The Role of Air Power in pre-1950 NATO-Soviet War

More than three, Core #3, was on administrative hold by Truman from being flown to Tinian after Fatman was used.
This was the infamous 'Demon Core'

For all of 1945, there were 6, three that were used during WWII, Gadget and Fatman, plus the HEU Little Boy

Many of the Mk3 bombs were pulled from service in 1949, and remanufactured.
If there is a War on,most of those 120 Mk.3 bombs will remain in stockpile

The wiki seems to use different number than that though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_stockpiles_and_nuclear_tests_by_country
 
For anyone who is interested here are a couple of overviews from somewhat different perspectives about what the US had in this area in ww2 and the post world war 2 situation. My take on it is that while the capabilities were allowed to run down after the war prior to 1950 or so they were not totally deleted and at least some USAF personnel were working to keep the capability alive. In my humble opinion I don`t see dealing with the fairly simple pre 1950 soviet equipment as being a huge technical challenge, and I suspect enough functional gear and trained staff to operate it could have been found to at least provide meaningful EW support to a nuclear strike force given a modest ramp up period. I will agree that meaningful large scale EW support for large scale air operations during the first few days of the war contemplated in this thread does seem a bit unlikely.

The existence of automated receivers capable of being used in small reconnaissance aircraft and recording the results for later analysis also bodes well in my view for the ability of the USAF to rapidly figure out what the Soviets had and how to deal with it during subsequent strike missions. To recap if the USAF focuses their efforts on using their available ECM to support nuclear strike missions the Soviets could be in for a very bad day.

First link doesn't talk about post-war at all. The second totally contradicts your claims:

The months following the end of the war saw the Air Force attempting to accomplish the seemingly contradictory goals of rapid demobilization, gaining autonomy as a separate service, and building a strong new Air Force. The effects of demobilization were nothing short of disastrous, and within a year the giant wartime organization was literally gutted of men, aircraft and resources. At the same time, the preoccupation of the air leaders with gaining independence from the Army and establishing a separate service had a negative impact on improving its combat capability. Finally, the air arm was trying to find a philosophy and focus for future research and development. Perhaps inevitably, the Electronic Warfare program suffered.

Not surprisingly, the EW program suffered while Air Force leaders focused their attention on the battle for autonomy. One of the chief civilian scientists involved in EW at the time summed up the general attitude as "Forget about countermeasures--it was a wartime weapon and there's no need for it in peacetime." The problem was that EW was regarded as a technical speciality, an attitude almost certainly influenced by its Signal Corps origins. Being regarded as a technical speciality brought it squarely up against attitudes like that of General McMullen at SAC, who once remarked that SAC had "no need for Quartermaster colonels", meaning that unless an officer was a flyer he was not needed.

Although the EW officers in the Air Force did not fall into the "long-haired" category, they were regarded by many as technical specialists who were unnecessary during peacetime, and the number of ECM officers was greatly reduced. Lt Harry Smith, for example, ended up in Florida teaching weather radar; another EW pioneer, Lt. Joe Wack, was advised by his squadron commander to retrain as a radar bombardier; and Captain Les Manbeck, who was the Chief of the ECM Branch at SAC (he had to be chief: he was the only officer in the branch!) in 1946, spent most of his time trying to find ECM officers to assign to bomber units.' By early 1947 the small but crucial pool of trained ECM officers had been scattered, and the EW program was in tatters.

Even if the Air Force had possessed sufficient numbers of aircraft and men, the equipment shortages which followed demobilization eliminated any real capability to conduct EW operations. At most bomber bases the little ECM gear there was packed away in the supply warehouse. The ECM branch on the Air Staff had little to do other than disposing of surplus equipment, and most of the jamming equipment' produced during the war was in fact sold on the surplus market. It is impossible to reconstruct a precise record of the Air Force's electronic demobilization, because of the fragmentary nature of the data, but some raw numbers indicate its extent. In May 1946 the War Assets Administration (WAA), the overall manager for the services' equipment disposal programs, reported that the services had declared $557,000,000 of electronics equipment surplus, with another $1,600,000,000 to come! The situation was so confused that the Air Force listed thirty-four warehouses and depots which could not provide even approximate inventories of their surplus gear. That summer the Assistant Director of the WAA's Electronics Division angrily resigned his position, frustrated by the confusion, lack of people, and "uninformed direction" of the overall program. The quarterly reports of the WAA indicate that the Air Force disposed of nearly a billion dollars worth of surplus communications and electronics equipment by 1949. By no means was all of this combat-ready gear: much was junk. But there would be cases in the coming months of Air Forceofficers quietly going out in civilian clothes and buying back surplis ECM equipment in order to have even an interim EW capability.'

By 1947 the Air Force had, as a result of demobilization, reached a point where it would have to start almost completely from scratch to rebuild its EW capability. As one of the few ECM officers active at the time said, "We had no equipment, no aircraft installations, no training programs, no training aids, no doctrine, no research and development programs to speak of and only a handful of RCM officers to begin anything with."" The fact that the services would demobilize after the war should have come as no surprise to anyone: witness the American experience after World War I. But the pace and confusion of the World War II demobilization almost certainly caught most Air Force leaders by surprise. Officers who could and should have prepared useful "after action" reports or summaries of lessons learned found themselves either being demobilized or trying to hold together an office or function while the Air Force around them seemed to dissolve; one Air Force history described this period as marked by "utter confusion, pervading all echelons of command". By late 1947 the Air Force had lost most of the people, aircraft and equipment needed to sustain combat operations.
-Pg 47-57

Of course, while the next bit goes onto discuss the one bright spot in the demobilization period (that is, planning for Research and Development investment), it admits that has very little short-medium term benefit: " By the end of 1947, however, the quality of any plan for future R&D was of less immediate importance than recovering from the confusion and malaise which accompanied demobilization." Needless to say, there is nothing in there to substantiate the claim that pre-1950 Soviet equipment was "simple" and easy for SAC to defeat or that they were within the capability of the air force to re-establish without massive and extensive build-up.

