AHC/WI: Britain won WW2 by itself? (Grasshopper Lies Heavy)

NoMommsen

Donor
My understanding is that a good chunk of the German production increase in 1943 came not from manpower or a "full war economy" but simply new industrial plant coming on line.
Manpower was part of it, but not in "numbers" but "usage". Only in 1942 IIRC they - finally - started working in a 3-shift-system, utilizing the already existing factories 24h/day. Prior to this they stll employed a - though extendd up to 10h/day - one-shift-system.
This system was ofc also used for finishing the plants ordered to be built prior to Speer under Fritz Todt, who also designed the later by Speer implemented "Ring"-system of industrial self-organisation.
Actually Speer just "harvested" what Todt had seeded and Todt also needed after his appointment 1940 still about a year to get things sorted against the Göring-industrial-complex.
 
Honestly any timeline where there Soviet Union and or France are in the war and don't fall almost immediately is going to end up with "The Soviet Union and/or France did most of the fighting and the UK was along for the assist". In no way would this lead to the UK winning the war by itself.
 
The answer was no. They were not at full capacity. Read the post you are replying to.

Sigh.
We are talking about aircraft that were produced, and the reason we are doing it is that you wanted to discuss production. If the British produce 1,000 less bombers in 1943 and 2,000 less in 1944, they might, again assuming a 4.1 conversion ratio, have 12,000 more fighters a tht eend of 1944.

That is dealing with production. Losses in the field are neither here nor there.

Please cite something that states British factories, by the late war period, were not operating at full production capacity. I do know the British had some issues with Spitfire production at a handful of sites earlier in the war, but such were long since addressed by 1943/1944. Further, basic knowledge of industrial production will show that a factory, no matter how many resources you throw at it, has a maximum production ceiling. This means that, no matter how many bombers you cancel, you're not going to get more fighters without building new factories or re-tooling the old Bomber ones.

As for your comment on losses on the field, it's extremely relevant and downright bizarre to say otherwise. Let's do some simple math, like you suggested earlier.

Bombers produced per year:
1940 - 41
1941 - 498
1942 - 1,976
1943 - 4,671
1944 - 5,509
1945 - 2,292

As I stated previously, losses for bomber command averaged over 1940-1945 was 1,655 per year. The 8th Air Force, meanwhile, took 4,145 losses between 1942-1945, which means an average annual loss of 1,382 bombers per year. Given the U.S. is neutral here, the German resources used to take out those American planes can be shifted to face the British bombers. So with an average loss rate of 3,037 planes and your industrial cutbacks, please do explain how Britain will be able to maintain an effective bomber force at all?
 
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Except I don't think you understand the point that Michele is making: I assume he means reducing bomber production by 1000 in one year, 1000 the next, and so on, giving Britain an extra 4000 fighters per year. Also, you seem to be assuming that losses will remain the same even though fewer bombers are being despatched on raids. As another factor, the bombers cancelled would obviously be the more vulnerable ones, like the Stirling, so the loss-rate will be lower.

Additionally, in OTL the British devoted huge resources in manpower, money and materials to building hundreds of airfields for the use of the 8th and 9th Air Forces, and absent the need to do this, the resources could be redirected to producing more tanks and aircraft. I could easily see Britain producing 25% more aircraft and 50% more tanks than they did OTL.

German production in 1944 was 13,000 more than the British. An extra 4,000 fighters means the Germans are still outproducing them by about 10,000 aircraft.

Some questions on the airfields:
1) Do you have a source that states the British built the airfields with solely British materials? I'd highly doubt Britain did so without American resources in part by 1942.
2) Do you have a source on how much steel, aluminium, and such was used to build the airfields? To increase tank production by 5,000 and 6,500 (1944 statistics), would require vast volumes of resources.
3) How exactly does one transfer the materials used to build the runways to tank production? You can't exactly make a tank out of concrete.
 
Please cite something that states British factories, by the late war period, were not operating at full production capacity. I do know the British had some issues with Spitfire production at a handful of sites earlier in the war, but such were long since addressed by 1943/1944. Further, basic knowledge of industrial production will show that a factory, no matter how many resources you throw at it, has a maximum production ceiling. This means that, no matter how many bombers you cancel, you're not going to get more fighters without building new factories or re-tooling the old Bomber ones.

As for your comment on losses on the field, it's extremely relevant and downright bizarre to say otherwise. Let's do some simple math, like you suggested earlier.

