but a few, who have argued successfully that Big Week was a turning point, or defeated the Luftwaffe etc. Eastfarthingan (talk) 12:25, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Fair point. I'll read some reviews of those books, to see how successful they have been in convincing the scholarly community of such conclusions. NLeeuw (talk) 13:34, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Zaloga, Dildy, and Infield are currently not used as a source in this article. Yenne and Holland are arguable, though seem to write more popular history than scholarly studies (James Holland (author) is described as an English popular historian, author and broadcaster). However, I have found Harvey and van Esch (both 2012) to be quite reliable and useful, and have improved the article somewhat here and there.

McFarland & Newton 1991 seem to be in the minority in claiming that Operation Argument was 'not primarily a bombing campaign, but a campaign designed to kill Luftwaffe fighters'. It's unclear what they mean: do they mean destroying German fighter aircraft (in the air, on the ground, or both), or killing trained/experienced/skilled German airmen? Taken literally, it seems to mean only destroying German aircraft. It does seem to be that, in the first half of 1944, the Allies were destroying German aircraft faster than the German factories could produce them, even though Germany expanded its production capacity throughout the year 1944, and its production peaked. But neither production capacity, nor aircraft availability, proved to be decisive:

• Harvey: It subsequently transpired that the damage to German factories in “Big Week” caused only a brief intermission in rising output, and the loss of trained fighter pilots, especially experienced unit commanders, turned out to be more important in the long term than the damage done by the bombing.[14]

Because of the large crews of their four-engine bombers the Americans lost almost as many aircrew in six days as the Germans lost in more than three months in the Battle of Britain, but replacements were arriving in a constant stream from across the Atlantic, and since the object of both campaigns was to weaken the enemy’s air defenses, “Big Week” can be counted as a significant — though costly — victory, not a defeat as the Battle of Britain had been for Germany. This is a really long sentence, and I had to read it like 5 times until I understood that Harvey meant 'a significant — though costly — [Allied] victory'.

• Van Esch: In the first half of 1944, the Luftwaffe was defeated by a month-long attrition of fighters, due to the Allied bomber offensive. The immense losses sustained during this intense period of air combat lead to loss rates the Germans could not sustain. During 1944, the Luftwaffe’s losses of fighter aircraft rose to 73 per cent of the total fighter strength per month.[83] However, also to the surprise of Allied analysts, German aircraft industries were still able to increase production of fighter aircraft, even after three years of strategic bombing. In this air war of attrition, the number of trained and experienced pilots proved the most decisive factor, though, rather than the availability of fighter aircraft. As Werell argues, the fierce battle for air superiority proved costly to both sides but, by 1 April 1944, the Allies had clearly emerged as the winners.[84]

In short, both seem to agree that Operation Argument (or the wider bombing campaign from January to March 1944?) was a costly victory for the Allies, but not because it achieved its operational objectives. The loss of skilled/trained/experienced German airmen was the most significant fortunate result for the Allies, although that was never the explicitly stated primary objective of the operation, nor of the wider campaign.

Incidentally, the Russell, Edward T. (1999) U.S. source is really unreliable, we might need to get rid of it. NLeeuw (talk) 17:15, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Many thanks it does give that article more balance and nuance. Eastfarthingan (talk) 16:27, 19 June 2024 (UTC)