The history link to B-17 casualties points out that danger from the Luftwaffe was minimal compared to the deadly German flak.
Two items were mentioned:
1. Fighters had gun cameras. Therefore there are literally hours where one can observe B-17's being shot all to **** by Luftwaffe fighter plane attacks. But only a few rare seconds have been recorded for the result of the computer-controlled flak guns and their devastation.
2. Despite the movies -- ALL of them -- formations of B-17's did NOT fly straight and level as they approached the enemy. If they did, the flak would wipe them all from the sky. They flew for no more than a few seconds before making a gentle zig... a few more seconds for a zag. It was enough to reduce the effectiveness of the flak to just deadly as opposed to completely destructive.
It so happens I knew a guy named Peter Grell who served on a flak gun in Bremen. We were sitting in his back yard when an airliner flew over at about 5000 feet. He looked up and said, "Walt, if a bomber flew over so straight and leveI as that, I could put one in the cockpit from here with my Fliegerabwehrkanone 88."
Depends on what part of the war of which we speak. The Luftwaffe was so effective prior to the P-38 and P-51 escorts, that the US invested in those two long range fighters. After they were introduced into the European Theater, not so much.
Because my father was a waist gunner on a B-17 and came home after 32 missions with a Distinguished Flying Cross with three Oak Leaf Clusters, an Air Metal, and a Bronze, Star unfit for overseas duty due to “Residuals From Operational Fatigue” (flak happy, currently referred to as PTSD), I did deep research on the 306th bomber squadron, including their now unclassified sortie record and diary and wrote the history for our family.
The 88’s were grouped together to a single radar fire control, and were so effective that we often lost so many B-17’s that we didn't have enough planes left to fly subsequent missions. Dad recounted instances where his own planes did barely make it back, but were scrapped for parts afterwards and they sometimes didn’t have enough operational planes left to fly missions, even stripping useable parts off the junked planes.
I have flak fragments that did hit him in his flak jacket without killing him and he lost a number of fellow crew members, including the waist gunner directly behind him, as well as the tail gunner.
Dad signed up for 24 missions, but was extended to 36 and signed up to fly in the lead plane that took the most serious damage, to limit it to 32.
