I agree about the usage of strategic bombers...maritime role is paramount. I was reading that the allies produced 15000 -25000 bombers per year so the loss of a few thousand was a drop in the bucket. Even still they could never muster more than 5000 bombers on any given day since a large number of damaged bombers were just left about while they tried to repair them.
Based on that , even a optimistic 2000-3000 He-177 production, its unlikely to allow more than 400-600 bombers on any given day. Now given the bomber loss rate demonstrated in 1944 , it would not be productive to waste such a small bomber force on trying to ID and hammer UK industries. A better strategy would be to hit shipping instead.
According to Churchills war diaries the UK relied on 15 million tons of supplies shipped to it each year in peace time and another 16 million more in war time. About 1/3 of this total was fuel, so britain was extremely vulnerable to blockading. From what I can gather the UK merchant fleet was about 4000 ships before the war to which I guess the common wealth could supply 1000 and Norway added another 1000 when she was overrun. Thats 6000 not counting the USA which could add another 4000-6000 mid war. The UBoat campaign while it was quite effective in the beginning of the war at best matched the yearly shipyard building rate of 1.25 million tons. So no matter how many UBoats you add they would never have been able to stop this force.
YOu can envisage an entire strategy to defeat the western allies based on blockading the UK as a launch point for any invasion etc. In addition to the supplies needed for common wealth troops , the USA would also have to ship 64 million tons over two years in the build up to Normandy. Thats a shipping requirement of roughly
30million tons in 1941
40 million tons in 1942
50 million tons in 1943
70million tons in 1944
So one could theorise that if 30million tons get through, only strategic defence is possible while if 40 million tons can be mustered an invasion like in North Africa can be pulled off and 50 million tons = Italy scale invasion , while it requires the 70 million to pull of a DDay level invasion.
The strategy should then be to remove 10-20 million tons delivery per year or more than 10 times what was sunk! It should be noted that a damaged ship is out of operation for months if not years awaiting repairs and thus it may not be nessesary to sink the ship. It may be that damaging the ships is sufficent to remove them from the delivery bridge.
Historically the Germans also relied on 150-200 maritime bombers/patrol planes on any given day, across all theaters . So going to the 600 figure could atleast tripple the destruction rate from the sky. Any one got any figures for the yearly rate at which allied shipping was attacked by Luftwaffe planes?
More Condor bombers in the recon role and coordinating role [Uboats surface ships and Luftwaffe] could be vital in this role, but until a long range decent bomber firing ASMs , appears, this sink/damage rate could never be achieved by warships alone. Had the prewar german guided missile programs been give their due , they could have resulted in a "X-1 Fritx X" ASM by 1941 to allow high altitude Condors to not only Co-ordinate intercepts but contribute to the shooting.
From what I can determine the Germans produced about 1400 x FritzX ASM and ~ 12,000 Hs-293 ASMs. But at most 1/4 of these missiles were ever used? One case sited 500 sorties with Hs-293 equipped planes resulted in 500 missile being fired and 50% hit rate on 83 ships [20%] damaged of which some were sunk. Given a high enough priority these ASM could have been produced at a rate of 20-30000 per year netting 2000-3000 ships damaged/sunk per year....provided of course you develope manufacture and field sufficent numbers of maritime bombers.
I wonder how much time could have been shaved on the He-177 production start, if the bomber had been built as a standard 4 engined bomber with no divebombing , from the start?
The Do-217 is another ideal platform for high altitude recon/strike role closer to home.