How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#766

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 25 Apr 2020, 05:39

Richard Anderson wrote:I would recommend Marvin A. Kreidberg and Merton G. Henry, History of Military Mobilization in the United States Army 1775-1945. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1955
Thank you for the reference, Richard.

Having read the chapters of the book focusing on industrial mobilization and logistics, I see lots of references to AGF equipment shortfalls and some blaming of Lend-Lease for those shortfalls. For example:
The diversion of equipment to lend-lease and the consequent shortages of equipment for American units in training was a calculated
risk. The PMP had planned and hoped for balance between personnel
and equipment procurement. The failure to achieve this part of the
PMP was not due to faulty planning but to the unforeseen and tremendous allocations of materiel to lend-lease and its predecessor foreign
aid programs.
p.681

What I don't see is any explicit discussion of grand strategy re army vs. air force production. Closest excerpt is this reference to FDR's desire for a smaller army:
The Victory Program achieved its chief purpose by establishing
munitions production goals for American industry. Its corollary
purpose of establishing a long-range troop basis was not so successful at first, for in the fall of 1941 the President was inclined to decrease rather than to increase the Army. The Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 prevented the reduction of the
Army from being put into effect and converted the Victory Program
into the War Munitions Program. The preparation of intermediate
troop bases became necessary.
p.624

To the extent that there is mention of AGF v. AAF grand strategy, it occurs in mid-'43, well after a decision to build a larger army could have made a difference to invasion of Europe in '43:
In its
report the special committee considered the changed strategic situation
in mid-1943 contrasted with that at the beginning of the war when
the first Victory Program had been drawn up. Russia, contrary to
expectations, had not collapsed and was launching massive offensives
which were pinning down large numbers of Axis divisions; the Allied
air offensive had achieved air superiority sooner and more successfully
than anticipated. These favorable factors, the committee reasoned,
had lessened the need for American ground forces and especially combat divisions.
p.627

None of the above-quoted excerpts bear on the period identified as critical by O'Brien: The Summer '42 correspondence of Roosevelt in which he ordered absolute priority for aircraft production, a decision characterized by O'Brien as follows: "In a matter of months, to protect aircraft construction, the US army had lost half of its planned strength."

Of course this mid-'43 decision does touch on the question of whether the decision for a smaller army was justified. With Russia still fighting in mid-'43, there's obviously no need to plan for hundreds of American divisions to defeat Germany.

But the distinction I'm drawing throughout this thread remains: whether it was justified to choose a smaller American army is irrelevant to whether choosing a larger army would have meant a smaller air force and/or navy (the latter less likely, given lead times in naval construction).

Nothing in the book's logistics/industry chapters remotely touches on the issue of whether any increase in historical AGF forces would have caused a reduction in AAF or USN air forces.
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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#767

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 25 Apr 2020, 06:22

Regarding the original thread topic, History of Military Mobilization (thanks again for the link, Richard) provides this tantalizing hint of the U.S. Army's understanding of the task ahead of it in January '42:
While G-3 (Maj. Gen. Idwal H. Edwards) was revising the 1942
Troop Basis the Division was working on a troop basis for 1943. At about the same time it was estimated that about 350 divisions would
be needed to win the war.16
p. 625

[ASIDE - does anyone know where one can find a copy of the G-3 memos and other internal army planning memos? I mean besides making a trip to some far-flung archive?]

350 divisions!

At the OTL AGF division slice of ~66k, that's a 23mil-man army.

Obviously raising such an army would totally preclude American ability to produce sufficient munitions to defeat Japan and Germany: As my upthread cite from the Combined War Resources Board estimated, a 30% cut in American munitions production would have freed 4mil men. To free an additional 17mil men over OTL AGF personnel strength would have caused economic devastation to the weapons program.

On the division slice topic, History of Military Mobilization has some useful insights.

On the optimistic side for America (and humanity), it points out that AGF division slice is inflated by factors such as the non-division status of all AGF units in the CBI theater.

