Luftwaffe strategic bombing targets during Barbarossa?

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Deleted member 1487

That would probably be the best contribution, even though given the difficulties of destroying rail-lines with strategic bombers it would probably not noticeably alter the course of the campaign.
What difficulties? They wouldn't be any worse at it than medium bombers and might even be better due to the payload.
 
What difficulties?

Difficulties in hitting the targets and keeping them down. Railroads and their attendant infrastructure are inherently difficult targets to hit with level-bombers. Furthermore, the Soviets proved able to repair and put back into action severed rail-lines faster then the Germans could keep them severed. Ultimately, it was only when a rail line was physically cut by German ground forces that whatever section of railroad was rendered useless to the Soviets.
 

Deleted member 1487

Difficulties in hitting the targets and keeping them down. Railroads and their attendant infrastructure are inherently difficult targets to hit with level-bombers. Furthermore, the Soviets proved able to repair and put back into action severed rail-lines faster then the Germans could keep them severed. Ultimately, it was only when a rail line was physically cut by German ground forces that whatever section of railroad was rendered useless to the Soviets.
Considering how well the USAAF knocked out rail yards in Germany and Western Europe its not that hard to do, especially at altitudes below 15k feet where German bombers operated in 1941. The only think would be hitting targets repeatedly. One mission a day is doable for a sustained period of time and for the Soviets repairs at best happened in 24-48 hours during Barbarossa. Hitting the same target over and over would keep it down, especially when mixing in delayed action bombs with anti-tamper devices.
 
i know how difficult bridges are to hit, but how long would it take them to get a railbridge repaired?
 
Considering how well the USAAF knocked out rail yards in Germany and Western Europe its not that hard to do

I love how you chose an example where the attacker had to use considerably larger amounts of aircraft, time, and sophistication in order to even temporarily knock out a rail yard. It took the USAAF months of continuous air raids (frequently against the same target) and thousands of aircraft to effectively sever rail traffic in France alone...

One mission a day is doable for a sustained period of time
Inadequate. The Germans are going to need to hit multiple targets, often multiple times a day, for months on end to achieve the desired effect.

repairs at best happened in 24-48 hours during Barbarossa.
More like inside of a day. IOTL, it was so fast that the Germans ultimately abandoned attempts at just striking generic stretches of rail lines and instead focused on harder to repair things like tunnels and bridges. The Soviets responded by quickly learning how to camouflage and decoy those kinds of things.

Hitting the same target over and over would keep it down, especially when mixing in delayed action bombs with anti-tamper devices.
Not a part of German doctrine at the time.
 
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Deleted member 1487

I love how you chose an example where the attacker had to use considerably larger amounts of aircraft, time, and sophistication in order to even temporarily knock out a rail yard. It took the USAAF months of continuous air raids (frequently against the same target) and thousands of aircraft to effectively sever rail traffic in France alone...
Against a target with very strong air defenses to knock out the entire rail network in Northern France, which is FAR denser than anything in Poland, let alone Russia. I mean compare this:
France-
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/ab/ba/be/abbabe0095bd58926d984a0bea805975.jpg

Poland:
http://www.karty.by/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Poland-map-1930_railway.jpg

USSR:
http://www.philatelicdatabase.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/map-ussr-1960-railways.jpg

Inadequate. The Germans are going to need to hit multiple targets, often multiple times a day, for months on end to achieve the desired effect.
Not considering how much more centralized the Soviet rail system was than France or Germany. Its comparing apples to baseballs.

More like inside of a day.
Depending on how heavy the attack is. 60 strategic bombers attacking a target are going to inflict the damage of 120 He111s and they didn't attack rail target with that many aircraft in 1941 due to lack of sufficient numbers; with a whole wing of heavy bombers to devote to the task they can put a massive number on target and push repairs out to 48 or more hours and launch another before service can be restarted. Because the only option is concentrate strategic attacks on strategic rail targets they could/would put the whole unit on target and ensure it remained out of service, which is an issue the 1935 doctrine mentions when going after rail targets (saying there should be repeat raids if you can't knock out a tunnel or bridge due to how quickly repairs can be done).

