On this day in 1944, the “Big Week” of World War II comes to an end. Allied forces had been pounding enemy targets for six consecutive days, finally striking a decisive blow to German air power.
Importantly, Big Week also laid the groundwork for Allied air superiority on D-Day.
“Everything that came together during Big Week was about one thing,” historian Bill Yenne concludes, “the use of American airpower to defeat German airpower in order to ensure the success of an epic campaign on the ground.”
The effort wasn’t known as Big Week at the time, of course. That name came later, when retrospectives on the war concluded that the campaign had been a critical turning point. Instead, in February 1944, the campaign was known as “Operation Argument.”
The successful campaign reversed Allied failures that had occurred during the Fall of 1943.
For too long, Allied leaders had relied on heavily armed bomber formations, without a fighter escort, at least in part because they lacked long-range fighters that could make a deep run into Germany.
Let’s just say that it wasn’t going well. Would D-Day fail because of an inability to gain air supremacy?
Fortunately, long-range American P-51 Mustangs and P-47 Thunderbolts, equipped with external drop tanks, arrived just in the nick of time. It also didn’t hurt that the famed Lt. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle was put in charge of the Eighth Air Force. Some of the failed tactics of past bombing runs would be changed.
In the past, fighters had been urged to stay close to bombers. Now, they would be authorized to fly ahead, pursuing and destroying Luftwaffe fighters. Indeed, one objective of Operation Argument was to bait these Luftwaffe fighters, luring them into the open where they could be shot down.
“Big Week began with a big gamble on Feb. 20,” retired Air Force colonel Walter J. Boyne describes, “when weather forecasts were so bad that the ‘master of the calculated risk,’ Doolittle, advised against launching. He and other commanders were concerned about losses that might be incurred by icing and collisions as thousands of aircraft made a long climb.”
Nevertheless, the order was given to depart. More than 1,000 Eighth Air Force bombers took off, accompanied by 835 fighters. The British Royal Air Force sent escort fighter squadrons as well.
More than 2,200 tons of bombs were dropped on more than 150 targets that day, but it was just the beginning. The bombing runs continued each day, with only a brief weather-related break on February 23.
By February 25, the Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces had flown nearly 4,000 heavy bomber missions, supported by about 3,700 fighter sorties. The RAF had conducted a few thousand more. Between American and British efforts, about 20,000 tons of bombs had been dropped.
Needless to say, the Germans suffered massive losses that week.
They’d lost factories and aircraft, of course, but their bigger problem was that they’d lost too many of their best, most experienced pilots. While they were able to replace some aircraft in the months that followed, they could not replace the pilots fast enough.
“[Operation] Argument would shove the powerful Luftwaffe into an irreversible decline,” Boyne concludes, “and make possible the June 6, 1944 Normandy invasion.”
We often hear of the tens of thousands who bravely stormed the beaches of Normandy in June 1944. Perhaps it’s time we also remember the thousands who stormed the skies in February 1944, clearing the way for D-Day.
The Greatest Generation put themselves on the line and achieved success in so many different ways, didn’t they?
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Primary Sources:
8th Air Force 226 Big Week—Day 1 (American Air Museum in Britain)
Bill Yenne, Big Week: Six Days that Changed the Course of World War II (2012)
Dr. Silvano Wueschner, Operation Argument (‘Big Week’): The beginning of the end of the German Luftwaffe (Air University History Office; Feb. 11, 2019)
Feb. 20-25, 1944: “The Big Week” (National Museum of the United States Air Force)
Hattie Hearn, Big Week: How Operation Argument changed the tide of the air war in Europe (American Air Museum in Britain)
Medal of Honor citation (William Robert Lawley Jr.; WWII)
Walter J. Boyne, Forceful “Argument” (Air Force Mag.; Dec. 1, 2008)
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