Hitler sacks Goring

On the aspect of aircraft production, the Germans simply are really going to lose this race regardless of their choices.

For example, even if Wever got his way and the Germans developed long range "strategic" bombers they would have had severe problems with this track in service. First, they would never be able to produce large numbers of such aircraft. Some rough numbers give an idea of the complexity: Single engine fighter = 100,000 parts. Twin fighter / medium bomber = 500,000 parts. Four engine heavy bomber = 1.5 million parts.
Just look at the relatively miniscule number of heavy aircraft the Germans did produce. Just over 1000 He 177. A handful of one-off prototypes. The Ju 290 was running just one or two aircraft a month in production.
In service such aircraft would have quickly been reduced in numbers to miniscule and irrelevant amounts. Look at the US / British strategic bombing campaign. Could the Germans afford to lose 20 to 60 or more bombers a day? They could never make up losses in planes and crews. Nor did they really have the fuel to run such a program. Heavy bombers consumed as much as 10 tons of fuel, or more, each per mission. A few large raids could literally eat up as much as 25% of the entire monthly production of fuel in Germany in a matter of days.
With the additional problem of providing long range escorts, the Germans simply don't have the wherewithall to run a large offensive long range airforce.
Their only realistic choice it would seem, in retrospect, was to create an operational / tactical airforce that could support the Army along with a good interceptor force for defense at home. With great foresight adding a real surface to air missile capacity to make dense bombing formations impossible by day or night would pretty much have put an end to Allied strategic bombing until well into the war.

 

Damn it, Terry, don't you know it's against the forum rules to throw rationality and hard facts against a What If?

You have to respect the feelings of the posters, even if they are

 

I would like to add that the German air force's early victorys in Poland and France and also the great victory made by it's gliders attacking the forts in Belgium helped secure Goring's position and to guide Germany, the US and Britian down an incorrect path. I think the US built over 40.000 Waco gliders alone, due to the early German success's but no country had much success with them afterward.

The fantistic victorys made by German pilots in Russia also helped Goring even though he had little to do with it. As they say Nothing succeeds like success. (my $50.00 worth)

 

While this skews away from the topic a bit it seems somewhat related. Another technological mistake Germany made was not pursuing from before the war a lightweight fighter built using "non-strategic" materials with an eye to being as cheap and easy to manufacture as possible.
All of the other major combatants (except Japan) toyed at various points with this idea and mixed success. The French had the Cauldron C 714 and several successors that were marginally successful. The British prototyped the Miles M 20 that was actually quite good for its time being nearly on par with the Spitfire! The Italians had the SAI 207 and 403 Dardo, the later of which actually was a good performer in 1943. The US built the XP 77 which pretty much was a failure and, finally most of the Soviet fighter designs might fall in this category.
Yet, the Germans only recognized the utility of such a design in the waining days of the war when it was too late to win. By then designs such as the He 162, for whatever its merits was not going to change the course of the war.

 

The Germans came out with the TA-154 in 1943 and it would have been a good aircraft for shooting down bombers except it kept coming unglued.

 

Well, the DH Mosquitos didn't come unstuck too often...

 

The Ta 154 is something of an exception to use of wood on aircraft. By 1944 most German aircraft had a high wood content. The Me 109 often had a wooden tail assembly. Flaps and control surfaces on many aircraft were wood. Propellers were being made of wood.
But, the Ta 154 was also not a light weight low cost fighter of the sort I was suggesting.

As a general guide, the aircraft I was suggesting would be more like a slightly smaller Me 109 designed to use several different readily available engines. It would have say a 20mm and two 7.9 mm MGs for armament and be capable of carrying a small bomb or two or some small rockets. The outfitting would be as austire as possible.
Its primary use would have been as a cheap replacement in the field and in theaters where the Allied air threat was less serious. It could also be used as a ground attack aircraft phasing out such relics as the Ju 87 completely.

 

But, Terry, in any case as the war progressed the Germans were porducing more and more foghters of conventional materials - with more or less wooden components. So was there a real need for wooden fighetrs?

 

So according to those above Germany was not in the same league as the Allies and was totally incapable of producing a four engined heavy and all those photos of the Me-264 were a fake and it did not fly in 1942, a good twelve month before the US began operations over Europe, also that Me-277 the four engined version of the Me-177 which was in production could not be made, in fact Heinkel went onto to develop it anyway under a threat of Goring to imprison anyone who continued to work on the project, Heinkel as far as i know believe that the He-277 could have been in full production as early as late 1940 early 1941, this however meant the scrapping of the He-111 and maybe the postponement of Barbarossa.

No Germany was such a stupid nation, one wonders how they invented or produced anything, silly Germans.

 

I didn't say incapable of producing a heavy four engined bomber but rather incapable of mass producing or even series producing one in sufficent quantity to make it useful in service.
A single Me 264 was built and flown a handful of times. Junkers produced the Ju 290 at a rate of one or two a month. The He 277 is another single prototype and the He 177 had a production run of just over 1000 in about 3 years. Focke Wulf produced a few hundred Fw 200s.
At the same time, the US was producing several B-24s and B-17s an hour and England likewise was producing Lancasters, Sterlings, Halifax etc at a rate of dozens a day.

 

What TAG said is to be no negative appraisal on the Luftwaffe. Instead of sending raids with 800 or 1000-bombers like the Allies did, they might send that Me 264 to the same target 800 times in succession.

The drawback is that it would be somewhat monotonous, and the crews would be bored to oblivion after the first couple hundred of missions.

 

Anouther strategy that might have worked would be to have more accurate bomb sites and better bombidiers in the German bombers and a better selection of targets. That is why we have fewer bombers today, they can hit what they want hit with fewer bombs. The USAF and RAF and Germans dropped bombs all over the place. Only the dive bombers had any luck at hitting selected targets.

 

A collection of thoughts.

1) Goring was all but out after 1940, he was only the figure head, Milch was running the show.

2) Germany had far less experiance with long range planes than any other major power. Yes they did design and build several (good planes) but even in 43 an expected production run would put out 10-20 planes a month compared to that many a day in the US or England.

3) The Ju-87 was the prefered attack plane of the Luft. even in 45. Other planes was adapted, Me-109, FW-190, Me-262, but the good pilots loved the Ju-87 even in 45.

3) The Germans held no doctrine like that of the US or Britian in regards to Stratigic Bombing.

4) Try not to be so extreme when you read other peoples posts.

 

"Patience Grasshopper" t-shirt > ZenWear | CafePress

 

Gnaw on this!!!


Hanna Reitsch

 

That is a pretty good article about her. I had forgotton the movie Operation Crossbow. Seemed like a good movie but it has been years since I seen it last.

 

It is not that Germany did any one thing wrong to lose the war. It is that they did so many things wrong. They had some excellent engineers, but poor administration and production techniques. The reality is that it was a smaller nation that took on the world using tactics that required a large amount of manpower and equipment. As long as they took on nations of equal or smaller stature, they could achieve their goals. When they took on not one but two of the largest nations, it was a doomed effort.

If German had been able to stop their advance without taking on Russia and the U.S., and had been able to keep the U.S. from supplying Britain, it would have been possible to maintain their holdings, but their economy could not sustain itself without a war footing.