WI Curtis LeMay's plan of sending armed convoys to the Berlin Blockade was enacted?

Acculturation since the Soviet’s did not have nukes most likely push to the Rhine we nuke everything in sight stategic bombing and we push them back and you know the the rest

Well, you need to establish air superiority first, so that the bombers actually get through to the targets...

The advantage of bombing Japan in 1945 is that the Allies had virtually total air superiority over the Home Islands.
 
Well, you need to establish air superiority first, so that the bombers actually get through to the targets...

The advantage of bombing Japan in 1945 is that the Allies had virtually total air superiority over the Home Islands.
the usa will be able to do that in enough time
 

kernals12

Banned
Well, you need to establish air superiority first, so that the bombers actually get through to the targets...

The advantage of bombing Japan in 1945 is that the Allies had virtually total air superiority over the Home Islands.
Nuke the airfields
 
Well, you need to establish air superiority first, so that the bombers actually get through to the targets...

The advantage of bombing Japan in 1945 is that the Allies had virtually total air superiority over the Home Islands.

USSR didn't have much of an early warning network later in the Cold War, let alone 1948. Battle of Britain showed that vectoring was important. Soviets had no practical experience with this, given how the Luftwaffe operated against them. The Great Patriotic War in the East was a tactical war, not Strategic.

They were building the 'Dumbo' VHF sets, starting in 1947, with a 100 mile range, and these were not PPI: but A-Scope, and no ground clutter removal circuits and rudimentary height determination, so you really need well trained operators.

Guess what they didn't have a lot of, back then. Their later '50s era stuff, the 'Knife Edge' were not much better, but added PPI and that clutter reduction and better at altitude estimation. These all had to be manually swept.
Think more mobile SCR-268, with less power and amenities.

Their WWII era sets were even worse.

The basic ECM would have had no problem disrupting any of those sets.
 
USSR didn't have much of an early warning network later in the Cold War, let alone 1948. Battle of Britain showed that vectoring was important. Soviets had no practical experience with this, given how the Luftwaffe operated against them. The Great Patriotic War in the East was a tactical war, not Strategic.

They were building the 'Dumbo' VHF sets, starting in 1947, with a 100 mile range, and these were not PPI: but A-Scope, and no ground clutter removal circuits and rudimentary height determination, so you really need well trained operators.

Guess what they didn't have a lot of, back then. Their later '50s era stuff, the 'Knife Edge' were not much better, but added PPI and that clutter reduction and better at altitude estimation. These all had to be manually swept.
Think more mobile SCR-268, with less power and amenities.

Their WWII era sets were even worse.

The basic ECM would have had no problem disrupting any of those sets.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your point. But the difficulty in taking advantage of these Soviet shortfallings is that you need actual air assets in place to do it - and those had all been radically drawn down over the previous three years, just as the ground forces had been.

The difficulties the US and Britain had in just establishing a limited air bridge to Berlin in the initial months of the Blockade are a testament to how limited Allied air assets were in Germany by that point.
 
Have just discovered and read the entire thread. If the Berlin corridor was considered a "Holy Soviet Border" how could the airlift, violating these borders, possibly be permitted to exist? Primarily because the highly pragmatic Soviet world view, that there be no global conflict initiated until the correlation of forces indicated a clear Communist victory, accepted this incursion. For the same reason, I suspect that peaceful, humanitarian ground convoys might also be permitted if attempted.

Literature since the fall of the USSR, particularly the Venona transcripts, give the impression that, while the Soviet may have deeply penetrated the Nuclear Labs and the Washington establishment, I could find no traffic discussing USAF readiness.

Nuclear testing just prior to the Russ blockade (Sandstone series) more than
doubled the yield of our bombs and facilitated an increase in quantity, by a factor of three (50 to 156) during the year following the start of the blockade.

Dynasoar
 
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also the ussr is still completed devasted by the war and they were not ready for a prolonged war unlike the usa who is a much better position

Unquestionably the long-term favors the Western allies.

