[4] The subsequent highest priority campaigns were against V-weapon installations (June 1944) and petroleum, oil, and lubrication (POL) plants (September 1944).

The Pointblank directive initiated the primary portion[6] of the Allied Combined Bomber Offensive intended to cripple or destroy the German aircraft fighter strength, thus drawing it away from frontline operations and ensuring it would not be an obstacle to the invasion of Northwest Europe.

The British Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW) published the Bombers' Baedeker in 1942 that identified the "bottleneck" German industries of oil, communications, and ball bearings;[11] a second edition followed in 1944.

[12] At the January 1943 Casablanca Conference the Combined Chiefs of Staff agreed to conduct the "Bomber Offensive from the United Kingdom" and the British Air Ministry issued the Casablanca directive on 4 February with the object of:[13] The progressive destruction and dislocation of the German military, industrial and economic systems and the undermining of the morale of the German people to a point where their capacity for armed resistance is fatally weakened.

[22] Eaker's "Combined Bomber Offensive Plan" was "a document devised to help Arnold get more planes and men[c] for the 8th Air Force" and not "designed to affect British operations in any substantive way.

Pointblank operations against the "intermediate objective" began on 14 June, [38][34] and the "Effects of Bombing Offensive on German War Effort" (J.I.C.

During World War II, it was designed to divert Allied airstrikes from the actual production site of the arms factory.

Losses during the first months of Pointblank operations and lower-than-planned U.S. bomber production resulted in Chief of the Air Staff Sir Charles Portal complaining about the 3-month CBO delay at the Cairo Conference, where the British refused a U.S. request to place the CBO under a "single Allied strategic air commander,"[40] as they did not want to interfere with, nor be part of, a decision they deemed unwise and purely of American military origin.

However fires started by the night's bombing obscured the targets and the USAAF " were not keen to follow immediately on the heels of RAF raids in the future because of the smoke problem".

[49] In practice the USAAF bombers made large scale daylight attacks on factories involved in the production of fighter aircraft.

[41] Soon after Doolittle took command of the 8th Air Force, between February 20 and 25, 1944, as part of the Combined Bomber Offensive, the USAAF launched "Operation Argument", a series of missions against the Third Reich that became known as "Big Week".

The Luftwaffe was lured into a decisive battle for air superiority through launching massive attacks by the bombers of the USAAF, protected by squadrons of Republic P-47 Thunderbolts and North American P-51 Mustangs, on the German aircraft industry.

During the period of the battle of Berlin, the British lost 1,047 bombers across all its bombing operations in Europe with a further 1,682 aircraft damaged, culminating in the disastrous raid on Nuremberg on 30 March 1944.

[53] At the end of Battle of Berlin, Harris was obliged to commit his heavy bombers to the Transport Plan attacks on lines of communications in France as part of the preparations for the Normandy Landings and the RAF would not return to begin the systematic destruction of Germany until the last quarter of 1944.

[6] Following Operation Pointblank, Germany dispersed works of its aircraft industry across 729 medium and very small plants (some in tunnels, caves, and mines).

[56] According to Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, Big Week and the subsequent attack on the aircraft industry reduced "the fighting capacity of the Luftwaffe" through threatening the bombing of strategic targets and "leaving the German fighters with no alternative other than to defend them" but "the combat was primarily fought and certainly won" by the US long range fighters.

[62] On March 25, 1944 Portal chaired a meeting of the generals and restated the Pointblank objective of air superiority was still the highest CBO priority.

Although the "Joint Chiefs of Staff" had previously argued that it was impossible to impede German military rail traffic due to the large reserve capacity,[63] for the secondary priority Portal identified that pre-invasion railyard attacks only needed to reduce traffic so tactical airpower could inhibit enemy defenses during the first 5 weeks of OVERLORD.

[64] Sir John Kennedy and Andrew Noble countered that the military fraction of rail traffic was so small that no amount of railyard bombing would significantly impact operations.

[5] and the highest priority of the Combined Bomber Offensive became operations against the German rocket weapons in June 1944 and the Oil Campaign in September.