Thank you for sharing that link to the interview. Very interesting thoughts about the Flying Fortress and the Mossie there, and after a bit of research not too far off the mark!

There might be differences in terms of mileage achieved per pound of bomb by the two aircraft, but apparently B-17's could carry 8000 pounds on short range missions and 4500 pounds on long range missions. For the Mossie the figures reveal themselves to be quite similar: between 4000 and 8000 pounds.

Tha Lanc of course stands mighty with 14000 pounds carried routinely and the 22000 pounds of a Grand Slam with bomb-bay modifications.

Possibly the US Airforce went to war with what they had, not with what was best suited for the job. They learned the hard way the folly of flying by day and paid a dear price.

Another interestig comment from the interview that caught my ear was the acknowledgement of very imprecise, in fact indiscriminate bombing until the advent of the Pathfinders and air-borne navigational radar.

A documentary I watched recently called Bomber Crew put young people of today into the world of 1940 as experienced by a RAF bomber crew thereby illustrating the sheer difficulty of finding ones way over darkend Europe to any given target, and dropping bombs on it with any precision.