The November 1994 Air Battles: Results and Conclusions
As a result of the four major days of air battle in November 1944, the German fighter force lost 416 aircraft in combat. Without doubt, the majority of these were the victims of US Mustang fighters.
The cost for this among the participating US fighter units was only around one tenth of the German fighter losses - a total of 43 US fighters were lost on those four days. And not even all those losses were due to German fighters; probably a significant share were due to ground fire.
While dealing more blows against Germany's Achilles heel, the oil industry, the US 8th Air Force lost 117 heavy bombers on those four days. The bulk of these losses were due to the increasingly effective German antiaircraft artillery. (Of 209 heavy bombers lost on all operations in November 1944, only 50 were due to fighters.)
The German Sturmjäger tactic had once again proved that it could be a very deadly method against US heavy bombers. However, the presence of large numbers of Mustangs largely rendered the Sturmjäger missions into suicidal flights.
At the same time as the lacking experience and flight skills among the German pilots is evident from these four days, so is also the stamina among the German fighter pilots. Several accounts testify to the very high combat spirits among the young German fighter pilots in 1944.
Although perhaps the majority of them by this time suffered from an understandable sense of inferiority toward the Mustang pilots, they showed the Americans that they were willing to fight to the end. The fact that the German fighter pilots clung together in formations maybe was not merely "stupidly", as the Americans interpreted it; it could also be viewed as a reflection of a stiff determination to reach and destroy the hated bomber formations. These young German pilots had been told - which also was correct - that if they clung together in tight "Gefechtsverbände" would they be able to deal crippling blows against the masses of heavy bombers. Indeed they were misled by an evil political system, but they also were convinced that they were the last hope for their tormented families in Germany's bombed cities.
On the other side of the hill, the US fighter pilots had received an equipment which was far superior to that of their German counterparts. The K-14 gunsight that had a gyro-actuated optical system that computed the lead angle was an important step forward, as was the G-suit. Both inventions distanced the US fighter pilots from the dogfights of World War One and brought them closer to today's computerised air fighting. As Eric Hammel points out in "Aces Against Germany", dealing with November 1944:
"American fighter pilots got better and better at what they did, and they had technologies at their disposal that made killing less sportsmanlike and more businesslike by the day."
If anything, the four major days of air battle in November 1944 puts the scenario for Galland's dreamed-of "Big Strike" into great doubt.