DBWI: Heavy Bombers in WWII

The idea of the 'stratigic' bomber attacking ultra deep targets like industry, factories, ect... Is the common proposal. Anyone see these as simply bigger versions of twin engined heavy bombers. Used on the same Strike attacks as the smaller attack planes. That is rail centers, bridges, supply dumps, ports... Any advantages to that?
 

hammo1j

Donor
I can see they might have had larger planes to attack cities had they not outlawed air attacks on civilians in 1923. Heavy civilian losses on both sides meant neither considered it fit women and children were in the firing line. Even Hitler kept to this principle.

It has been argued that the UK could have attacked Germany directly with heavy bombers,
and the second front where British forces fought directly alongside the Soviets was unnecessary.

I wonder if the Soviets would have taken so much of Eastern Europe in that case?
 
I can see they might have had larger planes to attack cities had they not outlawed air attacks on civilians in 1923. Heavy civilian losses on both sides meant neither considered it fit women and children were in the firing line. Even Hitler kept to this principle. ...


Still well over 20 millions civilians did die during the war. 258,000 French civilians, including tens of thousands of women & children died between 1940 & the end of 1944, perhaps 180,000 in 1944 alone. The 15,000+ tactical bombers the Allies had over the battle field in France alone risked the life of any civilian who did not flee far ahead of the combat zone. That the Germans habitually blocked the roads to civilian traffic as the situation deteriorated for their ground forces trapped millions of civilians of all nationalities, including Germans in their last days. It was inevitable that for every hundred German or Axis soldiers who died from air strikes a dozen civilians died as well.
 
Trying to sort out the most accurate but simple ways to translate the existing aircraft production of the WWII era into possible ultra heavy bomber numbers. One important criteria seems to be engines. A rough rule of thumb seems to be one four engined bomber = 2 twins or four singles. Of course thats only a rough guide. Possible adjustments suggest that a survivable single engined tactics bomber like the Soviet Shtormivik, or the Thuderbilot & Typhoon classes would be closer to 3.2-1 & 1.5-1 for the heavier twins like the B25 Mitchell or the He111
 
Remember that the Boeing 307 derived much of its origin in the XB-15 design. Douglas's early DC-4 seems to have influenced the Nakajima G5N and with very little to counter the G8N after the war ended in '46 we considered copying it almost verbatim. Maybe had we been able to drop an atomic weapon or two on Japan the monuments at Kagoshima, Myazaki, and Chiba would not be there. And maybe Chemnitz, Hamburg, and Berlin would have buildings older than 1946 still standing.
 
Um, has everyone forgotten that the Heavy VLR bomber was to be the Zepplins, as far back as WWI, but as Lakehurst proved, they were fragile as all holy hell and slower than snails.
Even with the plan to make Aluminium hulled craft and use Radial engines. I admit, they would have scared the crap out of anyone on the ground, but even a couple of Buffalo fighter planes could have taken one down.
The weight/thrust ratios of rotary engines, as stated in the opening, would not allow anywhere close to either the ranges or payloads needed in heavier than air craft.
 
Um, has everyone forgotten that the Heavy VLR bomber was to be the Zepplins, as far back as WWI, but as Lakehurst proved, they were fragile as all holy hell and slower than snails.
Even with the plan to make Aluminium hulled craft and use Radial engines. I admit, they would have scared the crap out of anyone on the ground, but even a couple of Buffalo fighter planes could have taken one down.
The weight/thrust ratios of rotary engines, as stated in the opening, would not allow anywhere close to either the ranges or payloads needed in heavier than air craft.

I don't think engines were a limitation especially given the development of the Allison V1710 and Packard 1a-2500 even a decade before the war. I think it was a question of willingness to put resources into the project especially after Walther Wever died.
 
... I think it was a question of willingness to put resources into the project especially after Walther Wever died.

This is one of the unknowns here. The examples we have, either the oversized maritime aircraft, like the Mariner, the Blom & Voss contributions, the Japanese Kawanishi types; or the very few experimental ultra heavy bombers, don't give a clear indication how far the technology would have developed had the effort been made. Could things have gone so far the other way we'd never have seen 700kph speeds on strike bombers in 1944-46 & instead wings of fast ultra heavies dominating the battlefields.
 
I don't think engines were a limitation especially given the development of the Allison V1710 and Packard 1a-2500 even a decade before the war. I think it was a question of willingness to put resources into the project especially after Walther Wever died.