Granting these statistical distortions however, the study acknowledges wasteful uses of AGF personnel:
An examination of the World War II division slice indicates the
following wastages and misapplications of military manpower:
1. The division slice at the outset of the war was overbalanced in
combat elements and underbalanced in service elements. As a result,
some combat units were idle for months after they were ready for
combat while at the same time service units were not available for use
when they were needed. This misapplication was due to faulty troop
basis planning.
2. Later the pendulum swung the other way and the division slice
became underbalanced in combat elements and overbalanced in service
elements. The reasons for this included: [long list]
p.650

In addition to wastages, the study points out that the US Army faced manpower-intensive logistical problems that the Germans did not:
Obviously, as communications lines lengthen more service elements
are needed to maintain those lengthened lines and more combat support troops are needed to protect them. Fighting on interior lines
during the last years of the war, Germany needed a far smaller division slice than the United States fighting all over the world.
p.649

Any discussion of Wallied military prospects after the fall of the SU has to take seriously the manpower problem faced by the U.S. due its inefficient division slice figures, some of which owed simply to the fact that fighting 4,000 miles from home is more manpower-intensive than fighting 400 miles from home.

It is likely that a U.S. faced with the necessity of European invasion against an undistracted Heer would have applied energy and ingenuity to solving its manpower wastage problems to a certain extent. That they could have solved all wastage problems seems unlikely, however, while the distance-based logistical manpower issues are simply insoluble absent teleportation technology.

Therefore, we should revise our estimate of the relative Wallied-Axis manpower endowments in this ATL to account for elevated division slice figures.

Most decisive to me is the impact of augmented US AGF manpower in this ATL on US production figures. For geographical reasons, this is particularly galling for the U.S.:

All soldiers deployed to Europe to build up for an invasion would be absent from the economy on a timeline measured in years. There's the journey time from America to UK itself but more pressingly there's a hard limit (shipping space) on the flow of American soldiers to Europe. To build a sufficiently large force for the invasion (OTL Bolero) requires many months at a given flow, during all of which months the accumulated soldiers are unavailable to the economy. Even if we cut the U.S. division slice to 50k, moving 300 divisions to Europe in advance of a massive invasion will mean 15mil men on active service (US-based support and forward-deployed), which is 9mil more men than served in AGF at its historical peak. Again, those 9mil men come from the economy in one way or another and their absence has a devastating impact on arms production.

By contrast, a Germany defending Europe can opt to mobilize its full army only in the few weeks following initial Allied landfall. In other words, most of the German army can continue producing arms until the battle starts, whereas forcing the battle causes the U.S. to accept a year or so's dramatic decline in arms production. Germany demonstrated its ability to transfer soldiers from factory to front, and vice versa, during the "armaments holiday" accorded to a large portion of the Heer between France and Barbarossa.

---------------------------------------

The combined shortfalls in manpower and production caused by America's geographic location should be accounted for in any stringent analysis of this ATL.
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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#768

Post by ljadw » 25 Apr 2020, 08:29

I have a production of 15000.
The war would be over before 1946 as German cities would be nuked in 1945 .
The OP was that the fall of the SU would liberate sufficient flak guns to make allied air attacks on Germany impossible,because too costly . This is wrong as the number of LW Flak guns in the east was only a small part of the total that was committed and also a small part of of the Flak committed to protect the Reich against air attacks .Less than 1000 Flak guns in the east in 1941,while Germany had thousands of Flak guns in 1941.Soviet captures were useless without the specific Soviet ammunition ,and I like to see how the Germans could transport Soviet flak and ammunition to Germany .
The OTL establishment in 1945 did not prevent the allies to destroy the German cities ,and there is no proof that a bigger production was possible than the number of Flak guns AND their ammunition which were produced .

