What would it take for the RAF to give up Area Bombing/Dehousing?

  • Thread starter Deleted member 1487
  • Start date

Deleted member 1487

Is there a level of loss or some result that would get Bomber Command to give up city bombing? Would perhaps a worse Battle of the Atlantic have diverted critical resources to Coastal Command?
 
There is certainly a level of loss that would get Bomber Command to change to different targets. Question is, what would be the new targets that offer a lower level of losses?
 
A more effective U-Boat campaign early might force Churchill to force Portal to divert the Halifax and Stirling as Very Long Range patrol aircraft to cover the Mid Ocean Gap until escort carriers can become available. It would also divert some Wellingtons.

That means a delayed 1,000 Plane Raid on Cologne, which is what made the entire bombing campaign seem possible. By the time the Lancaster is available in numbers it is late 1942, and by the time enough are available for massive raids it is summer 1943. At that point the Battle of the Atlantic has been won, but now we are looking at significant operations in Italy and the need for long range bombers for the CBI.

That will delay things.. need more thought on the rest of it
 
Not getting kicked out of Europe in 1940 would require the RAF to prioritise tactical air support at the expense of strategic bombing to help a much larger army in the field (see PDF's excellent Blunted Sickle timeline). OTL the RAF was much bigger than it should have been due to it being the only means to carry the war to Nasi occupied Europe 1940-1943.

Also very heavy losses could cause the RAF to rethink things (IOTL this led to bigger raids and denser bomber streams to overload the German defences) and come up with a fast bomber strategy based on the Mosquito hitting relatively precise targets instead of the Lancaster destroying cities.

I agree that greater losses in the battle of the Atlantic could have seen heavy bombers delivered to Coastal Command. However OTL at times the losses where staggering but the Bomber Barons managed to keep their heavies! I don't think that this could in itself cause the abandonment of city bombing. Indeed if the losses got so bad that all of Bomber Command got thrown at the subs then Britain would be so close to losing the war that area bombing becomes a moot point. That said I would love someone to write a timeline where Coastal Command is prioritised over Bomber Command so the butterflies such an action would cause could be explored.I think it would be net gain for the British.
 
Is it entirely unreasonable for the Germans to expect an Allied bomber offensive in advance. Say in 1939-40 or even 1938? Remember, before the fall of France, France was not expected to fall quickly and the British rearmament certainly favored bombers. Maybe, Me-110 and fitting radar equipment are allocated to this task from the onset andbomber losses just become to great.
 
Or, the change could happen earlier - with a recognition that RAF navigation methods wouldn't the bombers to the target area in enough numbers. Therefore, a fast aircraft that could do pin-point daylight raids, and larger four-engine aircraft that could accommodate the electronic navigation aids (that arrive earlier than OTL).
Hence, a Mosquito type aircraft in service earlier, and Germany experiences bombs suddenly arriving on target, at first the targets hit are on the coast, but later inland - though the Germans don't at first notice the correlation between being near a river, or other body of water.
 
I'd suggest you look for the SUPERB Reap the Whirlwind here on this forum, its an amazingly well researched (yet not finished and I hope it comes back) time line that is also very educational.
 
An accurate high altitude bombing system( not really doable with 1940s tech) and a general purpose bomb that doesn't have a 50% failure rate.
 

Deleted member 1487

Is it entirely unreasonable for the Germans to expect an Allied bomber offensive in advance. Say in 1939-40 or even 1938? Remember, before the fall of France, France was not expected to fall quickly and the British rearmament certainly favored bombers. Maybe, Me-110 and fitting radar equipment are allocated to this task from the onset andbomber losses just become to great.
For that you'd actually need some better German radar tech. They abandoned work on the cavity magnetron in 1935 because they hadn't figured out strapping as a means to solve the phase shift problem, which rendered the greater power output difficult to actually interpret when the signal came back. The Brits managed to figure out the multi-cavity strapping part of the equation, but couldn't turn that into something production workable until the US was given the device via the Tizard Mission and turned it into a viable weapon of war. So perhaps if the Germans figure that out in 1935 instead of abandoning work to focus on less powerful, but easier developments they could have smaller, cheaper, more effective AI radar by 1941 and use their existing weapons to make heavy bomber concentrations too costly. I did a post about that a while back. Then to be able to bomb at all you'd need a Light Night Strike Force based on the Mosquito and accuracy with systems like Gee-H and Oboe.

