You have one source, I go to my local Library and can find 80 sources that state the contrary. Also, Memoirs from WW2 are to be taken with a grain of salt in any historical conversation because of people on all sides were well known for inflating or just making up numbers to make themselves look good or to prove a point.
Which ones?
I’d be interested in reading through them, but so far the only source I could find in this whole conversation is wikipedia.
Any book about the 8th Army Air Force will gleefully tell you about “The Big Week” how they effectively destroyed the Luftwaffe, and any book about the Western Allied strategic bombing campaign campaigns will have to make some not of how the destruction of the Luftwaffe contributed to their ability to attack German factories and other infrastructure in the magnitude they did. “The Army Air Forces in World War II. Volume 3. Europe: Argument to V-E Day, January 1944 to May 1945” by Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate should cover both topics to a satisfactory degree.
Lv 40 is a Lv max.