Bombers produced per year:
1940 - 41
1941 - 498
1942 - 1,976
1943 - 4,671
1944 - 5,509
1945 - 2,292

As I stated previously, losses for bomber command averaged over 1940-1945 was 1,655 per year. The 8th Air Force, meanwhile, took 4,145 losses between 1942-1945, which means an average annual loss of 1,382 bombers per year. Given the U.S. is neutral here, the German resources used to take out those American planes can be shifted to face the British bombers. So with an average loss rate of 3,037 planes and your industrial cutbacks, please do explain how Britain will be able to maintain an effective bomber force at all?

With regards to aircraft construction if the onus was on fighters then the factories would instead align on that type of construction - so in an ATL where the need is for more fighters then its not a case of retooling - more a case of tooling up for fighters in the first place.

Castle Bromwich in early 1940 for example was building medium and heavy bombers but this part of the factory was very quickly retasked to focus purely on building Spitfires by the fall of France / BoB and then later on once the threat of an invasion had passed was partially retasked to build bombers and the supporting industries (Rolls royce etc) changing production likewise.

The early Spitfire issues at Castle Bromwich was down to Pre Fall of France Union issues, poor management and workforce training issues (the Spitfire was arguably the most complex fighter plane in the world in 1940 and used construction methods not used before in mass production) - this was rapidly sorted when Vickers (supermarines parent company) took the site over from Nuffield in 1940 - rapidly ramping up to its max construction by late 1940

But factories could and did retask / retool for different aircraft types during the war

Also as for Numbers of Bomber made during the war (plus number of Engines) I think your numbers are off

2,371 - Short Stirlings (4)
6,176 - Halifaxs (4)
7,337 - Lancasters (4)
1,814 - Whitworths (2)
1,430 - Hampdons (2)
11,461 - Wellingtons (2)
7,781 - Mosquito (2) - some - a relative handful built after the war
 
a) Germany goes to 24-hour war production in late 1939

b) Closer exchange of technology and information with Japan - specifically oxygen torpedoes, submarine technologies, and certain engine/airframes for tanks, engines, and certain synthetic technologies

c) Mussolini listens to Ciano and stays out of France and the Balkans (for now)

d) Germany raids the French military for ideas and prototypes, discovering the Bugatti plans and the MB 162 etc., perhaps putting one or more into mass production

e) Without the US or UK supporting the USSR, their reception of the blunt end of Barbarossa results in a harder push and much more difficult recovery effort - enough so that the IJA decides to push for a 'Northern route' instead of attack against the United States who is now next on the list after Moscow falls

f) Tizard mission occurs as OTL and the US still becomes the factory for the Allies without becoming one of the Allies themselves. The British take an especially fond interest in Goddard's work.

g) St. Petersburg falls in late December 1941 while Moscow becomes encircled in early February 1942 though the Kremlin flies the Soviet flag despite relentless assault. Stalingrad starts earlier and ends earlier with Astrakhan now in the sights of the Germans, both ends of Barbarossa achieved and only the middle remaining

h) British heavy bombing is augmented by the ranks of American 'volunteer' squads who wear only British uniforms but include 'former' US military personnel

i) British and American scientists develop ever-closer links as the 'Tube Alloys' project is relocated entirely to Canada near the Washington State and Minnesota borders, jet engines are also provided in exchange for bulk discounts on trade and 'understandings' in the post-war world

j) Americans offer similar deals on raw materials and trucks to the USSR as the Japanese invade Vladivostok and thrust into Mongolia then Soviet Far East Asia near Irkutsk

k) German efforts stall at Astrakhan and Ryazan. Moscow holds by a thread as hundreds of thousands starve to death and the city of Yaroslavl is declared a 'point of no retreat' in mid-1942. Despite the odds it remains in Soviet hands at the end of the Battle of Two Continents on Christmas Day 1942

l) Japanese forces reach the outermost edge of Irkutsk and Kharbaovsk in early 1943 but are beaten back with great difficulty by the Germans who advance more quickly than OTL due to a greater resource base

m) With a more completed Atlantic Wall and jet aircraft dominating the sky with occasional German bombing raids still hitting London, the British decide not to invade in 1944 but instead focus on Goddard and his evolving anti-air missile systems to begin a rapid destruction of the Luftwaffe able to fly over the UK while the Stg-44 becomes a widespread firstline infantry weapon

