The force that carried the brunt of the air war to the Luftwaffe prior to D-Day was the 8th Air Force. It’s fighter component was the 8th Air Force Fighter Command under MG William Kepner. When Gen Jimmy Doolittle took over command of the 8th Air Force, among his first directives was to order Kepner to destroy German fighters whenever and wherever possible by engaging them in the air and destroying them by attacking their airdromes and transportaion targets so as to secure air superiority over Europe before the invasion.
Accordingly, Commanders such as Col Hub Zemke of the 56th Fighter group developed tactics such as the Zemke Fan which called for the fighters to break free of the slow bomber formations and aggressively fan out and break up the German fighter Gruppen and Geschwaders as they were forming up. Tactics such as this were wildly successful and led to the destruction of the German Fighter Arm. Accordingly, air superiority was established over Europe prior to D-Day. It is a hideous reality that the heavy bomber crews were being used as bait to lure the Luftwaffe to battle in a war of attrition that they inevitably lost. The German Landser (infantryman) had a cynical saying; If you see a silver aircraft, it is American. If you see a camoflauge one it is British. If it is invisible it is German.
The 332 Fighter group was assigned to the 15th Air force out of Ramatelli, Italy. Their orders were close escort and protection of the heavy bombers and they did a superb job. The myth at the time wass to say that they were incapable of performing such tasks requiring technological skill and courage. We do not need to calumny the fine reputations of the courageous white fighter pilots of great outfits like the 56th and 4th Fighter groups who did so much to achieve victory on the Western front against the truly formidable German foe by implying a new myth that they did not want to protect the bombers so as to seek personal glory in aerial dogfights.
BTW I am a black man who owns 10 books about the 332nd, who regard them as amongst the greatest of my personal hereoes and I take a back seat in my admiration of their superb accomplishments to no one. I think it wrong to imply disparegment of the white pilots who were obeying their orders to engage the enemy in a specific way so as to extol black pilots. Lets not pit these great Americans against one another now. Their was too much of that in 1944-45.