Not easy when the German army and Luftwaffe are undefeated.
RAF and USAF would revert to an air war in the Mediterranean, which they would eventually win.
Operation Barbarossa succeeds. How soon can the WAllies plausibly attempt a landing?
- Thread starter John Dusk
- Start date
RAF and USAF would revert to an air war in the Mediterranean, which they would eventually win.
As I recall Post War the Wurzburg Radar was used in Radio Astronomy, for mapping the Milky Way.
And by the end of WWII the Wehrmacht had deployed a Phased Array Radar with a 300km range.
RodentRevolution
Banned
So not the thousands of miles of ocean intercept that was claimed. Plus the Earth curves, this may not be a problem when listening to the stars....yes listening because if you sent out radio signals in the 1950s you would just be getting back signals from say 61 Virginis if they were powerful enough. I mean 61 Virginis is potentially a rather interesting star system but scanning it usefully with active radar is a bit of a stretch. Thus the problem was for Earth based radar detecting Earth based targets was while radio signals would propagate around that curvature thanks to the ionosphere you needed rather complex processing to render information from the garbage that returned along with it.
It would seem there is this idea that if the bomber cannot operate with impunity it is useless but that is not how strategic bombing works. It is battle of attrition that succeeds so long as it denies more resources as a relative proportion of outlay than it consumes and the US economy by the 1940s had a huge outlay.
There would be a serious guerilla was going on in Russia that would tie down a lot of troops and resources for a long time.The full German military wouldn't be able to focus on Western Europe. I'd give the Luftwaffe another year of life.
If "that vulgar little corporal" decides to implement general place oust that would be a major logistical drain.Hitler's health was crap in 1945,Parkinson's disease and his methamphetamine addiction were taking its toll,he would probably die or be incapacitated in 1945/1946.The struggle for power would put saner heads in charge.
If "that vulgar little corporal" decides to implement general place oust that would be a major logistical drain.Hitler's health was crap in 1945,Parkinson's disease and his methamphetamine addiction were taking its toll,he would probably die or be incapacitated in 1945/1946.The struggle for power would put saner heads in charge.
The allies were way ahead in ECM,so not much of a accomplishment from a military point of view.
BooNZ
Banned
You seam to be chaining the German technology development to OTL 1944, while US advancements are limited only by your imagination. As previously stated, the Ta 152 had already entered service in January 1945 and it would have had the speed, service ceiling, climb and armament necessary to deal with the much later deployed B36s. Each B36 had six engines and a crew of 12 defended by a single tail gunner - a significant ante in a battle of attrition against single seat/engine interceptors.
Hand waving in fighter escorts for intercontinental bombers moves the goal posts and defeats the purpose of discussions on the B36 concept. Escorted B29 missions from GB is a more credible threat.
RodentRevolution
Banned
So hang on wait, I say it will be a contest of industrial muscle, implying a fight and you flip your lid?
I mean your claims are very easy to demonstrate as clearly the F8F only exists in my imagination, well mine and countless aviation historians and former US Navy and US Marine Corps pilots but no matter.
Edit: another minor point but the original defensive armament of the B-36 was more extensive than just a single tail gunner...originally there were eight turrets.
Last edited:
BooNZ
Banned
Did those aviation historians also 'imagine' the F8F had a service ceiling significantly above 40,000 ft?
You are close to replicating a "plot twist" from the Newt Gingrich book '1945', except his imagination extended to F8Fs with rocket attachments.
RodentRevolution
Banned
My original claim
I was very specific about the forty thousand feet. The point being that the US could engage in a high altitude battle of attrition with German air defence.
An air war continues until the Allies are ready to unleash instant sunshine over Germany sometime in 1945.
If Barbarossa succeeds in 1941, meaning the Soviets are defeated immediately prior to, or concurrently with Pearl Harbor there are a couple ways the question can be answered.
1. The Reich never declares war on the U.S. and effectively presents the British with a fiat accompli. There would be almost no reason for the Reich to continue with the War against the UK, and utterly no reason to continue with USW. Both the U.S and UK will have a more pressing set of concerns in the Pacific and SW Asia. It is one of the few scenarios where it is conceivable that Churchill would find himself outflanked by events, especially if the Reich offered very good terms.