How about "Bomber Harris" dying early, say, 1941 ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Arthur_Harris,_1st_Baronet
The problem with that is that Area bombing/Dehousing was not his baby, he was just the best practioner of it. Churchill and his science advisor, ironically a naturalized German Lindemann, were the proponents of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Arthur_Harris,_1st_Baronet#Second_World_War
Professor Frederick Lindemann (later ennobled as Lord Cherwell), appointed the British government's leading scientific adviser with a seat in the Cabinet by his friend Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in 1942 presented a seminal paper to Cabinet advocating the area bombing of German cities in a strategic bombing campaign. It was accepted by Cabinet and Harris was directed to carry out the task (Area bombing directive). It became an important part of the total war waged against Germany.[39]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_bombing_directive
The Area Bombing Directive (General Directive No.5 (S.46368/111. D.C.A.S) was a 14 February 1942[1][2][3] amendment to General Directive No.4 (S.46368 D.C.A.S), issued by the British Air Ministry on 5 February 1942, that had informed RAF Bomber Command that it had "Priority over all other commitments",[4] and directed RAF Bomber Command to bomb factories in occupied France. General Directive Number 5 amended Number 4 to make targets in Germany the priority for RAF Bomber Command.
Area bombing had already been the policy pre-Harris, but the Butt Report of 1941 demonstrated that Bomber Command was screwing up. Harris was appointed because Lindemann convinced Churchill that they needed better leadership to actually run it, so Harris was promoted to the task based on the decision by Churchill to make it THE priority. So Harris was a symptom rather than the cause of the policy.

Or, the change could happen earlier - with a recognition that RAF navigation methods wouldn't the bombers to the target area in enough numbers. Therefore, a fast aircraft that could do pin-point daylight raids, and larger four-engine aircraft that could accommodate the electronic navigation aids (that arrive earlier than OTL).
Hence, a Mosquito type aircraft in service earlier, and Germany experiences bombs suddenly arriving on target, at first the targets hit are on the coast, but later inland - though the Germans don't at first notice the correlation between being near a river, or other body of water.
The problem with that is they had been trying to do daylight precision raids with Blenheims and loss rates were astronomical. Defenses by day were so effective that even raids into France were sometimes suffering 100% losses and fighter escort range was so limited that mostly coastal targets could be reached. The Mosquito was around in 1941, it just took time to get it into wider service. The problem is by then the big bomber mafia was in charge and they wanted city destruction as their goal. It's hard to get something like the Mosquito any earlier, because they had been trying to get a fast bomber going for a while, engine and air frame design just took time to get to the point that that was possible.
 
Wiking wrote:

The Brits managed to figure out the multi-cavity strapping part of the equation, but couldn't turn that into something production workable until the US was given the device via the Tizard Mission and turned it into a viable weapon of war.

That's wrong: Britain began fitting centimetric radar to RN ships before the US started production. In fact I've seen claims that the British were shipping centimetric radars to the US to fill the gap until American production got under way.
 

Deleted member 1487

Wiking wrote:

That's wrong: Britain began fitting centimetric radar to RN ships before the US started production. In fact I've seen claims that the British were shipping centimetric radars to the US to fill the gap until American production got under way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_in_World_War_II#Microwave_Warning.2FFire_Control
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tizard_Mission
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_in_World_War_II#Centimeter
Check the dates, the Tizard Mission was before the first experimental British microwave ship radar. Nevertheless naval magnetron developments were different than the air force ones and weren't related to what the US shipped to the Brits. The US centimetric radar was a different type and ultimately supplanted the first British naval designs. It seems US centimetric radar designs were based on US research after the Tizard Mission, not British work.
 
