Luftwaffe strategic bombing targets during Barbarossa?

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Deleted member 1487

I don't see anything in that doctrine calling for relentless restrikes or concentration of focus or anything like that. You can find pretty words similar to Wever's about concentration of effort and the need to strike at industrial and transport targets in manuals written by the USAAC or RAF in the late-1930s and early-1940s. But no concentration of focus or relentless restrikes. Nor did any of those words prevented them from falling into the same targeting trap. Wever is not some air power god, he is only just as human as every other air force general at the time.
In that the understand they cannot put down a rail yard with a single raid for any period of time the only option is to keep it down is to hit it repeatedly, which they codified in 1943; I only have selected excerpts to work with, so perhaps it was codified even earlier based on experience in Poland and France, but I don't have access to those records. However the understanding was there that one raid was not enough and they would require multiple strikes to keep it down.

What will happen, given that the Luftwaffe is only human and its planners are only human, is that this bomber wing will be hitting one target for a few days and then another target elsewhere for another few days. And so-on. Because of this mayfly attention span, the damage done is totally inadequate to change anything. Barbarossa goes on as per IOTL.
Nonsense; putting down rail traffic through that line for 24 hours or more is dozens of trains that don't arrive where they need to go during a huge campaign. That has an impact. Doing it multiple times per week and you're creating a significant back up that didn't exist IOTL. It diverts resources, manpower, and attention to repairs and that pressure did not exist IOTL.

Even "multiple times a week" is not adequate enough. We're talking literally once a day, endlessly, with (since we only have a single wing to work with) no time to rest and maintain the planes.
To totally put it out of commission and keep it down, but we are talking about the disruptions that come from 24 or more hours per raid and creates a back up of dozens of trains per day that aren't getting through on critical rails lines during a critical massive campaign.

And how well did those work out, hmm?
Actually pretty well in June-August 1941 IOTL. They overran a lot of destroyed/backed up trains that were trapped because smaller raids by medium bombers had so badly ripped up yards and rail that the Soviets couldn't cope. As they pushed deeper and sorties became more limited due to supply and maintenance issues adding up they couldn't do it nearly as much. In the period I'm talking about from June-September they could do some noticeable damage to supply/mobilization.

In tactical close air support, not in strategic bombing or logistical interdiction.
No, in operational interdiction; the reason the French were unable to mass reserves against the Ardennes offensive was because of the LW so badly degrading rail and road movement to the point that the French could not move quickly enough until the situation radically changed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_France#Central_front
The main task of German aviation was to provide close support in the form of the dive-bomber and medium bomber. In 1940, the Luftwaffe was a broadly based force with no constricting central doctrine, other than its resources should be used generally to support national strategy. It was flexible and able to carry out operational, tactical and strategic bombing effectively. Flexibility was the Luftwaffe* '​s strength in 1940. While Allied air forces in 1940 were tied to the support of the army, the Luftwaffe deployed its resources in a more general, operational way. It switched from air superiority missions, to medium-range interdiction, to strategic strikes, to close air support duties depending on the need of the ground forces. In fact, far from it being a dedicated Panzer spearhead arm, less than 15 percent of the Luftwaffe was designed for close support of the army in 1939,[75] as this aspect was not its primary mission.[76]

On 11 May, Gamelin had ordered reserve divisions to begin reinforcing the Meuse sector. Because of the danger the Luftwaffe posed, movement over the rail network was limited to night-time, slowing the reinforcement, but the French felt no sense of urgency as they believed the build-up of German divisions would be correspondingly slow.

So then we're not talking about the Ju-89 (which could only carry a payload of 1,600 kilograms, or 3 500 kg bombs) but some completely new bomber that the Germans have magicked up without sucking the necessary resources, factory space, machine tools, and personnel from some other part of their air, or ground, or naval force. Okay...
The OTL 1st prototype had a vertical bomb bay, I'm talking about a developed version with a horizontal one. I already addressed this issue on the first page so we don't bog down in this argument again: the Fw200 and Do217 are not made to provide the resources to make the Ju89B.
Both the Do217 and Fw200 entered production in 1940, instead with TTL its the Ju89 instead.


But guess what? That still only gives you a average of slightly less then 1.5 bombs landing on target in a 60 bomber raid.
You need to prove your numbers are accurate, so let's get a source we can dissect.

Except for the fact that the Germans will just not be doing enough damage.
Again you haven't proven that.