n) As the Allies bring their own jet aircraft online in ever-increasing numbers a ruthless Red Army liberates the last of Moscow's suburbs and begin the Siege of Vladivostok in late 1944 as German troops begin working on the now-famous Stg-45b and BMW014

o) On January 19, 1945, the Luftwaffe begins Operation Hammerhead, the aerial destruction of London. V2b missiles launched en masse from southern Germany combine with over 120 Ta 400 bombers to nearly destroy London's infrastructure. More V2b missiles fly in to deceive and distract firefighting crews, bringing morale in the UK to the lowest point of the war. Churchill gives the famous 'I will stay!' speech rallying morale to London and the United Kingdom while a deeper shelter able to withstand the V2b is completed soon after

p) With Ta 183 and Messerschmitt p.1101 aircraft flying about in numbers, the introduction of the Ho 229 near the end of 1944 causes additional concerns for the Allies just getting their early second-generation aircraft off the ground. With Germany's synthetic oil refineries and engine production plants specifically being targeted the sudden mass destruction of bridges and railways infer an invasion for 1945 but no one is sure where. Russian forces begin the first of five assaults on Kursk around this time

q) Allied conference at Moscow in mid-1945 leads to the creation of the Grand Accord that essentially divides Europe wherever the armies meet just before Operation Dominance lands at seven points along the Normandy and Breton coasts

r) With the discovery of German atrocities on a mass scale with evidence previously unavailable the Italians, also sensing a turn in the fortunes of war and seeing preparations for a probable invasion along their southern borders, strike a deal to convert to Allied forces in December 1945 in exchange for absolution and some territorial changes after the war including Corsica and Tunis. A bombing attempt against Hitler fails though kills much of his upper staff. His feeling of invincibility, especially when fed by his deputy Reinhard Heydrich, the Butcher of Bayonne, the Poacher of Prague, Killer of Kiel, and Murderer of Marseilles

s) German forces reel in western Ukraine and eastern France, pooling forces for a counterattack on each front for late spring 1946 that fizzles out but stalls the Allies by three months and the USSR by six

t) By late 1946 the Germans realize the war is over as the Allies approach Berlin and the USSR approaches Warsaw. While peace is still four months away, the Vistula and San Rivers along with the Ukrainian-Romanian borders become the new Iron Curtain behind which a somewhat hostile Soviet Union maintains a very isolationist policy while its sector of Berlin and 'secure' railway become the source of much tension during the Cold War that lasts for the next three decades

u) As the United States accepts a larger role in the world with great deal of technology its role is secondary to that of the United Kingdom, especially as the Council of Nations begins regular meetings in London where the Soviet Union and United States often coordinate resistance to British policies that would increase 'perfidious Albion's' place in the world
 
e) Without the US or UK supporting the USSR, their reception of the blunt end of Barbarossa results in a harder push and much more difficult recovery effort - enough so that the IJA decides to push for a 'Northern route' instead of attack against the United States who is now next on the list after Moscow falls

Er. This train has to start by November 1941, and at this date in OTL the Soviets had withstood that blunt end, were preparing for a successful counteroffensive that would push that blunt end back, and had done so while receiving only token support from the British and none from the USA. Nor have points a) to d) in your timeline explained why are the Soviets weaker and therefore unable to perform as per OTL, save for:

a) Germany goes to 24-hour war production in late 1939

Which, if it worked, would at least make German readiness higher and therefore, if the Soviets aren't weaker, at least the Germans should be stronger. Unfortunately, it's not simply a matter of will, as reading Speer would lead you to believe. Yeah, among the reasons why the Germans did not increase production in 1939 there are political considerations, such as that they expected a short war and that such measures would have been not popular. But these considerations are nothing in comparison to the fact that even if they had wanted to do this, the Germans lacked the skilled manpower, the money, and the raw materials to triple production.
 
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Britains-War-Machine-Weapons-Resources/dp/0141026103

for a very different and modern take on British war production using modern business metrics i recommend Edgerton's above work.

having myself undertaken much work in the field (though specialising more in a re-appraisal of British business models 1890-1930) I would warrant that the significant focus on US centric productivity analysis massively biases early study in favour of the Germans, who were making vast amounts of crap. (e.g. Pz i and ii).

there is a complete absence of qualitative analysis in most early study of war materiel study.

the British system has always been both personality dominated and capable of rapidly shifting, quantative and qualitative outputs in a near schizophrenic fashion. Which makes it an utter arse to analyse in a holistic fashion.

you only need to re-roll the dice and you get markedly differing results because one project, system or order gets reshuffled to the top.
 
