<text id=00he0806><title>Increasing the Effort</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>Increasing the Effort</hdr><body>
<p>The first VIII Bomber Command mission to dispatch more than 100 heavy bombers was sent against the Focke-Wulf factory at Bremen on 17 April. Sixteen of the 115 B-17s dispatched were lost, further emphasizing the need for a long-range escort fighter. The bombers, it seemed, could not fight their way to the target and back with acceptable losses.
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<p>Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighters, designed as interceptors but used for escort, had been in the theater since December 1942,.but continuing engine and radio trouble had kept them out of action. They finally joined the 4 May raid to Antwerp, going all the way to the target and back with 65 heavy bombers. There were no losses.
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<p>May was another benchmark month. Four more heavy bomber groups became operational, and the available force took an upward leap. On 14 May, more than 200 bombers were sent against targets at Kiel, Antwerp and Courtrai. and 198 bombed their primary targets.
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<p>The missions became riskier as the crews were sent more often to bomb Germany's industry supporting the Luftwaffe. They still were making the trips without the long-range fighter escort—the P-47s had about the same combat radius as the 'short-range' Spitfires—and with a force that included four bomber groups that had been operational only about one month.
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<p>By then, the Luftwaffe had developed a whole string of anti-bomber tactics. They had added cannon and rockets to their armament. They had tried air-to-air bombing of large formations, and had developed coordinated attacks, with determined waves of fighters vectored in by plan, or by a radar-guided flight controller on the ground. Their single-seat fighters had been augmented by two-seaters, with heavier armament and improved gunsights.