In particular, the article also completely debunks a claim you made earlier, about the US having a jammer which can stop proximity fuzes. In discussing correspondence between LeMay and the rest of SAC about the degraded state of his new command in May 1949, this sentence pops-up on page 90: "A jammer for use against proximity fuzes was not yet available." Needless to say, if SAC did not have a jammer against proximity fuzes in mid-1949, I fail to see why they would suddenly have one in 1947.

Some other choice quotes from that paper:

The most immediate requirement SAC had was for aircraft. In 1947 SAC still relied on fewer than 200 B-29s, although it would soon begin to receive some B-50s (an upgraded version of the World War 1I-era B-29) and the new, long
awaited-and-hotly-debated B-36, with true intercontinental range. Both SAC and the Air Force were approaching a watershed in aircraft capability requirements. None of SAC's existing or planned bombers had an EW capability designed into the airplane. In 1944 the "Airplane Model Specification" for the planned B-36 listed only eleven crew members, none of whom was assigned the task of operating any ECM equipment, and in December 1947 the USAF Aircraft and Weapons Board's "Estimated Military characteristics of Heavy Bombardment Aircraft" stated that "'No radar countermeasures is required". By the next year, a memo by the Director of Research and Development on "Military Characteristics of Bombardment Aircraft" failed to mention ECM at all.
-Pg 78

The EW program not only lacked ECM equipment and airframes: the dearth of experienced ECM officers which followed demobilization meant that the EW program literally had to start from scratch. The Air Force had determined in early 1946 that there was no need for an extensive RCM program, and officers holding MOS 7888 (radar observer/RCM) could be released; not until later that year was that decision reversed, by which time virtually One entire cadre of countermeasures specialists had left the service. Throughout the entire Air Force there were perhaps a dozen officers experienced in radar countermeasures operations. Not surprisingly they were concentrated in SAC, because SAC had the few remaining B-29 units which had employed countermeasures during the war. The lone ECM officer at headquarters SAC, Captain Les Manbeck, began an Air Force-wide program to identify and recall officers with EW experience. His counterpart at 8th Air Force, Captain Frank Lindberg, actually had his orders releasing him from active duty cancelled the day he was due to sign out! Others were not so lucky: as Les Manbeck described, they "were assigned to other communications-electronic functions--or worse.""' This provided a small nucleus of officers with EW experience, but it obviously was not the long-term
solution: the Air Force needed a more permanent source for EW officers.
-Pg 82-8

The paper then spends a few pages describing a air force attempt to restart ECM training in '47 before summarizing the result of these efforts:

Although the flight training phase was supposed to begin operations shortly after The first group of officers entered the ten-week long ground phase on 5 May 1948, and continued on to the flight phase at the end of July. One prob!em area concerned the qualifications of those officers assigned to this and other electronic training programs. Many lacked the necessary educational background and had no experience in electrical concepts, since before mid-1951 virtually any officer could be assigned to these programs. One of the more tragic cases occured in early 1950, when' an older student officer in the Electronics Officer course committed suicide after having difficulty with the academics. This lieutenent had served in communications for most of his military career, but had been a coal miner in civilian life and had left his small high school over two decades earlier without graduating. Although this may have been the most egregious example of malassignment into the Electronics program, it was also true that nearly a third of the officers in the Electronics program overall did not request assignment into it and entered it only grudgingly."

The ECM training program was not immune to problems with student officers, and it too had its share of students who did not possess the proper academic background. A second problem concerned the military background of some of the students, particularly their rank and aeronautical ratings. By August 1948 two of the eight officers who had completed the ground training phase were majors and thus too senior to be effectively used as ECM operators. Worse, not only were some of the following students also too senior to be used, some were rated pilots. They may have been assigned as a result of the "Cross Training" program, but however they got there, they hated it, as noted by Lt. Joe Wack, one of the initial instructors, who said that the "ex-pilot Ravens [ECM crewmembers]...had little or no feel for the job and simply did not like flying in the backs of airplanes.... As time went on almost all the ex-pilot Ravens managed to get transfers to other posts, or else left the Air Force. We were' better off without them." In the process, however, they took up scarce training slots and wasted critically short instructor and aircraft resources.
Pg 84-85

I could go on, but the point has been made. Needless to say, this all shoots Wiking's waxing poetically about SAC ECM being able to completely render during the opening stages of the war in the head.
 

Deleted member 1487

I could go on, but the point has been made. Needless to say, this all shoots Wiking's waxing poetically about SAC ECM being able to completely render during the opening stages of the war in the head.
That's fair given the sourcing.
How about the RAF though? They were just as much a part of Wallied WW2 ECM, if not even more so than the USAAF due to their much earlier start and focus on it to drop their heavy losses.
You've consistently fixated on the USAF's abilities, but routinely ignored the state of the RAF.
Bomber Command also fielded the B-29 as the Boeing Washington from 1946 on to their first jet strategic bombers in 1951.
 
That's fair given the sourcing.
How about the RAF though? They were just as much a part of Wallied WW2 ECM, if not even more so than the USAAF due to their much earlier start and focus on it to drop their heavy losses.
You've consistently fixated on the USAF's abilities, but routinely ignored the state of the RAF.

It's a legitimate question. I can't imagine they'd be any better off in this period since they underwent a similar demobilization to the US and the post-war Government was (with a lot of justification) more concerned about reconstruction and social welfare then defense but I'll admit that is little more then an educated guess. I'll try and see if I can dig up some information on that on... say, Monday, but for now I really should stop procrastinating on my EdTPA write-ups...
 

Deleted member 1487

It's a legitimate question. I can't imagine they'd be any better off in this period since they underwent a similar demobilization to the US and the post-war Government was (with a lot of justification) more concerned about reconstruction and social welfare then defense but I'll admit that is little more then an educated guess. I'll try and see if I can dig up some information on that on... say, Monday, but for now I really should stop procrastinating on my EdTPA write-ups...
Will I get time until monday to back fill my incomplete post? I'll try and get to your latest rebuttal later.
 