US air raids in 1944-45 against both Germany and Japan, British air raids against Germany in 1941, and German air raids against Britain in both 1941 and 1944.
Wow, those are vastly different campaigns and I will need a source. The British 1941 raids had a 0% hit rate because they were bombing at night without navigation aids:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butt_Report

The German raids against Britain in 1940-41 and later Steinbock were night raids against cities that hit those cities. I've never seen any numbers about that either, especially not less than 1%.

You're USAAF numbers are off unless you can provide a source to back that up that we can dissect the specifics of.

German level bombing during the BoB, Blitz and Baby Blitz (that last especially) was not any more accurate than American or British level bombing. During the BoB, German Heinkels regularly completely missed entire airfields and did so while bombing from much lower altitudes than the Americans and British would later use when over the Reich, so clearly that did not make as much of a difference as you claim.
You're talking about radically different things; the BoB (I'd like to see your numbers for that) and the Blitz/baby Blitz were by day against airfields, the latter at night against cities. Those cities were hit, what does that have to do with a lower altitude day raid against a rail yard?

RAF level bombing was night raids against cities, again what relevance does that have? Can you provide a source that has numbers for the accuracy of raids on rail years by the USAAF? Again all your claims are without numbers or source to back up anything you said, while conflating things that have nothing to do with what I'm talking about. Source or admit you can't prove your point.
 

Deleted member 1487

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_bombing
This development process, driven by the need to bomb in unsighted conditions, meant that by the end of World War II, unguided RAF bombs could be predictably delivered within 25 yards[3] of a target from 15,000 feet height, and precisely on it from low level.


For the U.S. Army Air Forces, daylight bombing was normal based upon box formations for defence from fighters. Bombing was coordinated through a lead aircraft but although still nominally precision bombing (as opposed to the area bombing carried out by RAF Bomber Command) the result of bombing from high level was still spread over an area. Before the war on practice ranges, some USAAF crews were able to produce very accurate results, but over Europe with weather and German fighters and anti-aircraft guns and the limited training for new crews this level of accuracy was impossible to reproduce. The US defined the target area as being a 1,000 ft (300 m) radius circle around the target point - for the majority of USAAF attacks only about 20% of the bombs dropped struck in this area. The U.S. daytime bombing raids were more effective in reducing German defences by engaging the German Luftwaffe than destruction of the means of aircraft production.
The issue is altitude, the Germans are going to be attacking with different tactics (i.e. each bomber actually aiming rather than going off the lead) and from much lower altitudes without worry due to the lack of Soviet AAA on the targets and lack of significant fighter opposition. USAAF problems in accuracy was the result of bad aiming doctrine and from high altitudes to avoid FLAK and fighters (25k feet or higher). Germans attacked in the East in 1941 at 14k or lower.

Meanwhile:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams#German_systems
In the raid on Birmingham only KGr 100 was used, and British post-raid analysis showed that the vast majority of the bombs dropped were placed within 100 yards (91 m) of the midline of the 'Weser' beam, spread along it for a few hundred yards. This was the sort of accuracy that even daytime bombing could rarely achieve.
Luftwaffe strategic bombers would only be crewed by the elite like KGr 100, which would mean they know how to hit targets with the above accuracy.

Also rail yards are dispersed targets so dispersion is actually helpful for inflicting damage, versus small factories of air fields that are concentrated targets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_yard
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_yard

http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/LRG/sc500.html
Plus SC500 bombs have 220kg of explosives, which leave a big crater that will damage rail beds badly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_(rail_transport)
 
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Deleted member 1487

Effects of bombing raids on rail yards

Bombing raids on German rail yards by US:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsNNkm0bNhM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wglezAJeeE

Raid by medium and light bombers in Germany in 1944:
Limburg_railyard_bombed_23_Dec_1944.jpg


WW2 bomb found and detonated a modern German rail station:
3a772e8d82a0518173317034085c5d3f.jpg
 
In that the understand they cannot put down a rail yard with a single raid for any period of time the only option is to keep it down is to hit it repeatedly, which they codified in 1943;

And proceeded to completely fail to practice it in either the Baby Blitz or the rail interdiction in the east. Sure became a part of German doctrine. :rolleyes:

I only have selected excerpts to work with, so perhaps it was codified even earlier based on experience in Poland and France, but I don't have access to those records. However the understanding was there that one raid was not enough and they would require multiple strikes to keep it down.
Which is why they never did anything like that in the entire history of their operations. :rolleyes:

Nonsense; putting down rail traffic through that line for 24 hours or more is dozens of trains that don't arrive where they need to go during a huge campaign.
And the Germans can't do that. IOTL they tried, and the Soviets just repaired the damage quite rapidly. They repaired the damage so rapidly, in fact, that the Germans gave up hitting rail lines and tried to focus on hitting things like bridges instead.