Wever clearly ran further opposite the trend than anyone else. One has to speculate of what the German AF could have accomplished in 1939-40 had a portion of the Do17, He 111, Ju88, & Ju87 been 200-300 operational mega bombers? Maybe a prewar maritime strategy for the German AF could have triggered such a thing? A flight of four VLR bombers able to drop spreads of up to sixteen torpedoes in anvil attacks. Larger torpedoes with more range & explosive?
 
Wever clearly ran further opposite the trend than anyone else. One has to speculate of what the German AF could have accomplished in 1939-40 had a portion of the Do17, He 111, Ju88, & Ju87 been 200-300 operational mega bombers? Maybe a prewar maritime strategy for the German AF could have triggered such a thing? A flight of four VLR bombers able to drop spreads of up to sixteen torpedoes in anvil attacks. Larger torpedoes with more range & explosive?

Given the lack of powerful engines anything built would have been a disappointment. But agreed, Weaver was the main force behind this and his death meant no real sponsorship of the project after that...
 
I do t think it's a given the engines will be under powered. Those for existing single engine light and twined heavy strike aircraft saw large increases in raw power during the war.

It would depend on the actual combat weights. Some of the ultra sturdy and armored aircraft tended to look underpowered. Maybe these mega strike planes would carry more weight per engine than usual
 
Carl Schwamberger wrote:
Theories for using mega bombers are so thin on details they seem useless to me.

"Command of the Air" was pretty much the 'bible' of the mega bomber folks and the 'theory' was pretty simple actually if horrifying. Simply put sweeping large numbers of "heavy" bombers dropping large loads of bombs along overlapping strips of any enemy city or industrial area from very high altitude over and over again. Sure you can't claim any 'accuracy' or even discrimination but that WAS the point. Total destruction of enemy cities and industrial areas with total devastation of an unstoppable "artillery bombardment" from the air. Similarly the WWI 'static' trench warfare model assumed that future armies would run into similar situations and the 'bomber stream' could be used the same as artillery (with the stream 'biased' towards the enemy rear of course but casualties would be acceptable) with no risk of 'counter-battery' fire. No Navy could outrun or loose an attacking Air Fleet and no Land Army could stand the constant bombardment such Air Fleets would deliver.
Like I said, simple but horrifying when the idea got out and spread. And admittedly that's exactly what the author, (Giulio Douhet) intended it to be since he assumed that such horror would lead to the inability of nation to make war on nation under the peace of mutual destruction.

Mitchell was a total convert to the concepts which is why he pushed for the 'demonstration' against the Navy, and why it went so badly when the Navy used a primitive radio control and actually had the ships maneuver defensively. Mitchell had to get in very close to generate hits and when the fireworks installed as 'defensive fire' opened up it was pretty clear that none of the bombers that actually GOT hits would have survived the experience. Even though the 'near-misses' caused damage to the hull integrity the Navy quickly proved that standard damage control was sufficient to keep the ship afloat. The fact that Mitchell had to resort to a high temp series of attacks with no break for examination or damage control AND refusal to remove bombers 'shot-down' by the test judges was the only reason Ostfriesland finally went down. And Mitchell was totally unrepentant about how it was done stating that any "competent" government and military would have a "fleet" of thousands of bombers ready on each coast to defeat any "obsolete" Navies assault. When the joint Army-Navy report came back and said the Battleship was still the "backbone" of the Navy he vehemently and inflammatorily 're-wrote' the results in a report by a 'private research firm' (which turned out to be Mitchell to almost no one's surprise) that lambasted the Army, Navy and government of the US for not seeing the 'obvious' superiority of Air Power over any other branch.

No surprising since he'd expected the US government to organize a separate "Air Service" (with him in charge) shortly after WWI and was constantly frustrated and infuriated that this wasn't happening. Ultimately as he pushed harder and harder and went further and further 'out-of-bounds' to push the superiority of "Air Power" to both the Army and the Navy his insubordination finally caught up with him. I think he may have used his court martial and a 'pubic' trial but by this time he was loudly advocating the 'thousand heavy bomber Air Fleet' that would rain destruction on enemy cities and public to bring them to their knees and he was no longer seen in a positive light by either the public or the press.

