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Why No Heavy Bomber for Germany?

Discussion in 'Aircraft' started by David Scott, Sep 25, 2011.

  1. LJAd

    LJAd Well-Known Member

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    I don't see why it would be wrong to build large numbers of light bombers,instead of small numbers of heavy bombers .
     
  2. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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  3. CraigHistoryAfic

    CraigHistoryAfic New Member

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    > I don't see why it would be wrong to build large numbers of light
    > bombers,instead of small numbers of heavy bombers .

    It isn't wrong. I think the question is: was Germany's lack of 4-engined heavy bombers the right mix to accomplish the mission the Luftwaffe was given? As the war progressed, the mission included bombing in distant areas of Russia, and trying to bomb Britain beyond southern Britain. The right mix for the Luftwaffe's varied missions would have been a high proportion of smaller bombers and dive bombers, and a small proportion of heavy bombers. So the addition of 4-engined, heavy-payload, longer-range bombers would have been useful.
     
  4. merdiolu

    merdiolu Member

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    The problem was I think German strategic thinking. German military strategy since 1870 was a short knock out wars with quick against its neighbours. Mainly France , then Russia etc. Strategic bombing impiled a long , costly and attritional war and German military staff in any ages since Bismark and Moltke just did not like sound of that. Since its offical beginning in 1935 Luftwaffe was primarily designed as flying artillery , as tactical support force for land forces. It implies German wishful thinking about a short , affordable land campaign in Europe. Lack of focus on strategic heavy bomber designs or warfare means they did not think beyond a short term war. A narrow strategic outlook was considered.
     
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  5. CraigHistoryAfic

    CraigHistoryAfic New Member

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    That's a good point. Hitler never anticipated a drawn-out war of attrition. He thought he could knock Russia out in just two months. Hence the refusal to supply winter clothes to the Wehrmacht in a timely manner. Hence also the focus on the Luftwaffe mainly as flying artillery, as you point out.
     
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  6. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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  7. Fargo

    Fargo Active Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    Well remember that in a state of war, not all resources of the state can be devoted to one project. Rations had to be delivered to the front lines and troops organized before the fighting even began! Tanks had to be built and separated into their respective units, fighter aircraft had to be built to counter enemy bombers. All in all, German industry could never have built so many bombers if they couldn't even get over 1,500 of their formidable Tiger Is built.
     
  8. green slime

    green slime Member

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    Nazi Germany never needed a 4-engine Heavy bomber. The effectiveness of bombers is generally greatly exaggerated, especially prior to December 1944. Nowhere did bombing create a long lasting effect on production beyond a few weeks. It was most efficient when applied against the Nazi's Oil infrastructure. So called daylight precision bombing was anything but: On average 20% of USAAF bombs hit within 1000 ft (300m) of their target. In the Autumn of 1944, the average was 7%. The real advantage of the bombing campaign was that it forced the Luftwaffe to defend home, which ultimately destroyed the LW.

    Bombing the Ural factories would only have had a minor effect on Russian production (see USAAF figures for accuracy), and it is highly unlikely that they could've produced enough bombers to force the issue against the Soviet Airforce, and would've taken a completely different frame of time than what the Nazis were operating under anyway.

    The effort to produce, man, maintain, and protect 4-engine Heavy Bombers for Germany, would have been extremely wasteful, and not aided their effort in the least.

    Where they failed, was amongst other things, not producing enough fighter aircraft to ensure air supremacy in their theatres of action, and maintaining high quality of pilot training. They were lulled into a false sense of security thanks to the successes of their earlier battles, and by refusing to understand the gravity of the situation facing them. They feared placing too great a burden on their own populace, and it was not until Speer was appointed Minister of Armaments in Feb 1942 did something at least start to get organised. Factories operated on single shifts, consumer goods were still being produced at pre-war levels. That's 2½ years of wasted effort compared to the UK, 6 months vs the USSR. With America only just entering the war, however, the enormous need for LW fighters was far from apparent (although it should've been suspected).

    Additionally, they continued to fail by removing skilled LW personnel (engineers, mechanics, AA-crew) from airforce duties, and turning them into poorly-equipped and for combat untrained "Field Regiments".

    TL:DR; they were doomed, and producing 4-engine bombers would doom them faster.
     
