"Big Week" 1944 - Operation Argument and the Breaking of the Jagdwaffe

Osprey Air Campaign #27

by Douglas C. Dildy, Graham Turner (Illustrations)

In the years before World War II, it was believed that strategic bombing would win wars, but none foresaw the devastation that German radar-directed interceptors would inflict on large bomber formations.

With the increasingly urgent need to eliminate German fighter-aircraft prior to D-Day, a concerted two-phase effort was launched, code-named "Operation Argument." Targeting aircraft factories with hundreds of heavy bombers escorted by the new long-range P-51 Mustang, the operation, known to history as the "Big Week" campaign, was designed to destroy aircraft production on the ground, and force the Luftwaffe into combat to defend these vital facilities--when it was intended that the new escort fighters would take their toll on the German interceptors.

Using specially commissioned artwork and maps, this is a detailed and fascinating analysis of history's first-ever successful offensive counter-air (OCA) campaign.

96 pages, Paperback

Published February 15, 2022

About the author

Douglas C. Dildy is a US Air Force Academy graduate and retired US Air Force colonel with a degree in history. He attended the US Armed Forces Staff College and USAF Air War College and holds a Master's Degree in Political Science.

Reviews

[Shrike58 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apart from anything else one might say about this booklet, it's another good example of why the "Air Campaign" series might be the best thing that Osprey is currently publishing. This is in terms of how the authors chosen so far have done good work in terms of writing about aerial warfare as being more than one thing after another, and bringing events into operational coherence; or at least demonstrating why someone's clever scheme was unsuccessful.

That said, what Douglas Dildy endeavors to do is produce a final accounting of just what level of success Operation "Argument" generated, as a milestone on the way towards the Allies gaining air superiority in 1944 over Europe. One thing that I had not appreciated about Dildy previously is that he was a career officer in the United States Air Force, and appears to have gone to all the appropriate staff schools in the course of his career. This means that he has no respect for received reputations when failure resulted from bad decisions, and unsparingly points these errors out; regardless of whether said errors were made by the USAAF, the RAF, or the Luftwaffe. Let's just say that the flavor of this study is a bit more polemical than what one often sees with Osprey products.

As for the final result, while some of the individual raids staged by the USAAF during the operation in question were less than successful, due to failures in marrying bomber formations with their fighter escorts, Dildy holds that the overall effort was worthwhile; despite the arguments of "amateur historians and Luftwaffe enthusiasts." German capacity in regards to fighter production was halved and didn't recover until the Summer of 1944, over a hundred irreplaceable Luftwaffe fliers were wiped from the muster rolls, and the Luftwaffe's ability to mount a coherent air defense campaign was severely degraded. Keep in mind that this was only one step on the way to June 6, 1944. Next was the one-week assault on Berlin in March, 1944.

[Patrick Foley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another excellent addition to the Osprey bookshelf. The author does a commendable job of condensing the important facts of the campaign into a readable, enjoyable book. My only downgrade is concerning the illustrations... the maps didn't do much to add to the reader's understanding, they were too "grand scale" and too little detail: I know the 8th AF took off from England I don't need to see that, rather show the actual battle where the text was relating that JG-X joined the battle here and XX Fighter Group caught up to the bomber stream here and intercepted JG-X here and XX Bomb Group went around a weather front and got separated from the bomber stream here, etc. Also on the subject of illustrations, while Graham Turner is a good illustrator I don't feel his work is up to the level of an Adam Tooby or Gareth Hector.

[Robert Hepple · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published in 2021, 'Big Week 1944' is one of a number of books about this famous air campaign that took place in Europe in February 1944. The book does give a nicely detailed account of events in a small number of pages, profusely illustrated with photos and diagrams. It is let down by lots of typos, sloppy use of German/English phrases and errors in technical details of aircraft types - all very irritating.