<text id=00he0821><title>Weather Break for Big Week</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>Weather Break for Big Week</hdr><body>
<p>Finally, the weather forecasts were favorable. It would he clear for about one week beginning 20 February. A usual. there were some last minute doubts, and the night before the mission was cloudy. But the word went out to go: the skies cleared, and off the bombers roared.
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<p>The first day's offensive was the grand opener. VIII Bomber Command dispatched more than 1,000 heavies, of which 941 were to be credited with combat sorties. They were escorted by 33 fighter groups from VIII Fighter Command, Ninth AF and the RAF. A dozen targets has been chosen: assembly land component plants for the Luftwaffe's best day and night fighters. Most were in the area between Brunswick and Leipzig, about 500 miles (806 km) from the English coast. The attacks had been started by the RAF the night before; they hit Leipzig hard, and the tired defenders were still in the streets, trying to restore order, when the AAF armada hit.
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<p>That night, the RAF went out again, hammering Stuttgart. The AAF day raid, on a smaller scale, struck the plants at Brunswick, German airfields and storage parks. On 22 February, the USAAF hit six targets, including both Schweinfurt and Regensburg. The next day, only the Fifteenth AF flew, sending 102 sorties against Steyr, in Austria, and its ball-bearing factories.
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<p>On 24 February, the Eighth went back to Schweinfurt, and sent other strikes to Gotha and Steyr. That night the RAF raided Schweinfurt again, guided by the fires still burning from the American attack. On the next day, the USAAF bombers blasted Messerschmitt plants at Regensburg, Augsburg, Stuttgart and Furth. Then the weather closed in, and 'Big Week' was over. The German aircraft producers lost about two months of badly needed fabrication time, and they also received an urgent directive to disperse. That made the industry a more elusive target and a more difficult one, but the act of dispersing strained the already overloaded transportation systems and further disrupted the economy.
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<p>The AAF lost about 2,600 crewmen to all causes, and 226 bombers and 28 fighters. They dropped about 10,000 tons of bombs, almost equal to the tonnage of the whole first year of Eighth AF operations. The RAF dumped another 9,198 tons in their five raids of Argument, losing 157 bombers in the campaign.
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<p>Most importantly, the Luftwaffe had been beaten. After the assaults of Argument, the German air arm never again opposed a daylight strike with a major force that dogged the bombers from entrance to exit. Their losses were close to 600 aircraft, and a large number of the last classes of well-trained and experienced pilots. They were to hit hard again, on a number of future missions, but for the time being certainly, and for the rest of the war almost certainly, they had lost control of the air to the Allies.
