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