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#769

Post by glenn239 » 27 Apr 2020, 17:20

ljadw wrote:
25 Apr 2020, 08:29
The OTL establishment in 1945 did not prevent the allies to destroy the German cities ,and there is no proof that a bigger production was possible than the number of Flak guns AND their ammunition which were produced .
I've no idea how much more AA ammunition would be available without an Eastern Front. I see here,

viewtopic.php?t=236220

A thread indicating that Germany produced 8.6 million tons of ammunition in WW2 and expended 5.3 million tons on the Eastern Front. An 88mm shell complete weight about 16kg, so total German ammunition production expended on the Eastern Front would be excess of 300,000,000 x 88mm shells in equivalent weight. Here,

https://books.google.ca/books?id=SjqjDw ... ed&f=false

This states (pg73) that flak accuracy was improving throughout 1944 and chaff was becoming increasingly ineffective. Flak only fell off in late 1944 due to ammunition shortages - but I believe we just established that over half of 5.3 million tons of ammunition would be freed up with the conquest of the Soviet Union, correct? The article indicates 16,000 x 88mm shells per kill, but with better fire control and heavier weapons, that dropped by 75%. Even at 16,000 shells per kill, 5.3 million tons of ammunition translates into about 20,000 kills.

Nobody suggested that increased flak establishment somehow would prevent Allied bombing raids on German cities. The question was whether flak establishment could have been be increased, and if so, if this coupled with better fire control and more ammunition might have increased attrition to flak defenses while decreasing bomber accuracy. You argue on one hand that flak caused about half of all Allied bomber casualties, but on the other, that if the Soviet Union were conquered Germany could not significantly improve and increase its flak defenses. I don't see it. The raw numbers suggest that if the USSR falls, German flak might get significantly more dangerous.

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#770

Post by ljadw » 28 Apr 2020, 11:00

Ammunition expended on the eastern front is not the same as flak ammunition expended on the eastern front .5,3 million ton of ammunition is not 5,3 million ton of flak ammunition .Most of ammunition expended in the east was expended not by the LW flak, but by the army ,besides, in the east the LW flak was mostly involved in ground fighting .
The Germans needed AND more Flak guns AND more Flak ammunition .Victory in the east in 1941 would not give them more Flak guns and more Flak ammunition .

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#771

Post by EKB » 28 Apr 2020, 12:41

TheMarcksPlan wrote: The combined shortfalls in manpower and production caused by America's geographic location should be accounted for in any stringent analysis of this ATL.
What about girl power and war production?
German Rosie The Riveter 16 Marz 1943 JPEG.jpg

Your conclusion ignores that Germany employed women in the workforce to a greater extent than the USA and UK. However, for various reasons Germany was not able or willing to fully call up women for the war effort. As time passed the Nazis instead plunged into the slave labor market.

Even at peak in 1944, the United States never came close to full mobilization of women in the wartime workforce.

Another obstacle to full mobilization of industry - in any nation - is that not all factories were open 24/7. Some companies had one shift only and might be closed on weekends and holidays.


TheMarcksPlan wrote: Germany demonstrated its ability to transfer soldiers from factory to front, and vice versa, during the "armaments holiday" accorded to a large portion of the Heer between France and Barbarossa.

Transfer of skilled factory workers to armed forces was a disaster for Germany.

Quality assurance fell while defects and wastage of materials grew steadily. After the battle of Stalingrad, the overriding labor trend for German industry was specialists replaced with unskilled workers and slave labor from conquered nations, including POWs and inmates from concentration camps. Slaves had little motivation to build quality products for Germany, but thousands were assigned to high priority projects like the He 177 heavy bomber, He 219 night-fighter, Ta 152 high-altitude fighter, Me 262 jet fighter, Ar 234 jet bomber and V-2 ballistic missile.

In March 1944 Luftwaffe Inspector General Erhard Milch confirmed that 60% of workers in Germany’s aviation industry were foreigners. That percentage was even higher if non-production office jobs were subtracted, and part-time jobs held by German women.

Although the Nazis tapped into a massive pool of forced labor, the reservoir of conscripted workers was managed poorly due to bureaucratic conflict. Government agencies, the Heer, Luftwaffe, SS, and titans of industry were constantly locked in battle for a super slice of the labor market. This is explained in depth by Daniel Uziel in his book Arming the Luftwaffe.