Deleted member 1487

Some info about the RAF:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/54/a2447354.shtml
There was considerable training even in 1946 going on in terms of navigation with heavy bombers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Vampire#United_Kingdom
In 1946, the first Vampire Mk I fighters entered RAF service in the interceptor role.[9][N 2] Soon thereafter, considerable numbers of Mk I aircraft began equipping RAF squadrons of the Second Tactical Air Force stationed in Germany, often to replace wartime fighters such as the Hawker Typhoon, Hawker Tempest, and North American Mustang. On 3 July 1948, the Vampire became the first jet aircraft to equip peacetime units of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, gradually replacing the de Havilland Mosquito in this capacity.[9]

On 23 June 1948, the first production Vampire Fighter-Bomber Mk 5 (otherwise commonly designated as the FB.5), which had been modified from a Vampire F.3, carried out its maiden flight.[9] The FB.5 retained the Goblin III engine of the F.3, but featured armour protection around engine systems, wings clipped back by 1 ft (30 cm), and longer-stroke main landing gear to handle greater takeoff weights and provide clearance for stores/weapons load. An external tank or 500 lb (227 kg) bomb could be carried under each wing, and eight "3-inch" rocket projectiles ("RPs") could be stacked in pairs on four attachments inboard of the booms.[34] Although the adoption of an ejection seat was being considered at one stage, it was ultimately not fitted.

At its peak, a total of 19 RAF squadrons flew the Vampire FB.5 in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. By far, the theatre in which the largest number of Vampires were stationed was Germany; this extensive deployment by the RAF has been viewed as one measure of the emerging Cold War climate between West and East Europe, as well as being a reaction to events such as the Korean War and the Berlin Blockade.[35] Vampires were also operated by a number of active and reserve squadrons stationed in the UK.[36]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloster_Meteor#Operational_service
The next-generation Meteor F.4 prototype first flew on 17 May 1945, and went into production in 1946 when 16 RAF squadrons were already operating Meteors.[113] Equipped with Rolls-Royce Derwent 5 engines, the smaller version of the Nene, the F.4 was 170 mph (270 km/h) faster than the F.1 at sea level (585 against 415), but the reduced wings impaired its rate of climb.[114][Note 12]The F.4 wingspan was 86.4 cm shorter than the F.3 and with blunter wing tips, derived from the world speed record prototypes. Improvements included a strengthened airframe, fully pressurized cockpit, lighter ailerons to improve manoeuvrability, and rudder trim adjustments to reduce snaking. The F.4 could be fitted with a drop tank under each wing, and experiments were carried out with carriage of underwing stores and also in lengthened fuselage models.

The RAF sounds like it was well converted to jet aircraft, both bombers and fighters in the tactical/operational realm. The VVS is going to have it's hands full with them, especially any MiG-9 interceptors. Range was more than enough to escort from West Germany to Poland. Plus it would have been pretty tough to deal with when used for bridge/train busting.
 
First link doesn't talk about post-war at all. The second totally contradicts your claims:


-Pg 47-57

Of course, while the next bit goes onto discuss the one bright spot in the demobilization period (that is, planning for Research and Development investment), it admits that has very little short-medium term benefit: " By the end of 1947, however, the quality of any plan for future R&D was of less immediate importance than recovering from the confusion and malaise which accompanied demobilization." Needless to say, there is nothing in there to substantiate the claim that pre-1950 Soviet equipment was "simple" and easy for SAC to defeat or that they were within the capability of the air force to re-establish without massive and extensive build-up.

In particular, the article also completely debunks a claim you made earlier, about the US having a jammer which can stop proximity fuzes. In discussing correspondence between LeMay and the rest of SAC about the degraded state of his new command in May 1949, this sentence pops-up on page 90: "A jammer for use against proximity fuzes was not yet available." Needless to say, if SAC did not have a jammer against proximity fuzes in mid-1949, I fail to see why they would suddenly have one in 1947.

Some other choice quotes from that paper:

-Pg 78

-Pg 82-8

The paper then spends a few pages describing a air force attempt to restart ECM training in '47 before summarizing the result of these efforts:

Pg 84-85

I could go on, but the point has been made. Needless to say, this all shoots Wiking's waxing poetically about SAC ECM being able to completely render during the opening stages of the war in the head.

Actually I somewhat disagree with some of your points..

I provided a source where an individual with first hand knowledge discusses the actual manufacturing of proximity fuse jammers by the united states during the later part of world war 2 (the jammers in question were however designed to jam fuses made by the united states.) It is clear to me that they existed in ww2. Just because they were not available to SAC post ww2 doesn't imply to me that they didn't actually previously exist. If they had been destroyed post WW2 they could presumably have been re manufactured fairly quickly.
If anything by discussing the need for proximity fuse jammers, the other source I provided that you with that you have quoted from supports my contention that (in the context of this alternate time line) the soviet proximity fuses might have been of little use during a SAC Nuclear strike as they would potentially have been jammed (either by older jammers issued to SAC in a war emergency, or newly manufactured ones.) I do realize that the ability of the US to jam their own fuses in WW2 does not necessarily imply they could later jam soviet ones.

I also provided a source that I believe support my contention that the USAF maintained a small number of staff with some degree of ECM knowledge. (My read of the paper is that there were at least some staff with some degree of ECM knowledge on hand..) It also speaks to staff buying back surplus equipment so it seems to me that at least a few staff were interested in keeping this capability alive in some fasion. As your quotes mention some gear was in fact on hand (if in warehouses.) I don`t in any way believe this would have translated into a usable ECM capability on day one of war in the time frame we are discussing but it seems there may have been a nucleus to build upon.



Edit to add:
To recap prior comments of mine, the supply of deliverable nuclear weapons would likely have been a bigger issue for SAC than the lack of ECM equipment and operators.


All the best
Blue cat.
 
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To recap prior comments of mine, the supply of deliverable nuclear weapons would likely have been a bigger issue for SAC than the lack of ECM equipment and operators.

The biggest bottleneck would be the shortage of Polonium initiators for the implosion bombs.