As an example of terms that might just be too good to refuse: Removal of Wehrmacht forces from Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway with the three countries effectively being demilitarized. Formal recognition of Vichy France with a pledge of non interference and a binding guarantee that French colonial rights will be respected (this would piss Mussolini off to no end, but with the land war over, the Reich needs Italy like it needs an appendix, and Hitler can allow Mussolini to build his new Roam Empire along the Adriatic and Agean). Removal of Wehrmacht forces from Africa. Return of all Commonwealth PoW. Compensation for damages to property in the UK. British recognition of the Reich's area of influence in Europe and a free hand there.
The key to this is that Hitler really didn't WANT to fight the British, not in 1940-41. He didn't want to fight the U.S. for at least a generation, in actual fact any Reich decision to attack the U.S. would have been in the hands of his successor. It would have taken the Reich 40 years to really digest General Government and European Russia (I am assuming that the Reich follows the AA Line plan for post war occupation of the USSR) which was Hitler's real goal, destruction of the Slavs, the Communists, and the various ethnic groups his perverted beliefs found unworthy of life.
Churchill would be faced with the problem of continuing a war against effectively ALL of Europe, with only the Commonwealth for support (and Australia & New Zealand are more than slightly questionable with the Japanese advancing into the DEI) and doing to save what? The Soviets? How much of the British electorate is going to fight for years to save the friggin' Bolsheviks? The Jews? Antisemitism wasn't isolated to the Reich, the fact that London wasn't herding the Jews into enclosures doesn't mean they were loved, same goes for the Roma.
Without USW (and especially without the Reich declaring war on the U.S.) why would the U.S. even consider fighting the Reich while the Japanese are killing Americans all over the Pacific after their "Dastardly Attack". American votes wanted Hirohito's head on a pike, not Hitler's.
In this scenario you wind up with a Cold War that lasts as long as the Reich sticks to the Eurasian mainland and only fights the Anglo-Americans in the economic arena. Figure the Nazis to mismanage the Reich into OTL 1989 USSR conditions by the mid-70s.
2. The Reich still declares war on the U.S. and chooses to continue to fight with the UK. This is close to AANW, except it is unlikely that the WAllies manage to keep the Bomb under wraps without the active, if unfriendly, assistance of the KGB (in AANW the KGB was much more motivated by screwing up the Reich than helping the WAllies). If both sides have the Bomb you wind up with an unending series of proxy wars and a raging war at sea with no real hope of invading Europe. The sort of massive fleet needed to kick in the door constitutes a perfect target for a nuclear weapon and given some time, the Reich doesn't even need to get in in via an aircraft, submarine or even an a much improved missile, it can be delivered by coastline based torpedoes and large railway guns and even towed artillery (the U.S. had 280mm artillery nuclear warheads by 1952 IOTL). Nuclear weapons made invasions like Overlord or Iceberg a thing of the past, unless the target country lacked a nuclear deterrent.
If the WAllies manage to keep the Bomb under wraps and the Reich follows its historic lack of interest, then the earliest you could see a serious attempt to land would be around 1950, possibly later. It would, as was the case IOTL, only be possible to even attempt a landing after the Luftwaffe was rolled back. Without the constant losses in the East, and with the access to Soviet materials (along with the added strategic depth that would make practical bombing of Reich military industries impossible until proper, large scale air-to-air refueling was developed) it is difficult to see how the WAllies manage to knock the Luftwaffe out of the War in less than six or seven years. Even with that sort of lead time the WAllied ground forces will have serious problems unless they have, somehow, developed a mature armored warfare doctrine (not to mention sufficiently advanced vehicles) once the get more than 10 miles inland and leave the protection of the gunline, especially at night. I would frankly doubt that the WAllies would develop a useful doctrine, nothing in the Pacific, SW Asia, or even North Africa will prepare them to face the sort of heavy armor that the Heer was already developing in late 1941 (even in a rapid victory Reich designers would take the lessons of the T-34 and KV-1 into consideration) when follow on generations of vehicles are brought into service.
