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

  • Thread starter Deleted member 1487
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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.

In 1942, German production of heavy Flak was 4147, with 8,8L56 Flak (in several types) alone was 2828. In same year, the monthly average need for replacement of either whole guns (destroyed by BC) or barrels (worn out) of the heavy Flak was 143. The production of Flak (both heavy and light) used up 29% of total Wehrmacht weapon budget in 1943.
In that 1943, heavy Flak guns production was at 5900+ guns, the 8,8L56 models representing around 4300 guns produced of that total.
Ammo production of Flak was peaking at 1.4 million per month (just for the heavy shells), 1942-44; the percentage of total Wehrmacht ammo budget for Flak fluctated between 15% and 35%.

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?

Okay - but during what time, and what types?
 

Deleted member 1487

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.
Yeah, too bad about Sturmvogel, there was great info there. I did have that bookmarked, but had forgotten about it. I'm counting 196 twin engine nightfighters on hand on June 22nd 1941 with some Me109s attached the NJ force on top of that.
As to the impact of FLAK I'd suggest this:
https://www.amazon.com/Flak-German-...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303099435&sr=1-1
NFers generally played off of FLAK, picking off wounded bombers that fell behind due to FLAK shrapnel damage. I was really surprised to read somewhere recently that in 1944 some 13000(!) heavy bombers suffered damage from FLAK not counting destroyed bombers. So while yes night fighters were more likely to get a kills, FLAK did a lot of damage to Allied bombers and created conditions (i.e. lamed bombers) that were easy pickings for fighters to pick off both by day and night; therefore it isn't as simple as saying fighters > FLAK.

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.
Radar was better than no radar, both for FLAK and fighters. Even the flawed Lichtenstein system was better than nothing. Yes fire control was introduced in 1942...but was still rare; only about 30% of FLAK batteries had such guidance by the end of 1942 IIRC, as the Würzburg Reise systems were huge and expensive to make:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Würzburg_radar#Operational_models
Only 1500 were made during the war, the VAST majority after 1942. FLAK accuracy dropped in terms of bomber killing for a number of reasons, including the Allies flying higher and faster; the various figures of shells per kill also include daylight bombers, which were very hard to hit with regular 88s because of how high they flew (128mm guns were able to shoot down bombers with 2000 rounds per kill even in 1944). By 1944 the drop off in crew quality, barrel wear, radar jamming, drop in explosive filler of shells due to production shortages, and so much more all played major roles in the drop in accuracy. The Germans never thought it was a good idea to use school kids and PoWs on FLAK, they just had no choice. But again with better gunnery radar that wasn't being jammed at least at night they'd have a lot better chance to score hits. Chaff and various jamming systems really degraded ability to hit bombers at night from 1943 on. You can't hit what you can't see.

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.
Not in numbers, only a fraction of FLAK guns had radar guidance of sufficient quality in 1942. By the end of the year IIRC only about 30% of batteries had radar guidance. I posted a thread a while back about German experiments at the end of the war with direct hit aiming instead of box barrages, they called a contact fuse shell a 'Doppelzünder' (double fuse) as it had both the contact and timed fuse and by day that achieved triple the shoot downs and by night double (depended though on accurate radar guidance), but they lost the 'indirect' impact of shrapnel damage from box barrages. So even with non-VT fuses they could achieve considerably more kills with better radar guidance and direct hits...but they lose all the damage they inflicted via shrapnel. But again the main issue isn't the shell being able to explode with a near miss, the trick is getting shells near the bomber at altitude, which was very tricky so high up given that gunlaying computing at that time wasn't particularly great.

We should mention US developments with AAA though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCR-584_radar
Based on info I've read about it being used against German night bombers that were hitting Paris in mid-1944 after it was liberated by the Allies they managed to score kills with timed fused shells, not proximity fused shells, at 360 shells per bomber on average. That is as good as the proximity shells were getting in the Pacific against Japanese aircraft. So with a solid gunnery radar and integrated AAA guidance system really good kill rates could be achieved.

No quarrels about that. Just - Luftwaffe needed pehaps twice the Bf-110 NFs in 1941-43 in order to defeat the BC.
I'm not so sure about that. Just getting the sorts of kill rates achieved by night fighters in early 1944 due to improved radar with the 1941 numbers of Bf110s listed in your link above would have been crippling for the small BC forces in 1941-42. Again though that isn't even counting potentials for Intruder operations against the inexperienced Bomber Command and weaker British night air defenses in 1942 vs. 1944-45 when Operation Gisela did achieve remarkable success.

