German Four Engined Bombers ?

Yes, I have, Captain, Sir.
I have DEVOURED them! I was in a satiric corner, Sir. Sorry, Sir.

OK for a start I'm not American so knock off the "Sir. Sorry, Sir." business, neither am I an officer and like almost everyone on here I pay almost no attention to the forum ranks at all, they're an interesting distraction but basically meaningless.

You want an actual order with a time and date? Probably doesn't exist, like a lot of Nazi policies it basically evolved. Hitler wanted a big army to impress the world prior to WWII, he wanted large tank formations for parades which is one reason that I've read why the Panzer I and Panzer II were kept in production long after they'd exceeded any kind of value as military machines (Panzer I especially), they were cheap and quick to build and hundreds could be churned out for military parades. So what if they were militarily a waste of time, they looked good!

Flypasts look best with the greater number of aircraft, so the Nazis naturally prefered a flypast of 100 aircraft to one of 40.

But also the Luftwaffe was to be used for a purely tactical war, it was to be to flying artillery of the Wehrmacht, with that in mind 4 engine heavies would be unnecessary, twin engine mediums and Stukas would be needed.

In all honesty the Germans were probably best off with the airforce they had, I seriously doubt a heavy bomber fleet could have had any significant impact.

But , seriously: I am not fool enough not to believe in German designers´ capabilities.

Oh no?

How come, thay could devise a ballistic missile and put it in large scale production, but to take a carcass, screw 4 motors to it and make a mass product out of it - that - they couldn´t .

Your own words.

I will say again, they could and did. On a large scale they chose not to.

What I am "fighting for" is showing that Hitler´s regime was just as irrational as Le Corporal himself. People were corrupt, stupid, afraid of Hitler or all three (and more) simultaneously.

I don't think anyone here disagrees with that, what I was arguing was that if the Germans chose to go down the route of a predominantly four engine long range heavy bomber fleet they could easily have done so, and probably early than the RAF. Overall though it probably would have made for a less effective airforce if used within the confines of what it was intended for.

 

I´d like to answer you more fully, but I just don´t have time these days.
Many of my utterances were obviously (I thought) ironically meant. I just can´t forget Hitler´s fierce anger upon hearing that .....you know what.
Right. V2 was relatively cheap and could penetrate British, I would say, the best air defence on earth. Somehow, the He177 program got a lot of attention and proved a failure. That´s why I was laughing at those 4 motors and a carcass. I have an impression, that there is a consensus on this subject and everything that could be said, has been said in this subject.
Ain´t I right?

 

If you are, we'll never admit it!

 

of course not

 

:smok:

 

Yes!

See, I'll admit it!

 

wow

 

Less of your cheek Sargeant!

 

maybe it´s better I don´t understand the last comment from Ricky.
I cannot even answer wow or something like that.

 

I was (jokingly) telling you off for acting surprised that I agreed with you.

Cheek = being cheeky = taking the mick = poking fun at somebody.

Sorry for the confusion. I do tend to forget that some things are British idiom, and that (despite your excellent English) not all of you know them...

 

Well, thank you!
Don´t you think that many of us, not English speakers, USE this forum to learn better English too?
I certainly do!

 

I'm glad to be of some help!

 

Exactly!!

 

And you have a good reason to be, Ricky.
Here and now, I thank you and the other "Englishmen" for the help. I am sure, I´m not alone.
It should have been said, Gents. Anyone against?

 

Well, that might be to simplify things overly much. I tend to believe that the lessons the planners at OKL/RLM drew from Spain etc etc was that the two engined "medium" bombers were adequate for the task at hand. They saw them as strategic bombers, not just toys for the Heer to use as it saw fit - please bear in mind that before von Richthofen - Wolfram that is - the Luftwaffe was terribly bad at CAS. In its early days Luftwaffe did see itself as a strategic airforce.

