1944: Flak Alone Blasts the Allies out of the Sky

[Takao]

The factory resumed its production in a few weeks .

A long time for an insignificant factory.

Minimal damage, and it would resume production in 24 hours.

But, this is no production for weeks.

Thank you for proving my point.

[ljadw]

Why should there be a Flak unit to defend an insignificant plant ?
And the plant was hit .

You have not proved that Flak was not there...

Why did fighters defend an insignificant plant? Stupid Germans?

German fighters stationed in Antwerp,which is not Mortsel, did not defend the Erla plant,as the LW did not know that the Erla plant was the target : there were other plants in Mortsel and Antwerpre more important .
Most of the LW attacks started when the bombers returned to Britain .
At the Erla plants, Me 109 fighters were repaired ;their number depended on the number that arrived in Mortsel and on the available resources to repair them .
And about the FLAK: the center of the city was destroyed and 936 people died,but only a few Germans .If the FLAK was destroyed many more Germans would have died .

[ljadw]

The factory resumed its production in a few weeks .

A long time for an insignificant factory.

Minimal damage, and it would resume production in 24 hours.

But, this is no production for weeks.

Thank you for proving my point.

The resuming of the production did not depend on the damage from the air attack, but on the number of damaged aircraft that arrived in Mortsel .

[Takao]

The resuming of the production did not depend on the damage from the air attack, but on the number of damaged aircraft that arrived in Mortsel .

You need proof that no damaged aircraft arrived in Mortsel.
Proof please.

[Takao]

And about the FLAK: the center of the city was destroyed and 936 people died,but only a few Germans .If the FLAK was destroyed many more Germans would have died .

Nonsense, you said flak was not present, I said Flak was present. No one said anything about the flak being destroyed.

Flak was present at the factory and in Prins Baudewijnlaan.

[Takao]

German fighters stationed in Antwerp,which is not Mortsel,

The fighters were not stationed at Antwerp.

did not defend the Erla plant,as the LW did not know that the Erla plant was the target :

False, 5 German fighters were lost. If the German fighters were not defending the plant, no German fighters would have been lost.

Most of the LW attacks started when the bombers returned to Britain .

Another lie, most of the Luftwaffe attacks were done before the plant was bombed.

[T. A. Gardner]

One I will say was likely a big mistake by the Luftwaffe was not pushing their fighter, particularly nightfighter, defense /intercept system out into the North Sea and Channel and even over Britain. By waiting for the Allied bombers to reach the European coast to begin defense measures, they lost roughly 1 to 2 hours of intercept time per raid. Time + distance = more kills even with the same number of defending aircraft.

[Sheldrake]

One I will say was likely a big mistake by the Luftwaffe was not pushing their fighter, particularly nightfighter, defense /intercept system out into the North Sea and Channel and even over Britain. By waiting for the Allied bombers to reach the European coast to begin defense measures, they lost roughly 1 to 2 hours of intercept time per raid. Time + distance = more kills even with the same number of defending aircraft.

That might have put the LW night-fighter force in range of Britain's own air defences.

[ljadw]

German fighters stationed in Antwerp,which is not Mortsel,

The fighters were not stationed at Antwerp.

did not defend the Erla plant,as the LW did not know that the Erla plant was the target :

False, 5 German fighters were lost. If the German fighters were not defending the plant, no German fighters would have been lost.

Most of the LW attacks started when the bombers returned to Britain .

Another lie, most of the Luftwaffe attacks were done before the plant was bombed.

