The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940-1945

by Richard Overy

The point at which Allied air supremacy was established in German airspace is difficult to establish because of the continual, fluid, and incoherent nature of air combat. Some historians date it from the first attrition battles in March 1944, others from the early attacks on oil installations. The head of the Historical Section of the German Air Force, Major General Hans-Detlef von Rohden, argued in a postwar assessment that Allied air supremacy over Germany had been achieved by the time of the Normandy invasion: “Germany had lost the struggle for Air Control.”62 A Joint Intelligence Committee evaluation in August 1944 concluded that the German Air Force “can no longer affect the military situation on any front,” which was not entirely true, but did reflect the exceptional degree of operational flexibility now available to American and, increasingly, British aircraft over Germany.63 No date is entirely satisfactory, but by June, when German reserves were sucked into the aerial maelstrom in France, the attrition cycle was, for the moment, complete.