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.
Sure in comparison, but in 1942-43 they weren't even as accurate as they were in 1944-45. Nevertheless BC could have given up resources in 1942-43 to end the Battle of the Atlantic quite a bit earlier, while using Mossies for accurate night bombing in small raids...which could have all used Oboe for precision bombing of industrial targets, rather than mass bombing of city centers. Can you imagine what damage would have been done in 1943 by an all Mossie strike force that were precision guided by Oboe against German oil targets? Leuna and the like were all vulnerable. In fact Leuna was a large as a city center target, why the hell didn't BC use their heavies to smash it to bits??? They had the accuracy and damn sure had the tonnage ability IOTL in 1943 to wreck that facility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuna_works#World_War_II
Leuna covered three square miles of land with 250 buildings, including decoy buildings outside the main plant, and employed 35,000 workers (including 10,000 prisoners and slave laborers).
Even despite the heavy FLAK defenses the US smashed it repeatedly IOTL and by 1943 chaff and jamming tech would have rendered it blind by night.
 
Yeah, too bad about Sturmvogel, there was great info there. I did have that bookmarked, but had forgotten about it. I'm counting 196 twin engine nightfighters on hand on June 22nd 1941 with some Me109s attached the NJ force on top of that.

I've probably messed up the numbers of the NFs - 148 seems to be the number of serviceable aircraft, 196 are on hand.

As to the impact of FLAK I'd suggest this:
https://www.amazon.com/Flak-German-...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303099435&sr=1-1
NFers generally played off of FLAK, picking off wounded bombers that fell behind due to FLAK shrapnel damage. I was really surprised to read somewhere recently that in 1944 some 13000(!) heavy bombers suffered damage from FLAK not counting destroyed bombers. So while yes night fighters were more likely to get a kills, FLAK did a lot of damage to Allied bombers and created conditions (i.e. lamed bombers) that were easy pickings for fighters to pick off both by day and night; therefore it isn't as simple as saying fighters > FLAK.

I have the Westerman's book, and perusing it in this thread. He champions Flak vs. night fighters in his narrative, however.
Let's analyze that number of damaged bombers. The average is a bit less than 1100 per month in 1944, and that is for 9500+ heavy Flak deployed, expanding more than a million shells for the effort, while using hundreds of thousands of people to man the guns, searchlights, radars, do the logistics, take part in fire control & communications, servicing the guns. One out of nine heavy Flak will damage a bomber in a given month in 1944. Damaged bomber has a good chance to return to the base, crew can take part in the next bombing raid - all of this is impossible with a killed bomber.
Fighters were vectored towards bomber streams. Vectoring them towards a single crippled bomber might mean a sure kill, but it puts the Bf 110/Ju-88 etc. in away from the bomber stream where it can make multiple kills.

We can again recall that heavy Flak outnumbered the NFs by 20:1, give or take.


Radar was better than no radar, both for FLAK and fighters. Even the flawed Lichtenstein system was better than nothing. Yes fire control was introduced in 1942...but was still rare; only about 30% of FLAK batteries had such guidance by the end of 1942 IIRC, as the Würzburg Reise systems were huge and expensive to make:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Würzburg_radar#Operational_models
...
Not in numbers, only a fraction of FLAK guns had radar guidance of sufficient quality in 1942. By the end of the year IIRC only about 30% of batteries had radar guidance.

<my bold>
30% of the batteries were equipped with radars already by April 1942, per Westerman's doctoral thesis pg. 264.


I posted a thread a while back about German experiments at the end of the war with direct hit aiming instead of box barrages, they called a contact fuse shell a 'Doppelzünder' (double fuse) as it had both the contact and timed fuse and by day that achieved triple the shoot downs and by night double (depended though on accurate radar guidance), but they lost the 'indirect' impact of shrapnel damage from box barrages...

I'm afraid that I'll take Van Axthelm's thesis/claims with a grain of salt, the same way I take the supposed Hellcat's kill ratio of 19:1, or some aces kills getting into couple of hundreds - no offense.

We should mention US developments with AAA though:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCR-584_radar
Based on info I've read about it being used against German night bombers that were hitting Paris in mid-1944 after it was liberated by the Allies they managed to score kills with timed fused shells, not proximity fused shells, at 360 shells per bomber on average. That is as good as the proximity shells were getting in the Pacific against Japanese aircraft. So with a solid gunnery radar and integrated AAA guidance system really good kill rates could be achieved.