With some of the reactors being reworked at Hanford in the 1947 timeframe, only not many reactors were online to produce that, and that has a very short half-life, 138 days. couldn't really be stockpiled.

This shortage OTL moved the US Researchers to work on replacing them completely with neutron tubes, and that took till 1955 for a testable device.

It's hard: that why even decades later, the Indian and Pakistani test devices still used Polonium initiators
 
The biggest bottleneck would be the shortage of Polonium initiators for the implosion bombs.

With some of the reactors being reworked at Hanford in the 1947 timeframe, only not many reactors were online to produce that, and that has a very short half-life, 138 days. couldn't really be stockpiled.

This shortage OTL moved the US Researchers to work on replacing them completely with neutron tubes, and that took till 1955 for a testable device.

It's hard: that why even decades later, the Indian and Pakistani test devices still used Polonium initiators
Yes.. I also suspect the shortage of bomb assembly teams, the short useful life of the early weapons once they had been assembled and the general arrangements of the AEC having custody of the nuclear weapons in this time frame would have presented issues.
 
Actually I somewhat disagree...


Also reflecting on this ongoing debate, I thought I should mention that I am sort of expecting that during the planing stages for a nuclear strike during WW3 in the 1940`s the USAF would display the same type of out of the box thinking that lead to the Dolittle raid being carried out, that the Japanese used to put wooden fins on their torpedos during the pearl harbour attack etc.. I am having a very hard time accepting that the USAF wouldn`t use every tool at their potential disposal prior to dispatching their small number of usable nuclear weapons in the 1940s on combat missions against the Soviet Union. (But on the other hand I suppose they might have had to fly the missions with what they had on hand at the start of the war. Who knows what might have happened in this alternate time line.)

For example SAC was clearly aware of the concept of proximity fuse jammers. Presumably one way or another given a reasonable amount of lead time a modest number would have been provided for the handful of air planes that would likely have been involved in a nuclear strike mission. Given a WW3 war emergency I could conceivably see those involved in the manufacturing of those devices in WW2 being drafted into service to at least oversee the manufacture of new ones. I will concede that if the Soviets had developed proximity fuses that bore no relation to the US ones this approach may not have worked out very well. Given the massive effort the US the UK and others put into the fuses that were fielded in ww2 I have my doubts that the Soviets independently developed something else that would have been immune to US counter measures but I won't exclude that possibility.

To recap I don`t see these types of measures helping out with a broader conventional bombing campaign in the early stages of the conflict we are considering. I also can`t rule out a US effort to collect actual data on what the Soviets actually had prior to building new jammers.

Also after reflecting on this issue a bit more I suppose it is an open question even in a war time setting how long it might have taken for the available staff with ECM knowledge to have regained or refreshed their skills to the point where they could have usefully flown on combat missions in the time frame we are discussing. Still if one only focuses on the nuclear strike missions a fairly small number of people would be needed and hopefully some of them would ramp up faster than others (perhaps with some help by others who were recalled to service.)

As this is an alternate history forum I believe this type of speculation is reasonable.
 
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Deleted member 1487

Alright, I had to split off the last post so it wasn't lost on the last page.

Again, more claims. No sourcing. More speculation based on nothing going up against the hard assessments of the people who actually work and study with these machines. And the WAllies bombed Poland from the UK with their 1943-1945 air force, when they had tens of thousands of aircraft and thousands of bombers, not their vastly smaller and weaker 1947 air forces of a few thousand aircraft and a couple of hundred bombers. I'm not sure what delusion your under that the WAllies would be able to organize and deploy escort fighters to bases in Norway, France, Denmark, and West Germany when those bases would be under Soviet control within weeks of hostilities opening. And the paltry number of F-82s (their entire production run was smaller then the number of MiG-9s produced in '47, so there's that double standard again that somehow a few hundred MiG-9s aren't enough to equip multiple regiments but a few hundred F-82s are going to equip multiple groups) are gonna be swamped by the vast number of Soviet fighters available.
What are you basing your claim on that the Soviets would be able to get into steam roller mode in a matter of weeks when we haven't even figured out the scenario where war breaks out and what the readiness of all the forces in question would be? The Soviets weren't mobilized IOTL in 1947-48 and it would take them time to get forces ready to go, perhaps only after was has broken out and bombing is already started on their logistics. As it was the RAF had jet forces already deployed to west Germany, which would be uninterceptable by the aircraft the Soviets had deployed to East Germany and Poland. They'd be sure to hit bridges and other operational logistics ASAP.
Also the Allies in 1943-45 IOTL were using much less capable and had lower tonnage capacity, so ITTL with more effective bomb sights/radar guidance systems (BTW you haven't proved the Soviet ECM would be able to counter those) they can plaster concentrate logistics targets like Warsaw's rail yards and bridges over the Vistula with guided bombs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-A-1_Tarzon
The RAF still had their Grand Slams, which smashed German bridges and infrastructure completely by the end of the war and could be deployed at night by their strategic bombers early in any sort of WW3. In their case it is a question of precision vs. how many bombers they could deploy.
Plus there is the Royal Navy too and their aircraft, which could escort if needed. They even shot down a MiG-15 in Korea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Commonwealth_Forces_Korea
The Royal Navy usually had at least one aircraft carrier on station during the war. Five British carriers: Glory, Ocean, Theseus, Triumph, and Unicorn (a maintenance and aircraft transport carrier) served in the conflict. The Royal Australian Navyprovided the carrier HMAS Sydney. The RN, RAN and Royal Canadian Navy also provided many other warships. The Royal New Zealand Navy deployed a number of Loch class frigates throughout the war.

The RN carriers provided the only British fighter planes to take part in the war. On 9 August 1952 a propeller-driven Sea Fury, piloted by Lieutenant Peter Carmichael of No. 802 Squadron, based on HMS Ocean, shot down a MiG-15 jet fighter, becoming one of only a handful of pilots of propeller planes to have shot down a jet.