Re. the OP: it would've taken that Germany invests much more resources in better night fighters. Problem is that, by the time de-housing became the policy, Germany has the UK outproducing them, same with the Soviets. A 3-front war on ever-shrinking budget was getting the Germans, and Americans are still to make presence felt.

Is it entirely unreasonable for the Germans to expect an Allied bomber offensive in advance. Say in 1939-40 or even 1938? Remember, before the fall of France, France was not expected to fall quickly and the British rearmament certainly favored bombers. Maybe, Me-110 and fitting radar equipment are allocated to this task from the onset andbomber losses just become to great.

Germans were expecting a bomber offensive, and in 1938-40 the Allies were France + Poland (not in 1940) + UK. That is why they have had more AA guns than UK and France combined.
 

Deleted member 1487

Re. the OP: it would've taken that Germany invests much more resources in better night fighters. Problem is that, by the time de-housing became the policy, Germany has the UK outproducing them, same with the Soviets. A 3-front war on ever-shrinking budget was getting the Germans, and Americans are still to make presence felt.
Outproducing them in what? British frontline strength for heavy bombers was pretty low overall in 1942 and the German night fighter strength not much behind it. Losing a heavy bomber in 1942, when Dehousing became British official policy beyond the already existent area bombing, was far more costly than losing a night fighter. The existing night fighters were fine for the job, as the Bf110 was more than capable of running down and killing a Lancaster, Halifax, or Sterling even in 1943. The issue was AI radar tech, which I suggested before could have been much more advanced had the cavity magnetron not been abandoned in 1935 by German researchers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavity_magnetron#History
While radar was being developed during World War II, there arose an urgent need for a high-power microwave generator that worked at shorter wavelengths (around 10 cm (3 GHz)) rather than the 150 cm (200 MHz) that was available from tube-based generators of the time. It was known that a multi-cavity resonant magnetron had been developed and patented in 1935 by Hans Hollmann in Berlin.[24] However, the German military considered the frequency drift of Hollman's device to be undesirable, and based their radar systems on the klystron instead. But klystrons could not at that time achieve the high power output that magnetrons eventually reached. This was one reason that German night fighter radars — which never strayed beyond the low-UHF band to start with for front-line nocturnal fighter aircraft — were not a match for their British counterparts.[25]
Developing a working multi-cavity pre-war or at least by 1941 would yield some very useful AI radar that would allow night fighters to really develop and might shut down the heavy bombers...but leave the Mosquito untouchable. Which then would evolutionarily force the Brits to use the Light Night Strike Force to bomb:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathfinder_(RAF)#Light_Night_Striking_Force

There were some criticisms of Dehousing before it got off the ground:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Blackett
In August 1940 Blackett became scientific adviser to Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Pile, Commander in Chief of Anti-Aircraft Command and thus began the work that resulted in the field of study known as operational research (OR). He was Director of Operational Research with the Admiralty from 1942 to 1945, and his work with E. J. Williams improved the survival odds of convoys, presented counter-intuitive but correct recommendations for the armour-plating of aircraft and achieved many other successes. His aim, he said, was to find numbers on which to base strategy, not gusts of emotion. During the war he criticised the assumptions in Lord Cherwell's dehousing paper and sided with Tizard who argued that fewer resources should go to RAF Bomber Command for the area bombing offensive and more to the other armed forces, as his studies had shown the ineffectiveness of the bombing strategies, as opposed to the importance of fighting of the German U-boats, which were heavily affecting the war effort with their Battle of the Atlantic of merchant ships [13][14] In this opinion he chafed against the existing military authority and was cut out of various circles of communications; after the war, the Allied Strategic Bombing Survey proved Blackett correct, however.