The wild card here is if the Party follows through with its half developed plan to replace the Heer with a more politically reliable SS based force and if Hitler gets rid of the General Staff concept in favor of his own military "genius" and true believers in place of merit promoted professional senior officers. If the Heer continues with the the thoroughly professional officer corps and long service, well trained and developed NCOs the Reich is a vastly more dangerous opponent than if it has evolved into a politically orientated, loyalty test promotion based, regime protection force.
1. The Reich never declares war on the U.S. and effectively presents the British with a fiat accompli. There would be almost no reason for the Reich to continue with the War against the UK, and utterly no reason to continue with USW. Both the U.S and UK will have a more pressing set of concerns in the Pacific and SW Asia. It is one of the few scenarios where it is conceivable that Churchill would find himself outflanked by events, especially if the Reich offered very good terms.
As an example of terms that might just be too good to refuse: Removal of Wehrmacht forces from Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway with the three countries effectively being demilitarized. Formal recognition of Vichy France with a pledge of non interference and a binding guarantee that French colonial rights will be respected (this would piss Mussolini off to no end, but with the land war over, the Reich needs Italy like it needs an appendix, and Hitler can allow Mussolini to build his new Roam Empire along the Adriatic and Agean). Removal of Wehrmacht forces from Africa. Return of all Commonwealth PoW. Compensation for damages to property in the UK. British recognition of the Reich's area of influence in Europe and a free hand there.
The key to this is that Hitler really didn't WANT to fight the British, not in 1940-41. He didn't want to fight the U.S. for at least a generation, in actual fact any Reich decision to attack the U.S. would have been in the hands of his successor. It would have taken the Reich 40 years to really digest General Government and European Russia (I am assuming that the Reich follows the AA Line plan for post war occupation of the USSR) which was Hitler's real goal, destruction of the Slavs, the Communists, and the various ethnic groups his perverted beliefs found unworthy of life.
Churchill would be faced with the problem of continuing a war against effectively ALL of Europe, with only the Commonwealth for support (and Australia & New Zealand are more than slightly questionable with the Japanese advancing into the DEI) and doing to save what? The Soviets? How much of the British electorate is going to fight for years to save the friggin' Bolsheviks? The Jews? Antisemitism wasn't isolated to the Reich, the fact that London wasn't herding the Jews into enclosures doesn't mean they were loved, same goes for the Roma.
Without USW (and especially without the Reich declaring war on the U.S.) why would the U.S. even consider fighting the Reich while the Japanese are killing Americans all over the Pacific after their "Dastardly Attack". American votes wanted Hirohito's head on a pike, not Hitler's.
In this scenario you wind up with a Cold War that lasts as long as the Reich sticks to the Eurasian mainland and only fights the Anglo-Americans in the economic arena. Figure the Nazis to mismanage the Reich into OTL 1989 USSR conditions by the mid-70s.
2. The Reich still declares war on the U.S. and chooses to continue to fight with the UK. This is close to AANW, except it is unlikely that the WAllies manage to keep the Bomb under wraps without the active, if unfriendly, assistance of the KGB (in AANW the KGB was much more motivated by screwing up the Reich than helping the WAllies). If both sides have the Bomb you wind up with an unending series of proxy wars and a raging war at sea with no real hope of invading Europe. The sort of massive fleet needed to kick in the door constitutes a perfect target for a nuclear weapon and given some time, the Reich doesn't even need to get in in via an aircraft, submarine or even an a much improved missile, it can be delivered by coastline based torpedoes and large railway guns and even towed artillery (the U.S. had 280mm artillery nuclear warheads by 1952 IOTL). Nuclear weapons made invasions like Overlord or Iceberg a thing of the past, unless the target country lacked a nuclear deterrent.
