Heavy Bomber. Yet Again

[phylo_roadking]

How does this affect British & French prewar calculation, and that through 1939.

The French seem to have wholly given into the Duhet-ist fallacy John Ray recounts "Stuffy "Dowding travelling to France to for a liaison meeting...and the French equivalent of "The Hole" at Bentley Priory, and the whole Fighter Command Ground Controlled inteception scheme was two guys with a single telephone and a blackboard at the bottom of a stairwell in a chateau! He was..."not impressed"...

On the contrary - the whole RAF defence scheme was both planned to prevent "The bomber always getting through"...and at the same time that it would do so! How dop these two gel?

The British noted that without decent early warning AND tracking OVERLAND of raids once they'd passed through any early warning line...bombers could only reliably be attacked ONCE; on the way home FROM a target...when you had at least one reliable trackpoint on the map - the burning town/airfield/factory in England...

The RAF scheme was intended to ensure raids could be attacked AT LEAST TWICE - on the way to a target as well as on the way home Therefore - it was a force multiplier - Fighter Command do literally do TWICE as much damage than if they could only reliably intercept once.

Also - the RAF plan wasn't to defend against divebombers and/or light bombers and/or heavy bombers - it was designed to defend against ANY attacker on the UK Home Base that supplied/housed the RAF. Remember - the RAF planned from the very beginning...right from 1933 if you read John James - to fight a strategic counterforce war It wanted to defend ITS "UK Home Base" in order to provide for a strategic bombing campaign against Germany.

It literally didn't matter WHAT the Germans sent against the UK - large, small or indifferent - the scheme was designed to protect the UK against it The RAF started from the other end of the equation - not what the Germans would send, but how to protect from it. Thus it wouldn't change the RAF's calculations. If anything - they'd be happier...because the Germans would be only able to THEN fight the sort of air war against the UK that the RAF was intending to fight against Germany! They'd be far more evenly matched - but with RDF and GCI giving the RAF's defensive capacity an even greater advantage...

(France was always going to have to come up with some sort of "in depth" early warning/ground control solution given their direct land border with Germany...did they even try? Or did they just decide to rely fully on standing patrols?)"Charming's a special town - not many folks take to it. I like to think the town chooses its occupants. Right ones stay,

Let me attempt to rephrase it...

Why should it affect British calculations at all?

In fact - they'd regard themselves as better off!

The RAF was from 1933 planning a strategic bombing air war against Germany...and their defensive plans were wholly geared to the air defence of the UK Home Base for that air war. This happened to include aviation factories and other industries vital to the air war effort in major urban areas, ports etc. to keep the UK in any war and supporting the RAF 100%.

The UK air defence system as it entered the war and a year later fought the BoB was both predicated on the Douhet-ist idea that "the bomber always got through"....AND had the RAF determined that it would A twin stream approach...

1/ in an attritional air war ...prior to the invention of RDF and the creation of an effective GCI command and control system...you had "standing patrols" that could be sic'ed on an enemy bombing raid only once you knew where it was I.E. ONLY after it had hit its target. So a standing patrol could only hit a raid once...

With good early warning and a good over-land raid monitoring system and effective command and control system...you could set standing patrols AND scrambled aircraft on raids as they headed TO a target as well as coming back from it - DOUBLE the chance to attrit the enemy. So in a counterforce air war - your defence also became an effective way of hitting the enemy's air power.

2/ this of course means that while you WANT to protect targets...you still WANT the enemy to make the effort! You WANT the enemy bombers to "get through" into UK airspace where your air defence is most effective.

Now - historically, the RAF faced a large number of medium multi-role bombers; and a small number of light bombers, the precision bombers of Erprobungskommando 210...

If they faced a SMALLER number of more-expensive-to-produce, more-expensive-to-man heavy four-engined bombers....

A/ the LW sortie rate would be lower; more maintenance time for multi-engined aircraft etc....and a smaller pool of LW bombers to actually sortie!