The usual rampant corruption was in full bloom, such as how the SS extorted money from German business leaders to transfer inmates from death camps to factories. The factory also had to pay for SS guards. Heinkel paid the SS a sum of 4.4 RM per day for each inmate, while the Erla works (Messerschmitt 109) paid 6 RM per day for skilled inmates and 4 RM for unskilled inmates. That is less compensation than paid to German employees, but the savings increased profits for the factory while abetting a scam for Himmler’s sprawling fiefdom.


TheMarcksPlan wrote: In addition to wastages, the study points out that the US Army faced manpower-intensive logistical problems that the Germans did not:


Obviously, as communications lines lengthen more service elements are needed to maintain those lengthened lines and more combat support troops are needed to protect them. Fighting on interior lines during the last years of the war, Germany needed a far smaller division slice than the United States fighting all over the world.

Any discussion of Wallied military prospects after the fall of the SU has to take seriously the manpower problem faced by the U.S. due its inefficient division slice figures, some of which owed simply to the fact that fighting 4,000 miles from home is more manpower-intensive than fighting 400 miles from home.

Except that Nazi Germany had a Napoleonic war logistics tail dominated by horse and wagon, with only 20% of the army being mechanized. Animals were relatively cheap but required careful and expensive maintenance. Horses suffered high attrition and more so in the winter; during a two month period from December 1941 about 180,000 German army horses died on the Eastern front. In previous wars it was shown that on long marches, experienced soldiers walked further without rest than horses that supported them. In moving troops and supplies to battle fronts, Germany was in desperate need of more expansive railroads to compensate for its horse-dependent army.


TheMarcksPlan wrote: By contrast, a Germany defending Europe can opt to mobilize its full army only in the few weeks following initial Allied landfall. In other words, most of the German army can continue producing arms until the battle starts, whereas forcing the battle causes the U.S. to accept a year or so's dramatic decline in arms production.

This does not address other important differences with Germany and the United States: such as direct results of air raids on German industry and railroads. A steadily increasing portion of German labor was diverted to repair bomb damage, clear away debris, construct new factories, and relocate operations to underground production centers. All of this activity reduced potential factory output.

Direct attacks on factories caused devastation, dispersal and absenteeism in the work force, but the gradual breakdown in the German aviation industry and its supply chain was ultimately caused by RAF and USAAF attacks on transportation networks. Shipments of raw materials, machine parts, finished goods, coal and fuel were not stopped completely, but definitely bottlenecked by air power.
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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#772

Post by ljadw » 28 Apr 2020, 13:16

From Germany and WWII (German Edition ) Tome 4 P 317
Geographical distribution of the LW Flak on June 30 1941
Germany :
Heavy Batteries :786
Medium and Light Batteries : 530
Search Lights :163
West : 130,172 and 71
Southeast : 45,45, 6
South : 6,5,-
East :239 heavy batteries,135 light,25 search lights
Total :Heavy Batteries : 1206
Medium and Light :887
Search lights :265

20 % of the heavy batteries, 15% of the medium and light batteries and 10 % of the search lights were in the east in June 1944 .
And, as in June 1944 these % would have decreased, we can conclude that the transfer of the Flak units from the East to Germany would not help Germany in its war against the allied air attacks .

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#773

Post by glenn239 » 28 Apr 2020, 19:27

ljadw wrote:
28 Apr 2020, 11:00
Ammunition expended on the eastern front is not the same as flak ammunition expended on the eastern front .5,3 million ton of ammunition is not 5,3 million ton of flak ammunition .Most of ammunition expended in the east was expended not by the LW flak, but by the army ,besides, in the east the LW flak was mostly involved in ground fighting .
If we're not crediting the Germans to be able to switch their production to what is required after conquering the USSR in 1941, we're not having a realistic discussion.

