Vee I.

 This is coolbert:

Here begins a series of blog entries based on comments by Maximex and Steiner.

"German raw material shortages of all. Only lignite was enough throughout the war." - - Maximex.

"Steiner said..."

There is so much nonsense here that one hardly knows where to begin.

[Steiner referring to blog entry Antwerp II.]

"The Luftwaffe did not lack for combat aircraft, nearly thirty thousand were produced in 1944, what was missing as with all the service branches was the fuel to train and conduct missions. After the devastating Leuna and Ploesti raids in the first half of 1944, the Reich simply ran out of gas"

Saturation bombing of those synthetic fuel plants such as Leuna denying the Luftwaffe [and all other services as well] of previous fuel. Aviators not having AVGAS [aviation gasoline] not able to either fly missions or train.

That plant at Leuna  processing lignite [brown coal] process into fuel a major objective and target of the allied air forces, saturation bombing the order of the day:

As described by the wiki and copied in entirety:

"The IG Farben Leuna works . . . was Nazi Germany's second largest synthetic oil plant and second biggest chemical operation. Leuna was the first plant to test the Bergius process that synthesized oil products from lignite (brown coal tar in 1944).Leuna . . .  employed 35,000 workers (including 10,000 prisoners and slave laborers). The 14th Flak Division responsible for protecting Leuna had 28,000 troops, 18,000 RAD personnel, 6,000 male and 3,050 female auxiliaries, 900 Hungarian and Italian 'volunteers', 3,600 Russian Hiwis, and 3,000 others, thus making up a total of 62,550 persons. More than 19,000 of Leuna's workers were members of the air raid protection organization which operated over 600 radar-directed guns (the fire-fighting force consisted of 5,000 men and women)."

Albert Speer in his memoirs relating that a one million man army with impedimenta was needed to defend against the allied aerial strategic bombing offensive. That number of one million includes all day and night fighter pilots and ground crews, searchlight battery troops, air wardens, fire fighters, radar picket operators, communication personnel. Everyone! For merely Leuna alone the number of personnel devoted to AIR DEFENSE in the most general sense massive.

"A total of 6,552 bomber sorties over 20 Eighth Air Force and 2 RAF attacks dropped 18,328 tons of bombs on Leuna. As the most heavily defended industrial target in Europe, Leuna would become so dark from flak, German smoke pots, and exploding oil tanks that 'we had no idea how close our bombs came to the target.' (Tom Landry, B-17 co-pilot and later Dallas Cowboy coach). On clear days, only 29% of the bombs aimed at Leuna landed inside the plant gates; on radar raids the number dropped to 5.1%."

Strategic aerial "pinpoint" bombing not so "pinpoint" And those figures typical from the era of the Second World War [WW2]. That dropping of a bomb in the proverbial pickle barrel from 30,000 feet [10,000 meters] only under the most absolutely ideal of conditions and maybe not even then!!

coolbert.