360 rounds per kill sounds too good to be true, so I'll take this also with grain of salt.


I'm not so sure about that. Just getting the sorts of kill rates achieved by night fighters in early 1944 due to improved radar with the 1941 numbers of Bf110s listed in your link above would have been crippling for the small BC forces in 1941-42. Again though that isn't even counting potentials for Intruder operations against the inexperienced Bomber Command and weaker British night air defenses in 1942 vs. 1944-45 when Operation Gisela did achieve remarkable success.

I've suggested the increas in the number of night fighters beacuse that sounds more believable than having 1944 tech in 1941. More NFs also allows for conducting both offensive and defensive operations in the same time.

Sure in comparison, but in 1942-43 they weren't even as accurate as they were in 1944-45. Nevertheless BC could have given up resources in 1942-43 to end the Battle of the Atlantic quite a bit earlier, while using Mossies for accurate night bombing in small raids...which could have all used Oboe for precision bombing of industrial targets, rather than mass bombing of city centers. Can you imagine what damage would have been done in 1943 by an all Mossie strike force that were precision guided by Oboe against German oil targets? Leuna and the like were all vulnerable. In fact Leuna was a large as a city center target, why the hell didn't BC use their heavies to smash it to bits??? They had the accuracy and damn sure had the tonnage ability IOTL in 1943 to wreck that facility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuna_works#World_War_II

Evryone was more advanced in 1944-45 then in 1942-43. More British LR MPs in mid-1942 can't do anythin about the U-boot happy times of early 1942, when they roamed free against the targets in vicinity of American coasts. Leuna was beyond the range of Oboe, it would've taken the H2S radar for Leuna-type of targets, or/and waith for the Repeater Oboe to be developed.
But I agree that an earlier and more orchestrated effort vs fuel targets would've been a boon for the Allied war effort.
 

Deleted member 1487

How about as a potential POD for Area Bombing and later Dehousing not getting Churchill's approval, Professor Lindemann dies pre-war? He was the major proponent and pushed a lot of crazy schemes and in fact was the guy the managed to sideline the Operations Research guys pointing out it was a waste of effort compared to other alternatives. I'm reading "Blackett's War" about the history of British OR and it seems Lindemann was in large part the villain of this policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Lindemann,_1st_Viscount_Cherwell#Strategic_bombing
http://www.historynet.com/lord-cherwell-churchills-confidence-man.htm
He was right on a couple of big issues, so that bought him Churchill's total confidence (degaussing of ships and the German use of radio guidance beams). Had he died, his influence could have tipped the scales away from Area Bombing in 1941.
 
The 'waste of effort' arose when BC was removed from day into night bombing via the rough handling by Luftwaffe's fighters. RAF, unlike the LW, was without neccesarry navigational gear to undertake navigation through night and bad weather, crew was not trained for this new art of warfare. Now even of we send the bombers to go U-boat hunting, the airborne radars still need to be invented, produced, installed, people trained, and that still leaves better part of Atlantic not covered by air patrols.
In 1941-42, we have a situation where hundreds of British bombers are tying up thousands of German AA guns, together with men, using up a big chunk of German war budget & production when German ground forces are being out-numbered in Russia and N.Africa. Germans were wasting, not British.

Bombing campaign was also a way to tell Soviets: yes, we are bringing the war to Germany.
 
Bombing campaign was also a way to tell Soviets: yes, we are bringing the war to Germany.

12 November 1940

Later Molotov continued his talks with the German Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop. Their meeting was interrupted with an air raid on Berlin by the RAF. They moved to Ribbentrop’s private air raid shelter to continue the meeting. Allegedly Molotov was treated to a long monologue by Ribbentrop on why the British were ‘finished’, leading Molotov to comment:

If that is so – then why are we in this shelter – and whose are those bombs that are falling?
 

Deleted member 1487

The 'waste of effort' arose when BC was removed from day into night bombing via the rough handling by Luftwaffe's fighters. RAF, unlike the LW, was without neccesarry navigational gear to undertake navigation through night and bad weather, crew was not trained for this new art of warfare. Now even of we send the bombers to go U-boat hunting, the airborne radars still need to be invented, produced, installed, people trained, and that still leaves better part of Atlantic not covered by air patrols.
In 1941-42, we have a situation where hundreds of British bombers are tying up thousands of German AA guns, together with men, using up a big chunk of German war budget & production when German ground forces are being out-numbered in Russia and N.Africa. Germans were wasting, not British.