Perhaps he gets Churchill's ear and would be able to influence things? Assuming so what would the British spend the extra resources on? Clearly fighting Uboats and the Battle of the Atlantic might have been won say 9 months early, but what about the rest? Tactical and operational bombing forces? Perhaps could the African Front have been wrapped up early with greater resources? Of course if the Germans don't have to invest as much into night defenses they could divert resources too, so might they not offset some of British alternate investments or would the daylight bombing offensive still tie them down from 1943 on, but with greater US losses?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Outproducing them in what? British frontline strength for heavy bombers was pretty low overall in 1942 and the German night fighter strength not much behind it. Losing a heavy bomber in 1942, when Dehousing became British official policy beyond the already existent area bombing, was far more costly than losing a night fighter. The existing night fighters were fine for the job, as the Bf110 was more than capable of running down and killing a Lancaster, Halifax, or Sterling even in 1943. The issue was AI radar tech, which I suggested before could have been much more advanced had the cavity magnetron not been abandoned in 1935 by German researchers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavity_magnetron#History

Outproducing them in aircraft, but not just in that.
The RAF BC was a strategic asset, and all of it's bombers were 'trying' to be predominantly strategic bombers. Includes Wellingtons, Hampdens and similar. BC have had already in mid/late-1941 almost 750 bombers on strength, from Blenheims to Fortresses. German night fighter strength was 148 on 24th June 1941, and reached 200 after 13 months - long after RAF BC could muster 1000 bombers to bomb Ruhr and beyond. Heavy Flak arm counted perhaps 4000-5000 of cannons between Poland and Atlantic, not that they will defeat anything - Nachtjagd equaled them in kills from, IIRC, mid-1942 on despite the 20-fold lowe numbers.
This numeric disadvantage of the Nachtjagd meant they were strech thin - NFs based around Stuttgart will be in no position to intervene above Ruhr, or those based around Frankfurt to intervene above Hamburg. And Luftwaffe needs to kill many dozens of RAF bombers per night if they want to win the campaign.
AI radar tech was needed, but there were work-arounds that were battle-tested in 1940. Namely, using searchlights to light up the bombers, so radar-less fighters could kill them. Before 1942 and advent of AI radar, the 'Helle nachtjagd' claimed dozens of RAF aircraft.

There were some criticisms of Dehousing before it got off the ground:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Blackett
Perhaps he gets Churchill's ear and would be able to influence things? Assuming so what would the British spend the extra resources on? Clearly fighting Uboats and the Battle of the Atlantic might have been won say 9 months early, but what about the rest? Tactical and operational bombing forces? Perhaps could the African Front have been wrapped up early with greater resources? Of course if the Germans don't have to invest as much into night defenses they could divert resources too, so might they not offset some of British alternate investments or would the daylight bombing offensive still tie them down from 1943 on, but with greater US losses?

Bombing campaigh was a way to force Germans to spend more in defense than what would've British spend in attack, both in manpower and material resources. Expensive defense is an utter waste, the longer it lasts the closer the defeat becames.
That is not to say that several dozens of additional LR MP aircraft wouldn't hamper U-boot activities.
 