Meanwhile some people were trying to 'modify' the doctrine with the idea of "super-accurate" bombsights or even radio guided bomb loads but neither was gaining much traction over smaller loads delivered with higher accuracy by low and fast light and medium bombers. Still I think the main thing that 'killed' (it's not dead by any means as this thread shows :) ) the super-heavy, especially prior to WWII was the operational use of air-to-air refueling in the late 30s. As noted the supposed feature of these 'super-heavy' bombers included very high, (invulnerable) altitude, very heavy bomb load per airframe, large amount of defensive armaments and very long range due to large quantities of fuel onboard. Once you can get 'similar' ranges from light and medium bombers which are faster, more accurate and frankly cheaper the 'utility' of the super-heavy, VLR bomber is much more in doubt.

Of course there ARE special cases which we can look at such as the B36, B-40, Fw200, and the B-77 but the for the most part ACTUALLY "special cases" and not what the super-heavy bomber advocates are suggesting. (The B36 is actually the exception :) ) See the problem was once you had thousands of light and medium bombers with the 'ranges' that supposedly required 'super heavy' bombers the only reason for the super-heavies is if for some reason you might not be able to support the more numerous aircraft. And as it looked like England might fall that was in the forefront of America's mind when the initiated the XB-36 program. Of the ones I mentioned it is the ONLY one that started out as and was produced as a 'super-heavy' bomber design the others were all conversions of long range civilian airframes with all the limitations that implies.

And the fact that the B36 ended up spawning several civil and military conversions such as the airliner, cargo aircraft and tanker actually boded well for the design. But they were never produced in the numbers the advocates 'theories' demanded. They needed hundreds over a target, not dozens and the advent of the A and then H Bomb dispersed this even more as now you "only" likely had a single plane. The B36 and B-60 'survived' for as long as they did for two reasons: They could carry the early nuclear weapons initially till medium bombers like the B-47 and B-58 came along and then they could and did carry a HUGE load of conventional bombs (86,000lb/39,000kg in the final versions) which in some ways 'showed' what several of the proposed WWII era 'super-heavy' bombers could have done. (One B-36K carried a bit over what a full squadron of XB-29s could have carried if Boeing had ever gotten them to work properly)

Oh and Carl Schwamberger; the pic of the Ju89 is real not fake here's another one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junke...hiv_Bild_141-0068,_Flugzeug_Junkers_Ju_89.jpg

Not a lot on the project survived the war as it was not pursued in any version but note the low wing which is typical of airliner not 'bomber' construction. The 'bubble' on the tail is often labled a "defensive turret" but begs the question of why only one since a top or bottom turret as well as side gun stations would have been required as well. One suggestion I've heard is it may have been a hose turret for an air-to-air refueling system which the German did experiment with pre-war but did not put into operation. The Farman's were also put into limited production for cargo/passenger and mail flights but few were built before the war started and none as bombers.

Randy
 
PMAC wrote:
Um, has everyone forgotten that the Heavy VLR bomber was to be the Zeppelins, as far back as WWI, but as Lakehurst proved, they were fragile as all holy hell and slower than snails.
Even with the plan to make Aluminum hulled craft and use Radial engines. I admit, they would have scared the crap out of anyone on the ground, but even a couple of Buffalo fighter planes could have taken one down.
The weight/thrust ratios of rotary engines, as stated in the opening, would not allow anywhere close to either the ranges or payloads needed in heavier than air craft.

Eh, not really the US ones were supposed to, (in the last pre-war planned versions anyway) CARRY medium bombers or stage them through in semi-conformal housings into range of the target and recovery them after the run. The US versions, (since they had no hydrogen) were pretty robust with weather the main way to 'take them down' as firing tests showed actually hitting anything vital was difficult at best. Once air-to-air refueling was a thing the justification fell away and once the Navy lost all their airships they never got anymore. Similarly the German's had the hydrogen issue, (again not so much an issue if you keep away from the enemy) and as noted a lack of advocates interested in "strategic" bombing missions let alone 'long-range' missions. The Graff Zeppelin did undertake some Elint mission near England but was incapable of carrying any aircraft and while the Graff Zeppelin II was undergoing modifications to install some semi-conformal bays for testing it was scrapped before that could happen.

Randy
 
Carl Schwamberger wrote:
Wever clearly ran further opposite the trend than anyone else. One has to speculate of what the German AF could have accomplished in 1939-40 had a portion of the Do17, He 111, Ju88, & Ju87 been 200-300 operational mega bombers?