Bombing campaign was also a way to tell Soviets: yes, we are bringing the war to Germany.
No one said that bombing would need to completely stop, just that focusing so much on Bomber Command and using it to area bomb was not the best use of resources until about 1943 and then guidance systems that allowed targeting industry was available. Also do you have a source that Leuna was outside Oboe or Gee-H range?
And radar was not necessary to patrol for surfaced Uboats. It certainly makes the job a lot easier, but it wasn't necessary and would still force a submarine to dive or at least report it's whereabouts. The issue isn't sending BC aircraft and crew to do the job, it is funding Coastal Command with resources to do their job better from 1941 on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_C..._War_II#Versus_the_U-boats.2C_1939.E2.80.9341
The Mid-Atlantic Gap could be covered by an appropriately resourced CC in 1942. In 1941-42 how much resources were really tied up? Less than 200 NFers, several thousand AAA all over Europe, but remember at the same time the Germans were also bombing Britain and tying down resources. Logistically the Germans probably couldn't have deployed that much more in 1941 even if AAA resources were freed up and in 1942 too logistics and transport were major issues. Not that they weren't already dominant in the East in 1941-42. According to the FLAK book I posted earlier the Germans added over 800 heavy FLAK batteries in 1943 compared to 1942 for a total of 1200, a 65% increase. So in 1941-42 FLAK battery totals in Germany were in the lower hundreds, not thousands as in 1943 and beyond. By January 1943 there was less than 700 heavy FLAK batteries in Germany, but within 6 months that nearly doubled. So prior to 1943 air defense was actually not that huge within Germany proper. I does seem the expansion was related to Allied jamming of German gunnery radar in 1943, heavily degrading their ability to find and hit bombers, so they responded by dramatically increasing numbers of guns to saturate the skies more in response. Bombing of Uboat bases in 1941-42 would have probably been a more effective use of resources, same with mining them.
 

Deleted member 1487

Good luck with penetrating the U-boat pens before you get Tallboys.
Logistics leading to the bases and the bases besides the subpens can be smashed up and riddled with unexploded ordnance. Plus mining.
 
Logistics leading to the bases and the bases besides the subpens can be smashed up and riddled with unexploded ordnance.

Sounds a lot like area attacks :)

Have you looked up how much time and effort the RAF spent on bombing U-boat ports OTL - eg a third of sorties in winter 1941-42 were targeted at Brest.
 
Sounds a lot like area attacks :)

:p

Crudely, you won't force BC to give up area attacks because that's the only thing it can do. You can, however, force it to give up area attacks on certain targets or regions of targets, or to area-attack using different methods or aircraft.
 

Deleted member 1487

Sounds a lot like area attacks :)

Have you looked up how much time and effort the RAF spent on bombing U-boat ports OTL - eg a third of sorties in winter 1941-42 were targeted at Brest.
Confined areas to military targets, not city centers and civilian areas. It probably wouldn't have hurt to put 2/3rds of sorties into Uboat ports for 1941-42 while CC got the bulk of resource until guidance tech caught up for attacking targets in Germany at night. The Butt Report should have killed major attacks in Germany until more accurate technology existed other than for hitting just entire cities.
 
Confined areas to military targets, not city centers and civilian areas. It probably wouldn't have hurt to put 2/3rds of sorties into Uboat ports for 1941-42 while CC got the bulk of resource until guidance tech caught up for attacking targets in Germany at night. The Butt Report should have killed major attacks in Germany until more accurate technology existed other than for hitting just entire cities.

Logistics in WW2 means railways and in Europe most of the railway targets - engine sheds, repair facilities, marshalling yards etc - are in or near city centres. Hitting railway lines in open countryside at night is simply not possible. Viaducts and tunnels are more productive targets, but difficult to damage before the large late war ground penetrating bombs.

The key feature of the RAF attacks on U-boat ports is the complete lack of success in affecting U-boat operations; the USAAF had the same issue when they tried in daylight.
 

Deleted member 1487

Logistics in WW2 means railways and in Europe most of the railway targets - engine sheds, repair facilities, marshalling yards etc - are in or near city centres. Hitting railway lines in open countryside at night is simply not possible. Viaducts and tunnels are more productive targets, but difficult to damage before the large late war ground penetrating bombs.

