[conservatism_IS_compassion]

@34: "pickle barrel accuracy"

For a WWII atomic bomb? Are you kidding?

Obviously my point is the opposite - that America was back then sufficiently principled that it didn’t want to know that the US was in fact scattering bombs all over the place. That was what the Nazis did, not for Americans. Dropping an A-bomb is, obviously, just bombing the whole place at one go.

The Brits resorted to nighttime bombing of Germany because they didn't have the fighter planes with the range to escort them into Germany and fight off Nazi planes. The Americans did didn’t either, until the advent of the P-51B with the Merlin engine. Which was later in the war.

But the US went into the war with a “precision daylight bombing” theory which was essential to public support. They lost a lot of people and planes trying to vindicate the name of the B-17, the “Flying Fortress” with its multiple, individually manned defensive .50 cal machine guns in lieu of fighter cover. The German fighters disproved that theory.

The P-38 did have long range, and it was available from the start of US involvement in WWII. According to Wikipedia,

The P-38 was used most extensively and successfully in the Pacific theater, where it proved ideally suited, combining excellent performance with very long range, and had the added reliability of two engines for long missions over water. The P-38 was used in a variety of roles, especially escorting bombers at altitudes between 18–25,000 ft (5,500-7,600 m). The P-38 was credited with destroying more Japanese aircraft than any other USAAF fighter. Freezing cockpits were not a problem at low altitude in the tropics . . .

While the P-38 could not out-turn the A6M Zero and most other Japanese fighters when flying below 200 mph (320 km/h), its superior speed coupled with a good rate of climb meant that it could utilize energy tactics, making multiple high-speed passes at its target. Also, its focused firepower was even more deadly to lightly armored Japanese warplanes than to the Germans'. The concentrated, parallel stream of bullets [i.e., all the guns were in the centerline pilot’s nacelle, firing straight ahead rather than having left-wing and right-wing guns “focused” at at only one specific range in front of the airplane] allowed aerial victory at much longer distances than fighters carrying wing guns . . .

The twin Allison engines performed admirably in the Pacific.

But, also according to the same Wikipedia article,

Adolf Galland was unimpressed with the P-38, declaring, "it had similar shortcomings in combat to our Bf 110, our fighters were clearly superior to it.”

Experiences over Germany had shown a need for long-range escort fighters to protect the Eighth Air Force's heavy bomber operations. The P-38Hs of the 55th Fighter Group were transferred to the Eighth in England in September 1943, and were joined by the 20th, 364th and 479th Fighter Groups soon after. P-38s soon joined Spitfires in escorting the early Fortress raids over Europe.

But,

After some disastrous raids in 1944 with B-17s escorted by P-38s and Republic P-47 Thunderbolts, Jimmy Doolittle, then head of the U.S. Eighth Air Force, went to the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE), Farnborough, asking for an evaluation of the various American fighters. Fleet Air Arm Captain and test pilot Eric Brown recalled:

"We had found out that
the Bf 109 and the Fw 190 could fight up to a Mach of 0.75, three-quarters the speed of sound. We checked
the Lightning and it couldn't fly in combat faster than 0.68. So it was useless.

We told Doolittle that all it was good for was photo-reconnaissance and had to be withdrawn from escort duties. And the funny thing is that the Americans had great difficulty understanding this because the Lightning had the two top aces in the Far East."[71]

After evaluation tests at Farnborough, the P-38 was kept in fighting service in Europe for a while longer. However, even if many of the aircraft's problems were fixed with the introduction of the P-38J, by September 1944, all but one of the Lightning groups in the Eighth Air Force had converted to the P-51 Mustang. The Eighth Air Force continued to conduct reconnaissance missions using the F-5 variant.

Part of the limited success of the P-38 in the European theater was undoubtedly due to the escort “tactics,” if they even deserve the term, employed early in the war there. Obviously, one of the distinctive characteristic of a fighter is heavy armament which is forward-firing. And just as obviously, you have to be flying at your target to employ that armament, and fighter tactics which are not designed to attain that objective are useless.

But the morale of the bomber crews was so low (reflecting the limitations of terminal-defense provided by the bombers’ own gunners) that it was impossible to get the bomber commanders to agree to fighter tactics designed for any other objective than being visible to the bomber crews. And if you are making yourself visible to bomber crews you are not attacking but waiting to be attacked. So you had a vicious circle - terrible bomber casualties led to the demand for visible bomber escort, visible bomber escort meant passive escort tactics, and passive escort tactics led to further terrible casualties.

It was only as the US gained clear air superiority, numerically and qualitatively, with mass production of Merlin-powered P-51s that it was able to break out of that cycle, and use its “escort” aircraft in the aggressive search-and-destroy mode which is the only sensible tactic for fighter aircraft. Thereby compounding the effect of the already more-favorable conditions.

NORTH AMERICAN P-51D MUSTANG
In the fall of 1942, Mustangs in the United States and Great Britain were experimentally fitted with British Merlin engines. One in the United States flew a remarkable 441 mph at 29,800 feet -- about 100 mph faster than the P-51A at that altitude. Mass production of the Merlin-powered P-51B and P-51C soon followed (nearly identical, North American produced the "B" in Inglewood, Calif., and the "C" in Dallas, Texas).

In December 1943 the first P-51B/C Mustangs entered combat in Europe with the 354th Fighter Group "Pioneers." By the time of the first U.S. heavy bomber strike against Berlin in March 1944, the USAAF fielded about 175 P-51B/C Mustangs. Along with P-38 Lightnings, these P-51s provided sorely needed long-range, high-altitude escort for the U.S. bombing campaign against Germany.

"Bubble-top" Mustang
The P-51D incorporated several improvements, and it became the most numerous variant with nearly 8,000 being built. The most obvious change was a new "bubble-top" canopy that greatly improved the pilot's vision. The P-51D also received the new K-14 gunsight, an increase from four to six .50-cal machine guns, and a simplified ammunition feed system that considerably reduced gun jams.

The P-51D arrived in quantity in Europe in the spring of 1944, becoming the USAAF's primary long range escort fighter. - http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=513

The web research required to explain the failure of the P-38 in its designed role as a high altitude fighter escort, in the ETO but not against slower Japanese aircraft over the Pacific, was interesting and I’m glad your comment pushed me into it. I am old enough to have been interested in such matters long before many FReepers were born. Some relatively recent books have been quite edifying, and I recommend in particular

The New Dealers' War:

FDR and the War Within World War II
by Thomas Fleming

Fire and Fury

The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-1945
Randall Hansen

Freedom's Forge:

How American Business Produced Victory in World War II
Arthur Herman

[Yardstick]

Chiming in from the peanut gallery here to say that was a really interesting post.