Harry: Certainly "I was a Navigator in the 455th Bomb Group 15th AAF stationed at a former country estate called San Giovanni a few miles outside of Cerignola, Italy from January to July 1944 when I finished my "50 mission" tour with 35 combat "sorties" (15 of them were considered "doubles")."
That example doesn not explain a whole lot. It does suggest though that there can be one sortie used for multiple missions. For instance, a plane takes off, bombs city A (first mission), on its way back, via a different route, takes aerial photographs of an area (second mission).
But why complicate it?
The definition is clear and simple:
Sortie is a term for deployment or dispatch of one military unit, be it an aircraft, ship, or troops from a strongpoint. The sortie, whether by one or more aircraft or vessels, usually has a specific mission.
source
Hence, there can be a sortie without a mission, but there cannot be a mission without at least one sortie. A group of planes, say 10, participate in the same mission. That one, single mission required 10 sorties.
Ergo, the alleged "hundreds" of missions the Brits flew to try to help the Warsaw Uprising is hogwash.
Please get back on topic or start a new thread
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