He-177 Griffin produced as 4 engine bomber

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Deleted member 1487

Based on what happened to the JU-88 that should have only added 6 months
The He-177 required MUCH more modification than the Ju88.

The problem was that the Germans didn't have ANY operational or production experience with a REAL heavy duty 4 engine bomber

Actually producing the DO-19 and then going to the HE-177 (in 4 prop layout) would be a better and more natural progression with a much shorter development curve than producing a couple prototypes, getting pissed of that aviation had advanced over the previous 30 months and starting over

If Germany is going to get something useful out of a 4 engine bomber its in 1940
The point of the prototypes of the Ju89 and Do19 were to provide experience with experimental units both to make technical advising for the He-177 easier and to develop tactics and start creating crews with experience when the next generation bombers rolled off the assemble lines. As it was the DO19 was too much to invest in early on and Wever and Wimmer didn't think it was worth the price to start with it only to retool and go to the He177 later. It was a gamble, and we will never know if Wever and Wimmer would have been able to pull it off.
 
Assuming the Germans shifted a/c production to a decent 4 engine bomber by NOT producing some of the crap they did (not really hitting fighter production much if at all), the main benefit will be over Russia. Daylight raids over the UK would be way too expensive, and between CAM ships early and CVE's a little later, maritime patrol gets expensive. Longer ranger/heavier bombers can hit Russian oil fields more effectively, and also hitting the relocated Russian factories is likely to cause more production disruptions as these were often very jury-rigged to begin with. Also hitting transportation hubs like Moscow rail yards etc is doable better and even as the front line moves west...

Not going to change the outcome, but may move the line between west & east a little east.
 
I think 1100 He177s were built and they sucked. If they were built with spaced engines then they would not have caught fire so often and been more serviceable so would have achieved more. In this case more would have been produced.

I think it's a fallacy to think that if the He177 "uncoupled" was built from the start the Luftwaffe would be worse off. The Luftwaffe built all sorts of obsolescent shitheaps long past their use-by date. If the resources used to build the Me110, Do17, Ju87, Fw200 and He111 long after their obsolescence dates in about 1941-2 were instead used to build He177 "uncoupleds" then overall the Luftwaffe would be stronger and would be able to undertake missions that it couldn't IOTL.

The Stuka was a good dive bomber. A bit obsolete, but it did very well. It was feared in the Eastern Front, wasn't it?
 
While people may disagree over the Do-19 & Ju-89, no one is saying ASB! So though the decision to go with e.g. the Do-19 (with better engines) - instead of the Do-17 (whether completely or substantially reduced) maybe unlikely - it is not implausible!
For example to counter the comment by Goering of -'Hitler does not care how big they are only how many bombers there are' a flight is organised of the Do-19 over Hitler's retreat, Hitler's jaw drops with the obscene size of the aircraft and thinks of the impact such a sight will have on the French!
So Yes, with experience with a four-engined bomber, the next generation will follow suit.
Dornier, may participate in He-177 production otherwise concentrate on flying boats, Junkers, will still be involved with the Ju-88 family, Heinkel will have the He-177 to concentrate on - with the He-111 being phased out. And Focke-Wolfe may still be building the Condor, but as a transport aircraft rather than as a military aircraft.
Whilst, the British were able to counter the German night bombing system - X-Gerat (?), in the East this will give the Lw the edge.
 
The Stuka was a good dive bomber. A bit obsolete, but it did very well. It was feared in the Eastern Front, wasn't it?

As a dive bomber, it was accurate, but extremely vulnerable. IIRC, by the time of Operation Barbarossa, it had been almost entirely relegated to the close-support role, where it did very well when enemy fighters weren't around.
 
The Luftwaffe built all sorts of obsolescent shitheaps long past their use-by date. If the resources used to build the Me110, Do17, Ju87, Fw200 and He111 long after their obsolescence dates in about 1941-2 were instead used to build He177 "uncoupleds" then overall the Luftwaffe would be stronger and would be able to undertake missions that it couldn't IOTL.

The Bf 110 was not obsolete. It was simply used incorrectly; for example in the Battle of Britain it was used for close bomber escort, which it was horrible at, but for bomber intercepting or "boom and zoom" tactics it could be very effective. Do 17 production was halted in summer 1940, which seems reasonable to me. See my above post for the Stuka, and the Fw 200's only significant flaw was its accident rate--out in the Atlantic, with fighter opposition usually sparse, it did pretty well. And the robust He 111 would have been replaced earlier were it not for the delays in the Ju 288 program, although the reason why the Luftwaffe did not replace it with the Ju 88 and Do 217 eludes me.
 

