WI: No Flying Fortress?

Carthage was actually successful.

One Mosquito got hit by flak and crashed in a school yard. Following Mosquitos assumjed that was the target and put their bombs on the school, until the very last one's realised the mistake and put the bmbs on the Gestapo HQ.

The remaining Mosquitos breached the wall, allowing the prisorners to escape and destroyed the building.

This was so low level that they flew along the streets and also had to look out for the street lamps (!).

When USAAF (finally) got into the oil campaign, the precision aiming was "good enough" for an oil plant.

Ivan
 
I'll throw this out.

I think I can safely assume the Mosquito used less fuel than a B17 since it was lighter. Lets just suppose the USAAF didnt have abundant aviation gas. Would they then have had to switch to the Mosquito?
 
I'll throw this out.

I think I can safely assume the Mosquito used less fuel than a B17 since it was lighter. Lets just suppose the USAAF didnt have abundant aviation gas. Would they then have had to switch to the Mosquito?

More likely they would have had to scale back or abandon the strategic bombing campaign. Without the fuel to operate the proper weapon systems, there would be no point.
 
Copenhagen is not a strategic target located behind several layers of defenses.
And Bremen and Kiel have such defences in any number?

An accidental failure is a failure. And they did not destroy the building. Hitting doesn't count in the final success/failure determination, which is civilian casualties without mission success.
The failure was not attributable to the pilots, they hit (with amazing accuracy given the technology of the day) what they were meant to hit, it was the brainiacs who planned the mission who got it wrong.

Because the thread is on the possibility of replacing the B17 with Mosquito bombers, not Fighter-Bombers.
I though we'd more-o-less thrown it out about a page ago, hasn't got the range with a load, or the overload capacity, requires more machining (very little can be cast), thus limiting the numbers available, and will lose most or all of its advantages if stuck in a formation.
 
And Bremen and Kiel have such defences in any number?

The failure was not attributable to the pilots, they hit (with amazing accuracy given the technology of the day) what they were meant to hit, it was the brainiacs who planned the mission who got it wrong.

Do Schweinfurt and Regensburg not have these defenses?

The Oslo raid was postulated as an example of Mosquito's efficacy. A failed mission doesn't set a good example. As for poor planning, what would you have done to insure mission success? Crews were not sufficiently practiced in technique and time restraints prevented further honing of skills. It was a crapshoot and they lost this one.

Perhaps, if the British Air Ministry had insisted on developing the Mossie as a dive bomber....
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Sior

Banned
The B17 should not have been called the Flying Fortress but the Flying Blunderbuss much more accurate discription I think. American precision bombing was so good that they could guarantee that every bomb would hit the ground.
 
I though we'd more-o-less thrown it out about a page ago, hasn't got the range with a load, or the overload capacity, requires more machining (very little can be cast), thus limiting the numbers available, and will lose most or all of its advantages if stuck in a formation.

Ah I have been so busy defending that point that I missed when I'd won. :p
 
As for poor planning, what would you have done to insure mission success?
Loaded them up with smaller bombs, ones less inclined to go through the back wall like they did OTL.

Crews were not sufficiently practiced in technique and time restraints prevented further honing of skills.
The crews hit the right room, but the bombs they'd been given were too heavy, and thus crashed through the opposite wall. The pilots were good enough, it was the planners who stuffed up.
 
Loaded them up with smaller bombs, ones less inclined to go through the back wall like they did OTL.

The crews hit the right room, but the bombs they'd been given were too heavy, and thus crashed through the opposite wall. The pilots were good enough, it was the planners who stuffed up.

They were 500 lb bombs with 11 second delay fuses. Which bomb and which fusing would you prefer? A contact fuse was deemed likely to blow up the bomber delivering it. The Ju-88 could have done the job better using it's rather mediocre dive-bombing capability. 250 lb bombs would probably have gone through the wall as well. Had the Mossie been equipped with any kind of speed flap, it could have bombed in some kind of dive, but like the P-36 Apache, which had a poor flap, it was too fast to deliver ordinance with accuracy repeatably.

Rocket-firing Mossies were so fast during delivery that the bore-sighted rockets would fire low. The wings curled down at the front at delivery speed. The aim was adjusted to compensate.
 
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