B/ the critical point for forcing an attritional defeat on the LW would be lower in numbers terms

Therefore the RAF would be MUCH happier! The number of bombers they'd have to defend against would be smaller, flying fewer sorties. Each raid could be handled with greater fighter resources than historically...



As for the French - unless you know different, I see no sign of them attempting any similar cohesive plan for a counterforce air war No effective attempt at early warning or over-French territory raid tracking. They seem to have stuck with the more traditional and far more wearing on pilots and aircraft for less return tactic of standing patrols etc....

If they did THAT facing the historical Luftwaffe's numbers and potential threat - can you honestly see them doing any different against a heavier German bomber force???

2. The "bomber will always get through" concept takes hold.

My point was that it DID take hold in the Luftwaffe historically! it was only the BoB that started teaching them differently...and that we can see ALL the signs in what happened historically of them believing the bomber would always get through -

1/ unescorted raids; a huge number of them in Poland, slightly less in the West, and for the first couple of weeks of the BoB

2/ single-engined fighters that weren't there to provide escort as such - but to "free hunt"....they flew along with bombers to fighter enemy fighters when they appeared, fighter-on-fighter...but NOT as bomber escorts. To the LW's fighter pilots, until the middle of the BoB - their bombers were basically for attracting RAF fighters up to play!

[phylo_roadking]

From what I can tell, its that Britain expected Germany to fight a strategic bomber war

Yes, because....

1/ they'd started it with success at the end of WWI, and continued to develop capabilities along the same lines and objectives in the interwar period...after the "appearance" of a German air force again

2/ the British were planning to fight one! So the RAF planned in terms of protecting what it needed to do so.

3/ if, as everyone thought, another European war bogged down into the same attritional ground war as WWI, at least for a couple of years...and an RN-enforced Economic Blockade at sea...a rolling confrontation across the North Sea between the two air forces would be the one dynamic "front" of the war! Germany would have to fight SOME sort of a bomber war as the only way to impact (sic!) Britain directly.

[Keitel]

My take is this would cripple the Wehrmacht in all three campaigns of 1939-40 leading to worse results for the Germans on the ground. The effect would more likely be in terms of Allied morale if a 'stratigic' bombing campaign is pursued.

Uh nope. German Artillery Superiority still proves decisive on the ground. Artillery can deliver more ordinance, more accurately than bombers can and the majority of the damage done in 39/40 was done by artillery. Overall artillery accounted for 85% of all deaths in WW2 and did the majority of damage to cities.

[BDV]

Overall artillery accounted for 85% of all deaths in WW2.

Sounds goofy. 40% at least, 50% sure, 60% - oh. But 85%?! Even if it includes tube+mortar still sounds goofy.

P.S. Also POW camps accounted for at least 5 million soldier deaths (in Europe only!). Once Asia is accounted for, that's what 8? 9? 10 million dead POW dead?

[LWD]

.... German Artillery Superiority still proves decisive on the ground. ....

Care to supply some numbers illustrating this superiority?

[amcl]

As for the French - unless you know different, I see no sign of them attempting any similar cohesive plan for a counterforce air war No effective attempt at early warning or over-French territory raid tracking. They seem to have stuck with the more traditional and far more wearing on pilots and aircraft for less return tactic of standing patrols etc....

If they did THAT facing the historical Luftwaffe's numbers and potential threat - can you honestly see them doing any different against a heavier German bomber force???

Looking on the bookshelf, I am reminded - by its absence - that I gave away my copy of Brown's Radar History of World War II in a fit on unwonted generosity. Still, I do have Pierre David's 1949 Le Radar from the PUF Que sais-je series. David was one of the people behind the French "barrage électromagnétique" [BEM] system.

Compared to Fighter Command's electro- and bio-mechanical Ashcroft System 2.0, or the Kammhuber Line, the French BEM tripwire system was (as David himself says) "simple and rustic". [If you were trying to sell things to the French Air Ministry, rusticité could have been a plus. It certainly was in la Grande Guerre as discussed in Morrow's Great War in the Air.]