Deleted member 1487

Outproducing them in aircraft, but not just in that.
The RAF BC was a strategic asset, and all of it's bombers were 'trying' to be predominantly strategic bombers. Includes Wellingtons, Hampdens and similar. BC have had already in mid/late-1941 almost 750 bombers on strength, from Blenheims to Fortresses. German night fighter strength was 148 on 24th June 1941, and reached 200 after 13 months - long after RAF BC could muster 1000 bombers to bomb Ruhr and beyond. Heavy Flak arm counted perhaps 4000-5000 of cannons between Poland and Atlantic, not that they will defeat anything - Nachtjagd equaled them in kills from, IIRC, mid-1942 on despite the 20-fold lowe numbers.
This numeric disadvantage of the Nachtjagd meant they were strech thin - NFs based around Stuttgart will be in no position to intervene above Ruhr, or those based around Frankfurt to intervene above Hamburg. And Luftwaffe needs to kill many dozens of RAF bombers per night if they want to win the campaign.
AI radar tech was needed, but there were work-arounds that were battle-tested in 1940. Namely, using searchlights to light up the bombers, so radar-less fighters could kill them. Before 1942 and advent of AI radar, the 'Helle nachtjagd' claimed dozens of RAF aircraft.
Sure, overall production of aircraft was higher for the RAF, but in terms of the specific aircraft used for bombing, the heavy bombers, which were by 1942 the mainstay of the bombing effort, were pretty expensive and in limited production. The 1000 bomber raid of 1942 for instance was a 1 off event using training command and coastal command aircraft and crews to make it happen. The Battle of the Ruhr was not done by 1000 bomber raids in 1943:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Ruhr

Even the bombing of Hamburg in Summer 1943 that created the infamous firestorm was not a 1000 bomber single raid, rather it was carried out by hundreds of bombers over something like 8 days and 7 nights and included the USAAF.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_War_II#Battle_of_Hamburg

In 1943 the heavy flak army just in Germany had about 5000 guns IIRC, not counting non-annexed Poland and France/the Lowlands. Defeating raids no, but attritting them and forcing them to divert course and sustain damage yes. With centimetric radar gunlaying though they'd actually get a lot more effective; IOTL a major deficiency was having rather inaccurate gunlaying radar that was jammable by barrage jammers and chaff. Having Centimetric gunlaying radar in 1942 would have made the FLAK arm really efficient and effective against Bomber Streams. Radar too was a major problem of the German night fighter arm, it was shortage ranged and very drag enducing, which slowed down fighter heavily and sapped their range. Having suitable radar like the Brits had by 1942 would dramatically increase the effectiveness of the night fighter arm. Of course that isn't even getting into the potential of Hitler allowing Intruder missions to continue.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=104024

The issue with the German night fighters being unable to intervene in other parts of Germany was an issue of technology and methods. Being locked into the Himmelbett system was a problem into 1943, same with having too few AI radars and having them be short ranged and jammable was a serious problem. By 1943-44 though better technology allowed for the efficient use of night fighters from all regions as ironically did British use of bomber streams and chaff, as they created huge radar signatures that could be found 150km away even by inferior German AI radar! This helped lead to the defeat handed to Bomber Command in the Battle of Berlin in 1943-44.

The search light methods were not really that effective, but were better than nothing.
http://www.gyges.dk/Himmelbett.htm
They still depended on substantial amounts of ground radar guidance. In the end though the Germans really inflicted the losses on the RAF when their AI radar tech got decent in 1943 and available in enough numbers, plus the British started concentrating their bombers into easily locatable streams. I suppose had the Germans the proper AI tech ready in 1942 they could have used even their limited numbers of night fighters to inflict the necessary damage.
Edit:
If they had something like this in 1942 it would be pretty close to game over for BC even with the small number of night fighters:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FuG_240_Berlin
It shows the massive differences and improvements that cavity magnetron radar makes.

Of course if they had continued to develop their 'Fernnachtjagd' capabilities, the intruder missions, in late 1941-42 when RAF Bomber Command was developing, they could have inflicted enough losses and made British air space so unpleasant for training crews and returning bombers that it would have helped the lack of sufficient AI radar tech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gisela