Actually pretty well in June-August 1941 IOTL. They overran a lot of destroyed/backed up trains that were trapped because smaller raids by medium bombers had so badly ripped up yards and rail that the Soviets couldn't cope.
As evidenced by the way the Soviets were consistently able to use their railroads to mobilize massive new armies, supply them, and evacuate industry all at the same time. Yep, the Soviets sure couldn't cope with those air attacks. :rolleyes:

No, in operational interdiction; the reason the French were unable to mass reserves against the Ardennes offensive was because of the LW so badly degrading rail and road movement to the point that the French could not move quickly enough until the situation radically changed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_France#Central_front
Seems like the lack of urgency on the part of the French was a bigger issue. Not to mention we're looking at an operational interdiction campaign rather then a strategic one here.

Really, the key role the Luftwaffe played in the Battle of France was, once again, in direct tactical air support of the troops. CAS was definitely important in the fall of France. The Germans charged through the Ardennes and hit the Meuse river. The French assumed that the German tanks and troops would have to wait several days for their artillery to arrive through the packed roads trough the Belgian forests. Instead the Germans attacked immediately under waves of Stuka dive bombers. The close coordination of the Stukas and ground assault had much the same effect as a unexpected artillery bombardment, causing many of the defending troops panicked and run ahead of the attacking Germans. As a result, the Germans were able to cross the Meuse river and establish bridgeheads on the opposite bank.

German operational interdiction? Rather less important when compared to the relative snails pace of French C3 and the fact the French didn't take the Meuse bridgeheads seriously until close to a week after they were established.

It should be finally noted that the Germans did not actually distinguish between interdiction and CAS mission. Both were fundamentally understood to be conducted in support of the ground forces.

I already addressed this issue on the first page so we don't bog down in this argument again: the Fw200 and Do217 are not made to provide the resources to make the Ju89B.
Both the Do217 and Fw200 entered production in 1940, instead with TTL its the Ju89 instead.
So you have simultaneously degraded the capability of the tactical air force (fewer tactical bombers stretches the remaining bombers thinner, rendering them less able to support the ground forces) and the U-Boat campaign (less capability to guide the U-Boats to their target) for a insignificant strategic bombing capability. Good job.

You just don't get what kind of resource sink strategic bombers actually are. The British were only able to build up theirs in 1940-41 because they practically had no other major commitments. The North African was ultimately only a modest commitment and British naval supremacy could only be challenged indirectly. So the British sunk a huge portion of her wartime economy, almost half of what was allocated to the RAF, on designing, building and operating heavy bombers. With an incipient land war in Russia (Hitler isn't going to call that off, even for Goering) Germany will never be able to spend that level of resources. But without that level of commitment Germany will never be able to field a proper strategic bomber force. Thus strategic bombers are, for Germany, a terrible resource sink.

As far as bombers go, what Germany really needs in 1941 is the opposite of strategic bombing: improved ground attack planes and better maritime attack capability.

You need to prove your numbers are accurate, so let's get a source we can dissect.
Well just yanking two examples from the wikipedia page on precision bombing:

In the summer of 1944, forty-seven B-29's raided Japan's Yawata Steel Works from bases in China; only one plane actually hit the target area, and only with one of its bombs. This single 500 lb (230 kg) general purpose bomb represented one quarter of one percent of the 376 bombs dropped over Yawata on that mission.
It took 108 B-17 bombers, crewed by 1,080 airmen, dropping 648 bombs to guarantee a 96 percent chance of getting just two hits inside a 400 x 500 ft (150 m) German power-generation plant.
Of course for a more general rule of thumb, the USAAF that only 20% of a raids munitions would generally even land within a thousand feet circle around the target.

The US defined the target area as being a 1,000 ft (300 m) radius circle around the target point - for the majority of USAAF attacks only about 20% of the bombs dropped struck in this area.
You're talking about radically different things; the BoB (I'd like to see your numbers for that) and the Blitz/baby Blitz were by day against airfields, the latter at night against cities. Those cities were hit, what does that have to do with a lower altitude day raid against a rail yard?
Leaving aside that their targets were generally something within the city, the fact that entire air fields were repeatedly missed (from July to September the RAF lost less than twenty fighters on the ground! For a month of heavy attacks on the British's airfields, this is abject failure) is not something that gives great encouragement for the Germans to be able to hit something of similar size... like say a rail yard.

