German Heavy Bombers and Long Range Fighters

Assuming the Germans went into WWII with a dependable long range heavy bomber (comparable to the british Lancaster bomber) and by early 1941 had also introduced a long range escort fighter. These of course are complemented by the relevant changes in doctrine from OTL.
Would that change the situation? How? and by how much?

The Germans never had a long-range fighter nor ever planned one. They did have a few aircraft prototypes for long range bombers but not in full production. Toward the end of the war interest was renewed with the coming of atomic weapons. For some reason the Germans wanted to bomb New York and nothing else would do. For this there were many exotic bombers on the drawing boards. Only one, a Horton model, is rumored to have made it beyond the drawing board. It was said to be under construction at Gotha or somewhere in the Jonas Valley but underground. This area fell into the Soviet Zone, so we will never know.

The objective of a long range bomber would have been to first hit the Ural manufacturing centers the Soviets had set up and then the American air bases in England.

It would depend on what was then NOT produced by Nazi Germany

I think that there is a fair chance that giving terror bombing a priority would have meant that the attack in the West would have failed.

I know the germans had a lot of plans on the drawing board but nothing came out of it mainly due to their doctrine at the time. They believed the airforce should act as a kind of flying cavalry supporting the units at the front and neglected the strategic aspect that the allies favored.
Regarding what would not be built i would be in favor of less dive bombers and the other medium bombers the germans produced, midway through the war they became pretty innefectual anyway.
As solar wolff pointed out airbases in england and factories in the urals should be the first targets (definetely avoid a terror campain as they would divert presious resources away from the main effort) and it would be plausible to think that such a campain would have serious effects although england with its radar network would be a problem (that is why i added the long range escort fighter)

Dr. Solar Wolff said:

The Germans never had a long-range fighter nor ever planned one. They did have a few aircraft prototypes for long range bombers but not in full production.

Click to expand...

The questioner's POD specifies that they do have a long range fighter. That's the bit that makes this different from the OTL and that's where all the fun comes from.

You obviously have a great deal of information regarding Nazi warplanes adn their uses. Try you hand at guessing what they might do with a long range bomber and long range fighter in 1941.

The objective of a long range bomber would have been to first hit the Ural manufacturing centers the Soviets had set up and then the American air bases in England.

Click to expand...

I can understand the targets in the Urals as the Nazis didn't have anything that could reach them, but why the bomber bases in the UK? The Nazis could hit nearly all of Britain with the equipment they already had as 1940 showed. Why would a long range bomber make hitting USAAF airfields in Britain possible? Or is it the long range fighters protecting the bombers that make hitting the USAAF bases possible?

If the long range bomber has good airspeed or at least flight altitude, it will make a lot of difference in the Battle of Britain. the OTL Heinkels and Dorniers were too small to carry enough bombs and too vulnerable against fighters. Good long range bombers would allow to attack industrial sites in Britain as well as navy bases in the North (Scapa Flow, Rosyth, etc.).

I also agree that the Eastern front will be different with the option to bomb Moscow as well as cities east of the Ural or the tracks and railway stations.

Nevertheless, this will require some production shift. If less of the twin-engine bombers of OTL are produced, but still the same number of fighters and Stukas, the Blitzkrieg should not change much to Germany's disadvantage. One could also consider not to carry out the whole naval program, deleting the aircraft carriers and some of the heavy cruisers and battleships.

It could be an interesting adjunct to the what-if to delete the Z Plan and instead of the Graf Zeppellin, the H class and the Seydlitz and Lutzow, have the yards concentrate on more light cruisers. Could these have played a significant role at all ? One assumes that a good percentage of them would have been completed over the course of the war.

Grey Wolf

Nevertheless, this will require some production shift. If less of the twin-engine bombers of OTL are produced, but still the same number of fighters and Stukas, the Blitzkrieg should not change much to Germany's disadvantage.

Why keep the stukas? From what i understand whenever there was serious opposition they fared very badly (e.g. battle of Britain) wouldn´t a reduction there be in order too?

Lysander said:

Nevertheless, this will require some production shift. If less of the twin-engine bombers of OTL are produced, but still the same number of fighters and Stukas, the Blitzkrieg should not change much to Germany's disadvantage.

Why keep the stukas? From what i understand whenever there was serious opposition they fared very badly (e.g. battle of Britain) wouldn´t a reduction there be in order too?

Click to expand...

Hi Lysander!