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  9. phylo_roadking

    phylo_roadking Member

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    ...but there's a smaller number of situations that it's right for ;)

    Light/Medium bonbers restrict you both in range and bomboad....AND quite literally, limit the SIZE of ordnance that can be carried ;) You can't mount a strategic bombing campaign with light or medium bombers...as shown when the LW tried and failed in 1940-41

    When it came to inhibiting Soviet industrial production in the Urals and around Moscow...the Germans - and actually the Soviets too! - didn't think factories, they thought more about power generation ;) Factories without light and power are as dead and useless as if they had been bombed; worse actually....for you still have to feed the same number of workers the day after!

    On TWO occasions...near the start and again near the end...during the war in the East the Luftwaffe gave serious consideration and planning to htting the Soviets' electricity generation capacity; and realising their vulnerability, the Soviets protected them with earth berms, stationed fighter squadrons nearby, etc...
     
  10. green slime

    green slime Member

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    Bombing Accuracy was lacking, effect was limited in time when compared to effort (you have to attack repeatedly, for many, many days to get the desired effect), and attacking the same resource repeatedly enables the enemy to concentrate such a vast amount of AA and fighter, that the cost to your own industry and resources (pilots shot down over enemy territory are lost) may outweigh the advantage.

    The USAAF and BC attacks on Germany destroyed the LW, precisely because it had to try and defend everywhere.

    The Soviets lost the use of the DneproGES, which at that time, was one of the world's largest Hydroelectric stations (650 MW) already in 1941, yet managed to soldier on quite adequately.

    Operation Eisenhammer (to which I think you refer) utilizing Mistels (another indication of desperation), seems more like desperate well-wishing, than an actual feasible plan, and probably would have ended as badly as the attempt to destroy the bridges over the Oder and Neisse with the same aircraft.

    Attacks on that Electrical power infrastructure, should have happened in 1941 and been carried out by Brandenburg units. Not getting hatched until 1943 as some mad suicidal bombing run, then procastinated over until finally the Red Army is banging at the doorstep to Berlin (which, btw, proves just how fantastic the whole venture was). By Feb 1945, the writing was no longer just on the wall, it was carved into the grand piano falling on top of them.
     
  11. merdiolu

    merdiolu Member

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    Actually strategic bombing when applied properly could make important (not decisive though like Mitchell , Douet or Arthur Harris desired) contributions for war's outcome. 8th Air Force's Oil Campaign in 1944 or RAF Strategic Bomber Commands Railway Plan or Transportation Plan were quite successful and effective in crippling German war effort , economy and military performance. It is just Allied strategists wasted too much time or effort to find right doctrine and targets to have effective results. 8th Air Force's self defending bomber concept was a fiasco. Stubborness of Arthur Harris on area bombing disregarding bottlenecks of German economy and precision bombing was very difficult to overcome. Still even the mass bombings of German cities and industry had somekind of effect both in moral sense and capping the actual production outcome and efficiency of German war economy. Despite their losses or lack of definitive results Allies had will , time and resources to pursue strategic bombing campaign over Reich at will. It was just a matter of time , a process of painful learning evolution to find necessary doctrine. Germany had not. Third Reich couldn't fight both in land and handle prolonged total air warfare without destructive attritional effects in society , industry and military performance felt.
     
  12. steverodgers801

    steverodgers801 Member

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    the winter clothing was not a refusal, but bad planning on the army. To go along with the idea of a short war and due to the tremendous back log of supplies needed for the east front winter clothing was placed far down on the list.
     
  13. green slime

    green slime Member

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    Not only did Germany not need a 4-engine bomber; they could ill-afford to squander the resources to build them:

    Germany built nearly 25,000 fighter aircraft in 1944, and a total of almost 36,000 of all types (nearly double the numbers of the previous year (10,000 fighters - 20,500 aircraft).
    Germany built a grand total of almost 100,000 aircraft of all types, over the entire course of the war so fully one third of its wartime airforce production was produced in 1944.

    The USA, built ca 100,000 aircraft in 1944 alone.
    UK built ca 26,000.

    If we are generous, Germany just managed to match the USSR in aircraft production (ca 40,000) in 1944.

    So German production has a shortfall of 126,000 aircraft in 1944. Oh yeah, Japan? They're also in the race: 28,000 aircraft in 1944, so let's once again be generous and split the diff: They still had a shortfall of 49,000 aircraft. In other words, if they, by some Speer-inspired effort fed wunderbar protein snacks to their breed of superhuman Mengele-cloned slaves, and doubled their production yet again by working 28 hours every day, and if every single aircraft produced was a fighter, they'd still not have enough fighter aircraft.

    IOW: They needed far, far, more air superiority fighters, to regain control of the skies.