RAF level bombing was night raids against cities, again what relevance does that have?
Actually, in 1941 the British did carry out a number of daylight raids. The resulting casualties convinced them in switching to night raids.

Can you provide a source that has numbers for the accuracy of raids on rail years by the USAAF?
Searching now. Most of the information I've come across are really raids against industrial targets of roughly similar size to rail yards. The closest I've managed to pin down is that the entire transport campaign in spring of 1944 required in excess of 68,000 sorties and 130,000 tons of munitions.

Again all your claims are without numbers or source to back up anything you said,
And you have not provided a single source to show that the Germans could or did achieve anything like you have claimed. You have not demonstrated they ever developed the concept of relentless target restrike by Barbarossa or indeed even by the end of the war.

while conflating things that have nothing to do with what I'm talking about.
They have everything to do with what your talking about: you want to know the effectiveness of German strategic bombing? Then you are going to want to look at the record of actual strategic bombing campaigns, both those run by the Germans and others, instead of just making assumptions like you are doing. You don't actually look at events for what general lessons can be learned and then try to apply those lessons to your hypothetical, instead when someone brings up these other campaigns your defense has largely been to state that unless the events were exactly the same no conclusion can be made.

Of course, if you do that you would then have to confront the one, overriding reality: the Germans had a piss-poor record for destroying strategic targets despite having the on-paper-means to do so. Which I suppose would conflict with your base assertion that the Germans would be able to do so if only they just had this other little piece of napkinwaffe.

Not to mention the idea of interrupting Soviet mobilization by bombing it's rail transportation rests on the Germans rejecting one of the basic assumption they made right at the start of the planning for Barbarossa and stuck too from there on out: that the Soviets did not have the means to replace their forces once they were lost in the frontier region.
 
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Strategic Bombing is incredibly difficult and resource intensive. Bringing enough ordinance to destroy brute force an economy is neigh impractical and destroying key targets (Railway Junctions, Production Bottlenecks) relies on either luck or (more likely) contrivance.
 

Deleted member 1487

Strategic Bombing is incredibly difficult and resource intensive. Bringing enough ordinance to destroy brute force an economy is neigh impractical and destroying key targets (Railway Junctions, Production Bottlenecks) relies on either luck or (more likely) contrivance.
Seriously? I suppose all of the successful Allied and Axis bombing against rail junctions didn't happen then.
 

Deleted member 1487

And proceeded to completely fail to practice it in either the Baby Blitz or the rail interdiction in the east. Sure became a part of German doctrine. :rolleyes:
What are you talking about? They conducted the Baby Blitz entire against London and the constraints were British air defenses and their own bombed out economy making sustained operations difficult. They conducted rail interdiction haphazardly in the East after 1942 because of the lack of aircraft due to losses in 1941-42 prevented them from having enough forces not doing direct army support to conduct independent operations like rail interdiction by 1943 except haphazardly.

Its like different material situations and operational constraints force different behaviors/missions.


Which is why they never did anything like that in the entire history of their operations. :rolleyes:
Other than in 1944. Prior there was not really a need to due to the rapid ground advance and later they didn't have the ability to fight an independent air campaign due to the constant demand for direct army support. Finally they pulled enough bombers out of the line for a few months to try a rail interdiction campaign and did what I am talking about, but then had to revert to direct army support; whether or not they picked the right targets in 1944 is immaterial, the fact is they did it. And let's not forget the bombing of Velyki Luki by He177s in 1944 that was highly successful, even at 20k feet.

And the Germans can't do that. IOTL they tried, and the Soviets just repaired the damage quite rapidly. They repaired the damage so rapidly, in fact, that the Germans gave up hitting rail lines and tried to focus on hitting things like bridges instead.
Source? In the doctrinal documents I've read they never gave up they just realized they'd have to hit targets more often.

As evidenced by the way the Soviets were consistently able to use their railroads to mobilize massive new armies, supply them, and evacuate industry all at the same time. Yep, the Soviets sure couldn't cope with those air attacks. :rolleyes:
In areas the LW didn't operate in. They weren't able to pull that off in Belarus in 1941. As the LW got deeper and weaker while the front expanded they couldn't do it as well or fully as they could in June-August 1941. Now ITTL they have a force of heavy bombers that can strike deeper than they were able to IOTL early to disrupt those things.