Rather than focusing on what the USAF would be able to contribute early on, which would be limited due to the deployment posture in Europe at the time, the British would probably be making the serious early air contributions and they had quite advanced models in place and had a more rational demob policy after WW2 due to having to maintain the Empire. The colonial militaries would of course some later, but the RN air units and RAF would be making serious contributions to disrupting the Soviets. They had Vampires and Gloster Meteors deployed in Europe. F-82s would matter later on more, especially if production was resumed, but the initial fighting would be by British jets primarily.

BTW the F-82 was already in production and machine tools existed, while the Mig-9 was kept purposely limited in production to save resources for the MiG-15. Gearing up production for the MiG-9 instead would take at least as long as resuming production of the F-82 if not just going for US jet fighters like the P-80 of which nearly 1200 were made IOTL and had more than enough range from bases on the continent or from Norway if needed. Their performance well exceeded the MiG-9 despite predating it by several years.

More importantly the US Navy and it's fighters would be able to offer support off short in the Baltic if necessary, the Soviet Baltic Fleet was at best a minor threat. As it was there were strong US naval forces in the Mediterranean over the Turkish Straits crisis in addition to various other naval units normally stationed in Europe. Their aircraft and forces would be an important role as well.

Then there are the French, who weren't meaningless in any fight in Europe. Same with the Italians, even if both would have their own issues internally. Same with the Dutch, Danes, and Norwegians plus Turkey.


Screeching "Soviet propaganda!" is not an actual rebuttal and you haven't provided any actual which shows the proximity-fused 85mm would be ineffective. Just random supposition. In any case, it seems you are unaware that the M1939 received an upgrade in 1944 designated the KS-18 Model 1944 which had new propellant with a higher muzzle velocity. About 900 meters-per-second. And I also found that 100mm gun was already entering into service in 1947 (it's full name was KS-19 100mm Model 1947) along with the SON-6 fire control radar and PUAZO-6 fire director. I can't find anything to confirm it one way or the other, but I wouldn't be surprised if the 85mm batteries were re-equpped with those...
When I first posted I was not aware that there was an upgrade in 1944, which did make it at least as powerful as the German 88 if not slightly more powerful. Of course you actually haven't proven that Soviet AAA and proximity fuses would be effective either, just posted some Soviet claims about their range and performance of the guns, but nothing about proximity fuse quality nor anything about guidance system quality, both computer gunlaying or gun laying radar systems. It is unlikely that the best new equipment was going to be stationed outside of Moscow or Soviet core industrial regions in the 1940s and will probably be retained there given the threat of nuclear attack. So Poland is not going to be defended by the creme of Soviet air defense, neither aircraft nor ground, while even the best of Soviet equipment is of unknown practical efficacy in 1947-48. From the Korean war it seems that only the light caliber weapons when concentrated in large mass was able to shoot down tactical low altitude attack aircraft in numbers.
https://www.rbth.com/society/2013/0...ert_soviet_pilot_in_the_korean_war_28427.html
“However, the U.S. planes often worked at heights of more than seven kilometers [4.3 miles], and so anti-aircraft artillery shells burst in the air without doing any harm to them. That is why our fighters always wore helmets, as well as full combat gear. Shards of our shells, falling from an altitude of several kilometers, were often fatal to Soviet anti-aircraft gunners. The enemy carried out bombing raids at night. Americans were using napalm back then. We buried our soldiers in the Russian cemetery in Dalian, while dead officers with the rank of major and higher were sent home.


Well, of course not. SAC in 1947 doesn't have 800 B29s. The small number is gonna make them rather easy for Soviet fighters to pick off though and cause even small amounts of attrition to have outsized impact.
That's assuming they can reach that high to get them and actually catch up to them. MiG-9s after all aren't MiG-15s and we don't know how many were operational, serviceable, and deployed within reach of Warsaw in 1947-48. Also there is the issue of bombing at night and the RAF, which the Soviets weren't set up to handle at the time.

Yes, it is a double-standard. The Japanese lacked modern guns, fire control, proximity fuses, radar-guided guns, and all the accruements of a modern IADS that the Soviets had. Hell, not even the Germans have some of the kit the Soviets had in '47.
Outside of Moscow the Soviets lacked that too and you haven't proved that the Soviets had all that operational and integrated and it actually worked well in 1947-48. In Korean in the 1950s despite deploying Soviet AAA they lacked the ability to bring down B-29s except by fighter. Other than proximity fuses, which we don't know even how many or how well the Soviet ones worked in 1947, if anything the Soviets lacked what the Germans had in 1945. They didn't even have 128/130mm guns and apparently were just introducing 105mm ones other than what they captured during the war. Given how far behind the Soviets were in radar domestically, the best they had in 1947 was what they still had from L-L or captured from the Germans.
For example, this radar the Soviets introduced in 1947 was no better than what even the Japanese had in 1943:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-3_radar
It was also worse performing than the Chain Home system the Brits had tested in 1936:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_Home


No, they don't. The British and Americans never entertained basing on Continental Europe as they recognized they'd be lost within months at most. Soviet supply stocks in East Germany were sufficient to last the Soviets several months of much harder combat then they'd face in Western Europe, what with a strategic advantage numerical ground advantage across the board of 5:1 and all, and the significant motorization of Soviet forces and their logistical chain enables them to utilize Central/Western European road networks with great facility. Claims that the RAFs strategic bombing force is ready to go on day 1 are unsourced and implausible given the poor state of the British military in this period (indeed, per Steven Ross's books on the subject, Anglo-American British planning didn't envision air offensives beginning until Day 45 at the earliest and that assumed stronger forces and better prepared bases then actually existed in 1947). Soviet forces only need 10-20 days at most to be ready to move and, as they are the aggressors in this situation, would in fact already be at full strength and ready to move, claim of uprisings instantly happening on day 1 are unsupported and unsourced: the Polish Home Army has long been crushed and there isn't any sort of organized major resistance movement left in Poland.
Got some sourcing on that? The Brits had jets based in West Germany and supporting the Army of the Rhein. I already posted sources on this earlier and I think you might have replied to that already. In terms of heavy bombers, again the distance from Southwest England to Warsaw was less than 900 miles, so not a serious issue and well within the total range with the max payload of the Avro Lincoln. How soon they would be able to launch a major strategic air offensive remains to be sourced by anyone, but attacking bridges in Poland won't exactly require major fleets of bombers. The first B-29 missions were flown within 4 days of the Korean War breaking out, so it isn't exactly as if some bombers couldn't be mobilized quickly even in the event of a surprise attack. You haven't sourced any claims about the Soviets being ready for an offensive to the Atlantic ocean in 1947 or 1948 on the drop of a dime or their ability to mobilize for such without giving the Allies substantial warning.
Do you have a link for Steven Ross' books? I can see if I can get my hands on them.
The NVKD was still rooting out Polish resistance in 1947:
http://www.iwm.at/wp-content/uploads/jc-06-06.pdf

