Truly strategic bombing

I am well aware that hindsight has 20/20 vision and that it is easy to look back and challenge decisions taken. Yet one has to be embarassed by the policy of pure terror Britain used against the pure evil my father's generation faced.

So what if Bomber Command was about half the size it was in OTL and consisted mainly of Mosquitos targeting roads, railroads, canals and bridges concentrating on attacks at dawn or dusk.

In OTL the Mosquitos used as 'pathfinders' were quite accurate.

Of course train tracks and roads can be repaired. However key routes being blocked for days at a time- and maybe the same track being blocked 30 kilometers away 6 days later.


Could this have truly effected Nazi war production?


By the way how much problem would Britain has had if the Nazis had used JU88S and faster Dorniers in the same way.


How much of a difference could it make to the allied effort having more of the best men and that much extra productive facilities and less use of gasoline
 

mowque

Banned
How much of a difference could it make to the allied effort having more of the best men and that much extra productive facilities and less use of gasoline

I doubt the intelligence and accuracy of the bombers was good enough. They went with carpet bombing because ti was easiest. The type of bombing your talking about really wasn't possible until 'smart' bombs and whatnot.

Also, talk about a propaganda loss. At least they were killing Germans! I doubt the populace would be inspired by blowing up a interstate.
 
I am well aware that hindsight has 20/20 vision and that it is easy to look back and challenge decisions taken. Yet one has to be embarassed by the policy of pure terror Britain used against the pure evil my father's generation faced.

So what if Bomber Command was about half the size it was in OTL and consisted mainly of Mosquitos targeting roads, railroads, canals and bridges concentrating on attacks at dawn or dusk.

In OTL the Mosquitos used as 'pathfinders' were quite accurate.

Of course train tracks and roads can be repaired. However key routes being blocked for days at a time- and maybe the same track being blocked 30 kilometers away 6 days later.


Could this have truly effected Nazi war production?


By the way how much problem would Britain has had if the Nazis had used JU88S and faster Dorniers in the same way.


How much of a difference could it make to the allied effort having more of the best men and that much extra productive facilities and less use of gasoline

One major problem with this is that smaller fighter-bomber type aircraft may be far more accurate (able to get low, drop their bomb, and either outrun enemy fighters or fight their way through them) BUT they don't have the range to make it into the heart of the German industrial areas until quite late until the war. Big suckers like the Lanc and B-17 can
 

The Sandman

Banned
It would have been far more effective. Factories can be moved or concealed. Transportation networks can't. And the factories don't work very well when you can't get regular shipments of raw materials in, or finished goods out, or food and other sundries for your workers.

And while there would be a few major hubs that would be obvious targets and that therefore would be heavily defended, you can target pretty much anywhere in the network to disrupt it; therefore, the Germans would have had a much more difficult time massing against Allied air attacks due to the much larger potential target area.

Heavy bombers would still be useful, though; the longer range would be nice, as would the increased bombload.
 
Without the bombing raids there would of been anothe 800,000 men freed up to serve in the Army .As well as all the Flak guns could be used as anti tank Guns .
also the bombing raids were terrifing the german population .
Think of looking up in the sky and watching a 400 or 500 plane bombing raid fly over your nation .
 
It would have been far more effective. Factories can be moved or concealed. Transportation networks can't. And the factories don't work very well when you can't get regular shipments of raw materials in, or finished goods out, or food and other sundries for your workers.

And while there would be a few major hubs that would be obvious targets and that therefore would be heavily defended, you can target pretty much anywhere in the network to disrupt it; therefore, the Germans would have had a much more difficult time massing against Allied air attacks due to the much larger potential target area.

Heavy bombers would still be useful, though; the longer range would be nice, as would the increased bombload.

The earlier area bombing forced the Germans into dispersing their factories and more importantly their coal liquification plants.

These dispersed factories and especially the coal liquifaction plants depended on good communications - daily deliveries in most cases - so when the Allies finally got the equipment to acurately target the transport system they were in real trouble.

Its also screwed up the German plans for prefabricated building of U-boats - no water in the canals, no movement of U-boat sections.

An interesting book to read on the German fuel situation is 'Target: Hitler's Oil' by Ronald C Cooke and Roy Conners Nesbit.

There were also other potential targets other than transport and fuel.

Apart from the oil plants and transport network, there were other weak points in the German economy, which would have been very worthwhile targets for attacks by the Anglo-American strategic bombers. These were plants producing key war chemicals such as synthetic nitrogen, methanol (synthetic wood alcohol), tetraethyl lead and synthetic rubber. Nitrogen was vitally important in the manufacture of explosives and V2 rocket fuel; it was also essential in the production of agricultural fertilizer. Tetraethyl lead was an indispensable ingredient of aviation fuel; without it the Luftwaffe’s fighter aircraft would have been deprived of 40 per cent of their engine power and have been hopelessly outclassed in combat. With the almost complete cessation of imports of natural rubber from overseas on the outbreak of war, the production within Germany of synthetic rubber, needed for many types of wheeled vehicle, assumed great importance.

In the case of some of these products, for example nitrogen, the plants that manufactured them were very few in number and of large capacity. Direct attacks on them would probably have had an even more crippling affect than the raids on the oil installations. Although, the Western Allies know a great deal about German industry even before the war began, the military leaders did not appreciate the crucial importance of the chemical industry or of the close interdependence between certain branches of production, as between the manufacture of oil, chemicals, synthetic rubber and explosives. This information came to light only after the war, when American and British survey teams carried out post mortem investigations in Germany into the effectiveness of Allied strategic bombing.

None the less, manufacture of the above key items was greatly hampered as a by-product of the oil-offensive, although this fact was not fully realised at the time. When the oil plants at Luena and Ludwigshaven were temporarily put out of action, Germany was deprived of 63% of its current output of nitrogen, 40% of its synthetic methanol and 65% of its synthetic rubber production.


On the subject of hitting transport, there is this from Paul Brickhill’s ‘The Dambusters’ describing Barnes Wallis's thinking behind the 10-ton bomb.

He worked out theoretical figures, more pages of figures, and decided there was a chance that a 10-ton bomb exploding deep in water by a dam wall would punch out a hole a hundred feet across.

Supposing the bomb did not go as deeply into the earth as the figures predicted? Wallis worked out the effects of a 10-tonner exploding about 40ft deep. In theory it would throw out the staggering amount of 12,000 tons of earth, leaving a crater 70ft deep, with lips 250ft across. He worked out the circumference of the crater and from that the maximum number of men and machines that could gather round the edges. Working day and night they could not fill it in in under 14 days. Supposing one such bomb was dropped accurately in a marshalling yard, or on a vital railway or canal or road where ground contours prohibited a detour.

 
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