Just when you think you know most of it.

During the preparation for D-Day, the Allied commanders knew they had to have air superiority over the beaches to have any chance for success.  And so far the Luftwaffe was absorbing their losses well, and aircraft production was holding up very, very well.  Something had to be done.

Along came the P-51 with it’s long range and superior performance.  It was deployed to Europe in late 1943 and then in more numbers in 1944.  The P-47 was a better airplane in a number of ways, but did not have the range of the P-51, nor the eye-appeal.

Americans started bombing Berlin with B-17s based in England.  The decision to do so was made for a reason which surprised me.

Berlin was the one place guaranteed to bring up a maximum defensive effort by the Luftwaffe.  70% of the Luftwaffe fighter forces were stationed within the Berlin defensive corridor.   In attacking Berlin, the B-17s were bombing meaningful targets, but their main purpose was to draw out the Luftwaffe so that the P-51s and a few P-38s could take them on.  Defending the bombers was secondary.  It was essential to decimate the Luftwaffe before D-Day.

Normandy was a touch and go operation in many ways, and the invasion force would have been an unbelievably target-rich environment for the German Air Force had it had a meaningful presence in the area.  As it was, the Allied strategy worked, and the Luftwaffe was crippled and/or pinned down by the time the invasion took place.