Not a part of German doctrine at the time.
The 1935 manual says differently; in "The Luftwaffe' Way of War" by James Corum they public excerpts from the 1935 doctrine and on pp.138-1941 they quote the doctrine on railway attacks and mobilization centers, while on pp.144-151 they detail how an attack is supposed to be ordered. Effectively they recommend concentration of effort and discourage attacks on 'open' targets like rail stations and yard because of the difficulty of putting enough bombs on target, but if you do because that's the only way to combat the rail line (which would be the case at Smolensk) they should concentrate bombing effort heavily with as many bombers as possible to put the target out of commission, which they say will require repeat attacks; they mention the problem of the enemy having switch lines, but as the Soviet rail system is not nearly as extensive as the French or even Polish one they can hit a major rail line like that at Smolensk repeatedly and effectively severe a major artery without leaving the Soviets a work around as exists in places in Western/Central Europe.

Later German doctrine in 1943 codifies this and points out the choke points in Soviet rail infrastructure that can be severed with repeated strikes to suppressing repairs, as there aren't work arounds in the system.
 
Hypothetically is the Luftwaffe had a single operational wing of strategic bombers (between 100-120 aircraft) what sort of targets would they likely have gone after in 1941 against the USSR? For the sake of argument let's say that to pay for them they did not produce a similar number of Fw200 Condors and Do217s. Let's say that they developed the Ju89 into a workable strategic bomber from 1937 on so that by 1941 they have 100-120 in service with a 4 ton payload and a combat radius of 800 miles (they can reach out to 800 miles and return).

Someone made a developed idea for one:
http://www.fronta.cz/junkers-ju-89b

Maybe very little effect. According to Wiki: "In fact, the whole Ural bomber concept had already been abandoned, not only because the required range was impossible, but also because existing navigation and bomb sights were not up to the task."

They would miss their targets at high altitudes, and at lower altitudes they become sitting ducks as they do not have the ability to be escorted at such range.

Maybe the Germans can hit some power stations?
 
Most of those would be outside of the acceptable range, as they were around Moscow and would be too well defended for unescorted bombers from bases in Germany; by late 1941 they could be targeted though, but I'm curious about what could be hit in June-August from bases in Germany.

Perhaps strat bomb fortresses and logistics on the Stalin Line, Odessa, and Sevestapol.
 
Against a target with very strong air defenses

The Luftwaffe had already been largely broken by the time the WAllied transport interdiction campaigns began. The same could not be said for the VVS in 1941,

to knock out the entire rail network in Northern France, which is FAR denser than anything in Poland, let alone Russia.
The issue is not density, but the resiliency of the given target.

Not considering how much more centralized the Soviet rail system was than France or Germany. Its comparing apples to baseballs.
Hardly. It took weeks of constant attacks, with multiple raids every day, to even temporarily knock out a bridge, tunnel, or rail yard station. And then after a little while, the target would have to be attacked all over again because repairs had either been completed or were about to be. The Germans ran into the same difficulties with IOTL Barbarossa, but failed to overcome them because they did not have the resources or time to do so.

60 strategic bombers attacking a target are going to inflict the damage of 120 He111s
The Ju-89 has a smaller bomb load then the He-111: 1,600 kilograms compared to 2,000 kilograms (and that's only using the He-111s internal bomb capacity, external adds another few thousand kilograms). And given that German accuracy in level bombing was no better then the Anglo-Americans, only somewhere between 0.25% and 0.3% of those munitions dropped are going to hit the target, which (assuming every Ju-89 is carrying a full payload) works out too a maximum of 28.8 kilograms of munitions actually hitting the target. In terms of bombs...

they didn't attack rail target with that many aircraft in 1941 due to lack of sufficient numbers;
History does not bear this out, both the Germans and Soviets report large numbers of air attacks against railroad targets over the course of July and August.

with a whole wing of heavy bombers to devote to the task they can put a massive number on target and push repairs out to 48 or more hours and launch another before service can be restarted.
Their going to need a lot more then a single wing in order to do that.

