PC/WI: RAF maxes out on Mosquito's instead of "Heavies"?

A slight off tangent what if is that the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment who suggested removing the turrets from the Lancaster in order to improve its speed by reducing weight through removal of said turrets and surplus crew and this would allow more aircraft to survive gains greater credence as such a change did increase the bombers cruise speed by about 50 mph (80 km/h)

I recall that one Bomber group did allow its crews to 'de-turret' bombers and its losses did drop - I believe it was that Dyson chap who suggested it at the time - a somewhat 'grotesque math' that was simply that by being faster the given aircraft spends less time in the danger area and with less crew each loss of an aircraft is less costly - perhaps if this math was better understood and accepted then Faster Lancasters and More Mossies would be used decreasing losses in aircraft and personnel.

One of the issues with replacing Lancaster with the much smaller Mossie is that the Lanc did carry quite a lot of advanced kit (radar, Oboe etc) as a night bomber in order to find its target at night and in bad weather - and all up this kit would very likely exceed or make a serious dent in the Mossies bombs load to the point of being ineffectual.
 
Without the massive attacks by heavies in early 1944 (operation judgement) would the allied air forces have been able to draw up enough of the Luftwaffe to destroy, allowing them to gain air superiority over Normandy? Without this Overlord is much harder and the breakout from Normandy slower.

The USAF is still there, and everything goes as per OTL for them? So nothing changes - LW has aircraft, but their experienced pilot cadre is gutted and novice pilots are barely more than targets for Allied fighter pilots.

The POD was an earlier appreciation by the RAF of the bomber potential of the Mosquito. Therefore ITTL there maybe time to change priorities before OTL. Does anyone have access to the loss permission rate of the heavy bombers and the Bomber Command Mosquito's on comparable missions?

We can do some math. Say, from early 1942 AM is ramping up production of Mosquitoes, so by early 1943 they have 80% more bombers than in OTL. Best-case scenario allows for each bomber to be crewed with a pilot (one person, obviously) and navigator/bomb-aimer (one person onyl, does double Duty). The bomb-carrying capacity is lower by how much - 3 times lower? No ability to carry big bombs (2000 lb MC; cookies (HC) of 4000, 8000, 12000 lb); no ability to carry both incendiaries and cookie together.

We can take a look at Sbiper's excellent timeline when Bomber Harris' mind was occupied by a historian of RAF of ww2, last name Fleming. 'Flariss' pushed for more Lancasters and Mosquitoes, but his main effort went to improve ability of actually hitting targets, improve survivability with new gear and tactics, improve lethality with new and bigger bombs, a more lucrative choive of targets etc. He also tried to work with British Army. End result being ww2 in Europe being cut by 2 months.
 

CalBear

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What if the RAF realize the Mosquito's potential earlier in the war especially in regards of conducting selective strikes on targets for eg Operation Jericho on the prison at Amien instead of fielding a huge force of heavy bombers?

I was thinking of scaling back the heavy bomber force by around 80% and leaving them to attack hardened or large targets such as dams, battleships (Tirpiz style), underground etc.

With the spare personnel the RAF could then max out on Mosquito squadrons which would then conduct selective targets on power stations etc thus avoiding the carpet bombing strategy and even attack targets over Germany in daylight.

Would this be possible?

Would having a wing of Mosquito's hitting a target in daylight be any more effective than the USAAF's daylight campaign?

Regards.
Not really. The Mossie was an incredible aircraft, but like any other aircraft it had its limitations.

Now, if you change the way the entire CBO was conducted, with extra emphasis on "surgical" strikes, then you have a place for the Mosquito to inhabit. The loss rate would be huge, but considering Bomber Command's actual loss rate it might not change that much.

The problem is that no one, on any side, actually saw what was right in front of their eyes. Area bombing was simply an ineffective tool without fighter escort AND, at least in Europe, you simply could not reliably destroy enough of enemy target cities to destroy morale (it IS possible to destroy morale, although in a dictatorship with a competent secret police force it really doesn't matter. see: June 1945 Japan). The USAAF also was pretty much delusional regarding bombing accuracy through most of the war (and both it AND Bomber Command vastly over estimated the actual damage that bombing did to factories, opposed to factory buildings).