If the WAllies manage to keep the Bomb under wraps and the Reich follows its historic lack of interest, then the earliest you could see a serious attempt to land would be around 1950, possibly later. It would, as was the case IOTL, only be possible to even attempt a landing after the Luftwaffe was rolled back. Without the constant losses in the East, and with the access to Soviet materials (along with the added strategic depth that would make practical bombing of Reich military industries impossible until proper, large scale air-to-air refueling was developed) it is difficult to see how the WAllies manage to knock the Luftwaffe out of the War in less than six or seven years. Even with that sort of lead time the WAllied ground forces will have serious problems unless they have, somehow, developed a mature armored warfare doctrine (not to mention sufficiently advanced vehicles) once the get more than 10 miles inland and leave the protection of the gunline, especially at night. I would frankly doubt that the WAllies would develop a useful doctrine, nothing in the Pacific, SW Asia, or even North Africa will prepare them to face the sort of heavy armor that the Heer was already developing in late 1941 (even in a rapid victory Reich designers would take the lessons of the T-34 and KV-1 into consideration) when follow on generations of vehicles are brought into service.
The wild card here is if the Party follows through with its half developed plan to replace the Heer with a more politically reliable SS based force and if Hitler gets rid of the General Staff concept in favor of his own military "genius" and true believers in place of merit promoted professional senior officers. If the Heer continues with the the thoroughly professional officer corps and long service, well trained and developed NCOs the Reich is a vastly more dangerous opponent than if it has evolved into a politically orientated, loyalty test promotion based, regime protection force.
i much agree with this except for the following:
Barbarossa succeeds, but in no way is Germany getting all of the soviet union. The Soviets would give it to Botswana first, so I would assume that the united states would prop up a rump soviet state and build the war machine there for when the time comes. in the mean time or during this the Japanese will feel the full brunt of the US war machine and allied forces outside of Europe who will all fall under US military jurisdiction ( except for the british ( for as long as they would hold out in this scenario. also bear in mind the enormous resources that will be needed to maintain, occupy and subdue the soviet union. this is vast territory and even if Moscow crumbles and capitulates, it still a very vast amount of territory to control.
and lets not forget this small fact. if the soviets looked to fail, full use of chemical weapons would have come out. If the British felt their backs to the wall they would have dumped everything they had on the Reich. Weapons of mass destruction are taboo, until your going loose and I don't think the british would have went down with out using everything they had.
so the USA would win against Japan, secure china as an ally and I don't think we would argue about who it was in charge of china, The Soviets meanwhile would have moved as much as they could between population and people ahead of the surrender to the east.
The British are going to maintain the fight along with free French and other forces in the middle east and Africa and the pacific. the war in Europe may turn quite but the allies will peck away around the edges until they are ready.
on the note of the bomb. I agree, however if come 45 it rolls in on schedule I would think that the allies would wait until they had 10 or so ready before using them and the either made a massive example of japan or spread them out between Japan and Germany.
The USA is not going to fight alone in any scenario. but with V weapons and other technology making its aperence, The USA will know that its days of having an ocean to protect are coming to an end.
I must also agree with calbear on most of what he as written if the soviets just roll over and play dead before dec 41
most assuredly there wouldn't be a Normandy style invasion in 44
But the british, French and americans would do their best to keep the Nazi's out of the middle east and Africa and former occupied colonial possessions.
Last edited:
One of the problems is that the poster assumes the German R&D programmes progress as they did in OTL following a successful Barbarossa. This is not necessarily correct, a lot of the drivers for German advances in armour design would have been eliminated as there would have been no more KV1 and/or T34 to fight, so the need for the Panther & evolved PzIV medium along with Tiger 1 and later heavy tanks and AT guns are pretty much eliminated; the NAZI's would have pursued some of these programs but possibly with less vigour. Aircraft design is also an possible area of divergence as again the real driver for the ME262, ME163 and He162 was the Germans increasing difficulty in competing with the allies material superiority by going for quality so again maybe less pressure on the Luftwaffe. There was very little high altitude combat other than attempts to go after recce planes and even was limited so without dealing with the reality of high altitude B29 and later B36 less need or awareness of the need for High altidue combat. Without the massive pressure of the Red Army from the East and impending invasion from the West the Germans may well have felt less need to go all out on V weapons in the same way they did in OTL as they would have been happier to rely on fortifications in the West as their backdoor would be pretty secure.