The 1935 manual says differently; in "The Luftwaffe' Way of War" by James Corum they public excerpts from the 1935 doctrine and on pp.138-1941 they quote the doctrine on railway attacks and mobilization centers, while on pp.144-151 they detail how an attack is supposed to be ordered. Effectively they recommend concentration of effort and discourage attacks on 'open' targets like rail stations and yard because of the difficulty of putting enough bombs on target, but if you do because that's the only way to combat the rail line (which would be the case at Smolensk) they should concentrate bombing effort heavily with as many bombers as possible to put the target out of commission, which they say will require repeat attacks; they mention the problem of the enemy having switch lines, but as the Soviet rail system is not nearly as extensive as the French or even Polish one they can hit a major rail line like that at Smolensk repeatedly and effectively severe a major artery without leaving the Soviets a work around as exists in places in Western/Central Europe.

Later German doctrine in 1943 codifies this and points out the choke points in Soviet rail infrastructure that can be severed with repeated strikes to suppressing repairs, as there aren't work arounds in the system.
Except the actual history of Luftwaffe operations bears none of this out. During the Battle of Britain as an example, the Germans certainly had the tools to hit the British radar stations, but after the first few raids they moved on and left them unmolested. Similarly, the Germans never threw more than a few desultory raids at the plant at Woolston, before finally bombing the crap out of it towards the end of the BoB - when the British had a massive surplus of machines and in any case rapidly restored production when German pressure slackened. This continues all throughout the war: the Germans only hit this or that target before moving on. This can be seen in German operations in 1943 and 1944 (such as the Baby Blitz and the attempted interdiction against the Soviets in Ukraine, the latter of which by falling pray to Soviet decoy and camouflage measures) as much as in 1940 and 1941. All you've done is prove that the Germans talked about the concept of relentless target restrike. You have not demonstrated that they actually did it. We have the actual record of German attempts to destroy strategic targets to look at, and it is absolutely abysmal.

And the fault for this mayfly attention span went right to the top. Goering laid down the law, telling his commanders that multiple attacks against the same target were a waste of effort, and that once a target had been struck, the bombers should move on and strike another.

This was not a uniquely German problem, as the WAllied 1943 bombing campaign shows, nor was it one that was comprehensively solved in WW2: it would pop up again in the campaigns in Korea, Vietnam, Serbia, and even right now in Iraqi, Syria, and Afghanistan. It's a very hard problem to overcome since on the surface it seems to be a counter-intuitive process. There are always so many demands for bombers, and very rarely is anyone willing to have hundreds or thousands of very expensive machines just relentlessly striking the same target over and over. It smacks of futility, and so usually the bombers would usually move on, leaving the job only partly done.
 
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Deleted member 1487

Except the actual history of Luftwaffe bears none of this out. During the Battle of Britain as an example, the Germans certainly had the tools to hit the British radar stations, but after the first few raids they moved on and left them unmolested. Similarly, the Germans never threw more than a few desultory raids at the plant at Woolston, before finally bombing the crap out of it towards the end of the BoB - when the British had a massive surplus of machines and in any case rapidly restored production when German pressure slackened. This continues all throughout the war: the Germans only hit this or that target before moving on. This can be seen in German operations in 1943 and 1944 (such as the Baby Blitz and the attempted interdiction against the Soviets in Ukraine, the latter of which by falling pray to Soviet decoy and camouflage measures) as much as in 1940 and 1941. All you've done is prove that the Germans talked about the concept of relentless target restrike. You have not demonstrated that they actually did it. We have the actual record of German attempts to destroy strategic targets to look at, and it is absolutely abysmal.

And the fault for this mayfly attention span went right to the top. Goering laid down the law, telling his commanders that multiple attacks against the same target were a waste of effort, and that once a target had been struck, the bombers should move on and strike another.