Bombing campaigh was a way to force Germans to spend more in defense than what would've British spend in attack, both in manpower and material resources. Expensive defense is an utter waste, the longer it lasts the closer the defeat becames.
That is not to say that several dozens of additional LR MP aircraft wouldn't hamper U-boot activities.
Sure, but the Brits spent a huge amount on Bomber Command, perhaps different allocations would have been more efficient at winning the war, even if it frees up greater German resources. I suppose the pertinent question is whether an earlier end to the Battle of the Atlantic by sapping BC resources in 1941-42 would have made a difference on the wider war or ended it sooner?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Sure, overall production of aircraft was higher for the RAF, but in terms of the specific aircraft used for bombing, the heavy bombers, which were by 1942 the mainstay of the bombing effort, were pretty expensive and in limited production. The 1000 bomber raid of 1942 for instance was a 1 off event using training command and coastal command aircraft and crews to make it happen. The Battle of the Ruhr was not done by 1000 bomber raids in 1943:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Ruhr

The Wellington and, for example, Lancaster were to the BC what hammers were for the blacksmith - tools. RAF did not distinguish bombers by counting their numbers, but how far the can reach with the useful bombload. Four engined bomber meant that a crew of 7 will this night deliver eg. 7 tons of bombs, vs 3 tons of bombs by a very good 2-engined bomber. So, per bomb load delivered, the 4-engined force was a less expensive that a 2-engined force.
With that said - I Know that a 1000 bomber raid was many things apart from blasting Cologne. We also can note that LW having 148 NFs on the rooster would've meant perhaps 120 combat worthy machines - not nearly enough.


In 1943 the heavy flak army just in Germany had about 5000 guns IIRC, not counting non-annexed Poland and France/the Lowlands. Defeating raids no, but attritting them and forcing them to divert course and sustain damage yes.

Thing is that heavy Flak was not doing enough despite many thousands pointed upwards, while sucking out manpower, resources to produce guns, ammo production, radars & radios. And then they have situation where British swamp a 10 or 15% or guns during one night, loosing a few bombers, while the rest of 90 or 85% of the guns is doing nothing that night for the German war effort; in the same time, the NF force can't plug the holes due to the low number. All of that is before we count in British deception, jamming and other efforts to degrade and diminish the defences, both the Flak and NFs. And before we recall that Heer grows every day weaker when compared with artillery tubes & ammo the Allies could muster.

With centimetric radar gunlaying though they'd actually get a lot more effective; IOTL a major deficiency was having rather inaccurate gunlaying radar that was jammable by barrage jammers and chaff. Having Centimetric gunlaying radar in 1942 would have made the FLAK arm really efficient and effective against Bomber Streams. Radar too was a major problem of the German night fighter arm, it was shortage ranged and very drag enducing, which slowed down fighter heavily and sapped their range. Having suitable radar like the Brits had by 1942 would dramatically increase the effectiveness of the night fighter arm. Of course that isn't even getting into the potential of Hitler allowing Intruder missions to continue.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=104024

Probably the only thing that would've much improved heavy Flak wouldve been the introduction of proximity-fused shells. Granted, having a better radar, both on the ground and in air would've further improved defences. I agree that a more elaborate intruder operation vs. RAF airports is a missed opportunity, and that relocating the unit doing that to the Med was a mistake.
We also have a thing that widely deployed German night fighters were not that well performing, there was nothing in the league of Mosquito, the Bf 110 was in the league of Beaufighter, while Ju 88/Do-17/Do-217 were to darned slow to compete in a contested airspace.

Sure, but the Brits spent a huge amount on Bomber Command, perhaps different allocations would have been more efficient at winning the war, even if it frees up greater German resources. I suppose the pertinent question is whether an earlier end to the Battle of the Atlantic by sapping BC resources in 1941-42 would have made a difference on the wider war or ended it sooner?

Bombing campaign was a way to present Germany with 3-front war from mid 1941 on. Quirk with giving more bombers to fight subs at Atlantic is that most of them were not well suited for that until the advent of 4-engined bombers. Hampden or Wellington can't cover what Liberator can, while they can bomb Germany. Then there is a thing of engine-out situation - not fun on 2-engined ww2 aircraft.
 