What sort of sustainment did the Soviets have in 1947, given that they had at best slightly more total motor vehicle pool than the Germans did in 1941 in Barbarossa? Did they have the strategic truck fleet outside of their armies to cut loose from rail supply at bottlenecks in Poland at the Vistula?

Giving the effectiveness with which the Soviets turned Western agents in this period, a lot of that support will be going right into Soviet hands. I direct you to my earlier quotes about this subject in this thread.
Sure, there was substantial western failure during this period due to betrayal by communist agents in British intelligence. In the event of war though things will be stepped up more than the Cambridge 5 could safely report on and would have access to, as well as the Soviets have a lot more to worry about than the situation in Ukraine, such as potential resistance in East Germany, Poland, and Hungary.

The German raids in 1944 were also completely ineffective against Soviet marshalling yards, so supposition that the demobilized WAllies are going to do any better is nonsensical.
They were not completely ineffective, it's just that without the ability to sustain the attacks like the Wallies did they were repaired before too much long term disruption could happen. The Allies had learned how to attack rail yards and bridges in WW2 especially thanks to their research work after the war into what worked and didn't so wouldn't be making their earlier mistakes they had made during WW2 when they started operations in Europe. Not only that they had better tools than in WW2 like guided munitions.

And that'll be the case, as few B-29s were left operating in 1947 as well. Most had gone to the boneyards by then and the entirety of SAC was 1,000 aircraft. That isn't the number of B-29s mind you, but the total number of aircraft. And of course they weren't reaching WW2 levels of attrition (save for a few instances when they ventured too far north without fighter cover: one flight lost 6 out of 9 of it's bombers): they weren't facing WW2 levels of resistance, much less WW3.
That is leaving out the mothballed B29s, ability to resume production if needed, ramp up of new models of aircraft, and ability to even reactivate boneyarded models. You're only talking about the starting situation, not where they'd be in even a couple of months of activating reserves and fighting WW3.
I'm not sure what exactly you're referring to about 'too far north' and 'losing 6 of 9 aircraft'; I'm guessing something during the Korean War? In that case that was with the MiG-15 available, not piston engine aircraft or a handful of potentially not even active MiG-9s around Moscow in 1947.


I said that given the inherent optimism of BDAs, which is what the quote is relying on, it is quite likely that the Soviets did jack. As it was, the quote says they did very little. The main thing that attenuated the communist logistics in Korea was the fact that they were largely footbound, unlike the heavily motorized Soviet forces.
BDAs?
The communists in Korea were most certainly not foot bound, they were motorized and used rail. They only ended up being foot bound for supply because roads and rail were wrecked. Motorization is fine until you get your bridges and rail yards smashed and convoys shot up as the Germans found out in France, Italy, and even North AFrica.

Yes, I get that your deep down there in the fuhrerbunker, apparently believing that the Soviets are as devoid of motorized equipment and rolling stock as the Chinese and Koreans, as well as apparently possessing just as much in the way of air defense and repair capacity. Must be the same place your imagining the US still having 5,600 bombers in Europe ready to go instead of a couple hundred working spread across the world. Meanwhile, out here in the real world, there is a recognition that the Soviets have more locomotive and rolling stock and motorized assets in 1947 then they did when they were conducting the war against Germany.
I'm not sure what world you're on that you think the Chinese and Koreans didn't start with rail and trucks, they had plenty to get them to Pusan and later sustain them in 1951 with Chinese entry. They were just destroyed by Allied air power and interdiction campaigns.
Operation Strangle's 87,552 interdiction sorties were credited with destroying 276 locomotives, 3,820 railroad cars, and 19,000 rail cuts. They also destroyed 34,211 other vehicles.

This is some Nazis-level delusion. Ignore the logistical realities of having to callup, conduct remedial training, and organize millions of men, get them equipped with new aircraft, and ship them off overseas. Not to mention pretending that the British didn't undergo their own massive demobilization which would leave them with much of the same problems. Meanwhile, here in the real world the actual people in charge of planning US logistics in this time period observed that for the Air Force to reach a manpower strength of 2.1 million men from it's actual level in 1947 would take the American military 26 months (American WarPlans, 1945-1950, page 59).
The RAF demobbed down to 150k men, so yes they will be less powerful than during WW2, but they don't need to be WW2 powerful with the weapons they had in service even in 1947 to hit critical targets like the Vistula bridges or even the Oder ones. Their tactical jet bombers were faster than any Soviet fighter in Germany or Poland and would be a pain for Soviet forces to try and hit with AAA, especially before knowing how to properly lead them.
Then there is the USN and RN air units that could more around as needed and provide fighter cover and mobile bombers/fighter-bombers as needed.
And BTW having an air force the size of WW2 isn't necessary if not simply for the reason that they aren't also fighting Japan ITTL with a totally separate force structure and the Warsaw Pact doesn't exist yet and the nations that make it up really didn't have forces yet. I doubt the Czechs would fight the west, same with the Yugoslavs. The Germans probably would be mobilizable to fight against the Soviets, while the East Germans and Poles would need to be occupied quite a bit by the Soviets.
 