The BEM was installed around Brest and Toulon in 1939. The system in Brittany (which looks from David's map to have been intended to cover Brest and Lorient) seems to have been most advanced with around 350 linear km of tripwire coverage in place, leaving around 150 linear km needed for a complete perimeter.

Clearly there must have been some system in operation so that alerts from the BEM could be actioned, although there's no reason to suppose that anyone working for Têtu or Astier de La Vigerie would have known anything about the Marine Nationale's gimcrack gadgetry. And if they didn't know, they couldn't tell Stuffy.

A similar system was planned in the Jura and Vosges to cover the German border. It was - the tale of nine French rearmament programmes out of ten - delayed and thus incomplete. Again, there must have been some control system planned, however crude, or else the French might as well not have bothered with the BEM, but would the Air Ministry in Paris have shared any information about this with Têtu or Astier de La Vigerie?

Still, it's a long way from a Heath-Robinson bistatic radar tripwire with an unknown control system to continuous raid tracking by electronic - or any other - means. So, whatever the French planned for the future - and that's a mystery to me - they certainly weren't there yet in 1940. But then again, neither was the Dowding System the real deal when it came to tracking raids after they crossed the coast.

[phylo_roadking]

The BEM was installed around Brest and Toulon in 1939. The system in Brittany (which looks from David's map to have been intended to cover Brest and Lorient) seems to have been most advanced with around 350 linear km of tripwire coverage in place, leaving around 150 linear km needed for a complete perimeter.

Clearly there must have been some system in operation so that alerts from the BEM could be actioned, although there's no reason to suppose that anyone working for Têtu or Astier de La Vigerie would have known anything about the Marine Nationale's gimcrack gadgetry. And if they didn't know, they couldn't tell Stuffy.

I take it from the reference in the second paragraph there that this is French naval air radar??? Or at least - point defence radar around these naval depots?

A similar system was planned in the Jura and Vosges to cover the German border. It was - the tale of nine French rearmament programmes out of ten - delayed and thus incomplete. Again, there must have been some control system planned, however crude, or else the French might as well not have bothered with the BEM, but would the Air Ministry in Paris have shared any information about this with Têtu or Astier de La Vigerie?

One would have thought the information would have been exchanged eventually with the British...once the RAF started putting the first of what was to become several hundred aircraft into France with the AASF/BEF Air Element?

But then again, neither was the Dowding System the real deal when it came to tracking raids after they crossed the coast.

The radar based part of the Dowding system, certainly - and yes, there are quite a few tales of raids being "lost" or splits missed as LW formations split up to attack separate targets once overland...but don't minimise the ROC's contribution At least it was integrated with/fed into the SAME command-and-control system, was nation-wide, and tracked FAR more raids across country than it ever missed.

[amcl]

The BEM was installed around Brest and Toulon in 1939. The system in Brittany (which looks from David's map to have been intended to cover Brest and Lorient) seems to have been most advanced with around 350 linear km of tripwire coverage in place, leaving around 150 linear km needed for a complete perimeter.

Clearly there must have been some system in operation so that alerts from the BEM could be actioned, although there's no reason to suppose that anyone working for Têtu or Astier de La Vigerie would have known anything about the Marine Nationale's gimcrack gadgetry. And if they didn't know, they couldn't tell Stuffy.

I take it from the reference in the second paragraph there that this is French naval air radar??? Or at least - point defence radar around these naval depots?

Indeed. This Google Books extract is as clear an explanation as I can find of the system: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=U0XG ... &q&f=false. Some pics here: http://www.fcet.staffs.ac.uk/jdw1/sucfm/malvern.htm. According to the first link - and on rereading David agrees - there was a "barrage" in place between roughly Troyes in the east and Reims in the west, presumably to cover Paris, at some point during the Bore War.

A similar system was planned in the Jura and Vosges to cover the German border. It was - the tale of nine French rearmament programmes out of ten - delayed and thus incomplete. Again, there must have been some control system planned, however crude, or else the French might as well not have bothered with the BEM, but would the Air Ministry in Paris have shared any information about this with Têtu or Astier de La Vigerie?

