Do26 in the Atlantic War

So, interesting thread and discussion. As I understand it, here is the range of the OTL Dornier Do 26. Based upon an un-refueled range of ~5,500 miles, shown on a map of the N Atlantic. I suck at hand tracing a custom flight plan, but for range determinations on a map, this should do nicely, right?

9Q4CAq2l.jpg

As we can see, if I didn't screw this up, even without the refueling stop posited in the OP, the aircraft has the ability to cover virtually all of the N. Atlantic ocean one would expect to want/need to scout. Although this image has the planes taking off and landing in Norway, it is not hard to imagine that the Germans might realise that Iron ore shipments might need to be protected, and that might mean a German occupation on Norway, and such a realization would predate the actual aircraft by a decade or two, so...

If the Germans plan to take Norway, then basing aircraft there has obvious advantages, not limited to long range land based naval recon.
After DoW ot was the KM recommendation to acquire bases in Norway.
The ability to project power in Norway against French opposition was a major reason for expanding the KM. Makes sense
 
LUFTWAFFE OVER AMERICA reports LW discussions over JU290/390 plans. In these plans the calculation was for one sortie per day for every 20-30 planes built per year. So building one per month gets you only one sortie every two days.

The topic of refueling at sea from U-Boat was discussed a number of times but turned down as being to risky...as was inflight refueling.
Well I’ll have to consult these sortie rates as to how the compare to mostly uneventfull cruising, but thanks forbruge source. Certainly only a minority of total planes will be available.
The refuelling at sea is not the same as refuelling from a Fjord?
The ability to do this without interdiction will be much easier in 1939-41 than in 1943-45 I presume?
 
Well clearly, adequate oppprtunities existed for something post Fall of France. If it should be a naval strategy before that However...
That was and is the idea with do26, or 24 for that matter, refuelling on million cows in Greenland. Any thoughts on that idea?

my scenario is always they need to operate from Greenland, but that needs to start pre-war so they can have dozens of boltholes.

the idea of landing plane in random fjord and waiting for u-boat to turn up was ridiculed by Milch when proposed
 
my scenario is always they need to operate from Greenland, but that needs to start pre-war so they can have dozens of boltholes.

the idea of landing plane in random fjord and waiting for u-boat to turn up was ridiculed by Milch when proposed
Maybe Milch did get a few decisions wrong. Or he wasnt really backing the “bomb America” concept

PS. What is the source for this?
 
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my scenario is always they need to operate from Greenland, but that needs to start pre-war so they can have dozens of boltholes.

the idea of landing plane in random fjord and waiting for u-boat to turn up was ridiculed by Milch when proposed

Maybe Milch did get a few decisions wrong. Or he wasnt really backing the “bomb America” concept

"There is also an idea of landing in Greenland and waiting for a U-boat to turn up with fuel. I really don't know where they get these ideas from ..." Luftwaffe Over America (cheesy title great book.) have the idea they DID embrace idea of bombing US mainly to force "wartime measures" but also fully grasped the difficulties involved.

still think they could have launched operations from Greenland and it would have been worthwhile but it would be major undertaking.
 
Well, then to, let's remember the enigma disaster. Wolfpacks cannot find convoyes, scouts find them instead. Convoys coincidently by chance turning and avoiding wolfpacks, over and over again, but now being seen by air scouts doing this? Good bye unsuspecting German HQ, hello to new codes and doctrine...
 
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The problem with refuelling flying-boats from milch-cows is that it isn't enough. The British and Americans found that such aircraft were real maintenance-hogs, and an individual plane (Sunderland or Catalina) would only fly a couple of sorties per week. The idea that just topping-up the fuel tanks would render the Do26 good-to-go is extremely unrealistic: there'd be lots of minor faults that would cause the a/c to become unsafe to fly, and that's not counting any losses due to enemy action.
 
I seem to remember LUFTWAFFE OVER AMERICA they reported that the KM objected the most to these proposals, but were desperate for ANY long range recon planes.
 
Just some information on Sunderland and Catalina sortie-rates:

Coastal Command sorties per month, per a/c: 1941/1942/1943

Catalina: 2.88/2.22/3.96
Sunderland: 3.91/2.83/3.37

So less than one sortie per week.
 
I seem to remember LUFTWAFFE OVER AMERICA they reported that the KM objected the most to these proposals, but were desperate for ANY long range recon planes.

transport fleet was starved for aircraft also but not for duties, JU-252 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_Ju_252 with smaller load had very long range, of course it was cancelled.

POD that transport fleet addressed (instead of heavy bomber HE-177) might leave more than handful of aircraft to range over Atlantic? (FW-200, JU-252)
 
"There is also an idea of landing in Greenland and waiting for a U-boat to turn up with fuel. I really don't know where they get these ideas from ..." Luftwaffe Over America (cheesy title great book.) have the idea they DID embrace idea of bombing US mainly to force "wartime measures" but also fully grasped the difficulties involved.

still think they could have launched operations from Greenland and it would have been worthwhile but it would be major undertaking.