First, some admin stuff. If you quote someone (and you did), please use the quote function or some other visible mark.

Secondly, well, the Stuka can be discussed. From my point of view, the Stuka is a very useful ground attack fighter in the early years of the war. Yes, it is too slow against good fightercraft, but a dive bomber is a very useful plane to have. This also was the case in the Pacific war, by the way. Thus, I would prefer to delete twin-engine bombers but to keep the Stuka. Nevertheless, I admit that I am more of a navy man...any comments from aircraft experts?

You have to assume a change in Nazi doctrine. A Nazi Harris might have fooled Hitler into thinking bombers will win the war. (I had heard that later in OTL Hitler wanted the 262 jet to be a bomber rather than a fighter)

In these circumstances bombing would have happened earlier.

I think that the effect of night raids of Paris in the winter and Spring of 1940 might have been to make the French fight more. That is the usual consequence of states using this particular form of terrorism.

sikitu said:

Hi Lysander!

First, some admin stuff. If you quote someone (and you did), please use the quote function or some other visible mark.

Secondly, well, the Stuka can be discussed. From my point of view, the Stuka is a very useful ground attack fighter in the early years of the war. Yes, it is too slow against good fightercraft, but a dive bomber is a very useful plane to have. This also was the case in the Pacific war, by the way. Thus, I would prefer to delete twin-engine bombers but to keep the Stuka. Nevertheless, I admit that I am more of a navy man...any comments from aircraft experts?

Click to expand...

Sorry about that, keep having trouble with that.

I agree with you but wanted to put a sort of hierarchy. First remove the twin engined aircraft and the reduce the number of Stukas (or replace them with something better) if there is a need for extra manufacturing capacity. I really don´t want to take manufacturing capacity from other parts of the military effort (army, navy).

Since you´re a navy man. What effects would such aircraft have in naval warfare

Germany clearly needed more LR aircraft. There were a variety of stumbling blocks. First was German leadership itself. The Luftwaffe controlled all a/c and as a result their choices of a/c types often would ultimately dictate how various stages of the war would have been fought. (For example, too few a/c were alloted to maritime reccon or strike) Secondly, Germany never mobilized the production capabilities until mid-war. I'm not sure that the a/c production capacity in the late 30s' could have handled the additional requirements for l/r aircraft. There were too many types of a/c being produced. Standardization and improved production methods would be required. Also, German military leadership did not envision long-term strategic warfare. The Luftwaffe was optimized to be 'flying artillery' to support the blitzkrieg concept. There were always 4 engined l/r aircraft on the drawing boards and in the test stages, but there never seemed to be enough rationale to see them through. It was not only l/r bombers that Germany lacked, it was also insufficient number of contemporary transport aircraft.
As long as the war remained a European conflict, Germany had some chance of achieving victory or at least a favorable end to hostilities. Once the US entered the picture Germany's fate was sealed. There was no practical way for Germany to directly attacked the US production facilities. The US was essential a vast production center forever beyond the range of the Germany Luftwaffe.
L/R aircraft might have extended the conflict but the end result would have been the same.
(Ironically, Italy did have a 4 engined bomber the P-108 that was similiar in performance to the early models of the B-17, but it never went into large scale production)

Lysander said:

Sorry about that, keep having trouble with that.

Since you´re a navy man. What effects would such aircraft have in naval warfare

Click to expand...

Alright, forget it! As for naval warfare, long range aircraft would have meant better long range recon that could have really helped the U-boats in the first years of the war. Actually, the FW Condor was used for such purpose, but by far not enough of them, and not frequently enough. The problems with the Luftwaffe and its quarrels with the navy have already been mentioned.

I think that long range bombardments of British dockyards and bases would also have helped. Nevertheless, the German navy never was sufficiently large to be a threat for the RN, and there also never were enough U-boats. Even in the first years of war, the loss of U-boats used to be as high as the new launches...

Obviously it all depends on priorities set by the Nazis in the 1930's leading up to WW2. I would argue that a viable long-range strategic bombing force and good quality long range fighters would be much more useful to the Germans than a large surface fleet. Grey Wolf's point is interesting. Perhaps if all naval construction went into subs and nothing on the surface larger than light cruisers (heck, i'd suggest nothing larger than DE's for ASW purposes), quite possibly Germany could have had an effective long-range strategic airforce while still having enough panzers and tactical planes to do army cooperation.

