21. A Late Takeoff Doomed the Raid Against Schweinfurt
As they made their way south, the Regensburg mission’s B-17s were challenged by only a few Luftwaffe fighters that soon had to turn back to base because they ran low on fuel. Nine more B-17s were lost en route to North Africa due to mechanical failures or because their engines died when their fuel tanks ran dry. All in all, 24 Flying Fortresses were lost, while another 60 of the 122 B-17s that survived were damaged. They came off light compared to the Schweinfurt force, which got it far worse.
230 B-17s, divided into 12 groups, took off that morning for Schweinfurt, but they had been delayed and started late. That immediately wrecked a key pillar of the plan to raid two targets simultaneously: to fly at the same time as the Regensburg force in order to overwhelm the German defenders with numbers and divide their focus. Instead, the German fighters were able to concentrate against the Regensburg force and maul it. They then had time to return to their airfields to refuel and rearm, and take to the air again in time to challenge the Schweinfurt force.