There is, however, the other side of the coin when you look at the CBO, namely the reality that it created de facto second front that took considerable pressure off the Soviets in 1942-mid '44. Every 8.8cm, 10.5cm, and 12.8cm gun dedicated to AAA defending the Reich was one that was unavailable to punch holes in Soviet tanks. Every Fw-190 going up after B-24s was one less pumping 20mm shells into a Il-2, every Me-110/210/410 playing tag with Lancasters in the night sky over Germany was one less available to use in a ground support role in the East. Simply by forcing the Reich to move somewhere around 3/4 of its fighter strength to defend Inner Germany and the Luftwaffe to dedicate 9,000 heavy AAA and 30K light AAA (2cm, 3.7cm) the CBO vastly weakened the Heer in the East during the critical period when things could still have gone either way. Get rid of the CBO as we know it, and suddenly the Heer has way more in the way of heavy guns and a huge increase in airpower.
 
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There is, however, the other side of the coin when you look at the CBO, namely the reality that it created de facto second front that took considerable pressure off the Soviets in 1942-mid '44. Every 8.8cm, 10.5cm, and 12.8cm gun dedicated to AAA defending the Reich was one that was unavailable to punch holes in Soviet tanks. Every Fw-190 going up after B-24s was one less pumping 20mm shells into a Il-2, every Me-110/210/410 playing tag with Lancasters in the night sky over Germany was one less available to use in a ground support role in the East. Simply by forcing the Reich to move somewhere around 3/4 of its fighter strength to defend Inner Germany and the Luftwaffe to dedicate 9,000 heavy AAA and 30K light AAA (2cm, 3.7cm) the CBO vastly weakened the Heer in the East during the critical period when things could still have gone either way. Get rid of the CBO as we know it, and suddenly the Heer has way more in the way of heavy guns and a huge increase in airpower.

This, very much.
 
There is, however, the other side of the coin when you look at the CBO, namely the reality that it created de facto second front that took considerable pressure off the Soviets in 1942-mid '44. Every 8.8cm, 10.5cm, and 12.8cm gun dedicated to AAA defending the Reich was one that was unavailable to punch holes in Soviet tanks. Every Fw-190 going up after B-24s was one less pumping 20mm shells into a Il-2, every Me-110/210/410 playing tag with Lancasters in the night sky over Germany was one less available to use in a ground support role in the East. Simply by forcing the Reich to move somewhere around 3/4 of its fighter strength to defend Inner Germany and the Luftwaffe to dedicate 9,000 heavy AAA and 30K light AAA (2cm, 3.7cm) the CBO vastly weakened the Heer in the East during the critical period when things could still have gone either way. Get rid of the CBO as we know it, and suddenly the Heer has way more in the way of heavy guns and a huge increase in airpower.
And is that a bad thing for the Western Allies? All those guns and fighters are depleting Soviet manpower, at least until mid 1944. A best case scenario for the allies is a weaker USSR with less bargaining power in Yalta (otoh, the WAllies probably won't realize that). As long as Stalin doesn't sign a separate peace, it gives the WAllies a better chance of moving the future Iron Curtain east.
 

CalBear

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And is that a bad thing for the Western Allies? All those guns and fighters are depleting Soviet manpower, at least until mid 1944. A best case scenario for the allies is a weaker USSR with less bargaining power in Yalta (otoh, the WAllies probably won't realize that). As long as Stalin doesn't sign a separate peace, it gives the WAllies a better chance of moving the future Iron Curtain east.
I'd say it is a disaster for the WAllies. The Red Army took losses that would otherwise have been absorbed by the Wallies. If the Soviets don't prevail at Kursk (and with say 2,000 more 8.8cm guns and 300 more single engine fighters and 2000 more twin engine destroyers there is a reasonable chance that9th Army breaks through, albeit with heavy losses, something that unhinges the entire Soviet planned counter-attack) the Wehrmacht can move considerable combat power West to oppose the expected landing in France. It probably doesn't change the eventual outcome of the war, but it very well may cost the Wallies ab extra 50-75,000 casualties.
 

Errolwi

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The USAAF also was pretty much delusional regarding bombing accuracy through most of the war (and both it AND Bomber Command vastly over estimated the actual damage that bombing did to factories, opposed to factory buildings).

I read some interesting thoughts regarding the root cause of this recently
Industrial Electrification and the Technological Illiteracy of the US Army Air Corps Tactical School 1920-1940
...
The unavoidable, in hindsight, issue for USAAF leaders trained in the Air Corps Tactical School in the period between 1920 and 1940 was that it spanned the change in industrial infrastructure from steam engine, line shaft and power belt to electric motor powered mass production.[3] Thus the ACTS theorists had a fundamentally flawed understanding of industrial economies vulnerability to aerial bombing going into World War 2 (WW2) because they were technologically illiterate regards the radical change industrial electrification caused.