Deleted member 1487

The Wellington and, for example, Lancaster were to the BC what hammers were for the blacksmith - tools. RAF did not distinguish bombers by counting their numbers, but how far the can reach with the useful bombload. Four engined bomber meant that a crew of 7 will this night deliver eg. 7 tons of bombs, vs 3 tons of bombs by a very good 2-engined bomber. So, per bomb load delivered, the 4-engined force was a less expensive that a 2-engined force.
With that said - I Know that a 1000 bomber raid was many things apart from blasting Cologne. We also can note that LW having 148 NFs on the rooster would've meant perhaps 120 combat worthy machines - not nearly enough.
Are you sure your numbers, which BTW where are they coming from?, aren't the operational machines, not just all machines on hand? And 120 NFers with the right radar can do multiple intercepts in a single sortie when infiltrating a bomber stream.

Thing is that heavy Flak was not doing enough despite many thousands pointed upwards, while sucking out manpower, resources to produce guns, ammo production, radars & radios. And then they have situation where British swamp a 10 or 15% or guns during one night, loosing a few bombers, while the rest of 90 or 85% of the guns is doing nothing that night for the German war effort; in the same time, the NF force can't plug the holes due to the low number. All of that is before we count in British deception, jamming and other efforts to degrade and diminish the defences, both the Flak and NFs. And before we recall that Heer grows every day weaker when compared with artillery tubes & ammo the Allies could muster.
They didn't have the right radar to do their job right until the very end of the war, while by 1943 what radar they had was being effectively jammed by chaff and other devices. The late war German cavity magentron based ground radar was immune to it. With the right radar bomber streams would have been much more effectively handled by FLAK than they were IOTL, when most couldn't see the targets until enough radar was available, but when that was was after chaff was introduced. Cavity magnetron radar could 'see' through it and was smaller and cheaper to make. There is a limit to what losses the RAF could take even in 1944, which they reached during the Battle of Berlin.

Probably the only thing that would've much improved heavy Flak wouldve been the introduction of proximity-fused shells. Granted, having a better radar, both on the ground and in air would've further improved defences. I agree that a more elaborate intruder operation vs. RAF airports is a missed opportunity, and that relocating the unit doing that to the Med was a mistake.
We also have a thing that widely deployed German night fighters were not that well performing, there was nothing in the league of Mosquito, the Bf 110 was in the league of Beaufighter, while Ju 88/Do-17/Do-217 were to darned slow to compete in a contested airspace.
The challenge of high altitude AAA isn't having a proximity fuse, it is putting the rounds accurately near the target to be effective. At lower altitudes there isn't a chance to manually fuse shells due to rapid range changes of a target, so a proximity fuse is highly useful in that case as it turns near misses into hits, but at high altitude an accurate guidance radar is far more useful to scoring kills. This book on radar postulates that had the late war cavity magnetron based German ground radar been available sooner it would have changed the air war entirely:
https://books.google.com/books?id=u...cQ6AEIKDAB#v=onepage&q=egerland radar&f=false

Better radar would have completely changed the course the of the air war. Arguably the He219 and Ta-154 could have been competitive with the Mosquito if they get the engines they needed and didn't have their structural issues. Of course if the Jumo 222 had been ready the Ju88/188 would have been a real Mosquito swatter, but that is a different issue. The regular Bf110 was more than enough to kill the Lancaster in great numbers had it the right radar. The Do217 was a total failure as a night fighter.

Bombing campaign was a way to present Germany with 3-front war from mid 1941 on. Quirk with giving more bombers to fight subs at Atlantic is that most of them were not well suited for that until the advent of 4-engined bombers. Hampden or Wellington can't cover what Liberator can, while they can bomb Germany. Then there is a thing of engine-out situation - not fun on 2-engined ww2 aircraft.
The Halifax and Sterling would have been fine long range naval bombers. Twin engine bombers other than the Mossie were on the way out anyway.
 