Deleted member 1487

The problem was that the Germans didn't have ANY operational or production experience with a REAL heavy duty 4 engine bomber
Using an inferior, underpowered unit isn't going to help. The Ural Bomber prototypes were unusable in combat, so wasting limited resources on producing them is going to hurt general rearmament, which is exactly why Wever shit-canned them for better designs in the future once German aviation designs improved.

Actually producing the DO-19 and then going to the HE-177 (in 4 prop layout) would be a better and more natural progression with a much shorter development curve than producing a couple prototypes, getting pissed of that aviation had advanced over the previous 30 months and starting over
In a world of infinite resources, maybe. But Germany in 1936 had limited aluminum and could not waste it on an inferior model when the future could produce an actual combat-worthy design. In fact starting over after producing the Do-19 or Ju-89 (the better of the two BTW) would be far more costly and not really advance doctrine or knowledge all that much, as German air and ground crews would have to relearn everything on new models, not to mention production facilities that would have to retool, retrain, and relearn how to produce a new unit. If Germany were the US it could afford to do that, but this is 1930's Germany that has to make do and only produce units that could be competitive. As it was neither model lived up remotely to design specs. All that could be gained from them was the experience of what NOT to in designing them. In fact, just accepting the prototypes and working them over for ideas was the best that could be made of the designs.

If Germany is going to get something useful out of a 4 engine bomber its in 1940

I heavily disagree with this. Germany had other options in 1940, such as masses of proven medium bombers. The problem was the Britain could not be defeated by strategic bombing, nor could Germany afford the investments that the US and Britain made in that arena (during the war to boot, not prewar). Instead Britain was much more vulnerable at sea, thanks to her island status requiring vast imports to defend herself, let alone take the offensive. Instead of investing in techniques, technologies, and numbers of useful aircraft for naval blockading Britain, it lost the ability to force Britain to the table.

Instead, just as Wever and his staff envisioned, the heavy bomber was for use against the SOVIETS! In 1941 and beyond is where the 4-engine bomber is actually useful. The Moscow Oblast has massive amounts of vulnerable industry (forget the Ural industries, targeting would be a nightmare), which OTL were never even targeted. Hell, go after Baku and disrupt Soviet oil production, again something never attempted. There were reasons beyond just the lack of a suitable bomber, including Goering's shitty leadership and a string of terrible CoS's of the Luftwaffe.

Also part of the reason Wever pushed off production is that he didn't expect war before 1943 and thought he had time before the war to prepare. No one expected war that early. But assuming 1940 is when serial production ramps up, Hitler started the war just about the time to take advantage of the new bombers. Obviously they wouldn't really become truly effective until 1942 by which time they would have had more experience using the weapon, but still its a hell of a lot better than OTL where the Soviet industry was left untouched.
 

Deleted member 1487

The Bf 110 was not obsolete. It was simply used incorrectly; for example in the Battle of Britain it was used for close bomber escort, which it was horrible at, but for bomber intercepting or "boom and zoom" tactics it could be very effective. Do 17 production was halted in summer 1940, which seems reasonable to me. See my above post for the Stuka, and the Fw 200's only significant flaw was its accident rate--out in the Atlantic, with fighter opposition usually sparse, it did pretty well. And the robust He 111 would have been replaced earlier were it not for the delays in the Ju 288 program, although the reason why the Luftwaffe did not replace it with the Ju 88 and Do 217 eludes me.
True. Due to its underpowered engines it was only really maneuverable near its top speed. Still, looking at its OTL loss ratio during the BoB it did better than the Bf109.
 
Using an inferior, underpowered unit isn't going to help. The Ural Bomber prototypes were unusable in combat, so wasting limited resources on producing them is going to hurt general rearmament, which is exactly why Wever shit-canned them for better designs in the future once German aviation designs improved.


In a world of infinite resources, maybe. But Germany in 1936 had limited aluminum and could not waste it on an inferior model when the future could produce an actual combat-worthy design. In fact starting over after producing the Do-19 or Ju-89 (the better of the two BTW) would be far more costly and not really advance doctrine or knowledge all that much, as German air and ground crews would have to relearn everything on new models, not to mention production facilities that would have to retool, retrain, and relearn how to produce a new unit. If Germany were the US it could afford to do that, but this is 1930's Germany that has to make do and only produce units that could be competitive. As it was neither model lived up remotely to design specs. All that could be gained from them was the experience of what NOT to in designing them. In fact, just accepting the prototypes and working them over for ideas was the best that could be made of the designs.



