A very useful document. I send my thanks into the ether.KDF33 wrote:That's amazing detail! Thank you for sharing it.
Administration seems related to the size of the army in total. I doubt, for example, that New Zealand's army needed 343k administrative personnel. Among other things, administrators would process soldier payments, oversee procurement and shipping to field forces, review disciplinary cases, review disability claims, etc. All this paper-pushing scales with army size.KDF33 wrote:I agree with this as it pertains to administration (342,962)
Some things would not scale with army personnel size - e.g. weapons inspectors (would scale with weapons deliveries), the core analytical/command bodies of the General Staff and high command.
I'd guess half the Feldheer means slightly more than half the administration - say 200k. That gives 1.63mil in the Ersatzheer:

With 100 divs at 20k Feldheer div-slice, that gives 3.63mil in the Heer total. Not far from my original 3.5mil projection. 100 divs is obviously somewhat arbitrary...
We could also use stats for, say, OB West in 1941-43. Although OB West contained less-fit men so probably higher resting sick rates.KDF33 wrote:Some sick would remain, although I wonder how much sickness cases increased due to the grueling conditions the Feldheer operated under after 6/21/1941. Do you have figures for the number of hospitalized sick prior to Barbarossa?
Sickness rates were certainly higher on the Eastern Front than elsewhere. Obviously you have the cold with frostbite cases. In addition, soldiers were frequently sleeping in lice-infested peasant huts and drinking from unsanitary wells. This is ubiquitous in soldier's accounts though of course it would be best to have data.
I think I am too but to clarify:KDF33 wrote:We are largely in agreement, then, give or take a few 100,000s.
OTL LW air ops and support: 262,000
ATL LW air ops and support: 1,048,000 (x4)
ATL:OTL delta: +786,000.
4x OTL requires only a 3x delta...
But nonetheless I'd stick with ~1mil air ops and support delta. Why? Because attrition probably wouldn't have happened at 4x OTL velocity. I.e. the USAAF and RAF wouldn't have continued sending their bombers to get slaughtered at 4x OTL rate. They don't have enough bombers to do so. Rather, they'd have husbanded resources and made fewer raids (until/unless CBO is stopped).
This would allow LW's establishment strength to rise by a delta greater than the ATL:OTL production flow delta. Keeping a ~1mil combat/support delta allows ~5x the unit establishment strength. With lower attrition and sortie rates per establishment, the operable/on-hand and operable/establishment ratios would increase.
All together we'd probably see LW able to put up ~6x the planes on any given day. For RLV units in early 1944, that means ~3,000 dayfighters can sortie. The escorts would have their hands full with half that force; the bombers would be devastated.
Re 8th AF bomber tactics, there's a definite Lanchestrian element here: American Heavies flew in combat boxes offering interlinking, collective defense. As 8th AF told its crews:
More fighters would break up more combat boxes, causing more stragglers and weaker defenses within thinned-out combat boxes. This implies bomber losses supra-linear with opposing forces (and fighter losses sublinear).The “tactics lesson” grimly noted, “The straggler’s number
is up. Keep in formation at all costs”
The Luftwaffe over Germany: Defense of the Reich by Caldwell and Murray
You've convinced me. It's both wise and in line with Hitler's OTL wont (Speer complained in Inside the Third Reich that Hitler wanted to spend more on synthgas than Speer thought wise). One option I could see is locating expanded hydrogenation capacity in the Donbas under an expanded and earlier Iwan Program such as I discuss upthread. OTL Iwan was less focused on the Donbas it abutted the front lines when in early '42; ATL Donbas is deep behind them. This industrial complex could be partially adaptable to coal or oil inputs. It would of course be secure from bombing.KDF33 wrote:As I see it, the best strategy for the Germans would have been to allocate a large share of their additional manpower to expanding coal output, railway capacity, and the scale of the hydrogenation industry,
Yes but not to American levels. What do you see as a likely ATL LW fuel buget?KDF33 wrote: I also agree that German fuel supply expansion would have been necessary.
From what I've been able to find, the actual LW training fuel budget (i.e. that actually delivered/consumed) was shockingly small. Caldwell and Murray's Defense of the Reich say 50,000t allotted for May 1944 ("General Kreipe, the Director of Training, requested 60,000 metric tons of fuel per month for aircrew training. [Göring cut this to 50,000].") This was a prospective allotment; surely less was delivered.
That implies 600k tonnes annually, which implies 2.4mil tonnes for training 4x the pilots. That's approximately covered simply converting all of Germany's OTL hydrogenation plants to avgas production, rather than ~half going to mogas.
Of course 1944 training flight hours and fuel consumption, per pilot, were lower than before. Here's a summary from Defense of the Reich:

My ballpark estimate is you could maintain 1942 training levels with slightly more than double the 1944 fuel input, per pilot. That would imply only ~5mil tonnes of avgas for ATL LW training. It's, again, a shockingly small number but I see no way around the logic.
American comparisons are a red herring because US was simply inefficient (militarily) in WW2. If, as some would have us believe, the LW needs American staffing and resource levels to use 4x OTL production flow, then why doesn't the Heer need a 60,000 division slice like the US Army? That would obviously be an absurd argument; it's no less absurd regarding air forces. I will grant that ASF's assumption of much AAF logistical duties may make the nominal air force personnel comparisons similar. But as a mere coincidence, not as a matter of logic.
It's practically certain that ATL Germany can spare more than 5mil tonnes of avgas for LW training, which would allow a qualitative delta to LW performance in addition to quantitative. So far my discussion has proceeded as if quality remains constant. What would you project?