General Doolittle remembered that telephone call welclass="underline" “I already knew about the problem. In fact, I had once spoken to a B-17 crew that had been damaged by a jet attack. It had only lasted for one split second pass, but they had one dead and four wounded, just from the explosive shells. They came in through the bomb bay. Luckily, they were on the return leg of their mission. Otherwise, the bombs on board could have been detonated, and that could have destroyed several aircraft in the box formation. LeMay and I had an animated conversation, and he used language that I will not repeat here. Suffice it to say his language was colorful, part of his charm.
“The pilot was a twenty-two-year-old captain whose name I remember but will not mention here. He was on his sixteenth mission, I think, and remember they only needed twenty-five to get a ticket home. That boy saw his copilot’s head come off, and his crew chief bleeding all over the flight deck, and he had been wounded. The rudder was shot up on the way into the target by 190s, and then when leaving the target, a jet hit them in a high-speed pass from underneath.
“This boy was in complete shock. I saw it. I knew it. I knew that he was never going to be an effective leader again. I also knew that we now had a real problem, because if the bomber crews felt that they could not rely on our fighter escorts to protect them, then a curtain of morbidity would fall down on them, just like what had happened with the RAF Bomber Command. I could not let that happen. I then issued the order to have at least one complete recon group, even if a composite of American and British, fly photo missions. I wanted to know where they were being built, how they were being transported, and also where their airfields were.”{5}
During one of his many interviews, Adolf Galland mentioned this very situation, as it was during the time he was trying to convince Hitler to provide him with what he needed: “The great problem was that we were losing pilots faster than we could replace them, and this was not an accident. My friend General [James H.] Doolittle had devised the plan to force our fighters into the air to be killed, and we played right into his hands. There was nothing else to do. Our losses were staggering over the next few months [of 1944]. That was when I decided to focus our fighters inside Germany proper, and defend the installations that seemed to be the Allied targets of choice.”{6}
Continuing Doolittle’s comments: “After the war, Galland and I had a chat about this very subject. He asked me: ‘Jimmy, what was your impression of our jets when you first learned of them?’ I looked at him, grabbed his arm, and said: “Adolf, I hoped like hell we could bomb your factories, airfields, and kill your pilots before you could force us out of the bombing campaign.’
“I knew that he did not understand what I meant, so I explained it to him. I told him that I understood the political problems he had in getting the jet fighter; our congress was not much different when it came to appropriations. However, he was alarmed when I told him that there were many in our government who wanted to abandon daylight strategic bombing, feeling that it was too costly in aircraft and lives, with little to show for it. This was especially true after Big Week, and even more so after the August through October 1944 losses over Regensburg, Schweinfurt, and other places. And most of those losses came from 190s and 109s, even flak, not even jets. I decided to focus upon swarming the Germans in the air, shooting them down, ambushing them at airfields, everything.
“Galland’s response was: ‘Well, your bombing of factories was not that significant, but bombing the petroleum and railways was very effective. I would say that what harmed us the most was the killing of our pilots in combat. Planes can be built, but men cannot be made.’ I thought that was a perfect vindication for my plan, which I implemented to defeat the Luftwaffe. Galland was a great and gallant enemy, but he was an even better friend.”{7}
Doolittle had issued the order throughout the Eighth Air Force, and this was mirrored by the Ninth Air Force, which handled the bulk of the tactical bombing roles in Europe. American fighter pilots were to change their habits; no longer would they be chained to the bombers as escorts. They were ordered to go ahead in advance of the strike force, locate the German airfields, strafe and destroy everything they saw, and the next waves of fighters would catch the German fighters rising to engage the bombers. Victory by pilot attrition was Doolittle’s plan, and it was in this author’s opinion what truly eliminated the Luftwaffe.
The response from the fighter units was a resounding applause, as stated by Francis S. Gabreski: “Once we were unleashed, I knew, as did everyone else, that we were going to win the air war. We had the numbers, we had the best pilots, best aircraft, and we were in a sort of blood lust to whack those guys the best and hardest way we could. Ironically, Hub Zemke had started doing just that in 1943, a year before the order was given, and the tactic became doctrine. That was why he was vindicated. Hub made a lot of enemies, because he was a maverick, but he was the most effective fighter leader I ever flew with. He could read the enemy method and think up a method to counter the threat, just like a chess master. He was absolutely brilliant. That is not bullshit either.”{8}
USAAF Gen. Carl Spaatz, a bomber officer from the early days, was also involved in this problem-solving scenario. His close working relationship with Doolittle and British intelligence gave him an idea. While the fighter pilots would draw the German fighters into the air and kill them with overwhelming numbers, Spaatz wanted to implement his own revision of the Casablanca Directive. In his opinion, jet production facilities were just as critical to the war effort as the top targets: petroleum refineries and depots.
These targets were easier to hit once the fighter-bombers were established in mainland Europe, although the heavy bombers were still based in England. Given the new relocated forward bases, the bombers had much more fighter protection for longer periods of time. And they also had the time and fuel to strafe targets at will. Jets in the open and their airfields were prime targets, but the fighter-bomber units would be used to supplement the heavy bomber efforts at destroying the jets in the embryonic stage.
However, once forward air bases were established in France and Belgium, the Germans also adopted the “strike first” mentality. One example of this is found in Robert F. Dorr and Thomas D. Jones’s book Hell Hawks: The Untold Story of the American Fliers Who Savaged Hitler’s Wehrmacht, where Brig. Gen. Andrew W. Smoak, at that time a young P-47 Thunderbolt pilot with the 365th Fighter Group Hell Hawks of the Ninth Air Force, was downed by an Me 262 while taking off in early 1945. He never saw the plane that hit him, but the antiaircraft crew told him that he had been hit by a plane “with no propeller,” and he only later learned during the debriefing about the jets, as visual confirmations clearly provided the evidence of large numbers of Me 262s in the area.{9}
General of Bombers Dietrich Pelz commented on his doctrine of first strike against the Allied airfields: “Long before Operation Bodenplatte, which was the fighter operation, I had planned a jet bomber strike against all of the Allied fighter fields that we could reach. I was of the impression that if we could destroy at least half of the fighters on the ground, and destroy the airfields, then the fighters would be able to handle the remaining half of the enemy fighters that survived. The plan was a good one, I thought, but we never really had enough jets to put that plan to the test.”{10}
The Hell Hawks themselves ended the war in Europe with an impressive air combat record, given that they were a tactical fighter-bomber unit; among their achievements, they shot down 151 enemy aircraft, with five being the vaunted Me 262.{11} They, like most of the Allied fighter units, had managed to adapt to the evolving air war, watching their enemy and learning.