Hm.. 5,000 FLAK guns. If 2500 are built instead as medium & heavy cannon for corps/army artillery groups, something the Germans were short of, thats 200 battalions. Since field artillery erodes cannon barrels at a slower rate than AAA there is a savings in replacement tubes. I'll leave it to someone else to calculate the ammunition changes.

On the British side; If half as many four engine heavy bombers are built what does that translate to if the manufactoring goes straight to single & twin engined tactical bombers? Are the tactical air forces doubled or quadrupled?
 
Are you sure your numbers, which BTW where are they coming from?, aren't the operational machines, not just all machines on hand? And 120 NFers with the right radar can do multiple intercepts in a single sortie when infiltrating a bomber stream.

The numbers are from here (I advise saving the page): link
Some NFs can do better the intercepting, some worse, but all German night fighters were far better than Flak to kill night bombers.


They didn't have the right radar to do their job right until the very end of the war, while by 1943 what radar they had was being effectively jammed by chaff and other devices. The late war German cavity magentron based ground radar was immune to it. With the right radar bomber streams would have been much more effectively handled by FLAK than they were IOTL, when most couldn't see the targets until enough radar was available, but when that was was after chaff was introduced. Cavity magnetron radar could 'see' through it and was smaller and cheaper to make. There is a limit to what losses the RAF could take even in 1944, which they reached during the Battle of Berlin.

Lichtenstein radars were okay, after all the kills of the NFs jumped when radar was introduced.
Fire control radar was introduced for Flak in 1942, and experiments were done in 1941. Meaning 1942 was probably the best year of the Flak, after that British went crazy with cuntermeasures, while Germans though it was a good idea to have school kids and PoWs man their Flak. It took 4000 heavy shells to kill an Allied aircraft in 1942 (best year), soaring to 16000 (16 thousand) to do the same in 1944. By 1944, German NF arm was at ~400 fighters, they took advantage of BC reaching too far and defeated them above Berlin.
With that said - yes, Germany probably wasted their chances with radar.

The challenge of high altitude AAA isn't having a proximity fuse, it is putting the rounds accurately near the target to be effective. At lower altitudes there isn't a chance to manually fuse shells due to rapid range changes of a target, so a proximity fuse is highly useful in that case as it turns near misses into hits, but at high altitude an accurate guidance radar is far more useful to scoring kills. This book on radar postulates that had the late war cavity magnetron based German ground radar been available sooner it would have changed the air war entirely:
https://books.google.com/books?id=uYgsr3exvS4C&pg=PA317&lpg=PA317&dq=egerland+radar&source=bl&ots=AnQBH7kdOK&sig=ShaxnmNBfwU2Zk2DSCurS-exKy4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwisgJq-u7bRAhVj1oMKHXI8AccQ6AEIKDAB#v=onepage&q=egerland radar&f=false

There was fire control radar for the Flak available in numbers by 1942, so I did not mentioned it - took it for granted. Use of proxy-fused shells means that Flak crews always aim to hit, in case of near miss the shell will detonate.

Better radar would have completely changed the course the of the air war. Arguably the He219 and Ta-154 could have been competitive with the Mosquito if they get the engines they needed and didn't have their structural issues. Of course if the Jumo 222 had been ready the Ju88/188 would have been a real Mosquito swatter, but that is a different issue. The regular Bf110 was more than enough to kill the Lancaster in great numbers had it the right radar. The Do217 was a total failure as a night fighter.

No quarrels about that. Just - Luftwaffe needed pehaps twice the Bf-110 NFs in 1941-43 in order to defeat the BC.

The Halifax and Sterling would have been fine long range naval bombers. Twin engine bombers other than the Mossie were on the way out anyway.

They probably would've been. OTOH - RAF in late 1942/early 1943 was not the same as 1941, they could actually find a target and plant a decent tonnage of bombs at it.
 
Top