The link said 16,000 rounds per heavy bomber shot down. The numbers add up to 4,189 bombers. Times that by 16,000 shells each weighing 32lbs, divide by 2,000 and that's 1,072,000 tons of ammunition. Of 5.3 million tons, I think by those rough numbers a doubling of AA ammunition after 1941 in the production cue seems reasonable.
The Germans needed AND more Flak guns AND more Flak ammunition .Victory in the east in 1941 would not give them more Flak guns and more Flak ammunition .
Victory in the east would change the production cue after 1941 to more flak guns and more flak ammunition from 1942 through to the end of the war. In 1944, the link says that flak was getting more and more dangerous and countermeasures less and less effective - you skipped over that part but I'm pretty sure 8th Air Force bomber crews didn't have that luxury. But that's not the whole story. There is also the introduction of anti-aircraft missiles in large numbers in 1945, both of the guided and unguided variety. These promised a significant increase in bomber lethality on top of a doubling of it from a larger AA establishment - for example, the Taifun rocket, the BA-349, etc. The lethality rate of AA against 4-engine bombers would certainly be higher, just a question of how much higher.

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#774

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 28 Apr 2020, 19:33

Glenn239 wrote:The link said 16,000 rounds per heavy bomber shot down. The numbers add up to 4,189 bombers.
That was for the 88mm Flak 36/37, which could just barely reach the operating height of B-17/24.

For the Flak 41, it was 5,000 rounds per shoot down due to the newer gun's higher muzzle velocity and effective AAA ceiling.

Westerann's Flak mentions a 10x improvement (IIRC) with a new type of radar/layer combo towards the end. That's feasible IMO, as the Wallies saw stupendous results with computer-laying of the 3.7in guns used to shoot down 80% of V-1's by the end of the war.
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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#775

Post by T. A. Gardner » 28 Apr 2020, 21:02

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
28 Apr 2020, 19:33
Glenn239 wrote:The link said 16,000 rounds per heavy bomber shot down. The numbers add up to 4,189 bombers.
That was for the 88mm Flak 36/37, which could just barely reach the operating height of B-17/24.

For the Flak 41, it was 5,000 rounds per shoot down due to the newer gun's higher muzzle velocity and effective AAA ceiling.

Westerann's Flak mentions a 10x improvement (IIRC) with a new type of radar/layer combo towards the end. That's feasible IMO, as the Wallies saw stupendous results with computer-laying of the 3.7in guns used to shoot down 80% of V-1's by the end of the war.
But the Flak 41 was a more complex gun to produce and had considerable technical issues early on. It also cost more to produce than a Flak 36/37. Thus, by February 1944 there were just 279 in service, all in Germany and none at the fronts.

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#776

Post by ljadw » 29 Apr 2020, 07:51

glenn239 wrote:
28 Apr 2020, 19:27
ljadw wrote:
28 Apr 2020, 11:00
Ammunition expended on the eastern front is not the same as flak ammunition expended on the eastern front .5,3 million ton of ammunition is not 5,3 million ton of flak ammunition .Most of ammunition expended in the east was expended not by the LW flak, but by the army ,besides, in the east the LW flak was mostly involved in ground fighting .
If we're not crediting the Germans to be able to switch their production to what is required after conquering the USSR in 1941, we're not having a realistic discussion.

The link said 16,000 rounds per heavy bomber shot down. The numbers add up to 4,189 bombers. Times that by 16,000 shells each weighing 32lbs, divide by 2,000 and that's 1,072,000 tons of ammunition. Of 5.3 million tons, I think by those rough numbers a doubling of AA ammunition after 1941 in the production cue seems reasonable.
The Germans needed AND more Flak guns AND more Flak ammunition .Victory in the east in 1941 would not give them more Flak guns and more Flak ammunition .
Victory in the east would change the production cue after 1941 to more flak guns and more flak ammunition from 1942 through to the end of the war. In 1944, the link says that flak was getting more and more dangerous and countermeasures less and less effective - you skipped over that part but I'm pretty sure 8th Air Force bomber crews didn't have that luxury. But that's not the whole story. There is also the introduction of anti-aircraft missiles in large numbers in 1945, both of the guided and unguided variety. These promised a significant increase in bomber lethality on top of a doubling of it from a larger AA establishment - for example, the Taifun rocket, the BA-349, etc. The lethality rate of AA against 4-engine bombers would certainly be higher, just a question of how much higher.
Less PAK ammunition does not mean more FLAK ammunition .
\And anti-aircraft missiles would not stop US aircraft carrying nuclear bombs .

