Nazi Germany has Strategic Bombers?

But while doctrine will take a while to get developed, front line fighters can be equipped with 20 mm cannons within a few months.
Of course, a few months are all the time the BOB lasted.
 
The B-17 and DO-19 where on the drawing board at roughly the same time (DO-19 about 9 months behind)... my suggestion was to provide it with proper engines (it failed to meet the bomber A spec and got shit canned by Wever partially because it shitty engines which gave it crappy performance; had it been given the historically available BMW 132F (being used on the JU-52 amongst other birds) it would have had characteristics roughly similar to the B-17 of the period; plus it would serve as a useful development platform as more sophisticated and powerful engines become available

considering that NO major war power was developing single engine fighters with heavy cannons in this period; regardless of bomber development, it's not unreasonable to assume that German low priority development of the DO-19 (selected in 1936 and reaching squadron service in 1940 in my scenario) doesn't spur anyone to particularly change their otl fighter development curves (considering the germans themselves had stolen blueprints to the B-17 and didn't feel the need to start putting big cannons into their fighters until after they encountered them in real life; ditto the Russians)

so British 1940 fighters would find an upengined and developed DO-19 a tough nut to crack as they where only armed with rifle caliber guns; plus there is doctrine to work out for shooting down big bombers etc... they would experience many of the same issues the LW experienced in trying to combat B-17 shakedown missions in late 1942 and 1943 which required some period of adjustment (constant adjustment at that) in order to improve their sortie success ratio

When the time came for the US Air Corps to order a bomber, the B-18 was ordered because the B-17 was considered too expensive. Perhaps the Germans thought so too. The B-17 also used turbo-charged engines which gave it much better high altitude performance. There were attempts to develop turbos for the BMW 801, but they were not successful due to the lack of high temperature metals technology and supply of alloying materials.
 
When the time came for the US Air Corps to order a bomber, the B-18 was ordered because the B-17 was considered too expensive. Perhaps the Germans thought so too. The B-17 also used turbo-charged engines which gave it much better high altitude performance. There were attempts to develop turbos for the BMW 801, but they were not successful due to the lack of high temperature metals technology and supply of alloying materials.

The German history with radials is of course one fraught with mixed successes. The up engined DO-19 would have it's best flight characteristics basically at sea level (as did the JU-52 and the FW-190A series)

Doctrine would have to take the engine's limitations into account I suppose; I would assume raids would be schemed so that the bombers approach the target at 20k feet (the upper height of the engine's effectiveness and near the upper height of British medium aa gun effectiveness) at which point they would trade altitude for speed and make a fast run over the target and fly home at sea level at full throttle
 
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(We talk about Hitler as the absolute dictator of Germany. Which he was. But the German economy was remarkably inefficient as a war economy up to 1943/44?)

There's truth to that. The Germans would have been out-produced by the West anyways, but the (oddly uncharacteristic) inefficiency with which they ran their war economy made things much worse for them.
 
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