One would have thought the information would have been exchanged eventually with the British...once the RAF started putting the first of what was to become several hundred aircraft into France with the AASF/BEF Air Element?

That does indeed seem logical with the benefit of hindsight, although it would clearly be an error to suppose that the AASF and Air Component were on a scale or of a quality likely to make much difference to the inadequacies of the French Air Force.

[phylo_roadking]

That does indeed seem logical with the benefit of hindsight, although it would clearly be an error to suppose that the AASF and Air Component were on a scale or of a quality likely to make much difference to the inadequacies of the French Air Force

Oh certainly! But I was more thinking about the potential mayhem of having several hundred strange combat aircraft flying in your airspace UN-integrated with whatever is supposedly there as a command-and-control system...for THAT way lies blue-on-blue...

I would equally be suprised therefore that the British didn't demand integration....unless there was not much in place!

[Keitel]

.... German Artillery Superiority still proves decisive on the ground. ....

Care to supply some numbers illustrating this superiority?

Polish Infantry Division TO&E

Reserve Infantry Division

Cavalry Brigade

10th Motorized Brigade

Complete Order of battle found here-http://niehorster.orbat.com/029_poland/1939/_army.htm

German 1939 Organizations.

The key to reading the symbols.

Just comparing the organizations, its quite clear the Germans bring bigger guns and more of them to the battle field.

The firepower disparity is too great. This doesn't factor in that Germany has Poland surrounded on three sides and the USSR is poised to stab Poland in the back. Vernichtungsgedanke was assured regardless of the Luftwaffe Makeup.

[phylo_roadking]

Polish Infantry Division TO&E

Reserve Infantry Division

Cavalry Brigade

10th Motorized Brigade

Complete Order of battle found here-http://niehorster.orbat.com/029_poland/1939/_army.htm

German 1939 Organizations.

The key to reading the symbols.

Just comparing the organizations, its quite clear the Germans bring bigger guns and more of them to the battle field.

"The" battlefield???

You mean - "ONE" battlefield....

The ACTUAL discussion point you made that comment about was THIS -

My take is this would cripple the Wehrmacht in all three campaigns of 1939-40 leading to worse results for the Germans on the ground. The effect would more likely be in terms of Allied morale if a 'stratigic' bombing campaign is pursued.

Uh nope. German Artillery Superiority still proves decisive on the ground. Artillery can deliver more ordinance, more accurately than bombers can and the majority of the damage done in 39/40 was done by artillery.

...and the Polish Campaign only covers the 1939 bit...

[Keitel]

Polish Infantry Division TO&E

Reserve Infantry Division

Cavalry Brigade

10th Motorized Brigade

Complete Order of battle found here-http://niehorster.orbat.com/029_poland/1939/_army.htm

German 1939 Organizations.

The key to reading the symbols.

Just comparing the organizations, its quite clear the Germans bring bigger guns and more of them to the battle field.

"The" battlefield???

You mean - "ONE" battlefield....

The ACTUAL discussion point you made that comment about was THIS -

My take is this would cripple the Wehrmacht in all three campaigns of 1939-40 leading to worse results for the Germans on the ground. The effect would more likely be in terms of Allied morale if a 'stratigic' bombing campaign is pursued.

Uh nope. German Artillery Superiority still proves decisive on the ground. Artillery can deliver more ordinance, more accurately than bombers can and the majority of the damage done in 39/40 was done by artillery.

...and the Polish Campaign only covers the 1939 bit...

OTL Order of Battles.

British TO&Es of 1940

French TO&Es 1940.

German Forces 1940

Again comparing the makeups, the Germans bring more firepower to the fight.

[Carl Schwamberger]

OTL Order of Battles.

British TO&Es of 1940

French TO&Es 1940.

German Forces 1940

Again comparing the makeups, the Germans bring more firepower to the fight.

I am familar with those. Perhaps I have missed something, they appear to be missing large parts of the corps and army nondivisional units of the French, Belgian, and German armies. The section of the BEF does depict the non divisional artillery, but may not have the numbers or caliber of cannon. I have some uncollated data on the Germans & French around here somewhere, tho it would take some time to sort it out.