Seems like the lack of urgency on the part of the French was a bigger issue. Not to mention we're looking at an operational interdiction campaign rather then a strategic one here.
You're saying that to support your point only. In reading about LW operations in France it was not the lack of urgency primarily, it was the LW. The French in fact complained they couldn't move by day because of all the aerial interdiction. We are talking about operational interdiction in France and in the USSR, the latter ITTL is just being done by strategic bombers outside the normal operational depth.

Really, the key role the Luftwaffe played in the Battle of France was, once again, in direct tactical air support of the troops. CAS was definitely important in the fall of France. The Germans charged through the Ardennes and hit the Meuse river. The French assumed that the German tanks and troops would have to wait several days for their artillery to arrive through the packed roads trough the Belgian forests. Instead the Germans attacked immediately under waves of Stuka dive bombers. The close coordination of the Stukas and ground assault had much the same effect as a unexpected artillery bombardment, causing many of the defending troops panicked and run ahead of the attacking Germans. As a result, the Germans were able to cross the Meuse river and establish bridgeheads on the opposite bank.
As I posted before CAS was 15% of the LW in France. The vast majority of it was indirect support by operationally interdicting French rail lines and roads. You're ignoring the indirect support for the much smaller, but more sexy direct CAS ops.


German operational interdiction? Rather less important when compared to the relative snails pace of French C3 and the fact the French didn't take the Meuse bridgeheads seriously until close to a week after they were established.
Again you're only focusing on one aspect of the French campaign because it got the most press; the LW did far more interdiction operations in France than direct support. You can download the USAAF studies on the LW campaign in France if you want to read the details. Its free online.

It should be finally noted that the Germans did not actually distinguish between interdiction and CAS mission. Both were fundamentally understood to be conducted in support of the ground forces.
Yes they did. P.38 "The German Air War in Russia" mittelbare Heeresunterstützung was indirect army support, i.e. what the USAAF called battlefield interdiction. This was in contrast to unmittelbare Heeresunterstützung, which was direct army support, i.e. CAS.

p.37 there is a translation of Luftwaffe orders for Barbarossa which splits up CAS and battlefield interdiction missions to cut Soviet communications to make support of the front line armies impossible from the interior. They preferred to conduct the latter attack because it allowed them concentration of action and it was less dangerous than direct frontline support and had less chance of hitting friendlies. While technically both were viewed as army support instead of independent operations (strategic attacks, anti-enemy air force operations). However even the bombing of enemy factories could be considered part of the wider operational plan and therefore indirect army support, though that was a trick they played to get around prohibitions on strategic attacks during 1941.

So really the bombing of deep rail targets in 1941 would fit just fine into the doctrine of 1941 as it would be indirect army support.


So you have simultaneously degraded the capability of the tactical air force (fewer tactical bombers stretches the remaining bombers thinner, rendering them less able to support the ground forces) and the U-Boat campaign (less capability to guide the U-Boats to their target) for a insignificant strategic bombing capability. Good job.
The Do217 didn't participate in the East in 1940-41, so that's no loss, especially considering its engines didn't work right until 1942. I did say that by making the Ju89 ITTL it would replace some of the Fw200s in the Atlantic. Considering loss rates they suffered due to structural problems even if there are fewer there they were effectively be the same because of the lack of losses due to 'broken backs'.


You just don't get what kind of resource sink strategic bombers actually are. The British were only able to build up theirs in 1940-41 because they practically had no other major commitments. The North African was ultimately only a modest commitment and British naval supremacy could only be challenged indirectly. So the British sunk a huge portion of her wartime economy, almost half of what was allocated to the RAF, on designing, building and operating heavy bombers. With an incipient land war in Russia (Hitler isn't going to call that off, even for Goering) Germany will never be able to spend that level of resources. But without that level of commitment Germany will never be able to field a proper strategic bomber force. Thus strategic bombers are, for Germany, a terrible resource sink.

As far as bombers go, what Germany really needs in 1941 is the opposite of strategic bombing: improved ground attack planes and better maritime attack capability.
The British had very little strategic capacity ready in 1941, most of their heavy bombers came in 1942 and later. They needed so much investment because they were literally trying to burn down entire cities. That is not what is needed to hit rail stations. You're comparing nuts to car tires and thinking you're making a valid point, so either your being purposely disingenuous to try and win an arguement because that's the last option you've got left or you genuinely think you're making valid points in which case you're really got nothing to contribute to this discussion.