This was not a uniquely German problem, as the WAllied 1943 bombing campaign shows, nor was it one that was comprehensively solved in WW2: it would pop up again in the campaigns in Korea, Vietnam, Serbia, and even right now in Iraqi, Syria, and Afghanistan. It's a very hard problem to overcome since on the surface it seems to be a counter-intuitive process. There are always so many demands for bombers, and very rarely is anyone willing to have hundreds or thousands of very expensive machines just relentlessly striking the same target over and over. It smacks of futility, and so usually the bombers would usually move on, leaving the job only partly done.

Man you really are getting worse. Leaving aside the rest, during the BoB they didn't hit the radar stations because the entire point of the campaign was to bring the RAF fighters to battle and destroy them in the air, because they couldn't reach all the bases across the country; giving them early warning to draw them into battle was the entire point, so they left them alone to attract resistance. Its the same reason they bombed London; they needed to provoke the RAF fighters to come up to meet them so that they could be shot down. In terms of various German bombing campaigns you need to look at each individually to see what the motivation of the attacks were; saying that they all could be lumped together is missing the point that they don't all fit in the same categories. The Baby Blitz for instance was all against London, not dissipated all over the place. The Badekker raids were a general terror campaign. The Blitz had the strategic changed constantly by Goering. The missions in 1944 against Soviet rail infrastructure had the problem of hitting targets that were not part of Soviet preparations for the next campaign, Bagration, so they wasted the effort and had their bases overrun and in the meantime the Soviets repaired the damage and used those stations to prepare for later operations.
 
Man you really are getting worse.

Ad-hominem. You claimed that the Germans adopted the concept of relentless target restrike. I pointed out that if they adopted it, then they would have practiced it... but none of their campaigns show that they did. If you want to prove the claim, then you are going to have to provide an actual historical example where they did practice it.

Leaving aside the rest, during the BoB they didn't hit the radar stations because the entire point of the campaign was to bring the RAF fighters to battle and destroy them in the air, because they couldn't reach all the bases across the country; giving them early warning to draw them into battle was the entire point, so they left them alone to attract resistance.
And they would have managed to do that anyways. The British had to give battle if they wanted to contest the Germans. Only with the radar stations wrecked, the British would have been less organized and taken heavier losses. And the radar was just one example: attacks against pretty much any target you care to name (airfields, factories, and so-on) all shared the same lack of focus.

The missions in 1944 against Soviet rail infrastructure had the problem of hitting targets that were not part of Soviet preparations for the next campaign, Bagration,
Except you have provided no evidence that they had any effect on Soviet logistics for the forces that were in Ukraine. Even with the primary build-up being on the border of eastern Belarus, there were still some 2.5-3 million Soviet soldiers in western and southwestern Ukraine who had to be supplied and who would have noticed if the German logistical interdiction campaign actually had an effect.
 
I for one think they need to make a commission to investigate all claims to "ad hominems" on message board and Facebook debates. It appears to be a term that is thrown around a little too easily.

Their heads would probably explode, scanner style, because it is a unfortunately extremely common practice on the internet. I'll admit to having done it myself, although I do it alongside the actual arguments. Which, to be fair, Wiking did here... even if they are all arguments that merely attempt to refute my points instead of prove his original claim.
 

Deleted member 1487

Ad-hominem. You claimed that the Germans adopted the concept of relentless target restrike. I pointed out that if they adopted it, then they would have practiced it... but none of their campaigns show that they did. If you want to prove the claim, then you are going to have to provide an actual historical example where they did practice it.
You're right, you're already the worst, how can you be get worse? :p
You claimed that wasn't part of their doctrine, I showed it was in the manual; when they didn't utilize that part of doctrine there was generally a reason why, you cited a bunch of examples incorrectly and out of context. In the context of hitting a target repeatedly they did it with London, did it with Conventry on the night of the firestorm, they did it against Warsaw throughout the Polish campaign, and they did it later against Moscow before deciding it was not worth the effort.

Also ITTL I laid out the scenario so that Wever is directing the campaign according to doctrine, as he was the guy that made the 1935 doctrine, not his replacement Jeschonnek who didn't even go for strategic operations until 1943 before he committed suicide and never conducted one.

And they would have managed to do that anyways. The British had to give battle if they wanted to contest the Germans. Only with the radar stations wrecked, the British would have been less organized and taken heavier losses. And the radar was just one example: attacks against pretty much any target you care to name (airfields, factories, and so-on) all shared the same lack of focus.
The radar issue is debateable, they felt it was more important to their goal of bringing the RAF to battle to not degrade it. Their lack of focus during the BoB was a function of trying to find a target that would enable them to fight a decisive battle against a big wing of fighters so they could finish them off, rather than a grinding series of skirmishes with a handful of fighters.

Except you have provided no evidence that they had any effect on Soviet logistics for the forces that were in Ukraine. Even with the primary build-up being on the border of eastern Belarus, there were still some 2.5-3 million Soviet soldiers in western and southwestern Ukraine who had to be supplied and who would have noticed if the German logistical interdiction campaign actually had an effect.
There are no books on late war Soviet rail logistics in English that I can find that discuss the issue. Kind of hard to have evidence about it when there exists nothing in print on the issue, I don't read Russian, and the Soviet archives are basically locked down since the late 1990s. We don't know what effect it had because there is nothing published about it to show one way or another.

Their heads would probably explode, scanner style, because it is a unfortunately extremely common practice on the internet. I'll admit to having done it myself, although I do it alongside the actual arguments. Which, to be fair, Wiking did here... even if they are all arguments that merely attempt to refute my points instead of prove his original claim.
Pointing out the flaws in your criticisms of my point are helping prove my point.
 
You're right, you're already the worst, how can you be get worse? :p

No u. :p

You claimed that wasn't part of their doctrine, I showed it was in the manual;
A manual isn't doctrine. Doctrine is a collection of procedures and "best" practices which a military generally follows. It does not need to be something so formalized as to be specifically written down. If relentless target restriking was never practiced by the Germans, then it can not be said to be part of their doctrine. There is much to be said for doing a thing rather than talking about doing a thing.

Furthermore: your cited manual does not, in fact, call for relentless target restriking. It calls for concentration of effort, which is not the same thing (as that involves discussions on the use of resources in a raid, rather then how many raids should be launched). Now if it did something like call for concentration of focus, then maybe that could be construed as relentless target restriking.

when they didn't utilize that part of doctrine there was generally a reason why, you cited a bunch of examples incorrectly and out of context.
No, they are all perfectly in context: they were all strategic bombing campaigns and in none of them did the Germans practice relentless restriking. You then try and come up with all sorts of excuses for why they did not do so, but that does not change the fact that they did not do so. The answer really boils down to two possibilities: they were either incapable of doing it (a lack of resources) or unwilling to do it (a lack of doctrine). An analysis of the situation shows that they had the resources in most cases, so it really comes down to lack of doctrine.

In the context of hitting a target repeatedly they did it with London,
A city is not a target. Something within the city generally is. What targets within London did the Germans consistently (try to) hit, day after day, for the entirety of the campaign? Or were they constantly hitting a different target each day? The first is relentless restrike, the second is just constantly shifting focus.

did it with Conventry on the night of the firestorm,
Hitting a target multiple times in a single night is not relentless restrike, it's an air raid. Now if the Germans had started hitting a target in Conventry and kept hitting it, repeatedly, day after day, until the campaign ended... then you would have a point. But they did not: they launched a single raid on the night of November 14th, but did not launch another major raid on the city until April of next year, nearly 6 months later.

they did it against Warsaw throughout the Polish campaign, and they did it later against Moscow before deciding it was not worth the effort.
In both cases, the Germans occasionally attacked this or that target within the city, but not in a consistent and constant manner. The only time they did do so was in direct support of the ground troops but at that point we are talking about CAS, not strategic bombing.

