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To Command the Sky: The Battle for Air Superiority Over Germany, 1942-1944 (Smithsonian History of Aviation and Spaceflight
To Command the Sky is a scholarly record of the fight for domination of the skies over western Europe during World War II. It also explains the technical details of the tactics used to defeat the Luftwaffe. This book is important for serious students of World War II or military aviation.
344 pages, Paperback
First published October 17, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 21, 2022
This book explains it all. The USAAF's strategic bombing campaign in Germany started off based on the Army Air Corps' theory that air power could win the war by itself by destroying key sectors of the enemy's economy and making it impossible for them to continue, and that heavily armed unescorted bombers could defend themselves and do the job without prohibitive losses. It slowly dawned on some of the air generals that that wasn't really working, but what was working was that the bombing raids were drawing the Luftwaffe fighters into combat, where escort fighters could engage them and impose losses. The allies needed to deeply attrit the Luftwaffe in order to succeed in the D-Day landings, and the Luftwaffe just did not come up to meet fighter sweeps over the Continent, they only engaged to defend German factories. The bombing campaign's original goal of destroying German industry became secondary to the mission of drawing the Luftwaffe into air battles where it was greatly outnumbered and slowly depleted to the point where it could not interfere with the D-Day landings.
In the Fall of 1943, the Combined Bomber Offensive was failing. German aircraft production was rising, not falling. Many more Allied planes were being shot down than German. Deep penetration raids by unescorted bombers to reach German factories suffered intolerable 20% losses. Nothing helped: not more guns on the bombers, not different flying formations, not larger raids. The one thing that helped was the arrival of long-range escort fighters (chiefly P-51 Mustangs equipped with drop tanks) that were able to accompany the bombers to the target. The real turning point came in early 1944, when it sank home that attritting German fighters was the important thing and escorting fighters were freed to pursue enemy fighters away from the bombers. Now, if a German fighter dived away from the bomber formation, the escort fighter would follow it right down to the treetops to ensure its demise.
It's ironic that air combat is quintessentially about maneuver at the tactical level, but at the operational and strategic levels the bombing campaign was a grinding war of attrition. It was the trench warfare of WWII--yearslong combat week after week, constant casualties, and little visible change in the military situation.
One interesting tidbit: The German pilot training program was relatively modest in 1939 because they anticipated a short war. They never caught up. Towards the end of the war the German squadrons generally had enough planes, despite the Allied attempt to destroy the German aircraft industry. By heroic effort, the industry had been repaired and dispersed and hidden, and production kept increasing until 1945. But experienced pilots and new pilots with sufficient training became hard to find. German training in bad-weather flying was particularly weak, leading to many non-combat losses. German pilots went into combat with about half the hours in the air that American pilots did.
In the Fall of 1943, the Combined Bomber Offensive was failing. German aircraft production was rising, not falling. Many more Allied planes were being shot down than German. Deep penetration raids by unescorted bombers to reach German factories suffered intolerable 20% losses. Nothing helped: not more guns on the bombers, not different flying formations, not larger raids. The one thing that helped was the arrival of long-range escort fighters (chiefly P-51 Mustangs equipped with drop tanks) that were able to accompany the bombers to the target. The real turning point came in early 1944, when it sank home that attritting German fighters was the important thing and escorting fighters were freed to pursue enemy fighters away from the bombers. Now, if a German fighter dived away from the bomber formation, the escort fighter would follow it right down to the treetops to ensure its demise.
It's ironic that air combat is quintessentially about maneuver at the tactical level, but at the operational and strategic levels the bombing campaign was a grinding war of attrition. It was the trench warfare of WWII--yearslong combat week after week, constant casualties, and little visible change in the military situation.
One interesting tidbit: The German pilot training program was relatively modest in 1939 because they anticipated a short war. They never caught up. Towards the end of the war the German squadrons generally had enough planes, despite the Allied attempt to destroy the German aircraft industry. By heroic effort, the industry had been repaired and dispersed and hidden, and production kept increasing until 1945. But experienced pilots and new pilots with sufficient training became hard to find. German training in bad-weather flying was particularly weak, leading to many non-combat losses. German pilots went into combat with about half the hours in the air that American pilots did.