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#777

Post by ljadw » 29 Apr 2020, 08:02

glenn239 wrote:
28 Apr 2020, 19:27


If we're not crediting the Germans to be able to switch their production to what is required after conquering the USSR in 1941, we're not having a realistic discussion.

You have to prove that the Germans were able to switch their production to what is required after conquering the USSR in 1941, you can't start your argumentation with the unproved claim that they could do it .
An IF is not a FACT .
And you have also to prove that the German FLAK would be able to make it too costly for the allies to attack German cities by night .
If x FLAK batteries shot Y bombers during night attacks, it is not so that 2 X FLAK batteries would shot 2 Y bombers during night attacks .
Other point : the Germans would never have enough FLAK to defend all their cities, while the allies could chose which cities they would attack .

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#778

Post by ljadw » 29 Apr 2020, 08:43

From Lexicon der Wehrmacht
Production of the 1941 8,8 cm Flak ,which started only at the end of 1942 :
1942 (October, November,December ) : 44
1943 : 122
1944 : 263
1945 : 75
Production of the different Flak types (round figures )
2,2 cm Flak : 124000
3 cm Flak : 18000
8,8 cm Flak : 17000
10,5 cm Flak : 4000
12,8 cm Flak : 1200
The 8,8 cm Flak production was some 10 % of the total ,and the production of the 1941 8,8 cm was 3 % of this 10 % = 500 on 164000 = 0.3 % of the total .
I like to see convincing argument that in the ATL this production could start earlier and that more could be produced than 500 ,and that this would make a decisive difference .

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#779

Post by glenn239 » 29 Apr 2020, 18:36

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
28 Apr 2020, 19:33
Glenn239 wrote:The link said 16,000 rounds per heavy bomber shot down. The numbers add up to 4,189 bombers.
That was for the 88mm Flak 36/37, which could just barely reach the operating height of B-17/24.

For the Flak 41, it was 5,000 rounds per shoot down due to the newer gun's higher muzzle velocity and effective AAA ceiling.

Westerann's Flak mentions a 10x improvement (IIRC) with a new type of radar/layer combo towards the end. That's feasible IMO, as the Wallies saw stupendous results with computer-laying of the 3.7in guns used to shoot down 80% of V-1's by the end of the war.
Thanks for that clarification. Frankly, I'd always just assumed that the Allies would win the strategic bombing campaign by 1945 or 1946 - no matter what -due to US aircraft production. But the more I read here, the more seems clear that 4-engine piston driven bombers were themselves evolutionary dead ends, and that it could easily have been the case that heavy bomber losses would become unsustainable.

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Re: How bad would Allied casualties be if the Reich defeated the USSR?

#780

Post by glenn239 » 29 Apr 2020, 18:43

ljadw wrote:
29 Apr 2020, 07:51
Less PAK ammunition does not mean more FLAK ammunition .
And anti-aircraft missiles would not stop US aircraft carrying nuclear bombs .
Yes, less ammunition needed in the east does mean more ammunition for AA later. German ammunition production from 1942 would move in the direction required by the war, and once the USSR falls even with North Africa, AA consumption is going to be the biggest user I think.

AA will not stop the Americans from dropping A-bombs on Europe, but the British might.
And you have also to prove that the German FLAK would be able to make it too costly for the allies to attack German cities by night .
Proving that Germany could up production of 88mm ammunition should be possible. Proving the outcome to a 1945 bomber campaign that never happened? That might be a bit tougher!

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