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I'm having trouble pinning down any scholarly studies of the 1945-1950 RAF's capabilities in terms of maintenance, training, capabilities in EW, crew capabilities, and so-on. All of my searches keep throwing me stuff from the mid-50's or WW2.

What are you basing your claim on that the Soviets would be able to get into steam roller mode in a matter of weeks

Soviet operational plans for the defense, counter-offense, and to lesser extent offensive* against a WAllied counterattack published in Soviet military journals during the 1970s and 80s. The 4 group forces in Eastern Europe (7 armies, around double the number of divisions the West had in Germany) would be ready to go on day 1, with Category A home divisions (around 35 divisions) being ready to go by the end of Day 2. All category B divisions would be ready to go by day 10. Category C divisions would be at full readiness by Day 20. Beyond that, any further divisions would be fresh-formed.

Against this, the US has one half-ready infantry division in Western Europe and four constabulary regiments, the British also have 1 division and 3 brigades of unknown readiness. The British technically had a second division on paper, 7th Armored, but it is described as "effectively disbanded" in 1947 in the organizational history of the BOAR that I'm looking at. I'm not finding any numbers on what the French have, but given the previous examples, it probably isn't any more then one or two divisions.

*I say "lesser" extent because only the generalities are known about the offensive ones.

The Soviets weren't mobilized IOTL in 1947-48 and it would take them time to get forces ready to go, perhaps only after was has broken out and bombing is already started on their logistics.

The Soviets would require almost no time to mobilize. Even the modest peacetime build-up from 1946 to 1949 nearly doubled the Red Army's strength and WW2 demonstrated how rapidly the Soviet mobilization system could recruit, retrain, and organize reserve manpower into functioning formations.

As it was the RAF had jet forces already deployed to west Germany, which would be uninterceptable by the aircraft the Soviets had deployed to East Germany and Poland. They'd be sure to hit bridges and other operational logistics ASAP.

You have not shown any plans that the RAF intended to do so nor that the RAF personnel possessed the training and competence to do so. The Soviets are known to have a regiment of MiG-9s in East Germany, which are capable of intercepting the British aircraft available at this time.

More importantly the US Navy and it's fighters would be able to offer support off short in the Baltic if necessary, the Soviet Baltic Fleet was at best a minor threat. As it was there were strong US naval forces in the Mediterranean over the Turkish Straits crisis in addition to various other naval units normally stationed in Europe. Their aircraft and forces would be an important role as well.

Between 1946 and as late as May of 1950, no US naval forces were assigned to Western Europe. By the time any ships can be scrounged up, the Soviets will have overrun Denmark and/or Norway, effectively turning the Baltic into a Russian-lake. Even then, the confines of the Baltic Sea are powerful enough to make sending US carrier forces risky business, as they would have to deal with a multi-threat environment. Unless the USN limits itself to just bombing coastal targets in quick raids, which will do nothing to the Soviets, then they'll have to approach the shores and render themselves vulnerable to Soviet air and naval forces. And to have any real effect they have got to go inland.

Then there are the French, who weren't meaningless in any fight in Europe. Same with the Italians, even if both would have their own issues internally. Same with the Dutch, Danes, and Norwegians plus Turkey.

A interesting claim, given that they disagreed. The Italian Army was a complete gendarmie at this time and the French themselves admitted their own forces were only somewhat better, ultimately describing themselves during the Berlin Crisis as practically defenseless. The Benelux and Scandinavian Countries barely even had any men in their total armed forces, much less any functional formations. Turkey's the only one of these that really has any weight in it's armies but it isn't committed to the Western Alliance yet and is liable to only join if attacked directly... at which point the Soviets are liable to hit them with so much overwhelming force that they'll still be a comparative footnote.

When I first posted I was not aware that there was an upgrade in 1944, which did make it at least as powerful as the German 88 if not slightly more powerful. Of course you actually haven't proven that Soviet AAA and proximity fuses would be effective either, just posted some Soviet claims about their range and performance of the guns, but nothing about proximity fuse quality nor anything about guidance system quality, both computer gunlaying or gun laying radar systems. It is unlikely that the best new equipment was going to be stationed outside of Moscow or Soviet core industrial regions in the 1940s and will probably be retained there given the threat of nuclear attack. So Poland is not going to be defended by the creme of Soviet air defense, neither aircraft nor ground, while even the best of Soviet equipment is of unknown practical efficacy in 1947-48. From the Korean war it seems that only the light caliber weapons when concentrated in large mass was able to shoot down tactical low altitude attack aircraft in numbers.

I've already cited multiple studies on Soviet air defense which disagree while you have not provided even the slightest citation for any of your claims. Furthermore, Soviet air defense radar and personnel in Korea (or, more accurately, in Manchuria peering into Korea) proved more then able to effectively detect western raids which came up close to the Yalu and arrange intercepts, using the same radar systems that were already in widespread Soviet service in 1947.

They can. MiG-9s are faster then, as are the YaK-15s. . Your claims that the Soviets weren't set-up to handle are unsupported and fly in the face of already-cited improvements in Soviet air defense forces.

In Korean in the 1950s despite deploying Soviet AAA they lacked the ability to bring down B-29s except by fighter.

A patently false claim. Your earlier source recorded 4 bombers lost to AAA while this selective record has five B-29s lost to AAA (or damage inflicted there-of) while in the air and another 2 which suffered so much damage that they were written off upon landing. And this against an enemy not possessing remotely the AAA forces the Soviets did.

Do you have a link for Steven Ross' books? I can see if I can get my hands on them.

It's easy enough to find on Amazon.

What sort of sustainment did the Soviets have in 1947, given that they had at best slightly more total motor vehicle pool than the Germans did in 1941 in Barbarossa?

Between the proportionally increased availability of motor-vehicles with the disbandment of excess and obsolete divisions, improvements of the replacement system, and additional production of improved models in 1945-1947, a post-war Soviet rifle division alone possessed 12 times the motor vehicles it did in 1945 and three times that of a German infantry division in 1941.