Aircraft at High altitude are generally on the edge stalling - the U2 for example at 70,000ft is typically flying within 3-7 knots of stalling speed, any manoeuvre increases the risk of losing control. I read a book by a pilot who flew PR Spitfires over Germany during the war and he would watch ME262 and adapted piston engined fighters try to reach him and fail.
Also, there is a possibility the Germans might have kept more of their production capacity for civilian uses than in 1943 in our OTL which is when they actually went onto a full war footing. In OTL the Germans actually reduced bomb and munitions productions following the fall of France, who is to say they might not do so following a successful (for values of successful) Barbarossa. The likelihood is that there would have been a lot of partisan/bandit activity in the occupied areas which would have tied down a lot of German infantry and light armour so lots of lighter munitions but not necessarily the heavier munitions on the scale they would be made in OTL.
Aircraft at High altitude are generally on the edge stalling - the U2 for example at 70,000ft is typically flying within 3-7 knots of stalling speed, any manoeuvre increases the risk of losing control. I read a book by a pilot who flew PR Spitfires over Germany during the war and he would watch ME262 and adapted piston engined fighters try to reach him and fail.
Also, there is a possibility the Germans might have kept more of their production capacity for civilian uses than in 1943 in our OTL which is when they actually went onto a full war footing. In OTL the Germans actually reduced bomb and munitions productions following the fall of France, who is to say they might not do so following a successful (for values of successful) Barbarossa. The likelihood is that there would have been a lot of partisan/bandit activity in the occupied areas which would have tied down a lot of German infantry and light armour so lots of lighter munitions but not necessarily the heavier munitions on the scale they would be made in OTL.
I was about to say that your AANW timeline was pretty suggestive of how things would play out, only the Allies didn't really need the "warm war" pause to be in position to invade Europe. But you've anticipated that.
I might shave a year or two off the 1950 mark, but that's a quibble. The point is: with the USSR knocked out, the US and the Commonwealth need some time to get into position to successfully breach Fortress Europe (which now has plenty of combat power redeployed from the East and will have repaved most of France's northern littoral in concrete). And that process starts with whittling down the Luftwaffe, a task that will take some doing (a challenge, since the Allies were behind in jet technology). It's hard to see that being possible before the last 1940's at the earliest, no matter how desperately Marshall and the American chiefs want to make it happen.
The armored warfare capability is a real problem, but I don't think it's quite the show stopper. The Allies will need better tanks, no question (M4's won't quite cut it by that point), and their doctrine's a problem (along with combat leadership, especially at higher levels), but my sense is that air superiority and logistics can supply at least *some* of the deficit. They'll learn some very painful lessons along the way, no question.
I can't see the Anglo-Americans making peace with the Nazis (the last poll option). The commitment was too existential by that point.
Last edited:
No, the Germans will end up establishing a frontier on the Volga or (at most) the Urals.
But even that gives them plenty to work with. Any peace will also (as in Calbear's timeline, along with Onkel Willie's) require massive resource transfers from the Soviet rump state to Germany in any peace settlement - most of the advantages of having Soviet Asia without the disadvantage of having to garrison and govern it.
How large of a combat force would the Reich be able to deploy in Western Europe (including armored vehicles) without the Eastern Front to bleed the Heer/Waffen SS white?
Easy 90 divisions in either active or ready reserve, especially if they used the various Waffen SS "National" Formations, some of which were very substantial volunteer formations (SS Wiking mustered 19,000+, SS Nordland & Charlemagne 11,000+, etc.) and others that were drafted out of occupied countries from "ethnic Germans". Add in another 50-75 in true wartime when older men (even early in the war up to 40) were called to the colors. That doesn't even consider if the Reich chose to draft garrison/fortress troops from Occupied Western Europe.
So basically any attempt at a landing in France will result in a bloodbath for the WAllies, even more so the longer the Nazis have to prepare.
I believe the casualties would be at least double or triple the amount taken on D Day IOTL considering the strength of the coastal defenses and how well trained and equipped the garrisons would be.
Would it be reasonable to say that it would be as costly as the opening days of Operation Downfall if not worse?
Last edited: