Hello folks. This is my first "what if". Hope no one posted this before...
As we all know the pre-war Luftwaffe pretty much dumped all thoughts of strategic bombing, focusing on tactical support, the biggest payloads not surpassing 2 tons (He-111). This meant that, during the battle of Britain, the german bombers did relatively poor damage, compared to what-ifs. The switch from bombing airfields to cities meant the bombers were not given enough time to do the job.
But... what if the Luftwaffe had proper bombers, with heavier payloads?
The drive to build a strategic arm came from General Walther Wever. He started the "Ural Bomber" program, resulting in at least 2 prototypes, the Do 19 and the Ju 89 who, despite shorcomings, showed promise. But then Wever died in 1936 and his sucessor, Kesselring, an army officer through and through, advised Goring to cancel the program, focusing in tactical support, and the rest is history.
But imagine this: Wever doesn't die, or Kesselring continues the program, and the Luftwaffe starts the war with severall groups of heavy bombers with around 3.5-4 tons payload (the twin-engined Wellington carried 2tons, Hallifax over 5) and proper defences (unlike RAF bombers, even these prototypes had multiple cannon). This allows them do to a lot more damage per raid than the combination of He-111/Ju-88, wrecking the RAF's infrastructure before they are shifted to the cities: airfields, radars, comunications, etc.
A cascade of possible consequences follows
- wrecked RAF looses air superiority over the UK;
- Luftwaffe spreads out, does more damage; germans gain confidence in victory;
- Hitler, assuming (now correctly) air superiority is won, with assurances from Goering that he can protect the invasion force, believes all is good for Sea Lion and orders the invasion, despite warnings from the army about supplies and troop sizes, and from the navy about dificulties in escorts, proper transports, etc;
- the RN, at great cost, wrecks most of the invasion fleet, with the beach defenders dealing with the few that land;
- the large losses in men and equipment force Hitler to review his strategy for 1941, ie, the USSR.
What now? Would the war stalemate? Would the Luftwaffe be forced to ramp up the strategic arm even further, to try to do to the UK what the allies tried to do to germany in 1943/1994? Would the RAF recover fast enough?
And other, possible strategic outcomes: would Stalin be tempted to attack this now weakened Germany? Would Mussolini be left to hang in the Med, due to Germany's lack of deployable troops?
As we all know the pre-war Luftwaffe pretty much dumped all thoughts of strategic bombing, focusing on tactical support, the biggest payloads not surpassing 2 tons (He-111). This meant that, during the battle of Britain, the german bombers did relatively poor damage, compared to what-ifs. The switch from bombing airfields to cities meant the bombers were not given enough time to do the job.
But... what if the Luftwaffe had proper bombers, with heavier payloads?
The drive to build a strategic arm came from General Walther Wever. He started the "Ural Bomber" program, resulting in at least 2 prototypes, the Do 19 and the Ju 89 who, despite shorcomings, showed promise. But then Wever died in 1936 and his sucessor, Kesselring, an army officer through and through, advised Goring to cancel the program, focusing in tactical support, and the rest is history.
But imagine this: Wever doesn't die, or Kesselring continues the program, and the Luftwaffe starts the war with severall groups of heavy bombers with around 3.5-4 tons payload (the twin-engined Wellington carried 2tons, Hallifax over 5) and proper defences (unlike RAF bombers, even these prototypes had multiple cannon). This allows them do to a lot more damage per raid than the combination of He-111/Ju-88, wrecking the RAF's infrastructure before they are shifted to the cities: airfields, radars, comunications, etc.
A cascade of possible consequences follows
- wrecked RAF looses air superiority over the UK;
- Luftwaffe spreads out, does more damage; germans gain confidence in victory;
- Hitler, assuming (now correctly) air superiority is won, with assurances from Goering that he can protect the invasion force, believes all is good for Sea Lion and orders the invasion, despite warnings from the army about supplies and troop sizes, and from the navy about dificulties in escorts, proper transports, etc;
- the RN, at great cost, wrecks most of the invasion fleet, with the beach defenders dealing with the few that land;
- the large losses in men and equipment force Hitler to review his strategy for 1941, ie, the USSR.
What now? Would the war stalemate? Would the Luftwaffe be forced to ramp up the strategic arm even further, to try to do to the UK what the allies tried to do to germany in 1943/1994? Would the RAF recover fast enough?
And other, possible strategic outcomes: would Stalin be tempted to attack this now weakened Germany? Would Mussolini be left to hang in the Med, due to Germany's lack of deployable troops?