I heavily disagree with this. Germany had other options in 1940, such as masses of proven medium bombers. The problem was the Britain could not be defeated by strategic bombing, nor could Germany afford the investments that the US and Britain made in that arena (during the war to boot, not prewar). Instead Britain was much more vulnerable at sea, thanks to her island status requiring vast imports to defend herself, let alone take the offensive. Instead of investing in techniques, technologies, and numbers of useful aircraft for naval blockading Britain, it lost the ability to force Britain to the table.

Instead, just as Wever and his staff envisioned, the heavy bomber was for use against the SOVIETS! In 1941 and beyond is where the 4-engine bomber is actually useful. The Moscow Oblast has massive amounts of vulnerable industry (forget the Ural industries, targeting would be a nightmare), which OTL were never even targeted. Hell, go after Baku and disrupt Soviet oil production, again something never attempted. There were reasons beyond just the lack of a suitable bomber, including Goering's shitty leadership and a string of terrible CoS's of the Luftwaffe.

Also part of the reason Wever pushed off production is that he didn't expect war before 1943 and thought he had time before the war to prepare. No one expected war that early. But assuming 1940 is when serial production ramps up, Hitler started the war just about the time to take advantage of the new bombers. Obviously they wouldn't really become truly effective until 1942 by which time they would have had more experience using the weapon, but still its a hell of a lot better than OTL where the Soviet industry was left untouched.


inferior and underpowered compared to the HE-177 or 277 is self evident due to the 3 year difference in design date...the B-17 was inferior and underpowered versus a B-29 but that doesn't mean it still didn't put in good service all the way through 1945

Its better to build the DO-19 because it would be ready earlier and it lets the germans figure out crew training to a large degree BEFORE the war which might butterfly away a serious LW deffect If they have the DO-19 in service for several years they will have the requisite experience to build the HE-277 later and have a pool of pilots who have served in 4 engined machines

I disagree with you on the viability of strategic bombing against Russia yielding results worth the input costs

keep in mind that:

1. 4 engine bomber missions consume massive amounts of fuel
2. The German army was chronically short of fuel, every mission you send the 4 engine bombers on subtracts fuel from tactical bombers and ground forces
3. Potential Soviet targets where far to diffuse for strategic bombing to have any meaningful impact on war production (its the same problem they had bombing Britain except on a 20x multiple)
4. Whatever 4 engine bomber force the Germans field would be relatively small (certainly no more than 300-400 machines and certainly less than that serviceable at any one time, which isn't enough to inflict war winning results (considering the allies could produce 10x as many sorties bombing Germany and the didn't actually bomb them into submission or reduce the esacalation of their war production until the Germans lost Ploesti)

against Britain the story is different... the fleet anchorages where known, and night fighters where a joke in 1940, so the DO-19 would be able to bomb at will at night and could probably render Scapa inoperative for periods of time. Also they would be highly valuable in the recon role for uboats and conducting their own attacks on ships

edit: The JU-89's "superior" performance was only a factor of it being equipped with the BMW 132 radials... put those on the DO-19 and it catches up. And due to its MUCH lower weight it would be cheaper and more serviceable, and its performance would be roughly equal to the B-17 which more than suits Germany's needs
 
I disagree with you on the viability of strategic bombing against Russia yielding results worth the input costs

keep in mind that:

1. 4 engine bomber missions consume massive amounts of fuel
2. The German army was chronically short of fuel, every mission you send the 4 engine bombers on subtracts fuel from tactical bombers and ground forces

With you so far.

3. Potential Soviet targets where far to diffuse for strategic bombing to have any meaningful impact on war production (its the same problem they had bombing Britain except on a 20x multiple)
4. Whatever 4 engine bomber force the Germans field would be relatively small (certainly no more than 300-400 machines and certainly less than that serviceable at any one time, which isn't enough to inflict war winning results (considering the allies could produce 10x as many sorties bombing Germany and the didn't actually bomb them into submission or reduce the esacalation of their war production until the Germans lost Ploesti)

Here there are two problems. First, the Soviets built super-sized plants--very efficient, but also very big targets. If bombing forced the Soviets to disperse production, the dispersion would have more impact on production than the actual bombing. Second, building defenses to cover all of those plants would divert guns and manpower. The defenses might not have to be on the scale of the 10,000 or so 88mm guns or the thousands of people the Germans were forced to deploy around their cities, but even half that number of 85mm guns would have and impact somewhere--in less AA/dual purpose capacity at the front or in cities vulnerable to LW short-range bombers.

against Britain the story is different... the fleet anchorages where known, and night fighters where a joke in 1940, so the DO-19 would be able to bomb at will at night and could probably render Scapa inoperative for periods of time. Also they would be highly valuable in the recon role for uboats and conducting their own attacks on ships
Agreed for the most part, though level bomber attacks on ships tended to be woefully inadequate until the advent of skip-bombing.
 