The radar issue is debateable, they felt it was more important to their goal of bringing the RAF to battle to not degrade it. Their lack of focus during the BoB was a function of trying to find a target that would enable them to fight a decisive battle against a big wing of fighters so they could finish them off, rather than a grinding series of skirmishes with a handful of fighters.
"Goering had more to say about targets. He wanted to focus entirely on the RAF and the aircraft industry [rather than shipping]. Again, he stressed economy of effort. He wanted night and bad weather raids restricted to small groups of volunteer crews who knew the target well. These were nuisance raids designed to wear down the population, and should also be directed at the RAF. . .

"His most important remarks were lapidary and appear almost as afterthoughts. He questioned the wisdom of continuing to attack radar stations, as none had yet been put out of action, and the British had 'a lot of radio stations.' His comments are couched more as a suggestion than an order, as if he did not think the matter terribly important. However, he was quite explicit in ordering that airfields which had been 'successfully attacked,' one day should not be attacked the following day, presumably because he regarded it as a waste of effort.
-Stephen Bungay, "The Most Dangerous Enemy," pp.218-219.

Goering already had prioritized his targets: the RAF air fields and British aircraft industry. In both cases they practiced this by launching a few raids at a air field or factory and then switching to another airfield or factory. This is not relentless restrike. They found their targets, but they did not focus on them.

It's a plague on all air campaigns. NATO largely did the same with Serbia in 1999, continually switching the target set while flailing blindly. And while it wasn't limited just to bombing, the same mayfly attention span can be found at work in US targeting meetings in Afghanistan. There's just something fundamental in how air forces tend to rate success by how many targets they have hit that always seems to tempt them to this same, well known error. It's uncanny.

The problem has several elements. Firstly and most importantly, it's often very difficult to identify the key elements that the enemy's efforts rely on that are vulnerable to your attack. In WWII for Germany that was oil. The Allies recognized the importance of oil to the German war effort, but they significantly over-estimated the robustness of German synthetic oil production, and so didn't consider it a viable target until late in the war. When they finally realized their mistake and started seriously targeting the synthetic oil plants the effect was immediate and catastrophic for Germany, but by then the war was almost over anyway, so it didn't have the effect it could have.

Beyond that, there's always the fear that if you just hit one target, and that one target is the wrong one, that you'll be wasting all your effort, so bets should be hedged. Also, since even against the proper targets effects are often not clear or immediate, there's a tendency to look for new solutions in new targets rather than assuming that it just requires more attacks (which don't seem to be working) against that same target. The American bombing of the Schweinfurt ball bearing plant in WWII very nearly crippled the German aircraft industry, but Speer was able to desperately patch things over and make do. The Allies saw the cost of the raid, and didn't see the effects they'd been hoping for, and so moved on. Related to that is the very human practice of seeing greater success in a wide array of achievements than just one done monotonously over and over. Basically, it looks better to be able to point to 100 targets you've attacked in a powerpoint slide, than one or two targets you hit over and over. That smacks of futility.

Ultimately, targeting is a real gamble, even with excellent intelligence. Because selecting a target set and prosecuting it to destruction is a highly command oriented practice, it critically relies on the senior military leadership making the right choice and then passing this down to all levels. It is very easy for the leadership to guess wrong, or get cold feet partway and change their minds. The picture perfect case, again from WWII is RAF Bomber Command's Arthur "Bomber" Harris. Harris was in many ways a great leader. He tirelessly fought for the necessary resources for his command, kept morale up even during heavy casualties, and relentlessly pushed a plan for victory. Unfortunately his plan was the wrong one. Harris assumed that destroying German cities would break German morale, and cripple industry as a side effect of killing and scattering the population. Initially this was a strategy of necessity - the RAF couldn't hit anything more precise than cities - but fairly quickly other tools became available that would have allowed the RAF to change to more targeted attacks. Indeed, Bomber Command launched many impressive precision attacks during the war, of which the Dam Buster's raid is the most well known. But these were never a priority for Harris, and he always saw them as a distraction from the true war winning goal of flattening German cities, which he pursued relentlessly to the end of the war. Had he selected a more effective target and pursued it with the same single mindedness, he'd now be remembered in a much different light.

