In Flight Refuelling question

Lets see… Grumman aircraft’s main factory (and airfield for final test & send-out) was located on Long Island… just east of New York City, so there would be a lot of fighters available for an “operational test-flight” or two before shipping out.

Chance-Vought had its Corsair factory in Stratford, Connecticut, so there is another “hot spot” for fighter concentrations.

Brewster built its Corsairs (secondary production site) in Warrington, Pennsylvania (just a few miles north of Philadelphia and west of Trenton, New Jersey).

Curtis was building P-40s in Buffalo, New York (western end of the state).

Bell also built P-39s & P-63s in Buffalo.

Republic made P-47s in Farmingdale, New York.

P-51s and P-38s being shipped to Britain were flown to the east coast seaports (mainly in the Northeast) to be loaded aboard ship… or flown through Newfoundland, so there are more planes & pilots added in.

Delay aircraft deliveries for even two months to staff patrol squadrons, and use them to give new pilots and veterans ending recuperation periods some “seasoning”, and there are lots of fighters and pilots available.

Add in all the Army and Navy airfields along the coast, and very soon there would be standing fighter patrols, long-range “light bomber” spotting patrols, and radar blimp pickets that would make Britain’s defences in the BOB look meager.

Unless they were extremely advanced designs that could fly fast/ high, it’s hard to imagine a single bomber surviving for very long in US air space. Perhaps the first raid would be successful thanks to the element of surprise, but then you’d have a build-up of fighter defences etc, and that would be that. You’d have to send large numbers of bombers to ensure that some got through, and it’s hard to imagine how a large enough force of bombers could’ve been re-fuelled in flight. You’d need a big fleet of tankers, and these too would be vulnerable.

It’s thought (but not proven) that the Luftwaffe did actually send an aircraft into what could be called ‘US airspace’ during WWII. One of the two prototype Ju390’s was flown from Mont-de-Marsan to a point (alledgedly) just off the coast of New York in the autumn of 1943, although it certainly didn’t make any kind of attack and it seems unlikely that it would have been able to carry a bombload over that distance and return.

More short-term panic than anything else.
There would have been some diversion of units for defense (much like there was in the Pacific Northwest after the Japanese balloon bombs..or the ASW forces in place to counter subs) but no long term effect on the war.

Remember, many defense plants were well inland.