Please cite something that states British factories, by the late war period, were not operating at full production capacity.

I did. I said the issue was the lack of manpower, and I quoted the source. Read more carefully the posts you're replying to.

the source I mentioned said:
The reduced allocations of labour to munitions industries of December 1943(53)
made it no longer possible to contemplate the old aircraft programmes however realistic. Although the cut in the labour force employed at the end of the year was not great (some 105,000 in all), the expectations of the labour intake which M.A.P. considered necessary for the fulfilment of the existing programme were lowered by 155,000.

See. Look it up, will you.


Further, basic knowledge of industrial production will show that a factory, no matter how many resources you throw at it, has a maximum production ceiling. This means that, no matter how many bombers you cancel, you're not going to get more fighters without building new factories or re-tooling the old Bomber ones.

Yeah, it's so basic I didn't think it was needed to be stated. Note I always said "assuming" a 4:1 replacement ratio is feasible. That's obviously not a given. But I'd like you to note that if the British do need more fighters, for instance, that need will become apparent way before 1944. In other words, they will not even start building the same immense bomber assembly lines they did in OTL, for then having to convert them. They will build start enlarging the facilities to produce fighters - which is something they were doing anyway back in 1940.
And as an additional side note, what do you think is easier, converting factories that produced bombers to produce fighters, or the contrary?


As for your comment on losses on the field, it's extremely relevant and downright bizarre to say otherwise. Let's do some simple math, like you suggested earlier.

It's entirely irrelevant as we are talking about industrial capacity.
However, if you wish to add that factor, then do the math for the germans too. Or do you think that in 1945, the Luftwaffe really had in the field those 40,000 aircraft produced the previous year?
If we get to this, you'll discover another little dirty secret of the Speer ministry's statistics: they were more than happy to count aircraft as having been built even if the Luftwaffe had not yet taken those in force. And the reasons why the Luftwaffe sometimes did not take aircraft in force were such little problems as:
- the aircraft had been counted as finished and produced - then the Allies came and bombed it to smitheerens,
- the aircraft had been counted as finished - but actually it still lacked small details such as guns,
- the aircraft had been counted as finished, and it did have all the parts it needed - but there was no fuel to move it to an operational airfield.

So if you want to add an extraneous aspect to the industrial output as the actual presence of stuff in the field, do so. You'll discover it worsens the mighty Germans' accounting.

Now for the figures you really needed since your first post in this thread:

British aircraft production in 1944, not in number of airframes but in millions of pounds of airframe weight:
208
German aircraft production in 1944, not in number of airframes but in millions of pounds of airframe weight:
175.

Note the sources I'm using (Ritchie, Overy, the British and US after-war reports on strategic bombing, etc.) don't include the Commonwealth production. Once you consider that, you're more on a 220 to 175 ballpark ratio.

The British aircraft industry outproduced the german one, including in 1944. Now, I see you still don't seem able to wrap your mind around the notion that producing a Lancaster means a greater industrial capacity than producing a Bf 109. Once you come to see that, the rest will fallin place.
 
it is a very well made point but it can be nuanced somewhat with reasoning as to WHY commonwealth aircraft production and even overseas procurement should be take in as part of British total economic production because via non-obviously associated levers domestic production has been artificially capped to implement a different economic model.

one which is far harder to gather stats on as it involves a far more dislocated form of analysis, given it triumphed over the centralised German system twice (broadly through resource access and credit) I would argue that even though it lead to less staggering examples of surface productivity growth it had a longer term resilience.
 
German industrial capability was in fact significantly larger
And there's a big difference between "America not involved" & "America denying any aid to Britain". In fact, the first would actually have been better for Britain (given Lend-Lease). That way, 100% of U.S. production is available for Britain, with none going to U.S. forces, in particular in PTO (especially VLR Liberators...)
 
I would also recommend The Blunted sicle from pdf27, where a POD early in 1940 leads to quite a mess for the germans in 1940 and the Entente is en route to winning the war in 1942, without the soviets even getting involved.

With a better strategy in 1940 the Entente could have stopped the german rush to coast and Fall Gelb would have failed mightily.
 
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