Wallies target German electrical grid in 1943

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They'll concentrate all of their assets to defending the remaining power plants, and they'll likely move to decentralize their plants, rather than rebuild the very vulnerable nodes, making it harder to bomb out the whole grid.

You can't decentralize the main High Voltage lines and transformer stations, unless planning started in 1933 to have a bunch of tiny coal fired plants every 20 miles, and not count on all those hydro plants at all.
 

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The few times the WAllies bothered to launch major bombing operations against the German electrical grid in 1943 which achieved something, the Germans were able to rapidly recover the lost capacity. The classic example is Operation Chastise, which was also a raid on German electrical generation apparatus. After the raid, looking at the damage to the dams, Barnes Wallis estimated it would set the Germans back years. It set them back two weeks. Follow up strikes may have set them back a lot more (as Speer noted in his memoirs) but because of the overoptimistic BDA estimates as well as the usual mayfly attention span among the groups responsible for target selection, such strikes were not launched. This is quite typical of pretty much the entire strategic bombing campaign in 1943. As with other industrial targets, putting down German electrical generation is going to take sustained pounding to overwhelm German repair efforts.
Given that IOTL they only expended less than 1% of their total tonnage against a handful of electrical targets they didn't really even try. If most of that was against the Dams, then they really barely tried. The major failure of Chastise was their failure to follow up. Had they made it a sustained operation like the did against Ball Bearings and whatever else they targeted in 1943 instead they could have done A LOT more with what they had.


Erm... the Germans did make sure their radar sites could powered independently of the grid via stuff such as portable generators and the like.
Where is that fuel coming from?
 
Given that IOTL they only expended less than 1% of their total tonnage against a handful of electrical targets they didn't really even try.

Which does not at all disprove my point: the methodology was the issue.

The major failure of Chastise was their failure to follow up.
As I observed. A failure of methodology, not of effort.

Had they made it a sustained operation like the did against Ball Bearings and whatever else they targeted in 1943 instead they could have done A LOT more with what they had.
Not quite. The operations against Ball Bearing industries followed approximately the same rough pattern: launch a bunch of air raids against an installation, then switch to a new target. The Germans then repair the damage in the previously targeted installations and are back on schedule in a few weeks.

Now due to the nature of electrical industries the WAllies putting all that effort into bombing the German power grid would likely be more disruptive then the Ball Bearing campaigns and likely more successful in partially reducing armaments production which, given that the German Heer was woefully short of weapons as it was, would likely have some effects on the battlefield, and that might shorten the war at less cost to the Allies but the difference is more liable to be a matter of a few months rather then a full year.

Now if the WAllies put the effort into attacking the German electrical grid in 1943 with the methodology they used for the OTL 1944-45 oil and transport campaigns, then we could indeed be looking at your supposed industrial collapse in mid-1944, although that in and of itself would not immediately end the war. The Allies would still need another month or two to roll over the munition-deprived German army and occupy Germany, since Hitler and his lackeys are not going to surrender over such a thing as their armies not having enough ammunition to put up effective resistance. Probably the best way to do this would be to convince Arthur Harris that the German electrical grid is the weak link. The man certainly had the stubborn determination to pursue targets with single-mindedness it's just that OTL he had the misfortune of picking the wrong kind of target.

In essence, to induce an industrial collapse in Germany as a result of a 1943 bombing campaign, you need to not only change what kind of targets the WAllies hit but how they hit them as well.

Where is that fuel coming from?
Same place it came from OTL.
 
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You can't decentralize the main High Voltage lines and transformer stations, unless planning started in 1933 to have a bunch of tiny coal fired plants every 20 miles, and not count on all those hydro plants at all.

That is - more or less - what was there on the ground. Every town had a (larger cities several) power plant(s), these had been integrated into several larger networks (DC was still an option, and three-phase AC could come in different modes); and larger out-of-town power stations were still more the execption than the rule. There were something like 4,500 power stations spread out over the country - and consumption was much less than we imagine today, as quite a lot of the industry was still working with steam engines.
 
