Wow...thought-provoking stuff!
Thanks. I should probably credit John Terrraine's
The Right of the Line (IIRC) & Gavin Lyall's
The War in the Air. I got the idea for this from one of them... And since I really can't answer these is why I'm asking.... I'm hoping somebody knows, or knows where I can find it. (OOC: what made you decide to look at this one?
)
Not entirely sure how effective this plan would be over all or how quickly the Germans would find work-arounds, but I have to imagine it would be a better use of materials than cooking house-fraus with incendiaries.
I absolutely agree. IMO, "dehousing" effectively propped up the Nazis. As J. K. Galbraith once remarked on Bill Buckley's show, "A bad government is better than a bomber overhead."...
how effective would they be in actually stopping transport? (how fast can mines be removed/detonated? How accurately can critical infrastructure be targeted?)
IIRC, the powerstations were pretty coal-critical (FWI read in the USSBS online), so even small disruptions would have big effects. IIRC, even a few days' lack of supply could shut down plants; have a glance at the OTL situation late in '44, & that's without a dedicated plan to attack river/canal transport. Also, any disruption to canal/river means more load on rwy, which is already at (nearly?) full stretch, which has serious knock-ons to weaps deliveries & troop movements, not to mention the Holocaust, & makes any attack on rwy knock-ons even bigger.
Can't speak to minesweeping. It'd have to be
really good, tho. Consider: every Hampden could lay 1 mine/hop; Wimpys, 2; Lancs, 6 (IIRC). OTTOMH, that's 200K mines from Wimpys, 750K from Lancs, & 20K+ from Hampdens, not even allowing for the fact those were ops in good bombing weather. How many more in good mining weather? Add to that the "minefield effect": you don't know there are mines til you hit one...so just flying around near rivers/canals (presuming aerial mining in 'em is possible) more/less forces sweeping, which more/less has to continue indefinitely, or til something's found. How much shipbuilding capacity does Germany have? How many sweepers can she build? How long before just the
threat of mines ties up movement/supply?
how quickly can the Germans redeploy and reroute resources? (what was OTL's experience with the anti-petrol campaign? What are OTL's experiences later with "smart bombing" recovery?)
Again, can't say. Germany was pretty reliant on canals. Also, BC OR estimated one ship lost & one damaged
per 26 mines laid. Again, I don't know if this is just coastal shipping. (That seems to be the implication FWI recall.) I recall rivers being mined, but not if it's WW2, & AFAIK, never Europe... No capacity? Or no vision? And, again, can you risk moving in the face of mine hazard? Or do you reach a point you
have to?
how quickly and effectively can air defenses be repositioned to cover water and transport resources (these will be long and skinny but equally stationary - off the top of my head I'd assume it'd be easier to mass flak and interceptor squadrons near cities than to cover rail/river/canal corridors, yet hitting many of the latter will require more precision or going after big targets like marshaling yards or bridges, which means "duh, place flak there").
It's the dead easy aspect of defending cities that drives me crazy in all this: those factories aren't going anywhere, & both sides damn well know it, so the defenses are very likely to get stronger with time, & both sides damn well know
that, too, yet BC kept going back.... Can you say Haig at Verdun? Rwy def is a tick harder: bridges & railyards are big, immobile, & obvious. For them, I'd suggest something like Mossies, & when they become threatened, something like Azon/Fritz X or GB-4, a standoff weap, maybe even an airlaunched V-1 equiv, able to hit a railyard from 20-30mi out. As for hitting a river/canal, picture flying
along it & dropping.... Bridges are tough to hit & EZ defend, I agree, & I'd put them at bottom priority; again, something like Azon, GB-4, or Bat? I think GB-4's TV seeker could work in twilight (not at night, I'd guess), & Bat at night. Might try flares to make GB-4 workable at night.
Canal/river defense IMO is no go. There's too much mileage at hazard to cover it all, & damage could be done with handfuls of bombers. Can you picture 100 3-plane raids over Europe at once? Add to that they'd mostly be going in around treetop height, so they'd be damn hard to detect on W rzburg... (Even CHL had trouble with intruders, & the Brits were better at it.) Can you picture the AD headaches? (Suicides?
) They could mostly be decoys, even--& assuming aerial mining, the Germans'd never know, til they hit something...so decoys could work just as well as live ones. How much fighter production can you tie up this way? (How much have you got?
)
Just OTTOMH, I imagine chaos in a matter of weeks, but
I don't know. How big do the effects get, & how fast? Were their river-capable mines? Could standard Brit air-laid mines be adapted for rivers? OTOH, assuming some production is still possible in between, this probably means more heavy AT in Russia.
And there's a political aspect: it may be impossible to butterfly away
all city-burning, after the Germans have done it, with the "give it 'em back" sentiment. It was learned in China, to sustain morale there was a need to try & defend & hit back. How much "hitting back" is in question. There's also the "Second Front" demands; may be able to balance those against inhibiting weapon/supply deliveries. I take the pos this is for Winston to defend: to the public, say, we're giving the Germans back, but for security reasons we can't say how hard; to the Russians, the same, & look at the drop in German supply & fewer air attacks. He could also say BC's trying to avoid unnecessary crew slaughter against German defenses; he'd not need to specify Verdun, his audience would get it. (Fear of another WW1-style slaughter in France informed British reluctance to return to the Continent, FWI read.) IMO, there's also a moral issue,
per Haig; preserving friendly aircrews should trump demands of an ally they be expended just to keep up appearances. Of course, that may be a) a very postwar attitude & b) a very North American attitude, where taking losses is less acceptable; period Brits seem to me to've been more willing to take losses (until '44, anyhow, by which time a kind of "exhaustion" seems to be setting in).