Wallies target German electrical grid in 1943

  • Thread starter Deleted member 1487
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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.

I was under the impression that Harris railed against "panacea targets" of any kind, so he'd likely be unimpressed by someone waving a paper claiming that generation was key.
 
From what I've read, thouse things are big enough to cause localised 'earthquakes', which I'd have thought would upset the dams. Probably works better on a concrete wall dam mind than an embankment one.
 
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...

All of which managed to apparently fail on at least one occasion requiring the electricity from the then un-offcial National Grid.


The growth by then in the number of electricity users was the fastest in the world, rising from three quarters of a million in 1920 to nine million in 1938.[4] It proved its worth during the Blitz when South Wales provided power to replace lost output from Battersea and Fulham power stations.[4]
 
I was under the impression that Harris railed against "panacea targets" of any kind, so he'd likely be unimpressed by someone waving a paper claiming that generation was key.
Correct, so even if you can persuade anybody to put on the high priority it would need, you'd probably need to do it before Harris is AoCinC--& probably need to not have him be named.

That's quite aside needing to change the bombing approach to mining, which would actually work, which this won't...
pdf27 said:
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.
Correct. Worse for Germany, though: she hasn't the flexibility in the grid to "cross-connect" powerstations. Hitting certain select ones would be a good start--providing you can hit them (which is doubtful).

Could the Mosquito hit a target with 100m accuracy in 1943? With a sufficient payload? Deep in Germany? IDK. I'm picturing the losses would be severe.

OTOH, using minelaying in rivers could be done on days when bombing was impossible due to weather, by crews with a minimum of training--& by a/c that would otherwise be unsuitable for combat (Whitleys, for instance?).
 

Deleted member 1487

Correct, so even if you can persuade anybody to put on the high priority it would need, you'd probably need to do it before Harris is AoCinC--& probably need to not have him be named.

That's quite aside needing to change the bombing approach to mining, which would actually work, which this won't...

Correct. Worse for Germany, though: she hasn't the flexibility in the grid to "cross-connect" powerstations. Hitting certain select ones would be a good start--providing you can hit them (which is doubtful).

Could the Mosquito hit a target with 100m accuracy in 1943? With a sufficient payload? Deep in Germany? IDK. I'm picturing the losses would be severe.

OTOH, using minelaying in rivers could be done on days when bombing was impossible due to weather, by crews with a minimum of training--& by a/c that would otherwise be unsuitable for combat (Whitleys, for instance?).

They dive bombed a radio transmitter in Berlin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Mosquito_operational_history#Berlin_raids
Two notable daylight missions were carried out on 30 January 1943, when Mosquitoes carried out two attacks on Berlin timed to disrupt speeches being delivered by Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich's Propaganda Minister. The first, in the morning, comprised three Mosquito B Mk. IVs from 105 Squadron, which carried out a low-level attack on the main Berlin broadcasting station,[9] at 11:00, when Göring was due to address a parade commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Nazis' being voted into power. The mission gave the lie to Göring's claim that such a mission was impossible, and kept Göring off the air for more than an hour. A second flight of Mosquitoes from 139 Squadron went to Berlin in the afternoon of the same day to attempt to interrupt a speech by Goebbels at the Sports Palace, and once again bombed at the exact time. However, Berlin's anti-aircraft defences were on the alert and a Mosquito flown by Squadron Leader D.F.W. Darling DFC was shot down, killing both Darling and his navigator.[10][11] Goering himself was not amused; six weeks later he harangued aircraft manufacturers that he could "go berserk" when faced with the Mosquito, which made him "green and yellow with envy".[12]
 
Scattered one-off raids against very specific targets which the crews have been specifically trained and prepared for does not necessarily scale well into a more general campaign. A statistical study would be more useful in this regard
 
ObssesedNuker said:
Scattered one-off raids against very specific targets which the crews have been specifically trained and prepared for does not necessarily scale well into a more general campaign. A statistical study would be more useful in this regard
That's my thinking, too. I'm willing to believe the Mossies were able to achieve much better accuracy than the heavies, but could they hit close enough & often enough?
 
Problem with all of this is twofold.

You do not know how well you are doing.

You have to beat the german air defences first.

( there is actually a third problem - Ernie King - which results in a massive redirection of effort to bombing invulnerable U Boat pens in 42)

Returning to a target just invites concentration of AD assets.

Transportation is actually Portal's preferred target throughout the war and while from feb 42 the policy it to attack civilian morale in practice this also means attacking urban transportation hubs.
 
Gannt the chartist said:
Problem with all of this is twofold.

You do not know how well you are doing.

You have to beat the german air defences first.

...Returning to a target just invites concentration of AD assets.

Transportation is actually Portal's preferred target throughout the war and while from feb 42 the policy it to attack civilian morale in practice this also means attacking urban transportation hubs.
This is at the heart of my preference for mining (&, if I haven't said it, attacks on railyards, to complement the interference with movement of supplies). The Germans know the bombers are coming back--they have to. Doing it in the face of increasingly heavy defenses is butchery, a stupidity that makes WW1 look pale--then, they really had no option (or none I'm aware of); here, there's a clear, effective, & extraordinarily low-loss option, & the bomber generals are ignoring it.:mad:

In short, it's immoral: not because it targets German civilians, but because it wastes the lives of your own citizens, whom gov't is (supposedly) pledged to protect. (Pardon my fractured grammar.:eek:)
 
That's my thinking, too. I'm willing to believe the Mossies were able to achieve much better accuracy than the heavies, but could they hit close enough & often enough?
Close enough, yes (Operation Carthage and similar attacks show this), but often enough is less certain, they lost six of the twenty Mosquitoes committed in Carthage, and realistically, 30% losses isn't sustainable.
 
MattII said:
Close enough, yes (Operation Carthage and similar attacks show this), but often enough is less certain, they lost six of the twenty Mosquitoes committed in Carthage, and realistically, 30% losses isn't sustainable.
That was my sense of it, too. That's also a reason to prefer mining & railyard attacks: losses would be near zero. (Terraine says they were so safe, they were used for crew training.:eek:)
 
The Allies had a plane that was very capable to taking out the German electrical grid with pretty high precision: the de Havilland Mosquito.

Remember, the B.XVI version of the Mosquito had an enlarged bomb bay that could carry a 4,000 "blockbuster" bomb; dropping such a bomb with a parachute-retarding system could put such a bomb within 100 yards of impact point from a low altitude drop, and the blast effect would be enough to seriously damage a power generating plant.
 
SactoMan101 said:
The Allies had a plane that was very capable to taking out the German electrical grid with pretty high precision: the de Havilland Mosquito.

Remember, the B.XVI version of the Mosquito had an enlarged bomb bay that could carry a 4,000 "blockbuster" bomb; dropping such a bomb with a parachute-retarding system could put such a bomb within 100 yards of impact point from a low altitude drop, and the blast effect would be enough to seriously damage a power generating plant.
That's already conceded. It looks like they couldn't do it often enough.

Nor does being able to do it at all overcome the immorality of it...
 
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