The problem with refuelling flying-boats from milch-cows is that it isn't enough. The British and Americans found that such aircraft were real maintenance-hogs, and an individual plane (Sunderland or Catalina) would only fly a couple of sorties per week. The idea that just topping-up the fuel tanks would render the Do26 good-to-go is extremely unrealistic: there'd be lots of minor faults that would cause the a/c to become unsafe to fly, and that's not counting any losses due to enemy action.

Just some information on Sunderland and Catalina sortie-rates:

Coastal Command sorties per month, per a/c: 1941/1942/1943

Catalina: 2.88/2.22/3.96
Sunderland: 3.91/2.83/3.37

So less than one sortie per week.

These quotes touch upon the same point. Its not just a handful of planes and the KM would have stellar intelligence over the Atlantic. We would talk 1-200 and the need to maintain such numbers.
Hence, its not a POD you can just handwaive without anyother costs

Well, then to, let's remember the enigma disaster. Wolfpacks cannot find convoyes, scouts find them instead. Convoys coincidently by chance turning and avoiding wolfpacks, over and over again, but now being seen by sir scouts doing this? Good bye unsuspecting German HQ, hello to new codes and doctrine...

Now this is an intersting butterfly. The better German intelligence, the more troublesome the use of enigma messages. Why do the convoys always turn South-East when there is a submarine to the North-East and vice-versa. IOTL they just new they missed some or that the didnt. It may not necessarily lead to disovery that the codes are being read. Its just not possible to use the information that often.

Now, what we are missing here is a discussion about what the effects would be if there were two hundred less Do17's and 100 more Do-24 and a handful of Do-26 in 1939 rising to 200 in 1940-41?
 
Its not just a handful of planes and the KM would have stellar intelligence over the Atlantic. We would talk 1-200 and the need to maintain such numbers.
Hence, its not a POD you can just handwaive without anyother costs

... what we are missing here is a discussion about what the effects would be if there were two hundred less Do17's and 100 more Do-24 and a handful of Do-26 in 1939 rising to 200 in 1940-41?

my scenario would be employ DO-24 and FW-200 scrapping the BV-138, transports JU-252/352 and JU-290. that should leave enough diesel engines and overall resources (and capacity) to build a limited number of long range DO-26s

have suggested twin fuselage HE-111Z and JU-488 as good additional aircraft since they used (largely) existing parts.
 
Remember the core of Donitz U-Boat war- was using radio decoding of merchant ship traffic through the end of 1943. This generated mass "traffic pattern analysis" to initially map out the numerous allied convoy routes and frequency. From late 1941 through to 1944 they were able to detect 1/2 of all convoys in the North Atlantic. However 1/2 of these detections were by U-Boat wolf packs themselves vectored into the vicinity and only they were in a position to actually attack these convoys.

This whole process was a double edged sword- since the more the Wolf Packs had to communicate to coordinate sweeps and congregate too attack- the more radio chatter they generated. That generated hundreds of transmissions a day ,which helped the allies detect these marauding wolf packs using HF/DF to divert convoys and eventually crack the KM code to get a head of this threat. But much of this was avoidable.

When Donitz staged a prewar exercise pitting 20 U-Boat's vs a convoy -his exercise was criticised by his colleague Furbringer , because the allies would eventually deploy enough ASW assets to drive the Wolf Packs underwater , thus neutralizing the threat. Furbringer also warned that radio communications had to be kept to a minimum or risk detection by HF/DF. He recommended the KM & LW operate as a team. I imagine B-Dienst would providing approximate convoy locations [historically within about 150,000 nm^2 area] and direct the MPA to search this area and locate/shadow these convoys -vectoring in Wolf Packs, by broadcasting the convoys position. Thus minimizing the risk.
 
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my scenario would be employ DO-24 and FW-200 scrapping the BV-138, transports JU-252/352 and JU-290. that should leave enough diesel engines and overall resources (and capacity) to build a limited number of long range DO-26s

have suggested twin fuselage HE-111Z and JU-488 as good additional aircraft since they used (largely) existing parts.
That would work post 1940? I presume, bit not 1938-40?
 
my scenario would be employ DO-24 and FW-200 scrapping the BV-138, transports JU-252/352 and JU-290. that should leave enough diesel engines and overall resources (and capacity) to build a limited number of long range DO-26s

have suggested twin fuselage HE-111Z and JU-488 as good additional aircraft since they used (largely) existing parts.

That would work post 1940? I presume, bit not 1938-40?

pardon? the DO-24 and BV-138 were introduced at the same time, the latter got the contract but Dornier later supplanted it. FW-200 was introduced earlier than JU-252.

there were couple dozen BV-138 built prior to war, over 100 DO-24s pre-war but most for Dutch. have no idea the limits of Dornier direct production in Swiss facility. (guess there is option for Blohm+Voss to be subcontractor? had they not gotten the contract)
 
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