Well just yanking two examples from the wikipedia page on precision bombing:
B-29 daylight attacks were from 30k feet to avoid Japanese fighters and AAA and then ran into the Jet Stream, so had their accuracy literally blown away by wind. So even trying to use that as an example is pointless to the European context.
http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap12/jetstream.html


Of course for a more general rule of thumb, the USAAF that only 20% of a raids munitions would generally even land within a thousand feet circle around the target.
Again, that's already been addressed; they weren't aiming and they were attacking from 25k feet and above against heavily defended targets.

Leaving aside that their targets were generally something within the city, the fact that entire air fields were repeatedly missed (from July to September the RAF lost less than twenty fighters on the ground! For a month of heavy attacks on the British's airfields, this is abject failure) is not something that gives great encouragement for the Germans to be able to hit something of similar size... like say a rail yard.


Actually, in 1941 the British did carry out a number of daylight raids. The resulting casualties convinced them in switching to night raids.
They made the decision to switch to night raids in 1939 for strategic bombers; they did tactical raids in 1940-41 with Blenheims that were slaughtered. That had nothing to do with the night bombing decision for strategic ops, as that had already been made after this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Heligoland_Bight_(1939)#British_assessment

Searching now. Most of the information I've come across are really raids against industrial targets of roughly similar size to rail yards. The closest I've managed to pin down is that the entire transport campaign in spring of 1944 required in excess of 68,000 sorties and 130,000 tons of munitions.
You need numbers to back up that claim that factories and rail yards are the same size. Bombing one choke point in West Russia vs. the entire rail network of Northern France is not comparable.

And you have not provided a single source to show that the Germans could or did achieve anything like you have claimed. You have not demonstrated they ever developed the concept of relentless target restrike by Barbarossa or indeed even by the end of the war.

They have everything to do with what your talking about: you want to know the effectiveness of German strategic bombing? Then you are going to want to look at the record of actual strategic bombing campaigns, both those run by the Germans and others, instead of just making assumptions like you are doing. You don't actually look at events for what general lessons can be learned and then try to apply those lessons to your hypothetical, instead when someone brings up these other campaigns your defense has largely been to state that unless the events were exactly the same no conclusion can be made.

Of course, if you do that you would then have to confront the one, overriding reality: the Germans had a piss-poor record for destroying strategic targets despite having the on-paper-means to do so. Which I suppose would conflict with your base assertion that the Germans would be able to do so if only they just had this other little piece of napkinwaffe.

Not to mention the idea of interrupting Soviet mobilization by bombing it's rail transportation rests on the Germans rejecting one of the basic assumption they made right at the start of the planning for Barbarossa and stuck too from there on out: that the Soviets did not have the means to replace their forces once they were lost in the frontier region.
Why are you unable to understand that a rail strike is not the same as the RAF city bombing campaign at night or the attacks on dispersed and heavily defended industrial sites from high altitudes without aiming? You're basically saying because the name strategic was used for RAF and USAAF operations and the bombers we're talking about ITTL are called strategic that it all means the same thing without considering the details of campaigns and how they might be completely different and not instructive to what we are talking about here. Frankly you've just fallen into the ego battle to win an internet discussion at all costs without regard to intellectual integrity; you're not actually trying to have an intellectual debate you want to win a pissing match, so you don't even address the issue, you flail about throwing all sorts of unsupported claims out there and side step the issue that what you offer has nothing to do with what we are talking about. Then you create all sorts of straw man arguments saying that only one way of doing things makes any difference and the Germans cannot follow your narrow interpreted path, so there is no difference and its all wasted effort.

Yet you fail to understand that putting a rail line out of commission for 24 hours even twice a week backs up dozens of trains per 24 hour period during intense operations and causes a major deficit that will be felt. That is vastly different than claiming that one raid will collapse the entire Soviet rail system and they'll surrender immediately just because. You can still have a rail line running intermittently had have limited damage add up to real effect you know.

The issue of the Germans thinking the 1st strategic echelon is all there was doesn't matter to the the TL, because until the Minsk pocket is closed the Germans want to severe rail supply to the Western Front in several places, Smolensk being a big one. As they close the pocket and try to prevent forces from escaping to rally, they still want to keep rail supply to any formations. Then once they bump into the 2nd echelon they will want to continue to bomb rail lines to prevent that forces from getting supply/reinforcements. Its not a hindrance to the TL.
 
