If the German fighters were configured to kill bombers, with gun gondolas and heavy armor, they were sitting ducks for the escorts. If the Germans made the fighters lighter and more maneuverable, they couldn't kill bombers effectively. It's a great story.
One of the little appreciated aspects of the air war over Europe is that it was for a long time prosecuted with inadequate forces. In one week in February, 1944, the 8th AF dropped as many bombs as they did THROUGHOUT 1943.
Once the Americans had the force in place, and the weather improved, the German ability to resist waned dramatically. The Americans also had a ramping up period when their effort was dispersed. They hit U-boat pens, ball bearings, and transportation targets.
Once General Spaatz decided to hit the synthetic oil industry and concentrate on that, the Germans were toast.
From May to September, 1944 German synthetic oil production went from 175K tons/month to 10K tons.
That cost them what little chance they had to win at that late date. And this was largely a feat of American arms. The British Bomber command leader -- Harris-- wanted nothing to do with bombing oil, despite the destruction that was evident, and bombed city centers in this period with thousands of tons of bombs that were essentially useless. The war could have been ended months earlier, with a much better post-war outcome, but Harris wouldn't have it. He wanted to kill Germans.
Walt
The targeting of civilians as a strategic objective in the World War II Western European Theatre had a rather absurd and tragic beginning.
At the start of the war, both sides carefully avoided civilian centers although collateral damage was seen as an unfortunate consequence of aerial bombing. During the Battle of Britain, during the night of 23 August 1941, a dozen German bombers made a navigational error and dropped their bomb loads in the center of London rather than on the oil farms and factories that they were ordered to hit. The British believed that this attack was deliberate and, the next evening, 81 R.A.F. bombers targeted civilian targets in Berlin. After a few more such raids, the Germans retaliated with a massive night bombing raids on London. Ironically, the switch from R.A.F. targets to civilian targets took pressure off the R.A.F. and eventually lead to the Luftwaffe’s defeat in the Battle of Britain.
After this series of events, the genie was out of the bottle and each side, to the best of it’s ability, targeted each other’s civilian population centers with whatever means were available to it. The Allies firebombed cities. The Germans, never having developed adequate four engine bombers to match the Allied bomber capabilities, eventually resorted to the V-1 and V-2 terror weapons.
Each side truly believed that, by causing massive civilian casualties, the other side would surrender. In reality, conventional bombing never achieved that kind of shock value which was only achieved with the advent of the atomic bomb. More civilians died in one Tokyo fire-raid than at Hiroshima.
In the European Theater, the bombimg of the population centers was conducted mainly by the RAF although the 8th Air Force also participated in such attacks, most notably at Dresden. The British bombers could not take the punishment that the American B-17's could and British daylight bombing resulted in substantial losses. As a result, the British bombed at night. World War II bombing accuracy was bad enough as it was and hitting relatively small targets such as specific factories or refineries was out of the question during the night. Night bombing required a target the size of a city center. The British reluctance to bomb smaller, high value targets had much to do with Bomber Command's reluctance to give up the protective cover of the night.
After the war, the morality of massive conventional bombing of civilians came into question. It is always easier to ponder such questions with 20/20 hindsight than during the passions of a World War. The British, it seems, did not feel very comfortable with what had occurred. While all other British senior military leaders were lionized, Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris of Bomber Command became somewhat of a quiet embarrassment just as Sir Alexander Haig had become after World War One. Both men were seen by many as having wrought much more death than was necessary to achieve victory.