That is - more or less - what was there on the ground. Every town had a (larger cities several) power plant(s), these had been integrated into several larger networks (DC was still an option, and three-phase AC could come in different modes); and larger out-of-town power stations were still more the execption than the rule. There were something like 4,500 power stations spread out over the country - and consumption was much less than we imagine today, as quite a lot of the industry was still working with steam engines.

Nonetheless, whether we take your number of 4,500 or the 8,257 quoted by the USSBS, knocking out a couple of dozen of the largest plants would drop total generating capacity 20% or more and leave the entire grid even more dangerously overextended and vulnerable to disruption.
It sounds like it would have been worth trying - especially as these are the sort of relatively fragile high-value point targets that get the Mosquito Mafia on this board all hot and bothered.
 

Deleted member 1487

Nonetheless, whether we take your number of 4,500 or the 8,257 quoted by the USSBS, knocking out a couple of dozen of the largest plants would drop total generating capacity 20% or more and leave the entire grid even more dangerously overextended and vulnerable to disruption.
It sounds like it would have been worth trying - especially as these are the sort of relatively fragile high-value point targets that get the Mosquito Mafia on this board all hot and bothered.
Mosquito raids would have been ideal for this target.
 
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The one way that would have worked, interfering with coal deliveries by mining rivers & bombing canals, didn't occur to anyone.

Brits attempted in in 1939. The pilot project showed the techniques then were ineffective. While solutions were offered other missions 1940-41 seemed higher priority. After Harris got firm control of the RAF bombers river & canal mining, and transportation attacks in general were dismissed.

While it is an obvious missed opportunity, when dealing with counterfactuals we can't pretend that Germany won't change its strategy if the bombers start targeting the electrical grid.

They'll concentrate all of their assets to defending the remaining power plants, and they'll likely move to decentralize their plants, rather than rebuild the very vulnerable nodes, making it harder to bomb out the whole grid.

So yeah, definitely should have been done, but I don't think it necessarily means a knockout blow.

Generally panacea targets are a false objective, or unproductive in reality no matter how good they look on paper. However many alternatives offered could have been better than the indiscriminate saturation bombing of city centers. The weakness in focused targets in Germany 1939-43 is the difficulty in hitting the targets without excessive losses. To have destroyed precision targets; like the power plants, bridges, ball bearing factories, oil refineries; required with the technology of those years: 1. daylight attacks. 2. Medium or low altitude bombing. Attacking from high altitude and/or at night put to few of the bombs inside the destruction zone of the targets. Medium and low level bombing risked high losses from AAA defense, and from interceptors. Raids like the Imudjen attack, Ploesti, or the Neufchateau attack are three examples out of dozens of what could happen when unsuppresed AA artillery & small arms met a low altitude bomber strike. I don't think I need to go into how the RAF bombers of 1939-44 would fare in daylight over Germany.

So, yes if the right aircraft had been available, escort fighters as well as bombers, and the correct tactics/training been in place the power plant strategy could have damaged German industrial production. The Allies might have pulled it off in latter 1943 & certainly in 1944. But, earlier from mid 1943 its unlikely. Not without significant changes in leadership to allow the technical changes in hardware and techniques.
 
That is in fact exactly where I got the info for this thread. Thanks for posting it.
If you're after something like that then you might want to check out the post-war US Strategic Bombing Survey for the European theatre that some kind soul has put online here. Appendix A dealing with the German chemical industry goes into a fair amount of detail and identifies a number of potential weak points.
 
Which does not at all disprove my point: the methodology was the issue.

As I observed. A failure of methodology, not of effort.

Not quite. The operations against Ball Bearing industries followed approximately the same rough pattern: launch a bunch of air raids against an installation, then switch to a new target. The Germans then repair the damage in the previously targeted installations and are back on schedule in a few weeks.

Now due to the nature of electrical industries the WAllies putting all that effort into bombing the German power grid would likely be more disruptive then the Ball Bearing campaigns and likely more successful in partially reducing armaments production which, given that the German Heer was woefully short of weapons as it was, would likely have some effects on the battlefield, and that might shorten the war at less cost to the Allies but the difference is more liable to be a matter of a few months rather then a full year.