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Deleted member 1487

Page describing battlefield interdiction during Barbarossa

Page describing battlefield interdiction during Barbarossa

CCF11092015.jpg
 
Working on acquiring a some solid source for a response for everything else, and being hampered by schoolwork, but I notice that the quoted book is relying on a contemporary assessment of the damage done. Which are generally as accurate as spit. The Soviets certainly did not notice as much of an impact on their rail activity in the deep rear. The failure for mobilization to take effect in Belarus was ultimately a result of Belarus being overrun so quickly, rather then the result of German air power destroying Soviet rail lines.
 

iddt3

Donor
You're positing an operational tempo of one Strategic Bomber raid, with the entire force, every day, at low altitude. How long exactly do you expect them to be able to keep that up? IIRC both British and American operational tempo was lower than that, and that's with better planes, flying out of better infrastructure, in better positions, for the most part. Even with one percent attrition each raid, which would be extremely low, your force is rendered combat ineffective inside a month, and requires serious rebuilding. Hell, and these are unescorted, low altitude, daylight, raids. All the Soviets have to do is bounce one raid and the force is probably gutted. With the kind of operational tempo you're talking about, that's pretty much inevitable, relatively quickly. The Soviet Air Defenses weren't amazing, but they weren't *that* bad, and the Germans will be showing them a giant slow moving target to hit.

Strategic bombing, until the invention of Atomics and Modern turbojets, was simply not that great an investment. Unless you had no other choice (Like the UK) or were drowning in spare capacity and have the prospect of A Bombs (Like the US), there are simply better uses for your military budget. Full stop. It's not just the planes the Nazis didn't build to have them either; they need better runways, better pilots, and a good deal more fuel than pretty much anything else you might want to put into the air.
 

Deleted member 1487

Working on acquiring a some solid source for a response for everything else, and being hampered by schoolwork, but I notice that the quoted book is relying on a contemporary assessment of the damage done. Which are generally as accurate as spit. The Soviets certainly did not notice as much of an impact on their rail activity in the deep rear. The failure for mobilization to take effect in Belarus was ultimately a result of Belarus being overrun so quickly, rather then the result of German air power destroying Soviet rail lines.
Considering that the Germans were overrunning the areas they bombed they had the best assessment of what was going on in terms of the effect of their rail interdiction efforts; Soviet communications had broken down nearly completely due to bombing according to Glantz in his book 'Barbarossa' (pp.32-33). Can you can provide a source to back up your claim that the problem wasn't bombing or that the Soviets didn't think it was an issue? Take your time school comes first. Also wouldn't the breakdown in supply, CiC, and tranferring of reserves due to battlefield interdiction be the cause of the rapid collapse of Belarus?
 

Deleted member 1487

You're positing an operational tempo of one Strategic Bomber raid, with the entire force, every day, at low altitude. How long exactly do you expect them to be able to keep that up? IIRC both British and American operational tempo was lower than that, and that's with better planes, flying out of better infrastructure, in better positions, for the most part. Even with one percent attrition each raid, which would be extremely low, your force is rendered combat ineffective inside a month, and requires serious rebuilding. Hell, and these are unescorted, low altitude, daylight, raids. All the Soviets have to do is bounce one raid and the force is probably gutted. With the kind of operational tempo you're talking about, that's pretty much inevitable, relatively quickly. The Soviet Air Defenses weren't amazing, but they weren't *that* bad, and the Germans will be showing them a giant slow moving target to hit.

Strategic bombing, until the invention of Atomics and Modern turbojets, was simply not that great an investment. Unless you had no other choice (Like the UK) or were drowning in spare capacity and have the prospect of A Bombs (Like the US), there are simply better uses for your military budget. Full stop. It's not just the planes the Nazis didn't build to have them either; they need better runways, better pilots, and a good deal more fuel than pretty much anything else you might want to put into the air.

Given that in the first two weeks combat losses were extremely minor compared to the number of sorties, its not that big of an issue actually. The Soviet air force was rendered pretty much impotent and lacked any integrated air defense system in the area of operation in question. They have no radar and their CIC system had broken down. Perhaps 1 mission per day was too much, but German medium bombers were doing 3-4 per day. Within the first month the VVS was pretty much wrecked in this area and it was only able to recover and figure out what to do around August/September. They were combat ineffectively within the first month. Also as I said Smolensk is within drop tank range for Me109 escort, while the Soviets lacked significant numbers of cannon armed fighters to break into a bomber box. The Germans also had serious issues with taking down heavy bombers in 1942 and in 1941 the Soviets didn't really have a functional 20mm cannon with high capacity HE shell like the German minengeschoss. The Soviet 20mm HE shell had 2.8g of explosives, the German one had 18g and even with that needed 20-30 hits to down a heavy bomber.