[Bader's Briar]

Dear Carl:

Bader's Briar here - as we ARE talking about the Luftwaffe's relative "lack" of a true four-engined heavy of any type, please remember that as early as November 17, 1938, Ernst Heinkel himself had requested that the He 177 V3 and V4 prototypes be equipped with a quartet of the exact same Junkers Jumo 211 "Kraftei"-unitized mount format powerplants as the Ju 88A was intended to use a pair of - AND the exact fitment of aviation engines that got Messerschmitt's Me 264 V1 into the air for the first time in late December of 1942. Of course, Heinkel was overruled by Ernst Udet and his "Stuka Mafia", firmly possessed of the thought that even a 30 meter-wingspan strategic bomber should have to do diving attacks.

To address each of your numbered "component questions" in order:

"1. The dive bomber concept does not take hold, the solution instead thought to be a superior bombsight for level bombers at medium & high altitudes." It wasn't until the late summer of 1942 that Göring finally found out exactly WHAT type of powerplants were hauling the Greif through the air, and when he finally got it straight that a pair of overweight (at 1.5 metric tons apiece), fire-prone "welded-together engines" were handicapping the otherwise "in service" He 177A heavies, in September of '42 he personally rescinded the dive bombing requirement for the Greif, at the same time that "poor Edgar", Luftwaffe Colonel Edgar Petersen took over virtually all efforts in making the He 177 into a fully usable bomber, as HE was the poor soul tasked by Fat Hermann in making things "right" with the Greif. Also, Germany's Lotfenrohr 7 level-bombing sight system seems to allegedly had some sort of commonality in development with the American Norden bombsight, and similar accuracy figures were possible with the "more unitized" German unit, as the Norden had separate optical and stabilization systems, unlike the German unit's completely integrated design.

2. The "bomber will always get through" concept takes hold. That COULD have been true if the "Twin Biff", the Messerschmitt Bf 110, had been actually able to literally bulldoze all opposition before a Luftwaffe heavy bomber formation as intended — the only twin-engined German fighter design that was ever built, that could have realistically shocked the RAF in such a mission would have been the much later Do 335, which had something like only half the combat radius of the Twin Biff, but could easily top the Spit's and Hurricane's top speeds of the era with its twin DB 603 mills in the centre-line thrust format.

3. Development Marks are spent on four engine bombers & related items like appropriate engines. Production of light bombers ceases with the early models of the Do 17 & He 111, with small production of a less developed Ju 88 planned. The DB 603, and the "developed" Junkers Jumo 213 were definitely on the way in 1939-40 to being ready to take on the task of being useful heavy bomber powerplants, with the DB 603 set up as a Kraftei unitized powerplant installation for the Heinkel He 219 night fighter. The "Kraftei" version of the DB 603 ended up being QUITE important for the two "real-world built" attempts of the eventual trio of four-engined developments of the Greif, as both the He 177 V101 through V104 prototype series that was intended to lead to the production He 177B four-engined bomber, and the pair of He 274s flown in France post-war, essentially used quartets of re-worked DB 603 Kraftei unitized powerplants to fly them, complete with what sure seem like He 219 annular radiator setups. The third (AND never-built at any time!) way for a four-engined Greif to exist, which instead evolved through the first half of 1943 into being the Heinkel firm's Amerika Bomber contract contender, the long-misunderstood He 277 (which didn't even receive official acknowlegement of its existence from the RLM until February 1943!!!) instead was primarily designed to use a quartet of unitized-mount BMW 801E radials, and was planned on being a nosewheel-geared aircraft with what virtually looked like a big, four-engined powered twin tailed bomber with a much enlarged He 219-layout fuselage.