At what cost though? How many of the more 'useful' tactical and Army support aircraft do you give up for these monsters? Sure it sound impressive till you realize that you have to sortie just about all of them to get the sort of 'coverage' (with all the collateral damage that implies) the "strategic" bomber advocates proposed. Sure, 200 "mega-bombers" sounds impressive, (ok honestly? I'd guess it would have anyone on the ground pushing diamonds our their sphincters as they went over, ok it would be impressive) to have the stacked wingtip to wingtip 10 bombers wide and 20 rows in the 'stream' all dropping time-on-target in central London but that's about the only target you could reasonably assume to hit. Again with all that implies for civilian casualties and damage. Look how the world reacted to 'random' hits by V1's and V2s and the outrage over 'no legitimate targets' it caused.

Maybe a prewar maritime strategy for the German AF could have triggered such a thing? A flight of four VLR bombers able to drop spreads of up to sixteen torpedoes in anvil attacks. Larger torpedoes with more range & explosive?

Ok that got me seeing an 'anime' type scene where a half dozen German 'mega-bomber' drops sixteen Long Lance torpedo's each on the British Fleet at Jutland-II "Electric... Ok LOX Boogaloo!"

They're big and slow and frankly I'm wondering if they can reach a distance where a good 'probability of hit' can be generated? Sure medium and light bombers were used to drop torpedoes and with some success but I'm not sure just carrying 'more' would be any better than multiple separate platforms

Randy
 
...

They're big and slow and frankly I'm wondering if they can reach a distance where a good 'probability of hit' can be generated? Sure medium and light bombers were used to drop torpedoes and with some success but I'm not sure just carrying 'more' would be any better than multiple separate platforms

Randy

Really all we can do is extrapolate from the existing light and heavy bombers used during WWII. There is a lot of data, but where that can be taken depends on how one guesses the unknowns or interprets the clear variables. One clear saving with the mega heavies is halving the requirement for flight crew vs the twins. I'm unsure what else might lend to efficiency.

Extrapolating from the four engined maritime patrol/strike aircraft and commercial I strongly suspect the mega heavies would have far more practical range than the existing heavies. The twin engined place lost a lot in bomb load when the fuel storage was beefed up for ultra long range strikes.
 
Really all we can do is extrapolate from the existing light and heavy bombers used during WWII. There is a lot of data, but where that can be taken depends on how one guesses the unknowns or interprets the clear variables. One clear saving with the mega heavies is halving the requirement for flight crew vs the twins. I'm unsure what else might lend to efficiency.

Extrapolating from the four engined maritime patrol/strike aircraft and commercial I strongly suspect the mega heavies would have far more practical range than the existing heavies. The twin engined place lost a lot in bomb load when the fuel storage was beefed up for ultra long range strikes.

Well take the B40 for example or the Fw200. Not the most maneuverable aircraft and even though they had to lose bomb load for the fuel system it wasn't as much as you'd think. As for manning it really depends because they ARE bigger so have more 'area' to cover so it also depends on the defensive guns and arrangements. Arguably cannon are better than MGs but they are beast in space and weight so it might be a wash. Could carry a 'relief' flight crew though which a lot of the light and medium crews would have appreciated once the long missions became possible. One of the biggest 'issues' of the long range flights of the B/A-42 to Japan was the crew fatigue meant trading off between the navigator and pilot for 'breaks' throughout the flight. (Every navigator a copilot as the saying goes) A full copilot and or relief pilot might have been an advantage but not sure that's really a big advantage.

Randy
 
... One of the biggest 'issues' of the long range flights of the B/A-42 to Japan was the crew fatigue meant trading off between the navigator and pilot for 'breaks' throughout the flight. (Every navigator a copilot as the saying goes) A full copilot and or relief pilot might have been an advantage but not sure that's really a big advantage.

Randy

Unlike the B/A-42 & many other nations air forces the US AC & AF heavies like the B10, B18, B25, B26, or A26 did fly with both a pilot and copilot, for long range missions a separate flight engineer and navigator were included. Most of the B25 models were long ranged and had a full navigators station. The B26 as originally designed had the same & select aircraft retained those as group leaders. I think experience with the B10 or B18 vs the A20 or the Martin B21 Maryland pushed the US AF in the direction of two dedicated pilots for most of its later longer ranged aircraft.
 
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