German Weapons and Tactical Decisions in the 1930's

[Krases]

Inspired by a similar thread about Japanese Navy Decisions. This discussion is to mostly focus on specific armaments decisions and decisions on tactics. The same resource limitations still apply, Hitler will be less involved in specific decisions about armaments but not totally un-involved. Strategically, the war will still roughly follow OTL, but different tactics and strategies can be used.

For example, instead of bombing cities during the battle of Britain, perhaps it would be much more advantageous to assault Liverpool and cut off Lend Lease shipments and food supplies.

For tactics, during Barbarossa a much smaller front could have been used, focusing on the south or the North, but not both.

 

[TeaDaemon]

To take one of your examples to pieces, in the Battle of Britain it wouldn't have been Lend-Lease, but there were still a lot of shipments of troops, food, and equipment coming across the Atlantic. Unfortunately for the 'flatten Liverpool' strategy (which some might say was overall a good thing for the UK - sorry to any Scousers on here, just having a bit of an old joke at your expense), it's beyond the range of escorting fighters, and were it to be taken out there's quite a few other major ports on the west coast of the UK, like Manchester (via the Manchester Ship Canal), Glasgow, Swansea, Cardiff, and Bristol. If necessary, you might also see an expansion of port facilities and the railway line to Milford Haven, a large, sheltered anchorage surrounded by steep hills and mountains that could (if necessary) have rather a lot of AA guns emplaced on them. Or possibly dredging of the River Severn and an expansion of Gloucester Docks. So, knocking out Liverpool wouldn't significantly affect the ability to bring stuff or people into the UK, at least not for more than a very short time.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

To take one of your examples to pieces, in the Battle of Britain it wouldn't have been Lend-Lease, but there were still a lot of shipments of troops, food, and equipment coming across the Atlantic. Unfortunately for the 'flatten Liverpool' strategy (which some might say was overall a good thing for the UK - sorry to any Scousers on here, just having a bit of an old joke at your expense), it's beyond the range of escorting fighters, and were it to be taken out there's quite a few other major ports on the west coast of the UK, like Manchester (via the Manchester Ship Canal), Glasgow, Swansea, Cardiff, and Bristol. If necessary, you might also see an expansion of port facilities and the railway line to Milford Haven, a large, sheltered anchorage surrounded by steep hills and mountains that could (if necessary) have rather a lot of AA guns emplaced on them. Or possibly dredging of the River Severn and an expansion of Gloucester Docks. So, knocking out Liverpool wouldn't significantly affect the ability to bring stuff or people into the UK, at least not for more than a very short time.

Except Liverpool could be and was bombed at night.
Also port expansion and building new infrastructure to support it takes a lot of time, much more than Britain has to avoid material shortages. Also any production taken away for expansion purposes is taken away from war production.

 

[Krases]

Except Liverpool could be and was bombed at night.
Also port expansion and building new infrastructure to support it takes a lot of time, much more than Britain has to avoid material shortages. Also any production taken away for expansion purposes is taken away from war production.

I read somewhere that during one night bombing, the British shot down almost as many of their own planes as they did German planes. The British took a long time to create night fighting strategies and their anti-air could barely reach German planes early in the conflict.

I also wonder how quickly Germany can turn around to bomb more ports, like Manchester, Glasgow, Swansea, Cardiff, and Bristol. Maybe strike Liverpool with a concentrated force, then hit the other targets two at a time. How quickly can those bombers be given new missions to hit those targets?

This is also an armaments question. Drop tanks could be introduced at this time to give fighter escorts. Perhaps fewer Stuka's and more medium bombers could be used.

 

[phx1138]

An obvious one: don't require the Ju-88 to be a dive bomber.

Another option: pick the He-112 over the Bf-109.

Pushing the envelope (& following another thread here): copy the slanted armor of the BT series tanks on the Pz3 (& make it a bit bigger, to allow the 75mm L/48).

It would be good for U-boats if the snorkel was standard at war's start, too. (Better still of Dönitz realized he didn't need to micromanage...)

 

[deathscompanion1]

An obvious one: don't require the Ju-88 to be a dive bomber.

Another option: pick the He-112 over the Bf-109.

Pushing the envelope (& following another thread here): copy the slanted armor of the BT series tanks on the Pz3 (& make it a bit bigger, to allow the 75mm L/48).

It would be good for U-boats if the snorkel was standard at war's start, too. (Better still of Dönitz realized he didn't need to micromanage...)

I've heard that they did consider a sloped Pz3 but decided the space lost was not worth the added protection.

 

[TeaDaemon]

I read somewhere that during one night bombing, the British shot down almost as many of their own planes as they did German planes. The British took a long time to create night fighting strategies and their anti-air could barely reach German planes early in the conflict.

I also wonder how quickly Germany can turn around to bomb more ports, like Manchester, Glasgow, Swansea, Cardiff, and Bristol. Maybe strike Liverpool with a concentrated force, then hit the other targets two at a time. How quickly can those bombers be given new missions to hit those targets?

This is also an armaments question. Drop tanks could be introduced at this time to give fighter escorts. Perhaps fewer Stuka's and more medium bombers could be used.

With the bombs in use in 1940, ports are quite a hard target to knock out for any length of time, the same goes for railways and canals. Probably the worst that can be done is to sink a vessel alongside, which blocks up that section of dock until it can be salvaged (which will be fairly easy as normally there isn't enough depth of water to allow the vessel to capsize or fully submerge).

Attacking ports isn't a bad option, but I think you'd need a POD that resulted in a substantially stronger luftwaffe before there was any noticeable effect on the UK at the time.

Taking a more general view of 'is there a way for the luftwaffe to reduce the UK's capability to build weapons/feed itself/move troops around?', you run into the problem that the UK in 1940 has an extensive network of railways and canals (road infrastructure isn't as good, but still on a par with most of europe at the time), a lot of large ports attached to said transport links, and manufacturing is spread out, with factories in most major cities. Some of the more vital work is being carried out in 'shadow factories', which are mostly located underground to reduce the impact of bombing (one of them was the aircraft factory located at the Austin motor works at Longbridge, near where I grew up, across the other side of the city was the Castle Bromwich Spitfire factory). Basically, whilst it's possible to concentrate on any particular facility and knock it out of action for a while, it's difficult to do enough damage to enough facilities to substantially affect the course of the war.

 

[NothingNow]

Another option: pick the He-112 over the Bf-109.

Eh, the initial He 112s were actually pretty bad, so the decision to go with the Messerschmitt design was a sound one. the He112B on the other hand, was a pretty decent design.

Now, adopting a 12-13mm Heavy machine gun with a decent cyclic rate (800-900 round/min) as their primary fighter armament in the 30's would've been very useful.