Here's an interesting fact about American losses in WW2

The death toll for the 8th air force was greater than the combined total for marines in both theaters. Over 26,000 died taking on the Luftwaffe.

The key to their eventual victory was the introduction of long range P-51 mustangs and a change of strategy involving no longer flying escort for the bombers but using them as bait.

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drymer · 56-60, M

Yep, they just sent the bombers in daylight raids, and at first the existing fighter escorts had not enough range to fly with the bombers and protect them all the way to Germany... (the bombers well "well armed" and supposedly able to "defend themselves", but that wasn't the case) So the escorting Allied fighter's would have to come back half way (no in-flight refueling those days) and the bombers would be at the mercy of the German fighters... Losses were brutal... By 1943, if I'm not mistaken, long-range P-51 Mustang started escorting bombers all the way to Germany, and things improved a bit... (I'm writing this from memory, apologies if I got some facts wrong...)

21stCenturyFox · 26-30, F

@drymer You got it right. Then the order came to leave the B-17s undefended and instead destroy German fighters in dogfights. This tripled the kill ratio.

drymer · 56-60, M

We often forget that in wars there's often a lot of "trial and error". The brilliant decisions that led to victory are often well publicized, but there were also many miscalculations, errors and wrong assumptions... With hindsight, it's easy to point fingers and to clearly see how "stupid" some decisions were, but with all the new technology everyone was just trying to figure out what worked and what didn't work... I love the story about Eisenhower on D-Day, when he reportedly had written two different speeches in his pocket: one in case the operation succeeded, the other in case it went terribly wrong... We now know it succeeded after painstaking preparation, but even so, at the time it was far from certain that it would turn out well in the end...