1 How could the Germans know that the Erla plant was the target ?There were other and more important targets in the region of Antwerp . It was also possible that the real targets were in Germany .
2 The German fighters ( no one knows how many ) that attacked the US bombers shot 6 bombers . They started from the airfields of Deurne ( very close ) and of Moorslede and Wevelgem ( more than 135 km away from Mortsel ) . These needed more than 2 hours to be at Mortsel,not to defend the Erla factory,of which they did not know the existence .
3 The damage of the Erla factory : ONE, only one repaired aircraft was destroyed : a Bf -109 G4 from 12/JG 2 .
I have spoken in the past with people who worked in the Erla factory and they told me that a few weeks after the attack the factory was working again, and that it took a few weeks not because of the damage by the air attack but because of other obvious reasons :
the damaged aircraft were transported to Mortsel by train and the railway station of Mortsel suffered badly from the attack ,thus few or no new damaged aircraft could enter the factory .
repaired aircraft left the Erla factory also by train and because of the destructions of the railway station ,no repaired aircraft could leave the factory .
The second point is the most important,as even without an air attack that caused damages to the factory,it was possible that the factory was without work : the number of damaged aircraft that entered the factory was limited by ,was depending on the number of repaired aircraft that left the factory,otherwise the factory would be overcrowded .
If the factory was heavily hurt, this would mean that the Flak ( claimed to be very close to the factory ) would also be heavily hurt and there is no proof for this . All we know is that only 6 Germans were killed ,and we don't know if there were Flak soldiers. Besides there were a lot of Germans in Mortsel,not only at the Kommandatur: there was also a factory of Daimler-Benz with 11 German guards .

[ljadw]

About the importance of the Erla factory in Mortsel : there were 7 other aviation factories in Belgium:
3 Erla's in Evere(region of Brussels), St Agatha Berchem ( idem ) and Mechelen .
There was also the Fairey Aviation in Gosselies ( near Charleroi ),an other one in Courcelles,one in Haren (region of Brussels ) and the factory of Daimler-Benz in Mortsel, where aircraft engines were repaired .There were also 2 or more truck factories in Hoboken and Ekeren ( both in the region of Antwerp ) .
There were also ammunition,weapons locomotive factories .
How could the Germans know when more than 90 US bombers entered the Belgian airspace that their target was in Belgium and not in Germany and,if it was in Belgium, that the target would be Erla Mortsel and not Erla Mechelen,or even the harbor of Antwerp ?

[historygeek2021]

That might have put the LW night-fighter force in range of Britain's own air defences.

And lost LW air crew who otherwise could have parachuted over Germany. And shot down Allied air crew who could parachute safely over their own territory.

[T. A. Gardner]

One I will say was likely a big mistake by the Luftwaffe was not pushing their fighter, particularly nightfighter, defense /intercept system out into the North Sea and Channel and even over Britain. By waiting for the Allied bombers to reach the European coast to begin defense measures, they lost roughly 1 to 2 hours of intercept time per raid. Time + distance = more kills even with the same number of defending aircraft.

That might have put the LW night-fighter force in range of Britain's own air defences.

So? The Allies put their air defenses--at least in the form of fighter aircraft--in range of German air defenses...

[Sheldrake]

One I will say was likely a big mistake by the Luftwaffe was not pushing their fighter, particularly nightfighter, defense /intercept system out into the North Sea and Channel and even over Britain. By waiting for the Allied bombers to reach the European coast to begin defense measures, they lost roughly 1 to 2 hours of intercept time per raid. Time + distance = more kills even with the same number of defending aircraft.

That might have put the LW night-fighter force in range of Britain's own air defences.

So? The Allies put their air defenses--at least in the form of fighter aircraft--in range of German air defenses...

By the time the RAF was bombing Germany seriously, say 1942-43 the RAF night fighter arm was in better shape to shoot down German night fighters than vice versa.

[T. A. Gardner]

In 42 up through the end of 43, the British nightfighter force was pretty marginal really. It was only in 1944 when it became both really an offensive arm and comparatively vicious. The primary aircraft in use in that period was the Beaufighter equipped with AI Mk IV or V radar roughly equivalent to the German Lichtenstein sets in use.
The Mosquito with similar radar sets was in limited squadron use from mid-43 when the first AI MK VIII became available with the NF Mk XII Mosquito. It was the introduction of the NF Mk XVII at the end of 1943 with AI Mk X (the British equivalent of the US SCR 720 radar) that really made the Mosquito vicious.
Additional equipment introduced such as Serrate and Perfectos in late 43 also played a big role in improving intercepts by British nightfighters. But in the 1942 - 43 period they really were no better off than the Germans.

[ThatZenoGuy]

One issue with Brand Shrapnel from what I can tell, is that all those submunitions will come back down and start fires...bad if it's over a city!