Now if the WAllies put the effort into attacking the German electrical grid in 1943 with the methodology they used for the OTL 1944-45 oil and transport campaigns, then we could indeed be looking at your supposed industrial collapse in mid-1944, although that in and of itself would not immediately end the war. The Allies would still need another month or two to roll over the munition-deprived German army and occupy Germany, since Hitler and his lackeys are not going to surrender over such a thing as their armies not having enough ammunition to put up effective resistance. Probably the best way to do this would be to convince Arthur Harris that the German electrical grid is the weak link. The man certainly had the stubborn determination to pursue targets with single-mindedness it's just that OTL he had the misfortune of picking the wrong kind of target.

In essence, to induce an industrial collapse in Germany as a result of a 1943 bombing campaign, you need to not only change what kind of targets the WAllies hit but how they hit them as well.

Same place it came from OTL.

I don't think some people here realize what to due during the Bombings is it was new. We were not sure what to so we winged, no pun intended, and do something plus a lot of things happened were due to politics.
 
Nonetheless, whether we take your number of 4,500 or the 8,257 quoted by the USSBS, knocking out a couple of dozen of the largest plants would drop total generating capacity 20% or more and leave the entire grid even more dangerously overextended and vulnerable to disruption.
It sounds like it would have been worth trying - especially as these are the sort of relatively fragile high-value point targets that get the Mosquito Mafia on this board all hot and bothered.
The problem is that the size of plant you're thinking of just didn't exist - as mentioned by Rast, Germany (or indeed pretty much any other country) didn't have a national grid yet, so the size of a power station was limited by the distance of the wires stretching from it. The only power stations that might be big enough to make a difference are already going to be in cities and within the bombing area anyway - for example take a look at the list of power generating companies for London before nationalisation (lifted from Wiki):

Barking Borough Corporation
Barnes Borough Corporation
Battersea Borough Council
Beckenham Borough Corporation
Bermondsey Borough Council
Bethnal Green Borough Council
Bexley Borough Corporation
Bromley Borough Corporation
Dartford Borough Corporation
East Ham County Borough Corporation
Erith Borough Corporation
Fulham Borough Council
Hackney Borough Council
Hammersmith Borough Council
Hampstead Borough Council (1894)
Ilford Borough Corporation
Islington Borough Council
Leyton Borough Corporation
Poplar Borough Council
St Marylebone Borough Council
St Pancras Borough Council
Shoreditch Borough Council
Southwark Borough Council
Stepney Borough Council
Stoke Newington Borough Council
Walthamstow Borough Corporation
West Ham County Borough Corporation (West Ham Electricity Board)
Willesden Borough Corporation
Wimbledon Borough Corporation
Woolwich Borough Council
Central London Electricity Limited (formerly Charing Cross Company)
Chelsea Electricity Supply Company (formed 1886; taken over by Charing Cross Co 1937)
Chislehurst Electric Supply Company
City of London Electric Lighting Company
County of London Electric Supply Company
Foots Cray Electricity Supply Company
Hampstead Electric Supply Company Ltd (records from 1898) †
London Electric Supply Corporation (LESCo) - formed in 1887 out of Grosvenor Gallery Electric Supply Corporation, London's first commercial electric power supplier
London Power Company
Notting Hill Electric Lighting Company
South London Electric Supply Corporation
South Metropolitan Electric Light and Power Company

Nearly all of these will have had their own coal-fired power stations, although in the case of London there was some consolidation in the 1920s which led to many of the smallest power stations being closed - the bigger ones which remained seem to have been on the size of tens of megawatts, rather than the hundreds required for any one plant to be supplying 2% of national electricity. It should be noted, indeed, that all of the largest power stations in the world at this time were hydroelectric - and even they were generally pretty small outside North America or the Soviet Union. Operation Chastise, for instance, knocked out 5.1 MW of generation.

So while you could make a major impact on German production by taking out power stations, you aren't going to do it in one raid. Instead you're going to have several squadrons of Mosquitoes spending their time flying across Europe plinking away at little tiny power stations...
 
So while you could make a major impact on German production by taking out power stations, you aren't going to do it in one raid. Instead you're going to have several squadrons of Mosquitoes spending their time flying across Europe plinking away at little tiny power stations...

