By June 1944, the Luftwaffe was losing both in the East and in the West. The Germans had only about 200 planes (of which 140 were ready for duty) in northern France and Belgium on the 6th of June.

The German plan was to keep their fighter units in Germany to fight the allied bombers until it had been established that the landing was not a feint and then "surge" west, if possible establish air superiority, if not at least deny the Allies air superiority while the ground forces threw the Allies back into the sea.

During D-Day, two Fw 190 from I/JG 2 (Jagdgeschwader 2) armed with rockets attacked the landing site at Gold Beach. The Luftwaffe also sent up recoinnasance planes to fotograph the Allied fleet to establish the size of it.

JG 2 fought P-47s and P-51s during the day, doing hit and run attacks on Allied planes caught low and strafing German troops and positions.

The landing beaches and the fleet was under a constant umbrella of fighters from the RAF and the USAAF, the AA cover was massive, not even talking about all the barrage balloons raised over the fleet to make navigation harder.

The Germans continued to do night-time attacks, single recoinnasance missions and attempting to whittle down the Allied superiority by pouncing on fighers and bombers in hit-and-run attacks.

Right before the Battle of the Bulge, the German slaunched Operation Bodenplatte in which they came out in strength and attacked Allied air fields in France and Belgium, destroying 232 Allied air crafts on the ground. However, the Allies lost very few pilots, and reserve stocks of planes could soon be brought in and the Allied air forces were back at their pre-operation strength very soon, while the 143 German pilots killed, wounded or captured during the operation were irreplacable, especially as many of them very experienced veterans. The Luftwaffe more or less ceased to operate during day-time after that (as every operation only caused them more casualties they could not afford). Nighttime operations continued for a while longer though.

A German solder on the western front in 1944 is supposed to have invented the joke;

"If you see a white plane, it is American. If you see a black plane, it is the RAF. If you see no planes at all, it is the Luftwaffe."

To track back a little and explain why, as vonadler says, Luftflotte 3 had comparatively few aircraft to oppose the Normandy landings, the destruction of the Luftwaffe with a view to securing air superiority for an invasion of France was a key objective of the Allied strategic bombing campaign as set out by The Pointblank Directive of June 1943: 'The Pointblank Directive prioritized the Luftwaffe for destruction over all other German targets as the immediate objective leading to the D-Day invasion. The focus for the British and American air forces would be "(1) the destruction of the German Air Force, its factories and supporting installations and its ball-bearing plants; and (2) the destruction of transportation facilities."' (L. Douglas Keeney, The Pointblank Directive.)

Early raids by unescorted USAAF bombers suffered crippling casualties, culminating in the October 1943 Schweinfurt raid where 82 of 291 B-17s were lost. The Allies were also failing to make a serious impact on German aircraft production, which rose steadily during 1943 and early 1944. The turning point was extending the range of US fighters to allow them to accompany bombers throughout their mission; in February 1944 Operation Argument or "Big Week" launched a series of raids with heavy fighter escorts, mostly P-47 Thunderbolts with drop tanks, inflicting considerable losses on Luftwaffe defenders. The arrival in numbers of the P-51 Mustang allowed both the escorting of bombers and offensive fighter sweeps deep into German territory, seriously damaging Luftwaffe capability, particularly pilots that could not be replaced as quickly as aircraft. (William R. Emerson, Operation POINTBLANK: A Tale of Bombers and Fighters).

One of the few stories my grandpa told me about his time in France was his first time ever seeing a jet airplane. It was German (of course) and flew directly over him while he was out trying to round up food for the troops. At the time he had no idea what it was other than some aircraft -- everything he has seen up until then that flew had a prop on it and this new craft sounded totally different, looked different and moved a lot faster. About a week later his group came across seven of them sitting on the ground at an airfield. He always assumed that at that point in the war they didn't have the fuel to fly these likely unmatchable aircraft, but maybe they just didn't have the pilots.

Thank you all. This was very informative and exactly what I was looking for

More good information, thanks

Hmm thats very intresting, love hearing stories from ppl that were actually there too