300 Ju 89's during the Blitz

[phylo_roadking]

Please, you're the one being obtuse; Britain is at a more northernly climate than Germany and suffers worse winter weather. The two situations are not comparable, especially considering that the war years experienced worse cold and snow than prior in the 1930's. Testing was done in Dessau, which was considerably south of Britain longitudally speaking, and inland in Saxony, so didn't experience the sort of poor flying weather that Britain does.

Seriously??? I suggest you come and live here then! Don't forget that Germany "benefits" from the sort of winter weather that major continents get inland, just like the USA,...whereas the UK benefits from coasts...and thus off -continent coastal weather...warmed by the Gulf Stream! Our winters are probably wetter, yes...but certainly far warmer than German ones - and certainly with a lot less snow!

P.S. can I suggest you look at a globe with lines of latitude on it? Dessau is on roughly the SAME latitude as London!



Germany as a whole is on the same latitudes as virtually ALL of England except for North Yorkshire!

[stg 44]

And you are accusing me of being obtuse
The heavy bombers could only use paved runways.

Do you have a source for that?....

Everything I've ready about B17s during WW2 is that they required paved runways to take off because their weight was too much for unpaved ground and ripped it up. Same for the He177s, unless the ground was frozen, like during Stalingrad.

..a major airfield such as Rechlin for example didn't have a paved runway then...

...but Junkers' Dessau plant where the Ju 89 and 90s were built did, a heated concrete runway - but the apron wasn't! It was, as you can see - grass and somewhat waterlogged at times!

However, I don't know if Zeppelin-Lindau where the Do 19 was built had a paved runway in 1936.

Taxi-ing isn't the problem, taking off is. So driving over it isn't that big of a deal even for the big bombers. Taking off is the issue AFAIK.

Greene cites the Bundesarchiv and interviews with engineers that worked at Rechlin and various German aircraft manufacturers. Heinz Nowarra's "Die Deutsche Luftrüstung I-IV" also talks about the Do 19 and Ju 89; he also backs up Greene and my other book about the December 1936 first flight date; apparently the initial plan was for the first flight to be in October 1936 and complete testing in February 1937, but it was pushed back to December for some reason. The V2 first flew in early April before Göring killed the program on April 29th. The V3 started conversion to the Ju 90 early in 1937.

AFAIK Nowarra is considered the authority on Luftwaffe aircraft 1933-45.

He's also known for being a bit of a propagandist and having some big holes in his facts, as Jon G could tell you if he was still around here I've come across some holes in his dedicated history of the Ju 52, for instance.

Well, I haven't found many who discuss the Ju 89 and Do 19 other than Greene and Nowarra, but feel free to include sources that you find, because I'm always looking for more.

[phylo_roadking]

This is also in Hooton I asume? See above

Yes, sourced to Greene....but ALSO H.M. Mason "The Rise of the Luftwaffe 1918-40", and Edward Homze, "Arming the Luftwaffe: The Reich Air Ministry and the German Aircraft Industry 1919-39"

Everything I've ready about B17s during WW2 is that they required paved runways to take off because their weight was too much for unpaved ground and ripped it up. Same for the He 177s, unless the ground was frozen, like during Stalingrad.

...but we're not talking about any or all "heavy bombers" we're talking about two very specific ones.

I could of course note that the RAF didn't see the necessity for some time; Lancasters operated from grass fields for the duration of WWII. Some gave more problems than others; the legendary Scampton was known to be more than a bit boggy...one of the reasons making it operational stopped and started and stopped again several times...but it didn't stop 617 Sqn!

Taxi-ing isn't the problem, taking off is. So driving over it isn't that big of a deal even for the big bombers. Taking off is the issue AFAIK.

Taxiing is a problem if the aircraft is bogged down...

Well, I haven't found many who discuss the Ju 89 and Do 19 other than Greene and Nowarra, but feel free to include sources that you find, because I'm always looking for more.

See above, Also Hanfried Schliephake's "Birth of the Luftwaffe".

[stg 44]

Please, you're the one being obtuse; Britain is at a more northernly climate than Germany and suffers worse winter weather. The two situations are not comparable, especially considering that the war years experienced worse cold and snow than prior in the 1930's. Testing was done in Dessau, which was considerably south of Britain longitudally speaking, and inland in Saxony, so didn't experience the sort of poor flying weather that Britain does.

Seriously??? I suggest you come and live here then! Don't forget that Germany "benefits" from the sort of winter weather that major continents get inland, just like the USA,...whereas the UK benefits from coasts...and thus off -continent coastal weather...warmed by the Gulf Stream! Our winters are probably wetter, yes...but certainly far warmer than German ones - and certainly with a lot less snow!

P.S. can I suggest you look at a globe with lines of latitude on it? Dessau is on roughly the SAME latitude as London!



Germany as a whole is on the same latitudes as virtually ALL of England except for North Yorkshire!

That's what I get for operating on memory, rather than looking at a map. My mistake. I did live in German briefly and in Austria for a year. The snow wasn't that bad in Vienna, though of course weather patterns have changed since then. I cannot speak for East Germany though this suggests that Saxony's rainfall for January is 2 inches, which even translated into snow isn't bad at all:
http://www.bing.com/weather/tripplan?q= ... ny+weather

[phylo_roadking]

Dessau in winter...



Junkers built a heated runway for a very good reason...

[stg 44]

This is also in Hooton I asume? See above

Yes, sourced to Greene....but ALSO H.M. Mason "The Rise of the Luftwaffe 1918-40", and Edward Homze, "Arming the Luftwaffe: The Reich Air Ministry and the German Aircraft Industry 1919-39"

Everything I've ready about B17s during WW2 is that they required paved runways to take off because their weight was too much for unpaved ground and ripped it up. Same for the He 177s, unless the ground was frozen, like during Stalingrad.