That said and done, economy as well as access to resources played a major part, not to mention the all to obvious German volume sickness - if that's a british term?! Heavy bombers were expensive in evry regard and used up incredible amounts of fuel. And as mentioned, the Germans needed planes in some numbers, thus cheaper variants were chosen for production.

Furthermore Luftwaffe was a very young branch of the Wehrmacht, having been created, or officially revealed if you will, only in 1935. The Luftwaffe that went to war in 39/40 was only some 5 years old. That means, that the Luftwaffe didn't have time to do all the things its commanders wanted done - as with the Kriegsmarine, the war came perhaps a bit premature.

Because of a mixture of the above, the German aircraft industry had troubles keeping up. The heavy bomber programme suffered from a lack of sufficiently powerfull engines fx., and the fact its development got interrupted and delayed by the "dive bombing mafia" didn't help either.

They might have helped immensive, not because of their heavier pay load as such, but for their extended range. During the war a lot of targets were outside the reach of the Luftwaffe.

Best regards and all!

- B.

 

Good points!
But...

And outside the range of escort fighters. Which is not good.

 

range in general

i have never understood why most european aircraft at the start of WWII were so short legged. didn't anybody look at a map and figure out that you just might have to fly and fight over a hundred miles away? maybe it because i'm a yank and am used to covering a hunders miles without thinking about it. its easy to note that the germans were dumb to have such short ranged aircraft but the brit fighters were no better and if anybody elses over there were it missed my attention.

 

Actually relatively few targets were beyond the reach of the Luftwaffe for most of the war. For example the Ural factories were bombed, briefly and largely ineffectively early on by Heinkel He111s (I believe) and the entire of the UK could be reached by the Luftwaffe bombers of the Battle of Britain era.

A heavy bomber could only have made an effective difference for the Luftwaffe if they could have established permanent bases guaranteed to be more or less free from ground and air interference, effective intelligence behind the lines of the location and details of targets and an effective long range escort fighter.

Take the likes of the Ural factories which is where the Luftwaffe's lack of a heavy bomber is most often suggested as being decisive.

They had no practical intelligence of what was going on, locations and types of factories were largely a mystery.

Any squadrons that were established were not likely to remain in range for long enough to be decisive, it took the combined efforts of the US Airforces in Europe and Bomber command 3 years in their campaigns and even then Fighter production rates (For example) actually went up during the worst of the bombing. The Allied bombers were flying from really very secure bases compared to the environment on the Eastern Front.

They had no long range Escort Fighters worth mentioning. Without escort fighters the Soviets would quickly make mincemeat of unescorted German bombers, either the MiG-3 (Which retained decent performance at altitude) or lend-lease Spitfires/P-38s (For Example) could provide an effective interceptor force. The Germans would quickly have to abandon the effort due to overwhelming losses and stick to escorted range as they did in the Battle of Britain, or switch to night bombing and with no idea of the location of the targets they would largely find themselves having to carpet bomb the entire of the Urals in an effort to hit their targets.

With this I fail to see how much help a Heavy Bomber would have been, except to use up much greater resources compared to Mediums. Ironically I think the Luftwaffe would have actually been better off concentrating on Mediums than the largely half interested attempts they made at building Heavies.

 

Re: range in general

The same could be said for everywhere, with the possible exception of the Japanese. In the US fighter aircraft were given a "P" designation, ever wonder why? It stood for "Persuit" because even in the US it was perceived that the only use for fighters were to Persue enemy bombers.

Nobody started off 1939 with a worthwhile long range escort fighter because nobody including the US thought the concept was viable, even you Yanks had to wait till early 1944 for a fighter to appear in US squadron service with sufficient long range internal tankage and performance for the USAAF.

Besides, no-one was paricularly saying the Germans were dumb, just that these bombers were going to be next to useless without a "Mustang-109" to escort them.

 

Plus it was assumed that bombers did not need an escort - "The bomber will always get through". Again, everybody believed this, many against all the evidence of the first few years of war, and all the evidence of WW1...
:roll: