[sarge83]

Doolittle decided to turn the fighters loose on the Luftwaffe and destroy their fighters instead of staying tight with the bombers. He turned hunters loose against hunters.

[pfflier]

Yes, that is why I said Doolittle changed tactics. I just didn't know some out there were that interested in the details. Obviously we have many.

BTW they promised my dad pilot training at 25 missions, upgrading from navigator. He wanted to get some in the P-51s. One mission more and he was to rotate then they upped the count to 30. By the time he got to flight training, the war in Europe was over and they didn't need the pilots. Back to navigator.

[Tallguy]

“Doolittle decided to turn the fighters loose on the Luftwaffe and destroy their fighters instead of staying tight with the bombers.”

Well, so-called ‘close-escort’ didn’t really work. Very late in the war they basically sent late model P-47’s ahead of the bomber raid to sweep the fighters out of the sky and camp out over enemy airfields to keep enemy planes on the ground. This is how a relative handful of F-86’s dominated MiG-15’s later on in Korea. Orbiting a pair of fighters over the enemy airfield sends a rather large message at very little cost.