February 13, 2007
The authors do an excellent job of showing how the Allies were able to use their material superiority to best advantage and defeat the Luftwaffe. Counterintuitively, the main advantage gained by the strategic bombing program was the defeat of the Luftwaffe. It was only when the bombers started hitting important targets in Germany accompanied by escort fighters that the German fighters had to fight at unequal terms.
December 1, 2018
The author of the Jimmy Stewart book I read referenced this book as the definitive history of the European Theater air war in WWII. It covers in detail the philosophy,technology, tactics and just plane guts of the men of the US Army Air Force from 1943-1945. I am fascinated by the complex strategy setting and decision making processes of this endeavor.
September 23, 2022
A good solid read and statistical analysis of the air superiority battle over Germany.
September 14, 2023
This book could have been summarized in three pages. While interesting in the development of air philosophy - it is a statistic wet dream
December 10, 2023
This is not a pop history. This is a phenomenal study of a vital aspect of WW2 that is, sadly, overlooked far too often in the popular mind.
April 24, 2016
To Command the Sky: The Battle for Air Superiority Over Germany, 1942-1944 (Smithsonian History of Aviation and Spaceflight is a 4 Star focus on the key air campaign of WWII in Western Europe—winning air superiority over the continent, especially in time for the Normandy invasion. This is an underappreciated part of the overall effort to defeat Germany. Starting with Normandy, western Allied forces would never again fight under threat of sustained, heavy enemy attack from the air. This was possible only with great sacrifice by the airmen primarily of the Eighth Air Force. This book tells the roundabout story of how this campaign came to be.
Although somewhat “textbookish”, the authors spend some time familiarizing you with WWI experiences and the development of air doctrine. The predominance of the “bomber” generals into WWII led to the idea that strategic bombing of either the “industrial fabric” (American) or civilian population (several countries) would lead to collapse and victory. Development of the air forces was lopsided, depending on the prevailing doctrines. German air forces were structured to support the army and a short war, American forces were predominantly bomber with little attention paid to fighters and the British had the most balanced doctrine of bombers and fighters but did not put it into effect at first. The experience of WWII would demonstrate successful and unsuccessful strategy and tactics.
The bulk of the book is spent on the air battle from 1942-1944. Initially, the generals thought the bombers could achieve “local” air superiority wherever they went. The bomber formations were not ever stopped but they suffered terrible losses at times. The US developed the “gunship” YB-40, a B-17 outfitted with more guns and ammo (no bombs) to escort the other bombers until a long range fighter was available. It didn’t work. The air forces also tried big fighter sweeps but could not get the Luftwaffe to engage. The Luftwaffe would only engage the bombers, especially when an important target like Berlin was threatened. All the major air campaigns, Oil, Transportation, Industrial (and the coming invasion) needed air superiority to succeed. But air superiority could only be achieved through attrition of the Luftwaffe.
Key events of the air superiority campaign were the development of a long-range fighter, tactics that enabled full employment of fighters, and using the bombers as bait to draw the Luftwaffe to battle. The book covers all these quite well. We also see the campaign from the German eyes. The Germans were able to replace aircraft until 1945 but they could not replace veteran fighter pilots. They also could not give new pilots enough training, and most disturbing, they did not get all-weather flying training. Major losses occurred when the Luftwaffe launched in bad weather, especially due to icing in winter. (As a pilot, I can attest to the stress of trying to climb and descend through icing, especially over Germany in winter—not fun). Allied, especially US, pilots entered combat in 1942-43 with comparatively little experience (learned by doing) but the training programs began turning out great numbers of well-trained pilots. The Germans did not rotate their veterans into training schools while the Americans did. Eventually the P-51 (plus P-47 and P-39) are able to carry the fight to the enemy over Germany.
Many interesting aspects of doctrine, plans and personalities are covered. The development of 100 octane aviation, the relatively small force of German fighters employed, the wasteful size of flak defenses, the extensive use of air-to-air rockets by the Luftwaffe early on, etc.
Highly recommended for the WWII historian and a permanent place on the shelf.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews