Fighter escorts?

A quick and dirty history lesson:

At the start of the war, US Army Air Force doctrine was based on the assumption that heavy bombers (the B-17 and B-24) had enough machine guns on them to defend against enemy fighters. Development of long-range escort fighters was deemed unnecessary. Both premises were fatally flawed.

The movie time setting was from the Fall of 1942 to the time of the great "maximum effort" raids on German oil refineries, aircraft factories and ball bearing factories at Regensburg and Schweinfurt in August 1943. While the movie focuses on General Savage reversing the bad fortunes of the 918th Bomb Group (but suffering a nervous breakdown in the process) and Lt Col Gately redeeming himself from his perceived cowardice, the horrendous losses suffered by the American bomber groups, particularly at the hands of the German fighter force, serves as the underlying backdrop to the drama. What the movie doesn't show is that losses during the Schweinfurt-Regensburg missions were so high that the USAAF nearly abandoned the doctrine of precision daylight bombing and switched to joining the British Royal Air Force in night area bombing. (RAF losses were also high but not quite as severe.)

During this period, Allied fighters escorted the American bombers as deep into enemy territory as they could go, but the RAF Spitfire could barely get into French airspace, and the USAAF P-38 Lightnings and P-47 Thunderbolts could barely make it to the Rhine river; all the German fighters had to do was wait for them to turn around and go home, and then rip into the bomber formations.

The B-17 and B-24 were endangered species when the later models of the P-51 Mustang arrived at the front lines in December 1943. (Both the original design team and the British had worked frantically over the previous year to redesign a fast but altitude-limited attack aircraft into a long-range high-altitude fighter.) The late-model P-51 had essentially the same Rolls-Royce-designed Merlin engine as the Spitfire (although mass produced under license by Packard Motors) but its aerodynamics were much more streamlined than the Spitfire, making it about 50 to 80 mph faster and, with both a larger internal fuel capacity and the ability to carry droppable external fuel tanks, having nearly triple the range. The P-51s had the capability to match the range of the bombers and fly to the farthest points in Germany, and even make one-way trips from Britain to friendly bases in Ukraine or Italy. By the Spring of 1944, bomber losses dropped by 80%.

More on this subject is discussed on the following thread:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0041996/board/nest/116056334?p=1

The American war planners honestly believed that heavily armed and fast bombers massed for maximum firepower in box formations could defend themselves against fighter attack. I believe this was an underestimation of the lethality of the German inteceptors. The German fighters were faster then expected, at least when the Forts and Liberators were conceived and designed and, becasue they used explosive cannon fire as opposed to dead slug machine gun rounds, they were far deadlier to bombers with fewer rounds. German tactics also evolved. At the beginning of the air war, The Germans took generally accepted tactical pursuit angles from the rear and below the bombers. Coming from below and behind, the German had trouble catching and closing with the relatively fast bombers and, while executing their attacks, had to remain far too long in a killing zone where the rear guns, ball turret and waist guns of the bomber could be brought to bear on the closing fighters. This changed to frontal attacks, where, because of the relative high closing speed as the planes approached each other, the Geramn fighters could get in, get close, fire and get out in a big hurry withut tarrying for long where a bomber gunner could draw a bead on the fighter. Both B-17s and B-24s were, initally, deficient in forward facing machine guns and a head-on attack exposed more vital areas of the bombers; the command and control sections on the flight deck and in the nose, the frontal part of the engines, the fuel tankage in the wing roots. It was with the changing tactics that losses from German fighters (as opposed to flak, which was a constant)became prohibitive and escort fighters became imperitive. The Greamn figher aircraft were not built for endurance and had only a limited time to engage the bombers before fuel became an issue. If Allied fighters could just interfere with the speedy engagement of the German fighters, the clock would also work against the Germans in trying to destroy the bombers. When the P-51 was deployed, the allies not only had a plane which had the fuel endurance to escort the bombers, it also the endurance to fight in extended, gas guzzling, engagements and still get back to England. The "home field" advantage of the Luftwaffe was then completely nullified. All of this took time of course, and a revision of American thinking which was premised on effective bomber self-defense. It was a good idea in principal, but changing equipment and tactics necessitated and change in philosopy, as often happens in war.

Yes, they are a good idea, a very good idea. Unfortunately, they didn't have round trip escorts until late '43/early'44. P-38s and P-47s couldn't make it to Berlin. It wasn't until the P-51, with their drop tanks, did fighter escorts make it to Berlin (March of '44). So the unescorted daylight precision bombing of the USAAF were amazingly dangerous. But they did much more damage than the RAF night time area bombing.

This will be the high point of my day; it's all downhill from here.

At this point early in the war, there weren't any fighters in production that could make the distance of the bomber missions. Later there were long-range fighters, just that simple.