The key feature of the RAF attacks on U-boat ports is the complete lack of success in affecting U-boat operations; the USAAF had the same issue when they tried in daylight.
Should have tried more mining then, it isn't as if 'Gardening' operations weren't already being done against German ports.
 
No one said that bombing would need to completely stop, just that focusing so much on Bomber Command and using it to area bomb was not the best use of resources until about 1943 and then guidance systems that allowed targeting industry was available. Also do you have a source that Leuna was outside Oboe or Gee-H range?

The source for the range limitation of Oboe can be found, for example at the pg. 324 of the book you've posted the link, the 'Technical and Military Imperatives: A Radar History of World War 2'. Basically - the bombers need to be above the radio horizon for the Oboe to work.
I'd say again that bombing offenseive was the only way to bring the war to Germany proper after the fall of France, and that no-one but RAF was the force capable to do so. This is not to say that offensive was conducted flawlesly, far from it.

And radar was not necessary to patrol for surfaced Uboats. It certainly makes the job a lot easier, but it wasn't necessary and would still force a submarine to dive or at least report it's whereabouts. The issue isn't sending BC aircraft and crew to do the job, it is funding Coastal Command with resources to do their job better from 1941 on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_C..._War_II#Versus_the_U-boats.2C_1939.E2.80.9341
The Mid-Atlantic Gap could be covered by an appropriately resourced CC in 1942.

Radar-less aircraft is far less capable during the day, and not worth trying during the night, when U-boots were free to travel surfaced in general East direction, so convoys don't slip through.
Mid-Atlantic gap will need B-24s, that by 1941/42 UK government can get basically for free, thus having no bearing on what BC was doing; also needed are escort carriers that again have nothing to do with BC. I'll again agree that a better outfitted CC would've been a good thing, but let them have proper 4-engined aricraft with top-notch electronics when available, not cast-offs that wait for electronics.
Britain have had plenty of places where to save money, like not producing the tank types proven unreliable or too thinly armored, earlier phasing out of Hurricane, Battle, Defiant, 2pdr, not producing the horrendeous Botha, producing just half, if so, of the Lysanders.

In 1941-42 how much resources were really tied up? Less than 200 NFers, several thousand AAA all over Europe, but remember at the same time the Germans were also bombing Britain and tying down resources. Logistically the Germans probably couldn't have deployed that much more in 1941 even if AAA resources were freed up and in 1942 too logistics and transport were major issues. Not that they weren't already dominant in the East in 1941-42. According to the FLAK book I posted earlier the Germans added over 800 heavy FLAK batteries in 1943 compared to 1942 for a total of 1200, a 65% increase. So in 1941-42 FLAK battery totals in Germany were in the lower hundreds, not thousands as in 1943 and beyond. By January 1943 there was less than 700 heavy FLAK batteries in Germany, but within 6 months that nearly doubled. So prior to 1943 air defense was actually not that huge within Germany proper. I does seem the expansion was related to Allied jamming of German gunnery radar in 1943, heavily degrading their ability to find and hit bombers, so they responded by dramatically increasing numbers of guns to saturate the skies more in response. Bombing of Uboat bases in 1941-42 would have probably been a more effective use of resources, same with mining them.

Germany was bombing the UK in 1942? That's a good one.
Luftwaffe Flak arm, that was using vast majority of Flak, both light and heavy, out-numbered the whole RAF.
There was never thousands of heavy Flak batteries, nor I've claimed that either. As for geographic disposal of the batteries, in unspecified date of 1942 there was 866 heavy Flak batteries in Recih and on the Western Front together, while just Germany proper was home of 744 heavy Flak batteries, per the book you've posted. We know that all those 866 batteries have had just one target in 1942 - RAF aircraft (no offense for the USAAF cutting their teeth) along with 621 light Flak battery. I'd say it is a huge asset to design, produce, man and pay for.
Germany was increasing production of war material per each year passing, Flak incuded.

Bombing U-boot bases would've probably been a good idea in 1941, after LW turns east and shelters are still in construction phase.
 
Sorry - I've used term 'bombing' as something done by hundreds, sometimes many hundreds of bombers in a sustained or increased tempo, during many months. That Baedeker blitz, when LW was sending mere dozens of bombers out, while suffering losses disprportional vs. damage done, were pinprick raids, not bombing.
 