They just have to survive the short term, somehow.
 
Even if we generously assuming wartime contingencies speed that up by around a half-decade, your looking at the first nuclear-tipped V-2 being fielded two-three years after the first Soviet atom bomb.
It's not that generous, considering how slow-walked the American ballistic missile program was until the mid-'50s. The Air Force really wasn't keen on them, for whatever reason. (Also, it couldn't be a V-2; not enough payload) The bigger problem is that without hydrogen bombs of a reasonable size and weight ballistic missiles are mostly useless as military devices, because they're not accurate enough to do significant damage even to unprotected area targets.
 
For the same reason, I suspect that peaceful, humanitarian ground convoys might also be permitted if attempted.

I doubt they would be permitted, although I agree that the Soviets automatic instinct probably won't be to open fire upon them. Rather, I imagine they'd actually be peacefully blocked via the methods David T indicated would be available to the Soviets.

My sources have 110

50 weapons is the number given by this Department of Energy release and reiterated by Ross. Being the people who actually build the warheads, they would know. In a way, though, it doesn’t matter. Since the bottleneck in crews and bomb teams means the US can only hope to deliver 12 bombs at a given time and that number is likely to decline in the short-term due to losses.

USSR didn't have much of an early warning network later in the Cold War, let alone 1948. Battle of Britain showed that vectoring was important. Soviets had no practical experience with this, given how the Luftwaffe operated against them. The Great Patriotic War in the East was a tactical war, not Strategic.

Given that Soviet interceptors were able to get up and buzz Berlin airlift aircraft all the time, it’s pretty clear that the Soviets were more then capable of putting interceptors on Anglo-American aircraft. Their intelligence penetration of the west would likely give them plenty of advance warning and knowledge of which air bases they’d have to watch. The extreme depths the USAAF would need to fly and sheer quantities of Soviet aircraft and observation teams they’d have to fly through ensures significant probability of interception even without that. Even as it was, USAAF projections were 50 percent losses and that was with full quantities of bombs, crews, and planes as well as adequately trained crews. When LeMay in 1948 He challenged his crews to stage a practice bomb raid on Dayton, Ohio, from nearby airfields and at 30,000 feet in broad daylight, the results were a fiasco. Inadequate training makes everything massively worse and given what I’ve read, they’d be fortunate to find their targets even if the Soviets don’t send a single fighter after them.
 
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Given that Soviet interceptors were able to get up and buzz Berlin airlift aircraft all the time, it’s pretty clear that the Soviets were more then capable of putting interceptors on Anglo-American aircraft. Their intelligence penetration of the west would likely give them plenty of advance warning and knowledge of which air bases they’d have to watch. The extreme depths the USAAF would need to fly and sheer quantities of Soviet aircraft and observation teams they’d have to fly through ensures significant probability of interception even without that. Even as it was, USAAF projections were 50 percent losses and that was with full quantities of bombs, crews, and planes as well as adequately trained crews. Inadequate training makes everything massively worse and given what I’ve read, they’d be fortunate to find their targets even if the Soviets don’t send a single fighter after them.

I think your claiming that Soviet interceptors successfully bumped into a nearly continuous stream of aircraft flying to a single known destination proves anything about PVO capabilities is a bit suspect.

That said I would agree that there simply were not enough A-bombs to be decisive at the time and the conventional bombing forces were inadequate to significantly compensate for that. After all a British projections for an atomic weapons stockpile estimated a need for 800 bombs and they intended to be supporting a US nuclear campaign. People tend to forget that while yield is not a good measure of a nuclear weapons force due to scaling and other issues a single 1 megaton bomb can devastate an area that would require five 20 kiloton weapons to do the same.
 

nbcman

Donor
It's not that generous, considering how slow-walked the American ballistic missile program was until the mid-'50s. The Air Force really wasn't keen on them, for whatever reason. (Also, it couldn't be a V-2; not enough payload) The bigger problem is that without hydrogen bombs of a reasonable size and weight ballistic missiles are mostly useless as military devices, because they're not accurate enough to do significant damage even to unprotected area targets.
The AF wasn’t keen on missiles because there weren’t pilots needed for missiles. It threatened their fiefdom.
 
