According to McFarland & Newton (1991), Big Week was not primarily a bombing campaign, but a campaign designed to kill Luftwaffe fighters. Two tactical factors made this difficult. First, Luftwaffe fighters avoided Allied fighters and would simply ignore the fighter sweeps. Thus, the Allies could not entice the Luftwaffe fighters to engage. Second, during escort missions, Allied fighters remained in close escort formation with bombers. This tactic limited bomber casualties but it also reduced Allied pursuit and destruction of Luftwaffe fighters. Recognizing these problems, Major General Jimmy Doolittle, commander of Eighth Air Force from the end of 1943, ordered bombing missions of key aircraft factories that the Luftwaffe could not ignore. In addition, Allied fighters were ordered to abandon the bombers with the primary goal of shooting down Luftwaffe fighters. In effect, the primary purpose of the bombing missions was to bring up the Luftwaffe and the real role of the Allied bombers was to be used and sacrificed as bait.
On the other hand, Brinkhuis (1984) contended that the operation's target was attacking Germany's aircraft industry, 'going back to a plan that had already been made in October 1943. This plan, operation Argument, was the biggest Allied air action so far. The ambitious enterprise had the total destruction of the German aircraft industry as its goal.' 'The manufacture of these [fighters, such as Messerschitt 109, 110, Focke-Wulf 190, and Me-109], saw such a steep rise that the USAAF and RAF had good reason to fear that the defence of Hitler's Festung Europa with all these aircraft would lead to a horrible massacre amongst Allied flight crews. Therefore, the primary goal of the Allied airforce became the destruction of the factories producing these aircraft.' Planners estimated that the Allies would lose between 7% to 18% of their aircraft every day; given that the campaign was to last six days, the expectation was thus that between 42% and 100% of all aircraft (981 bombers in total) would be lost. In order to achieve the objective, U.S. commander Frederick L. Anderson was prepared to sacrifice three quarters of all planes and crew (meaning 736 bombers). The Allies proceeded to gather intelligence on all parts of German industry involved in producing parts, engines, wings and airframes, as well as assembling factories. However, operational success was foreseen to heavily depend on several consecutive days of good weather, meaning ideal cloud covers between about 600 to 4,000 metres above England, but no clouds above the target areas in Germany. As such a situation was extremely rare, leadership decided to launch the campaign anyway as soon as the forecast showed the smallest signs of acceptable flying weather.