...but we're not talking about any or all "heavy bombers" we're talking about two very specific ones.

I could of course note that the RAF didn't see the necessity for some time; Lancasters operated from grass fields for the duration of WWII. Some gave more problems than others; the legendary Scampton was known to be more than a bit boggy...one of the reasons making it operational stopped and started and stopped again several times...but it didn't stop 617 Sqn!

Taxi-ing isn't the problem, taking off is. So driving over it isn't that big of a deal even for the big bombers. Taking off is the issue AFAIK.

Taxiing is a problem if the aircraft is bogged down...

Well, I haven't found many who discuss the Ju 89 and Do 19 other than Greene and Nowarra, but feel free to include sources that you find, because I'm always looking for more.

See above, Also Hanfried Schliephake's "Birth of the Luftwaffe".

Homze states that just before Wever's death the Ju 89 was planned for 4-5 preproduction models.

Schliephake's books was from 1972, so the later books on the subject, including Greene and Nowarra have access to the scholarship that was written after the fact, including by Homze. Not only that, but the East German book also was written later and had access to information that the West did not have access to until the 1990s and later.

Not sure about Mason's book, which was written in 1975, so has some of the same problems, which James Corum addresses in his book "Creating the Operational Air War: 1918-1940" written in 1997 initially.

[phylo_roadking]

Schliephake's books was from 1972, so the later books on the subject, including Greene and Nowarra have access to the scholarship that was written after the fact, including by Homze.

That WOULD of course depend on whether Greene did any major editing between editions; that one listed on amazon is a quite late reprint - his "Warplanes of the Third Reich" was ALSO published in 1972!

[stg 44]

Schliephake's books was from 1972, so the later books on the subject, including Greene and Nowarra have access to the scholarship that was written after the fact, including by Homze.

That WOULD of course depend on whether Greene did any major editing between editions; that one listed on amazon is a quite late reprint - his "Warplanes of the Third Reich" was ALSO published in 1972!

Good question; my edition is from 1990, so even if there was revisions post opening of the Soviet archives, this edition wouldn't have it.

[BDV]

I presume that a big part of the problem resides in that the production and design were not separated, and that there were a vast array of producers. Kesselring might have spared some coin for work on one heavy bomber design, but could not fund all, and with so many corporations yielping for the RLM reichsmark he just put the kibbosh in the whole enterprise.

Bigger problem is, the stability of the Nazi system hinged on producers/corporations being beholden at the whim of the State, hence divide-and-conquer fitted the RLM just fine.

[Carl Schwamberger]

Assuming these Ju 89s are built to the specs presented here or the other places I've checked I can think of better ways to use 300 of them than bombing stuff off in the Midlands.

To digress slightly, what was the common doctrine for level bombing in the Luftwaffe? Details like altitude, formations, ect...

[stg 44]

Assuming these Ju 89s are built to the specs presented here or the other places I've checked I can think of better ways to use 300 of them than bombing stuff off in the Midlands.

To digress slightly, what was the common doctrine for level bombing in the Luftwaffe? Details like altitude, formations, ect...

I'm not sure what doctrine was, as historically there was no doctrine worked out for strategic bombers in 1940. The Ju89s and Do19s prototypes were supposed to act as demonstrators to work out doctrine, but they were scrapped before they had the chance to be armed and have doctrine worked out.

As far as medium bombers like He111s, I think they typically operated in 1940 at over 13,000 feet because most of the British AAA either didn't reach that high or at night search lights could not reach that high and thus would make early British AAA defenses virtually ineffective.

As far as formations, I'll let you be the judge:

[Carl Schwamberger]

Thought this over again and still cannot see any argument these would have made a decisive difference in the historical 'blitz' of 1940-41. However I keep returning to their possible value in reconoitering for the submarines, attacking ships with bombs, and dropping mines in the the roadsteads & channels into the ports, and bombing the ports themselves. The extra range certainly could not hurt with the first two items, and the heavier bomb load in the second two.

[LWD]

... As far as medium bombers like He111s, I think they typically operated in 1940 at over 13,000 feet because most of the British AAA either didn't reach that high or at night search lights could not reach that high and thus would make early British AAA defenses virtually ineffective.
....

Or alternately it made them very effective. Forcing the German bombers up over 13,000 feet has got to have had a significant impact on their accuarcy especially for night bombing and that's what AAA was really suppose to do protect the instalations it was guarding. Shooting down opposing aircraft is nice but preventing them from hitting their targets is the real objective.

[stg 44]

Thought this over again and still cannot see any argument these would have made a decisive difference in the historical 'blitz' of 1940-41. However I keep returning to their possible value in reconoitering for the submarines, attacking ships with bombs, and dropping mines in the the roadsteads & channels into the ports, and bombing the ports themselves. The extra range certainly could not hurt with the first two items, and the heavier bomb load in the second two.

Let's take up that topic then:
what if those 300 Ju 89s were instead used in naval support operations?
There then are two mining Geschwader with each aircraft capable of handling 4 mines at a time, perhaps more for short range missions, like for the Thames.
The other Geschwader and 36 aircraft KG are focused on Uboat support operations, performing recon work and bombing convoys in support of the Uboats.

What effect does this have on the war/Blitz?

[Carl Schwamberger]

Let's take up that topic then:
what if those 300 Ju 89s were instead used in naval support operations? ....

What effect does this have on the war/Blitz?

I guess part of the answer is how well prepared for these operations they would be. I know in OTL the martitme capabilites were not well developed & they were learning the techniques on the fly. Another part would be how cooperationsbetween the Air Force & the Navy came about. Maritime ops of this scope imply a lot more cooperation than in OTL.