German heavy bombers

As for putting more eggs into basket I'm not that sure about it. While heavy bombers were more expensive than light bombers they were also capable of carrying larger load farther than medium/light bombers. When WW II heavy bombers were used in tactical role (for example B-24's in Indochina) they proved to be quite effective.

Yes, very effective, especially in:

1) Killing your own troops. Strategic forces didn't usually work together with the tactical ones and weren't trained for it. Lack of FAC etc resulted in a lot of friendly fire, even in '44.

2) Completely ruining the infrastructure.
IIRC after Cobra the Allies mostly chose to stop tactical bombing with strategic bombers and used fighterbombers and medium bombers instead with lighter bombs.

These two coupled with the results of strategic bombers in a tactical role (generally lousy) ended up with Bomber Command and the American strategic forces mostly doing strategic bombardments, even after Normandy.

So IMHO the effectiveness of strategic bombers in a tactical role is debatable.
 
What would be devastating for the British would have been a few German heavy bombers available in 1940 because they could have attacked British shipping in the Atlantic. A few small number of Fw 200 Condors (25 or 26 produced during 1940, some loses and approximately 25% availability because of structural failures etc.) sank 85 ships over the six months (August 1940 to February 41) despite being very vulnerable essentially civil air liners.

My POD for an early Me 264 was that the RLM agrees to finance an aircraft to carry the Olympic Flame to Japan (OTL the flying fuel tank Me 261) if it is also a potential America Bomber. Thus the Me 264 prototype flies in September 1939. Unfortunately I am not sure if the Me 264 could have been built on that time scale and apparently the test pilots diagreed on whether the Me 264 would have worked without extensive design (tail flutter?).
 
true, but being boring doesn't necissarily make it wrong :D

No, but all these WI's are basically meaningless as they won't change the fact that Earth will be grilled by enlarged Sun in some billion years.... :rolleyes: It's just that whatever WW II what-if there is someone is quick to point out that Axis will lose. Gee, what a surprise...
 
1) Killing your own troops. Strategic forces didn't usually work together with the tactical ones and weren't trained for it. Lack of FAC etc resulted in a lot of friendly fire, even in '44.

That's a question of training, no specific problem in itself. Finnish bomber force, although used almost exclusively against infrastructure targets before, was deployed in 1944 within space of some six months in night-bomber intruder role (during winter), tactical combat air support, interdiction, anti-shipping and reconnaissance roles, all with same airframes (Blenheims and Ju-88's as mainstay) and, with exception of anti-shipping strikes, in level bombing role. Badly trained aircrews (Bomber Command and 8th US Air Force) result in friendly fire.

One should also note that with Second World War technology with competent ground organization ground radar guided raids could be made with quite good accuracy (ie. radar information from front-line AA unit was used to inform the planes about the exact speed, height, direction and location of the bomber formation for more exact bomb release).

2) Completely ruining the infrastructure.
IIRC after Cobra the Allies mostly chose to stop tactical bombing with strategic bombers and used fighterbombers and medium bombers instead with lighter bombs.

One is not required to load bomber with same bombs every time and neither is one required to use similar fuzes every time. In Second World War in addition to VT-fuzes there were also solutions for technologically challenged, such as extension to fuze length...

So IMHO the effectiveness of strategic bombers in a tactical role is debatable.

In Dien Bien Phu, for example, French Navy Privateers (B-24 variant) were prized over French Air Force B-26's because they could be guided in by radar and had very high bombing accuracy due to combination of Norden sight and radar correction information. Even more importantly, their combat load was impressive.
 
No, but all these WI's are basically meaningless as they won't change the fact that Earth will be grilled by enlarged Sun in some billion years.... :rolleyes: It's just that whatever WW II what-if there is someone is quick to point out that Axis will lose. Gee, what a surprise...

Yea but it's a case of how they'll lose.;)
 
A German heavy bomber would NOT change the basic dynamics of the war. Germany would still lose the BoB and ultimately the whole war. If the Germans had put the industrial capacity to produce tens of thousands of 4-engined bombers in the basic B-17/B-24/Lancaster/Halifax category, that would have affected their output of other things like tanks, fighters, and subs.

However, it could result in a WW2 which was very different. An huge force of long-range heavy bombers based in France coupled with adequate long range fighters could have threatened allied air superiority in the eastern atlantic - greatly assisting the U-boat campaign. It is also possible that a force of effective German long-range bombers (and long range fighters) could have led to a situation where the whole channel area was contested air space, eliminating the ability of the allies to marshall the Normanday invasion force and stage their own bombing raids with virtual impunity. "Tit-for-tat" raids could be mounted against allied airbases in Britain, North Africa, and Italy, and propaganda raids against more distant targets (Scotland, Iceland, Northern Ireland, even possibly a one-way run at an American target might be considered. Anything which would affect total allied air superiority in rear areas would slow the mounting of a 2nd front and affect the impact of the UK/US strategic bombing campaign.