Another issue is timing and available aircraft. Early after the Luftwaffe was established the mid-1930's Germany began developing two 4-engined heavy bombers, the Ju-89 and Do-19, which were soon cancelled after priorities changed However, if either of these designs had been pursued and rushed into production, they would have been approaching obsolescence when the war began, and be nowwhere as effective as the Lancaster,Halifax, B-24 or B-17 were for the allies. Also, it needs to be remembered that when these two planes were cancelled, preliminary work did begin on a modern heavy bomber, the He-177. Had this plane not been a failure, Germany would have had a fine design around which to base a heavy bomber force in the early 1940's. All other German heavy bomber designs came about too late to help with the BoB. Realistically, knowing what we do about what the Germans actually tried to produce, bomber-wise, in the period 1934-1941 one needs to postulate either (1) a purely hypothetical plane or (2) a decision by Germany to license or copy an existing foreign design. Regarding foreign types, US or British planes would probably be be out of the question. The Italian Piaggio P1008 is a possibility, as might be the Soviet Pe-8 (hypothetically licensed during the Hitler-Stalin pact period. Japan had no long range bombers available for license.

Regarding long range fighters, the Focke Wulf Fw-187, designed in the late 1930's as a single seat, twin engined fighter, could have been in widespread production by 1940. It was apparently an excellent plane and, continually improved, could have given the Nazis a plane equivalent to the P-38. Another possibility could have been license-building the Japanese A6M Zero, which could have given the Germans a long range single engined fighter by mid 1941. Of course, the Germans might have added a lot of armor and stuff which would reduce its range and performance.

Finally, the real advantage of a long-range bomber force would not necessarily be in bombing the UK and USSR, but in anti-shipping duties in the Battle of the Altlantic. What might a force of several thousand offensively capable long range planes- capable of covering virtually the whole North Atlantic have had on submarine coordination and aerial attack on convoys?

This would come out worse for the nazis.
These aircraft would be much harder to build and need more crew then what they had in OTL also a long range fighter is rarely a match for a short range interceptor. The fewer German aircraft would be shot up without bringing the RAF to near defeat as OTL.

One thing with light cruisers, if you look at WW1, they can roam far and wide, they can massively disrupt trade and logistics greatly in excess of their actual value. They are massively cheaper than even a pocket battleship, and they are in the end expendable.

Destroyers can't do this, and u-boats are a different kind of warfare from surface raiding

Grey Wolf

John, wasn't there a Messerschmidt design too that got to prototype ???

Grey Wolf

Building and operating a substantial long range bomber force would involve a major resource drain. The British reckoned that building and operating a force of 40 bombers equaled the resources used to build and operate a battleship. If the Germans are to have a significant heavy bomber force the resources will have to be taken from somewhere else. Even if deleting the entire Kriegsmarine surface force, you would still be short of resources to have a force equalling OTL Bombercommand. Deleting the U-boat arm might provide the necessary resources, but would really relieve the British of a serious pain. Dropping the medium bombers of OTL Luftwaffe will take away a significant part of the airsupport of the German army. That would be costly.

Reducing the mighty army will indeed provide splendid resources but also make it impossible to invade major neighbours.

In short, if we could somehow drop Harris over Germany pre-war and have him successfully sell his ideas it will be an effective way of winning the war for the allies with far less cost than in OTL.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

Grey Wolf said:

John, wasn't there a Messerschmidt design too that got to prototype ???

Grey Wolf

Click to expand...

Yes, Grey, the Me264. Planned as a 4-engine long range maritime-reconnaissance heavy bomber capable of attacking the USA from French bases. Was first flown as a prototype in 1942 I believe. Like a lot of Nazi planes, there was official indecision during its development and the prototype when flown was no longer anything other than a flying test bed. Never had very high priority. Six-engined developments were schemed, including some with auxilliary jet propulsion, I believe. It probably would have been equivalent to the US B-29. I guess it could have been rushed into production, but it probably would not have been available in quantity until 1943-44, by which time Germany needed fighters, not bombers.

Leej said:

This would come out worse for the nazis.
These aircraft would be much harder to build and need more crew then what they had in OTL also a long range fighter is rarely a match for a short range interceptor. The fewer German aircraft would be shot up without bringing the RAF to near defeat as OTL.

Click to expand...

Correct about crew cost and building expense for bombers. But I disagree about long-range fighters. All three US escort figters (P38, P47, P51) were capable of holding their own against geman interceptors.