3. Potential Soviet targets where far to diffuse for strategic bombing to have any meaningful impact on war production (its the same problem they had bombing Britain except on a 20x multiple)

Partially true. Not sure if its been mentioned - a much worse problem for the Germans would have been actually finding the Soviet factories. They only had a hazy idea where they were "beyond the Urals". As the Brandenbergers discovered when they hiked nearly a thousand miles and found... nothing.

The Germans would have been much better off bombing Soviet transport nodes. Trading the longer range of the four-engined heavies for a heavier bombload. The Soviet transport infrastructure was highly dependent on railways and river transport. Destroy the railways, sink the river barges and the war materiale won't reach the front.

Easier said than done though, I fear.
 
With you so far.



Here there are two problems. First, the Soviets built super-sized plants--very efficient, but also very big targets. If bombing forced the Soviets to disperse production, the dispersion would have more impact on production than the actual bombing. Second, building defenses to cover all of those plants would divert guns and manpower. The defenses might not have to be on the scale of the 10,000 or so 88mm guns or the thousands of people the Germans were forced to deploy around their cities, but even half that number of 85mm guns would have and impact somewhere--in less AA/dual purpose capacity at the front or in cities vulnerable to LW short-range bombers.


Agreed for the most part, though level bomber attacks on ships tended to be woefully inadequate until the advent of skip-bombing.


Destroying heavy machinery (like the sort used to cast a t-34) is not easy. Even if the facilities where damaged to a medium degree, production lines still find a way to roll... Germany themselves proved this over and over again in 1944

The only real way to disable these sorts of plants is to knock out the power stations that feed them

Regardless, 300/400 bombers just aren't going to do enough damage to affect the soviets in a meaningful way (considering Germany was being hit with 2000 plus sorties a day in 1944 and still had their war production increase until November)
 
I think the whole idea of a "Ural Bomber" was misconceived from the start. Even granting that massive soviet plants might have been very tempting targets, Do-19s, Ju-89s, He-177s, He-277s, He 274s, Me-264s, Ju-290s, Fw-200s, or whatever else the Luftwaffe puts in the air to do this job will have to traverse a thousand miles or more over defended enemy terrain to reach the Urals.

Even if the Germans introduced effective long range escorts (which they didn't have OTL), bombing missions would be subjected to aggressive defensive attacks and flak all along the route. Losses would probably be worse than what the USAAF and RAF faced on their proportionally shorter missons in NW Europe and Germany would not be able to make up the losses like the western allies could.
 
Here there are two problems. First, the Soviets built super-sized plants--very efficient, but also very big targets.

But as the American and British "precision bombing" attempts showed, attacking individual facilities with heavy bombers at high altitude is simply not feasible. Even with the Norden bombsight, the 8th Air Force knew that it would not accomplish anything by trying to go after individual targets, so they mass-bombed entire conurbations. The Germans simply could not afford a four-engined bomber force large enough for that sort of thing, even though the Do 19 and the He 277 were just as good if not better than their contemporaries.

I think the whole idea of a "Ural Bomber" was misconceived from the start. Even granting that massive soviet plants might have been very tempting targets, Do-19s, Ju-89s, He-177s, He-277s, He 274s, Me-264s, Ju-290s, Fw-200s, or whatever else the Luftwaffe puts in the air to do this job will have to traverse a thousand miles or more over defended enemy terrain to reach the Urals.

Even if the Germans introduced effective long range escorts (which they didn't have OTL), bombing missions would be subjected to aggressive defensive attacks and flak all along the route. Losses would probably be worse than what the USAAF and RAF faced on their proportionally shorter missons in NW Europe and Germany would not be able to make up the losses like the western allies could.

That's a good point, the Germans had enough trouble escorting their bombers to England, imagine if they tried it over the Soviet Union. Losses would be horrendous.
 
But as the American and British "precision bombing" attempts showed, attacking individual facilities with heavy bombers at high altitude is simply not feasible. Even with the Norden bombsight, the 8th Air Force knew that it would not accomplish anything by trying to go after individual targets, so they mass-bombed entire conurbations. The Germans simply could not afford a four-engined bomber force large enough for that sort of thing, even though the Do 19 and the He 277 were just as good if not better than their contemporaries.

I think that's the point. Italy made the Piaggio P.108, a heavy long-range "strategic bomber". With 2,000 of them, Italy could have waged a strategic campaign and brought Ethiopia to her knees.
 
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