Sure, there was substantial western failure during this period due to betrayal by communist agents in British intelligence. In the event of war though things will be stepped up more than the Cambridge 5 could safely report on and would have access to, as well as the Soviets have a lot more to worry about than the situation in Ukraine, such as potential resistance in East Germany, Poland, and Hungary.

The Cambridge 5 was less of an issue then the fact that the Western efforts at this were just plain awful and amateurish. Again, I've already posted on this.

They were not completely ineffective

There is no evidence for this. Certainly the Soviets record no effectiveness from the German raids. Notably, the German forces involved were similar in size to the sort of forces the Western powers would be able to assemble on a short notice.

The Allies had learned how to attack rail yards and bridges in WW2 especially thanks to their research work after the war into what worked and didn't so wouldn't be making their earlier mistakes they had made during WW2 when they started operations in Europe. Not only that they had better tools than in WW2 like guided munitions.

A lot of that knowledge was not institutionalized and was lost in the demobilization. The guided weapons you mentioned earlier were, like pretty much all guided weapons of the era, were too unreliable to be effective. With only a few exceptions, the equipment available to the western strategic air bombers at the start of the war is no different from that available in the end of WW2.

That is leaving out the mothballed B29s, ability to resume production if needed, ramp up of new models of aircraft, and ability to even reactivate boneyarded models. You're only talking about the starting situation, not where they'd be in even a couple of months of activating reserves and fighting WW3.

We've still yet to determine how many of the mothballed/boneyard B-29s were serviceable and ramp-up of production would still take time. Then there's the problems of fielding all the personnel needed to support additional aircraft when SAC could barely maintain their existing fleet at a peacetime level. While the situation would improve in a couple of months, it won't to the degree that'll be felt on the overall war effort.

I'm not sure what exactly you're referring to about 'too far north' and 'losing 6 of 9 aircraft'; I'm guessing something during the Korean War? In that case that was with the MiG-15 available, not piston engine aircraft or a handful of potentially not even active MiG-9s around Moscow in 1947.

Yes? You were talking about how the US in the Korean War never suffered WW2-levels of attrition in Korea and I observed cases where tactically they did. Worse then WW2 in fact. Overall though, the main thing preventing WW2-levels of air attrition in Korea was that, firstly, the Chinese refused to rebase into North Korea proper and, secondly, the Soviets refused to provide the resources to construct a proper IADS south of the Yalu.

BDAs?
The communists in Korea were most certainly not foot bound, they were motorized and used rail. They only ended up being foot bound for supply because roads and rail were wrecked. Motorization is fine until you get your bridges and rail yards smashed and convoys shot up as the Germans found out in France, Italy, and even North AFrica.

Bomb Damage Assessments, a pretty basic term. And yes, the Communists in Korea were very much footbound. The North Koreans had no effective means of vehicle replacement organized in 1950 and hence lost the gross majority of their trucks simply getting to the Pusan Perimeter, with the rest going in the subsequent attritional struggle and being gone by the time of the rout all the way to the Yalu. The Chinese fielded practically no vehicles to start with and outright didn't have the trained personnel to be able to maintain any significant vehicles stocks: when the Chinese captured 1,500 UN trucks while pushing south, they only were able to find enough people with the qualifications to even drive 200 of them. The Germans main issue in France, Italy, and North Africa was their own crap logistical plan much more so then enemy air superiority.

I'm not sure what world you're on that you think the Chinese and Koreans didn't start with rail and trucks, they had plenty to get them to Pusan and later sustain them in 1951 with Chinese entry. They were just destroyed by Allied air power and interdiction campaigns.

These are air force claims and hence of little credibility. If taken at face value, they represent the destruction of more vehicles then the Communists even fielded during the war. Post-war studies have found that the cost of UN aircraft lost in interdiction efforts was higher than that of all the destroyed Communist vehicles, rolling stock, and supplies. The only reason the West was able to afford such losses in such a ineffective campaign was because their military resources were so much superior to that of the North Koreans and Chinese, which would not be the case in the first two phases of a war against the USSR and even in the third and final stage of such a war, the gap is liable to be much smaller. The simple reality is that throughout the conflict, Communist supply lines were never cut by air power. Indeed, the opposite happened: Communist troops became better supplied as the war progressed. Nothing indicates improvements in supplies quite like ammunition: in August 1951 the Chinese fired 17,000 artillery shells. In July 1953, they fired over 375,000. This was achieved while also increasing rations so that Chinese soldiers went from starving to death by the hundreds in the winter of 1950-'51 to being better fed then they were in civilian life in 1953.

Notably, air strikes against North Korean bridges were usually repaired within 2-4 days. The Soviets, being in possession of more mechanized means of bridge repair and more rail resources overall, could presumably do it much faster.

Then there is the USN and RN air units that could more around as needed and provide fighter cover and mobile bombers/fighter-bombers as needed.

Global Western air strength in 1947 was slightly smaller then Soviet air strength in Europe alone. If anyone will hold air superiority over the tactical-operational battlefields, it will be the VVS. This goes double if the Western Air Forces stay up high, where they can't protect or cover the ground troops... or their own airbases, for that matter.

And BTW having an air force the size of WW2 isn't necessary if not simply for the reason that they aren't also fighting Japan ITTL with a totally separate force structure and the Warsaw Pact doesn't exist yet and the nations that make it up really didn't have forces yet. I doubt the Czechs would fight the west, same with the Yugoslavs. The Germans probably would be mobilizable to fight against the Soviets, while the East Germans and Poles would need to be occupied quite a bit by the Soviets.

It's a minor quibble, but the Soviets do have some local forces recruited by this time. The 1st and 2nd Polish Red Army and the Czechoslovak Rifle Corps as well as the Romanian Army exited the other side of the war intact and the most reliable of the bunch wound up serving as cadres for some post-war formations created in 1946. They aren't good for anything more then then the most basic of garrison duty though and even then their liable to have an MGB rifle regiment attached for "advisement".
 
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The need for 400+ nukes is something I have to doubt. What happens when the USAF nukes Kuibishev & 80% of Sov electricity production stops?:eek:
 
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