Atlas was first known as XB-65, B for bomber in 1953, later SM-65 in 1955, Strategic Missile

That in no way contradicts his point.
From what I’ve read, the Air Force didn’t pay any attention to ballistic missiles until around the test of the first hydrogen device in 1953. The Army was another story, but the army was barred from the strategic nuclear game at a very early stage by lobbying efforts from the Air Force. Their effort to develop rockets was their attempt to get back into the nuclear business, but in 1954 the Air Force realized the army had gotten the leap on it and again lobbied Congress to block the army and transfer the program to their hands. The increase in prestige the Air Force has gained due to the Berlin Airlift helped them out immensely. In ‘48, though, the Air Force’s interest just wasn’t there.

A possibly interesting repercussion here is that if war breaks out and the US tries a immediate atomic offensive out of reflex only for it to fail due to the decrepit state of the American bomber force, the USAAF would suffer a pretty bad loss in prestige. This was right around the time of the Revolt of the Admirals and the failure of SAC to deliver a immediate atomic knockout would add extra weight to their criticisms in the eyes of Congress. Perhaps the B-36 program gets scaled back in favor of the USNs plans for nuclear-armed carrier aircraft or the armies rocket program.

Of course, with the conquest of Western Europe (especially the sweet, sweet Marshall, and Pre-Marshall in fact, Program Aid the US have managed to sink into Germany, France, and Italy which would now be in Russian hands) and much of Asia, the Soviets would also now have a lot more resources to throw into their own nuclear, bomber, and missile programs. It’s a race the Americans still have a advantage in (particularly since they’ll still be able to hold onto Britain and Japan as forward bases, barring the Soviets managing to get some nuke-tipped SRBMs in position before the Americans), but the Soviets do have some opportunity to catch up.
 
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Perhaps the B-36 program gets scaled back in favor of the USNs plans for nuclear-armed carrier aircraft or the armies rocket program.

They called it Bomber as that seemed more in line with what the Bomber Mafia wanted. The first idea was that Atlas would have to be radio command linked, rather than on board guidance, so piloted, in a sense. Same was true for the Matador Missile, first known as the B-61, and was radio command linked. Later was redesignated 'Tactical Missile'

SAC had the near nuclear monopoly, since the USN had nothing that could carry an atomic bomb more than 1600 miles, and were limited by only Midway class decks until the Essex modernization with the strengthened decks starting in 1950 that could both have the AJ Savage land and take-off from Carriers. Otherwise, could only take off with JATO assistance., and no way to land. One way trip, or try to return and ditch near a ship for -hopeful- recovery.

Even getting the USS United States class built wouldn't have helped much, as in 1949, there wasn't really anything on the drawing board for the planned 50 ton bomber they were going to operate when the class was scuttled with hardly any steel laid down. Douglas didn't even have a paper project for it, and only designed the 2/3 size A3D Skywarrior that could operate from the just updated Essex rebuilds

For the Army, would take years for vB at Redstone Arsenal to do anything large enough to carry an Atomic Bomb any great distance.
 
The former Wallies are knocked all the way back to Britain, while the USSR occupies Europe, and possibly also the Mediterranean.
Meanwhile, the PRC invades Japan with Soviet help, and creates an Asian communist commonwealth under Mao's aegis. Later on, a split still happens between them and Moscow.
Mccarthyism gradually grows in the United States, resulting in the erosion of civil liberties and the nefarious trade of freedom for security. A certain moustached old man takes over, cameras and screens with his image are installed on every street, society is reformed... and we have always been at war with Eastasia.

Just kidding. Most likely, the Soviets estabilish puppet states all over mainland Europe behind the pyrenees, only to lose them later, Tito-style. The US focuses on defending the Americas from communist infiltration until they can work up their arsenal, while the situation in East Asia grows only a little different from OTL.
 
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