    Now, there are lots of small holes in this quick-n-dirty analysis, but what it does serve, is to show the magnitude of the problem facing Germany with regards to the Airwar.
     
  14. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    I think Germany was "lucky" losing Wever to get Udet instead if you consider Luftwaffe´s position to help in Blitzkrieg. Then again for Nazi Germany on the whole they should have wasted their money on big bombers...
     
  15. Jadgermeister

    Jadgermeister Member

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    If we stick to proven tech... things that were actually fielded...there are some interesting possibilities.

    For instance, the Do-335 exceed the mosquito... it would have been a pretty unique fast bomber. I doubt it would have replaced the Stuka because of its relatively poor vision, but the FW-190 did a good job of that...

    The germans had these really common portable radars, they fielded something like 1500 of them and they aimed the portable 88mm AAA guns. The thing worked by rotating a bar on front of a dish, and when the bar blocked the signal... you knew an aircraft was there. It was not accurate enough, it could only be used in barrage, but at ranges under a mile, something of that accuracy would have been much more acceptable.

    That said, the US fielded some radar guided guns on the B-29 and they were widespread by the Korean war, my grandfather operated them as a flight engineer.

    So, the Germans fielded at least two technologies that would have worked very well together, the fastest multi-engine of the war, and widespread portable radar systems... just imagine trying to stop a DO-335 when it can keep its guns on you with almost no effort.... would have been very frustrating. I mean, the mosquito was frustrating enough, imagine if it could fire withing a few degrees of you at any time, with no effort...

    Another thing is that the Allies fielded very accurate radar guided AAA in Italy, which ended the bomber raids. The Germans understood what was happening...

    The only thing that could counter it, and still to this day... is a fast fighter that flies higher than small arms, and low enough that the radar guided cannon cannot turn quickly enough.

    The only hope the Germans would have had, was to beat the already proven mosquito at its own game...

    And that inaccurate German portable radar? Point it at a radar guided bomb... and slave it to have control. If the radar gets a reading in a certain direction, it has a simple negative feedback, and instructs the bomb to fly the opposite direction until its detected to be centered...

    This can be done with any kind of amplifier with feedback... which were more than available in the day...

    There is the issue of jamming, as the allies immediately started jamming with their ships... but can every factory and ground unit protect from several different signals all at once? No. And the jamming would not work if you had a directional antenna, as only the aircraft and target would be aligned with the antenna... making only ships and jammers immune to direct attack...

    So ya, there were more than one possibility... using tech that already existed at the time...

    And just imagine firing a V-1 or V-2 that can be commanded by you pointing a radar... you could hit a target from well outside its defenses. Use the same pathfinder technique as the Allies, and fire at the flairs... dont even need to cross over the target...

    And the magic thing is, you dont have to lock on, you dont have to process all the ground clutter, you use the radar to spot your own bomb and the radar sends out the remote control signal... the bomb only receives the control signal, and the radar only tracks the bomb... no need for complex programming and guidance... just point...

    The same concept could be used for air defense, but since the weapon is not the only thing airborne, it would need to send a directional signal back to the guidance, and the guidance reverse feedback would align the missile would be directed to align itself with whatever point on the radar that the gunner is aiming at. Its only slightly more complicated.
     
  16. Don Juan

    Don Juan New Member

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    Germany didn't have the industrial capacity to build heavy bombers without affecting other areas of production. It's GDP pre-war was no bigger than Britain's (not including the Empire) despite having a significantly larger population. It also had few natural resources and was always on the verge of a foreign currency crisis.

    Heavy bombers meant either less of other types of aircraft, or less ships or submarines or tanks or small arms or ammunition.

    Germany was in economic terms a small country fighting a big war. As such it had no real strategy. Policy decisions were made "on the hoof" and were invariably high-risk - war with Britain and France was considered to be a policy failure as it brought forward the prospect of engagement with the USA - the country that the Nazis considered to be their ultimate enemy. Therefore the USSR had to be invaded in order to secure the resources to take on the Americans.

    Production priorities had to be constantly switched in order to meet changes in circumstances, from the "ammunition crisis" in the early war years to the changing emphases on submarines or tanks or aircraft. Each one experienced "spurts" of production according to what the Nazis considered to be the strategic priority a year or two before.

    This is the great misunderstanding of WWII - Germany wasn't a great power in the making that could pick and choose how it wanted to fight. It was a desperate, economically backwards country that had to take enormous risks, then adapt to them quickly utilising its comparatively small high-tech industries to the full.
     

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