This flawed understanding was that roof damage in a factory with line shaft and drive belt power transmission — whether steam or electric driven — stops all production until the roof-mounted line shaft is re-seated or replaced. This was not the case for electric motor delivered power located on the factory floor. The technological illiteracy here was not seeing the fact that electric motors fundamentally disassociated factory production processes from factory physical structure.
...​
 
Mosquito production had several choke points which would not permit grossly increased production.

Lightweight balsa wood is an Ecuadorian export. The balsa tree contains much water and is heavy. It takes a long time to both grow and for the timber to dry out enough to float down to the docks and more for the drying to make the wood suitable for use. OTL production use up most of the actual production. The lead time for more is in years not months.

The structural timber for point and that for sheathing needs to be imported either from North America or Russia.

The labour force needs entirely different skills to that in metal airframe construction so retraining will remove them from the labour force for a period and trainers require the same skills as are being used IOTL production to train them.

So one could raise Mosquito production somewhat but it would not be possible to move wholesale from the metal 4 engined bombers to Mosquitos. What one could do is male a metal Mosquito equivalent that will do the same task but use existing available resources. However, by the time experience shows that this would be a good thing the war will be over before it sees widespread service. Thus we are left with maxing out on Mosquito production but still requiring many heavies.
 
I once read, probably decades rather than years ago, that German night fighters were pretty marginal on excess performance over the 4 engine heavies, in particular the Halifax. It was suggested that if the Halifax was stripped of its guns, cleaned up a bit aerodynamically and run on engine settings for fast cruise it could operate at about 300mph or maybe more. That would have been enough to make them very tough to intercept and cause loss rates to drop.

Anyone else heard of this? Is is crap or plausible?
 
I once read, probably decades rather than years ago, that German night fighters were pretty marginal on excess performance over the 4 engine heavies, in particular the Halifax. It was suggested that if the Halifax was stripped of its guns, cleaned up a bit aerodynamically and run on engine settings for fast cruise it could operate at about 300mph or maybe more. That would have been enough to make them very tough to intercept and cause loss rates to drop.

Anyone else heard of this? Is is crap or plausible?

I also recall that a good number of Halfaxes, with better streamlined to turret, no front turret and some other clean-up job, were with lowest losses. IMO, the 300 mph mark will probably be achived as max speed, cruise at perhaps 250 mph?
Most of the German night fighters, with 'antlers', flame dampers and guns' barrels bristling were indeed barely faster than BC's heavies, so a general clean up job ('pointy nose', no upper turret, more thought invested into antennae placement, better fit & finish where possible) would've probably improved survivability of the heavies via better speed. I'd also suggest upping the engine's cruise setting for a bit more power.
 
I once read, probably decades rather than years ago, that German night fighters were pretty marginal on excess performance over the 4 engine heavies, in particular the Halifax. It was suggested that if the Halifax was stripped of its guns, cleaned up a bit aerodynamically and run on engine settings for fast cruise it could operate at about 300mph or maybe more. That would have been enough to make them very tough to intercept and cause loss rates to drop.

Anyone else heard of this? Is is crap or plausible?

Freeman Dyson of all people proposed it and I recall from reading Leonard Cheshires Biography some years back that he allowed Lancaster Crews under his command when he was a Group commander to choose to remove turrets if they wished and this did have a positive statisitcal impact on aircraft losses.

I think the reasoning was that few night bombers saw the night fighter that intercepted them let alone shot at it.

More useful was the extra pair of eyes warning of a given NF and allowing the Bomber to corkscrew its way out of contact.
 
Mosquito production bottle necks were different than you suggest.

First off, balsa wood was already in wide-spread use for emergency life-rafts aboard ships. So increasing Mossie production meant shifting life-raft production to more modern materials like synthetic rubber.

Mahogany could be replaced by northern hardwoods that were readily available in Canada. Increasing hardwood harvests was merely a matter of telling lumberjacks what species to cut next month.

Increasing Mosquito production did not require down-time to retrain sheet metal workers. Remember that sheet metal monocoque airplanes were really only entering production during the late 1930s. So increasing Mossie production required deciding whether to train new sheet metal workers - from scratch - or training more wood workers.
 
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