Even that by itself won't do it. As the aftermath of Operation Chastise shows, the Germans were able to work very fast when it came to repairing damage and restoring the damaged capacity. Relentless restrikes would be required to interrupt and overwhelm such repair attempts, although this could be conducted by heavy bombers rather then the mosquitos.
 
I wonder, could they do much damage with Tallboys or Grand Slams? Sure I can't imagine they'd hit the dams themselves, but wouldn't a few of those weaken the foundations of the dam?
 
I wonder, could they do much damage with Tallboys or Grand Slams? Sure I can't imagine they'd hit the dams themselves, but wouldn't a few of those weaken the foundations of the dam?
They tried against the Sorpe on the 15th of October 1944. Didn't work, and left them with an unexploded Tallboy to deal with when the dam was drained for work in the 1950s

WEST GERMANY: 'TALL BOY' BOMB DISPOSAL
About 650 people were evacuated from the small West German town of Langscheid Jan 6 before the defusing of the 'Tall Boy' bomb found in a nearby reservoir shortly before or about Christmas 1958.
When the evacuees were in safety, RAF Flight Lieutenant James Waters the Officer Commanding 6209 Bomb Disposal Flight and German bomb disposal expert Walther Mitzke set to work. Aided by Corporal Al Mouat and Corporal Frank Smith the smartly and carefully they removed the three fuses - one by remote control and two by hand - of the 12,000 lb bombs designed by Barnes Wallace dropped by the RAF during a raid on the Sorpe Dam in October 1944.
Said Flight-Lieutenant Waters: "It went just as we thought it would go - easier than pulling teeth." The 12 ft bomb was the first of its kind to be dismantled in Germany.

The largest bomb ever tackled by the RAF and probably the largest ever rendered safe by any BD Unit was one of their own. This 12000 pounder known as Tallboy was found in the silt and mud at the base of the Sorpe Dam in 1958 after the dam was partially drained.

The bomb was fitted with three No 47 Half-hour delay fuzes which work by an ampoule of acetone dissolving a celluloid disc retaining a striker. The thickness of the disc determines the delay time and the delay can be set for 72 hours in some cases.
80871e31a1af7c527b23d2f6e66011b7
 
That is - more or less - what was there on the ground. Every town had a (larger cities several) power plant(s), these had been integrated into several larger networks (DC was still an option, and three-phase AC could come in different modes); and larger out-of-town power stations were still more the execption than the rule. There were something like 4,500 power stations spread out over the country - and consumption was much less than we imagine today, as quite a lot of the industry was still working with steam engines.

The North–South Powerline, or Nord-Süd-Leitung, is the world's oldest interconnection for electric current. It was built between 1924 and 1929 by RWE AG, to transport electricity produced in the hydro-electric power plants in Vorarlberg, Austria and the southern Black Forest to the Ruhr district.
The line begins in Bludenz and in Herbertingen connects with a second line, which comes from Tiengen. It continues to the transformer stations at Ludwigsburg-Hoheneck, Mannheim-Rheinau, Kelsterbach, Koblenz, and Bad Neuenahr to Brauweiler.
The entire line was originally installed on pylons with a three-tiered arrangement. With the exception of the Kelsterbach–Koblenz and Heilbronn–Neckarwestheim sections of the line, the North–South Powerline is still carried by the original masts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North–South_Powerline

That's what you hit. That 220kV Grid.

Then there is the 16.7 hz 110kV grid for the electrified traction railroads.
 
They tried against the Sorpe on the 15th of October 1944. Didn't work, and left them with an unexploded Tallboy to deal with when the dam was drained for work in the 1950s
Yeah, but they dropped that one into the reservoir, I was thinking more of dropping it either down-river of the dam, or only the ground either side of the dam.
 
Yeah, but they dropped that one into the reservoir, I was thinking more of dropping it either down-river of the dam, or only the ground either side of the dam.
It wasn't aimed into the reservoir - the dam was in the form of an embankment with a concrete core, and they were trying to destroy the dam wall, that was the only bomb to miss and land in the water that we know of. Downriver won't do any good, and realistically unless you get very lucky neither will hitting the banks.
 
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