The bomber box would be formidable if they follow this alternative model:
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=cs&u=http://www.fronta.cz/junkers-ju-89b&prev=search
Armament aircraft constitutes barrel weapons (defensive), consisting of machine guns and bomb equipment. Barrel weapons Junkers Ju 89B initially consisted of one or two MG 15 caliber 7.92 mm, later MG 81 or MG 81Z dvojkulomety caliber 7.92 mm, respectively. two to three large caliber MG 131 caliber 13 mm (gun is designed to charge 13 × 64 mm). Guns were mounted both in the Range at the rear of the cab glazing, and on the bottom of the fuselage, in výstřelné channel (on some machines was blinded, then you take only the dorsal gun). Ammo was after 750 rounds per gun (with machine guns MG 15), each ten trays to each gun and 1000 rounds of ammunition in belts for machine guns MG 81, or - mounted MG 131 - after 500 rounds in belts. Bomb weapons represent various combinations of jerky, cluster and incendiary bombs to the total weight of 4000 kilograms, carried in a pair of fuselage bomb bay. Bomb sight (Lotfernrohr) the type Lotfi Lotfi 7C or 7D.

Frankly they stood a lot to gain by ripping up the mobilizing 2nd echelon's logistics in June-July, as it would have been felt when the Germans closed the Minsk pocket and started getting counter attacked. Same against later when they close the Minsk pocket and start hitting Vyazma and other targets, hampering the Timoshenko offensives from July-September that really hurt AG-Center, costing them over 100k casualties (out of 700k total east front losses from June-the end of November).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShVAK_cannon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minengescho%C3%9F
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MK_108_cannon
the otherwise excellent 20 mm MG 151/20 required an average of 25 hits to down a B-17.
 
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Deleted member 1487

http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p4013coll8/id/3339/rec/1

This is a report on the bombing accuracy of the USAAF in late 1944. They explain all of the factors of bombing accuracy and how much blind bombing they did at high altitude which was the major factor for low accuracy. When they bombed in good visibility from 12k feet or below they were placing around 2/3rds of bombs within 1000 feet of the aiming point even with problems caused by poor aiming techniques, the smoke caused by the bombs of earlier bomber boxes making their runs, and German defenses. About 1/3rd of a bombs were landing within 500 feet of the aiming point even with the above constraints at that altitude with good visibility at the start of the bombing run.

That's on page 9 Table 3.

At 12.5k-15k feet accuracy was 25% within 500 feet, 60% within 1000 feet for B-17s. B-24s were less accurate for some reason.

Things got worse the further up you go. Most bombing in 1944 was done at high altitude (over 20k feet) in poor visibility against heavy defenses, so accuracy was tough; the Germans used smoke projectors, which made it almost impossible to find the aiming point.

Another big problem is the fall in accuracy with big raids due to the smoke generated by the first bombs; they end up obscuring things worse and worse as more bombers make their runs. By the end of bomber stream they are pretty much dropping into smoke and hoping to hit anything.

So much of this isn't a problem for German bombers in 1941. They will have a small raids, highly trained crews, little cloud problems, lower altitudes, good bomb sights, no Soviet smoke generators or really much in the way of AAA or accuracy (plus no early warning without radar), and a big target (i.e. much larger than a German factory). Dispersion out to 500-1000 feet is actually desirable for a large target like a rail yard the size of Smolensk due to the importance to the rail line it services. Even with 1/3rd of 480 bombs falling within 500 feet and another 1/3rd falling within 500-1000 feet of the aiming point and the rest outside of that (unlikely really given that they are using a smaller raid with the best bomber pilots in the LW), they are saturating the target with plenty of explosives, especially as every bomb has 220kg of TNT, which is a BIG explosion/crater.

Even 2-3 times a week is going to do a LOT of damage that the Soviets are going to have a hard time repairing over and over. If they vary the target they hit they can cause systematic blockages and no ability to concentrate defensive resources, which will be highly disruptive to the 2nd and later 3rd echelon's ability to mobilize and fight when its their turn come late June into August.
 
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