Basically, for all it's on paper potential, targeting is difficult to do because it relies on a great deal of accurate knowledge of the enemy, correct decisions by the leadership, and then nerves of steel to hold to those decisions against all doubts. And all three are something the Germans in WW2 rather lacked (except maybe for the last one, and even then it was usually in all the wrong areas).

Really, the Luftwaffe is better of trying to stop get into the strategic bombing game and sticking to close support of the army. There are plenty of things an enemy can do to defend against air attack or ground attack, but several of these options are mutually exclusive, and it's exponentially harder to defend against both at once, which is why the Luftwaffe made it's biggest contributions to the war in France and Barbarossa directly supporting ground offensives.

There are no books on late war Soviet rail logistics in English that I can find that discuss the issue. Kind of hard to have evidence about it when there exists nothing in print on the issue, I don't read Russian, and the Soviet archives are basically locked down since the late 1990s. We don't know what effect it had because there is nothing published about it to show one way or another.
So you can not prove the example. Thus, it is useless in supporting your claim.

An extremely basic problem here is that you are approaching strategic bombing as if it is quick, easy, and only requires a modest expenditure of resources. History does not support this. History indicates that a strategic bombing campaign is inherently long, hard, and resource-intensive. In other words, three things that Germany in WW2 can not afford as they do not have the time or resources for a long, hard, and expensive campaign.
 
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The Luftwaffe, absent ASB intervention, is never going have a sustained strategic bombing campaign. The question is with a modest number of heavy long range bombers can they put a spoke in the Soviets wheel? Can they do enough damage to disrupt the movement of troops and goods west and bureaucrats and factories east? Can they potentially hit enough electrical generating facilities and put them out of commission for long enough to disrupt production and or movements? Are there canal locks within range and can they be damaged badly enough to slow things down?

If the Luftwaffe can do enough of the above, then the Germans have a shot at coming to some sort of successful conclusions with the Soviets.

If the question is, can the Luftwaffe do the sort of damage the Allies were able to do to Germany, then the answer is clearly no.
 
that Rand Corp. study (have downloaded it and cannot find link) noted the LW preferred target was the aircraft engine mfg. plants, full of specialty machinery, difficult if not impossible to replace (during wartime) and if Allies tried to ship engines they would not function with Soviet aircraft (at least without difficulty.)

(this would also solve the quandary they had about whether to destroy power plants and industrial targets or capture and use them, they were NEVER going to use Soviet aircraft)
 
Didn't work all that well against strategic targets, either, particularly in the numbers proposed.
Using high altitude four engine bombers against tactical targets did not work well (usually) in WWII. BTW as far as range goes, you can base bombers in Helsinki or elsewhere in Finland, or do some version of shuttle bombing using Helsinki for refuel/rearm.
 
The Luftwaffe, absent ASB intervention, is never going have a sustained strategic bombing campaign.

Then they are never going to achieve anything of note, because the only way a strategic bombing campaign can begin to work is if it is a sustained one. Hitting a target a few times or once-in-awhile is going to achieve jack. It's very much something that is not suited for a short-war...

Which, incidentally, is what the Germans thought they were getting into when they started Barbarossa.
 
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So you're in the deeper rail interdiction camp?

Although one likes the point of hitting the Moscow area electrical installation, there is probably too little to support such a campaign

I like the idea of interdicting further west. Rostov is not going to be evacuated before Kiev has fallen and so forth. So hit the rails east of Kiev, Smolensk and Leningrad and when bases are available around Kiev and Smolensk, then maybe go east of Rostov and Moscow.
Just a thought.

Ideologically, it fits nicely as it helps trap the Russians west and destroy their fighting ability in time for Barbarossa.
 
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