On the flip side, it is hard to imagine Germany having the economic ability to mount such an effort on two fronts - and focusing a heavy bomber campaign against the USSR instead would have had much less overall effect. My guess is that a WW2 in which Germany attempted to mount and maintain a serious bomber offensive in the west might actually significantly delay a 2nd front and might slow the allied air assault on the Reich, but would lead to Soviet Tanks in Berlin by 1944. The same effort aimed at the USSR would be even worse - both the Wallies and the Soviets get there before Christmas '44.
 
That's a question of training, no specific problem in itself. Finnish bomber force, although used almost exclusively against infrastructure targets before, was deployed in 1944 within space of some six months in night-bomber intruder role (during winter), tactical combat air support, interdiction, anti-shipping and reconnaissance roles, all with same airframes (Blenheims and Ju-88's as mainstay) and, with exception of anti-shipping strikes, in level bombing role. Badly trained aircrews (Bomber Command and 8th US Air Force) result in friendly fire.

Blenheims and Ju-88s are hardly strategic bombers are they?
And like described above their previous function looks a lot more like how the Allies used medium bombers like the B-25. So, not really similar to true strategic bombers.

Not only was Bomber Command alone much larger in numbers then the Finnish airforce, it was also relatively bigger...
As the losses in the strategic forces were quite high, you'd have to retrain both the guys already operational as the ones still in training.

Wouldn't that make it harder to switch?

Certainly if you realize the Americans and British didn't attempt to switch from daybombing to nightbombing and the other way around because of the difficulties in that (read time it would cost, time in which you wouldn't have a effective bombingcampaign going on).

I'd advise you to look at the problems the Allies had while using strategic bombers in a tactical role, like with Cobra in '44;
Even if the planes were 100% aware of where they are and where they have to go there's still a problem;
you're vectoring large amounts of heavy bombers to a target at most a few kilometers across, with friendly troops within 500 meters or so.


In Dien Bien Phu, for example, French Navy Privateers (B-24 variant) were prized over French Air Force B-26's because they could be guided in by radar and had very high bombing accuracy due to combination of Norden sight and radar correction information. Even more importantly, their combat load was impressive.

Didn't the French even fly in transport aircraft into Dien Bien Phu?
If they are capable of that, the AAA they're facing is less serious then OTL 1940s Britain. Also, again, numbers used by the French in Dien Bien Phu would be much smaller.

Again I'd advise you to look at the problems the Allies had while using strategic bombers in a tactical role, anecdotal evidence of the opposite when used in small numbers (like Finland/Dien Bien Phu) aside.
 
But making these exact technical WI's and just saying that it won't change the outcome of the war is rather boring, isn't it?

But that's the real point. WWII is an extremely boring war. About as exciting as Godzilla vs Bambi.
 
But that's the real point. WWII is an extremely boring war. About as exciting as Godzilla vs Bambi.

Agreed. In AH terms I've often thought that WW II is the usual sequel. Compared to the first movie it has more length (six years vs. four years), muddled plot (two major theaters vs. one), bad guys threatening suspension of disbelief (Stalin and Hitler, neither of them would be believable Bond-villain and lack any character development), more spectacular special effects (atomic bombs, radar etc) but most importantly it lacks the cliffhanger moments. Axis wins, stalemate, Axis lose.

In comparison, WW I has surprising developments, more complex bad guys and cliffhanger moments right into the end. :cool:
 
I'm curious. If the conventional wisdom is that the Allied bombing offensive did not hurt Germany's industrial output, then how can a "Ural-bomber" damage the Soviet industrial output enough to affect the war in the east?
 
I suspect that conventional heavy bombers would have been a marginally more effective use of Nazi Resources than the V1 or V2. If they were in addition it would mean some other part of Hilter's war machine would be less effective- that might have a real knock on in the timing of the defeat of monsterous evil
 

Peisander

Banned
The Mosquito night fighter would have had no problem with the speed and altitude of the Greif.

Historically though the Mosquito nightfighters did have huge difficulty intercepting the He-177 during the Steinbock raids of early 1944.

The He-177 formations climbed over Europe and then entered shallow high speed dives over Britain. British nightfighters found it impossible to intercept them.

http://www.century-of-flight.net/Aviation history/photo_albums/timeline/ww2/Heinkel He 177.htm

http://www.transportbookshop.co.uk/...itz-on-britain-january-to-may-1944-4595-p.asp
 
Historically though the Mosquito nightfighters did have huge difficulty intercepting the He-177 during the Steinbock raids of early 1944.

The He-177 formations climbed over Europe and then entered shallow high speed dives over Britain. British nightfighters found it impossible to intercept them.

http://www.century-of-flight.net/Aviation history/photo_albums/timeline/ww2/Heinkel He 177.htm

http://www.transportbookshop.co.uk/...itz-on-britain-january-to-may-1944-4595-p.asp

*sigh*
Thread ressurection...

Quote
On the night of February 13, 1944 as part of Operation Steinbock, fourteen He 177 taxied out on a bombing mission, thirteen took off, one suffering a burst tire, eight promptly returned to base with overheating or burning engines. Of the four He 177s which did reach London one was shot down by night fighters

Oddly I find a 25% loss rate rather different from 'imposssible to intercept them'
 
Top