The He 177B series would have been quite useful as a "Ural bomber", with capabilities far beyond any forseeable development of either the Do 19 or Ju 89 which contended for the original Ural Bomber contract competition in 1935. And, by October 1943 Ernst Heinkel himself seriously thought that only the Focke-Wulf Ta 400 would have a realistic chance of stealing the Amerika Bomber contract from his He 277 design as it had evolved to that time - the He 277's nosewheel-geared version, with a maximum warload of six SC 500 bombs for ordnance for the longest possible combat radius - was envisaged to have had a nearly 5,500 km combat radius. That was enough of a combat radius for it to have hit the US Atlantic coast from the Azores or, heaven forbid, all the way westwards to the Rocky Mountain front ranges if the Germans could have captured and held Bermuda, much as the USA did for real with Guam, Saipan and Tinian for the B-29 Superforts in the Pacific to hit the Japanese home islands.

The He 277's Typenblatt proposal drawings from Heinkel that emerged throughout the latter half of 1943 seemed to have been geared towards eventually producing the most capable airframe that could realistically use a quartet of the BMW 801E radials for power - the range of the 1.75 meter width/7.0 meter length, longitudinally-split bomb bay version of the He 277's nosewheel version was the one that had the nearly 5,500 km combat radius envisaged for it, and truly seemed to have impressed Heinkel enough to submit it for the Amerika Bomber competition. True, the RLM had by that time begin to specify SIX-engined airframes as being more practical for the Amerika Bomber's intercontinental mission (like the Ta 400 and Me 264B), but Heinkel still thought in October 1943 that a four-engined He 277, and not a six-engined version (using an additional pair of 801s) was what he wanted to make for the Luftwaffe at that time.

A German air armada of He 277 Amerika Bombers heading from Bermuda, to almost anywhere in either the eastern USA or eastern Canada with an air supremacy force of Do 335A strategic fighters clearing the way (using extra internal fuel tanks in their own weapons bays) could even have hit Oak Ridge, TN, the prime home of the USA's atom bomb fissile material production research within the Manhattan Project efforts as just one example. The 1.75 m x 7 m bomb bay on each He 277 Amerika Bomber could have just barely accommodated a pair of Fritz-X smart bombs in their internal bomb bays with the bay doors completely closed, and the weight of a single Fritz-X PGM bomb would been nearly identical to a trio of the SC 500 "dumb bombs", making a 5,500 km combat radius still possible for the He 277 Amerika Bomber WITH that example of what the Germans had available for "precision-guided munitions" during the war years.

The separately-developed He 177B for an "ultimate Ural bomber" to subjugate the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom — and Heinkel's Amerika Bomber version of the never-built He 277 flying from the Azores to capture Bermuda, then flying from Bermuda to take on the USA — simply got ate up by the Third Reich's own well-developed habits of politically chewing up its own possibilities, over and over again while the Allies came at it from both directions (east & west), until all it could do was vainly hope that its lead in turbojet propulsion technology could save it. And, all the while during that development of jet combat aircraft for its Luftwaffe, the Third Reich was having most of its its aviation production capacity being blown to bits by RAF Bomber Command and the US Strategic Air Forces from the west and south, and by the onrushing Soviet Red Army and its own VVS air arm from the east eventually seizing the land on which many of those facilities were built, by the end in the spring of 1945.

Had General Walther Wever LIVED, however, past the June 3, 1936 air crash that ended his life prematurely, Heinkel could have gotten his wish for a truly four-engined heavy bomber contract or two, and Heinkel heavy bomber aircraft of designs like both the He 177B, and Amerika Bomber (He 277) designs from Ernst's firm could have spelled real trouble for the future Allies of World War II.

Yours Sincerely,

Bader's Briar.. ..!!

[Kingfish]

My take is this would cripple the Wehrmacht in all three campaigns of 1939-40 leading to worse results for the Germans on the ground. The effect would more likely be in terms of Allied morale if a 'stratigic' bombing campaign is pursued.

Uh nope. German Artillery Superiority still proves decisive on the ground. Artillery can deliver more ordinance, more accurately than bombers can and the majority of the damage done in 39/40 was done by artillery. Overall artillery accounted for 85% of all deaths in WW2 and did the majority of damage to cities.

I can accept the fact that in some theaters artillery has inflicted more damage, but there are others where the ratio heavily favored air power, and with regards to cities on mainland Japan artillery played no role.