Deleted member 1487

Sorry - I've used term 'bombing' as something done by hundreds, sometimes many hundreds of bombers in a sustained or increased tempo, during many months. That Baedeker blitz, when LW was sending mere dozens of bombers out, while suffering losses disprportional vs. damage done, were pinprick raids, not bombing.
Nevertheless they did tie down large numbers of British aircraft. Which brings us back around to the impact of say Intruder missions against Bomber Command; it would force the Brits to spend dispropotionate resources to counter them.
 
According to one article (yes I know it is in a USAF publication that can be seen as cheerleading for airpower) the Germans put the following resources into air defense http://www.au.af.mil/au/afri/aspj/airchronicles/apj/apj95/fal95_files/gnzingr.pdf:

By 1944 over 800,000 Germans were committed to air defense, including the crews of about 54,000 antiaircraft guns; furthermore, a million Germans were engaged in repairing damage caused by air strikes. In fact, Germany dedicated more forces to air defense than it deployed to counter the Allied campaign in Italy. The air war also caused a significant shift in Germany’s resource priorities. In 1944 more than half of Germany’s industrial base was working to satisfy the Luftwaffe’s needs. Albert Speer, architect of the German war economy, estimated that 30 percent of artillery, 20 percent of heavy ammunition, and over 50 percent of electronics production were dedicated to air defense, depriving frontline ground forces of critical antitank munitions and communications equipment. Production of antitank guns was halved in favor of building more antiaircraft guns. The bombing campaign also forced German aircraft manufacturers to focus almost exclusively on producing fighters. At the beginning of the war, the Luftwaffe operated about the same number of bombers and fighters. By 1945 the mix had shifted to more than 26,000 fighters and fewer than 3,000 operational bombers.

The point is we can argue about shifting resources and tactics and I concur that, particularly through 1942 a few squadrons of long range aircraft could have helped a great deal in the Battle of the Atlantic but I do think it is important to note that the bomber offensive caused the Germans to devote a substantial portion of their war effort to air defense and away from other activities.
 

Deleted member 1487

According to one article (yes I know it is in a USAF publication that can be seen as cheerleading for airpower) the Germans put the following resources into air defense http://www.au.af.mil/au/afri/aspj/airchronicles/apj/apj95/fal95_files/gnzingr.pdf:

By 1944 over 800,000 Germans were committed to air defense, including the crews of about 54,000 antiaircraft guns; furthermore, a million Germans were engaged in repairing damage caused by air strikes. In fact, Germany dedicated more forces to air defense than it deployed to counter the Allied campaign in Italy. The air war also caused a significant shift in Germany’s resource priorities. In 1944 more than half of Germany’s industrial base was working to satisfy the Luftwaffe’s needs. Albert Speer, architect of the German war economy, estimated that 30 percent of artillery, 20 percent of heavy ammunition, and over 50 percent of electronics production were dedicated to air defense, depriving frontline ground forces of critical antitank munitions and communications equipment. Production of antitank guns was halved in favor of building more antiaircraft guns. The bombing campaign also forced German aircraft manufacturers to focus almost exclusively on producing fighters. At the beginning of the war, the Luftwaffe operated about the same number of bombers and fighters. By 1945 the mix had shifted to more than 26,000 fighters and fewer than 3,000 operational bombers.

The point is we can argue about shifting resources and tactics and I concur that, particularly through 1942 a few squadrons of long range aircraft could have helped a great deal in the Battle of the Atlantic but I do think it is important to note that the bomber offensive caused the Germans to devote a substantial portion of their war effort to air defense and away from other activities.
The situation in 1944 in terms of commitment of resources was vastly different than in 1942. Also in 1944 the numbers don't really tell the full story in terms of manpower and labor, that 800k manpower devoted to air defense was mostly not men of military age and ability, but women, girls, boys, workers, PoWs, and forced laborers in some cases. In terms of clean up again that was mostly forced labor doing that. In terms of production, yes by 1944 the majority of German industry was dedicated to air defense related things, but again that was including daylight targeted bombing of industry and night bombing of oil targets and transport. Also it involved more than just defense of Germany, as huge bombing of Italy and France/the Lowlands was done in 1944 too. But the same effect could have been achieved by targeting industry from 1943 on. In 1941-42 Operations Research indicated there were better ways to spend resources than on Bomber Command and German defensive investments were much lower in that period than from 1943 on. In fact had they laid off until guidance systems became better they could have unleashed a shock when accurate attacks on German industry began in 1943 in a big way and German air defenses weren't prepared.
 
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