Weather was one of the top causes identified for "ineffective sorties" flown in the ETO. For fighters in 2QTR44 it was 2,384 out of 10,400 (23%), 3QTR44 it was 3,079 out of 9,736 (32%), in 4QTR44 it was 2,198 out of 7,243 (30%), and in 1QTR45 it was 1,552 out of 6,211 (25%).LWD wrote:The source for the digression on weather was this statement:Chromeboomerang wrote:...Abysmal weather is very hard on ground troops, but unless fog or extreme wind occurs, flying is less affected.
More importantly, in 2QTR44 113,224 sorties were airborne, in 3QTR44 it was 122,465, in 4QTR44 it was 95,488, and in 1QTR45 it was 125,486. In other words, although the number of sorties airborne that aborted due to weather did not vary much by quarter, the number of sorties airborne actually varied considerably due to weather.
Overall, it appears that the 1st quarter was consistantly the "best" flying weather, followed more or less by the 3rd, 2nd, and 4th quarter. If anyone is really interested I could check the Ninth TAF daily sorties records that we have compiled to confirm that, unfortunately I don't think I have the First TAF (P) records in our files? Or you can simply refer to the AAF Combat Chronology and note the number of times that the operations of First and Ninth TAF were affected by weather, which was suggested a half dozen or so rather silly posts ago.