Could Germany have built a strategic bomber force?

A few years before the start of WW2 German strategists had considered putting some aircraft production into creating a strategic bomber force. After the main drive behind the idea died in 1936 (General Walther Wever) the efforts to create such a thing died with him and production went to dive-bombers and concentration of destroying enemy aircraft with a doctrine of close support instead of focusing on industry.

Could such a force be constructed if Walther had lived longer? What effects would it have as the war played out?
 

Ian_W

Banned
Yes, they could have.

It would have been roughly the same size, and roughly as effective as the British strategic bomber force in 1939-1942.

Assuming one four engine bomber costs the same to build as 3 single engine bombers, the Heer is going to miss the dive bombers a lot.
 
Assuming one four engine bomber costs the same to build as 3 single engine bombers, the Heer is going to miss the dive bombers a lot.

How would the lack of those dive-bombers be in the campaigns up to 1941? I know that it would have sever effects especially in Norway and France but I figured it would have more direct changes for Norway then France. Could it have made either be a failure?
 
One thing you always have to remember was Nazi Germany did not have the resources for a long war, so building more of one thing meant fewer of another thing. A strategic bomber force implies that you're playing the long game and Germany needed to get a win as quickly as possible. That's how the whole blitzkrieg type of fighting came into being.
 
The Germans did construct a strategic bomber force in OTL, it's just that it's development was screwed up by a bizarre engine configuration and a requirement introduced after Wever's death that it possess the ability to dive bomb. See Wikipedia's article on the He 177. If the question is changed to "Could Germany have built an effective strategic bomber force?"... see my sig.:)
 
Could have? Yes. They also could have planned for enough REAL dive bombers to provide the support needed by the ground forces, but that would require a solid long-range plan, instead of production and major goals being governed by whatever whim the Fuhrer happened to wake up with.
 
I don't think strategic bombing would really help them; what they absolutely needed to win the war was oil, and the only place they're going to get it is in the Caucasus. Only way to get that is with highly mobile forces, which means tactical air forces, not strategic. Only way strategic bombers help them win the war is if it can reduce allied factory output for tactical forces more than the redirection of German production towards strategic bombers cuts into the German tactical air force. Maybe they would have been better off scrapping the U Boats altogether (I don't think there was any chance of them forcing Britain out of the war even when things were at their best) if they wanted to beef up their tac air or start a strategic air force.
 
Not without sacrificing the tactical elements of their air force to the point their unable to win the short war, much less a long one in which strategic bombing can play any kind of role.
 
Germany have had strategic bomber force, comprised mostly by He 111 bombers. What they lacked were long range fighters that can perform.
 
Germany kept producing obsolescent pre war bombers long after their peaks. I doubt building a decent 4 engine bomber fleet rather than building he111s, stukas, do17s after 1941 would damage German prospects in the war.
 
far better off if they had FW-200 in numbers at beginning of war, not more overall just earlier, so they would have 275 - 300 of those.

build one large Junkers 89/90/290/390/252/352 et al which would evolve with rear loading ramp, long range, well armed, if they had not gone with the multiple tracks they probably could have finished 300 - 400.

scrap whole HE-177 program and use the wasted engines to alleviate some of the shortage of DB engines
 
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