It might not be safe to assume that much increased focus on anti-submarine a/c would result in more rapid development in anti sub a/c technology, but... Development tends to come faster in the areas of greatest focus.
If there's any side in WW2 more likely to work out how best to actually do things, given enough data, it's the Western Allies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operations_research#Second_World_War
Sure, what suffers as a result?
Sure, but they still made plenty of mistakes in spite of that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodecanese_Campaign
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Berlin_(air)
Sure, what suffers as a result?
Sure, but they still made plenty of mistakes in spite of that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodecanese_Campaign
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Berlin_(air)
Things the British could do to counteract Germans fixing their torpedo dud rate and inflicting a major shipping crisis.
1) Don't bother counterattacking the Italians in North or East Africa in December 1940. The Italians arn't going to do anything and attacking just gets the Germans involved.
2) Don't get involved in Greece either.
3) Use a fleet carrier or two for convoy cover, even if this means not doing something like the Taranto raid or reducing Malta Convoys.
4) Don't bother with trying to maintain Malta as an active forward air and sea base. It would be hard for the Axis to push into Egypt anyway through normal port and road capacity logistics issues.
5) Regardless of who is in North Africa or when don't try to take anything in Libya or Cyrencia until 1943. As long as the British hold Alexandria and Gibralter they can start the ultimate counter offensive eventually whenever they want and win.
6) Don't get too immediately worried about Vichy colonies or its Navy. Initial policy should be as long as Vichy isn't moving their fleet units between bases and are keeping the Germans out we are not going to worry if the fleet is in Oran or the West Indies. USA diplomacy can help here.
7) Once USA is in the war, you are going to win eventually, reduce bulk imports into Britain even if British manufacturing production starts to slip.
8) Be more passive in the Pacific. The risk/reward of Midway/Coral Sea/Tokyo raids/Guadacanal really don't seem worth it. If the Japanese try to invade Midway sit back and watch the Marines shoot up the Japanese trying to wade in. Rely on submarines (if the Germans get to fix their torpedo problems its only fair the USA fixes theirs too). Put a USA fleet carrier on Atlantic convoy cover duty.
I would only reduce if absolutely necessary. (Soviet Union was really only in serious danger October through December 1941, Bomber command raids and even the beginning trickle of Lend Lease help Soviet morale in this critical time even if only symbolic)
1) Keep up Bomber command raids in 1941 (but reduce in 42 or later)
2) Keep up Lend Lease in 1941 (but reduce in 42 or later)
Oh, yeah, good point.What suffers is Bomber Command's strategic bombing effort. Either they'd scale back the whole thing, or else focus down on the bits that could have REAL effect: attacks against oil infrastructure, perhaps, rather than just burning down German homes.
But if uboats were sinking 20% more ships, it would deserve greater resources to counter, and those resources would almost have to come from Bomber Command.
Edit: actually, I don't think BC settled down to making attacks on civilians their main focus until sometime in '42. So the effort taken from BC in '41 would really be trading bombers wandering ineffectually and individually across W Europe hunting for industrial targets, for more aircraft hunting uboats. The "de-housing" campaign would only be affected in embryo, as it were.
Oh, yeah, good point.
Ah, Bomber Command. The only force that could launch a raid on Germany and hit Liverpool. (In fairness, that did only happen once that I know of.)
We should probably count ourselves lucky they didn't sink King George V...
Oboe in particular is very interesting, yes. And I seem to recall there was an Arthur C. Clarke book about his time as a tech during the world's first electronics war. (ECM and ECCM, and so on).OTL, Bomber Command was supported by some pretty amazing techie talent. Witness H2S, Oboe, Monica, and the very effective marking techniques eventually evolved.
All those lovely gadgets... my favorite is probably the one which pipes engine noise at maximum volume over the German night fighter control frequencies.
Good, the Allies still have more slack.
Note BTW that the lack of reaction after an opposing side's action is always a mistake - even when, say, it's the Allies doing an ATL action and the Axis that doesn't react.
For some reason, however, lots of posters don't want the Allies to do better in an ATL.
Things the British could do to counteract Germans fixing their torpedo dud rate and inflicting a major shipping crisis.
1) Don't bother counterattacking the Italians in North or East Africa in December 1940. The Italians arn't going to do anything and attacking just gets the Germans involved.
2) Don't get involved in Greece either.
3) Use a fleet carrier or two for convoy cover, even if this means not doing something like the Taranto raid or reducing Malta Convoys.
4) Don't bother with trying to maintain Malta as an active forward air and sea base. It would be hard for the Axis to push into Egypt anyway through normal port and road capacity logistics issues.
5) Regardless of who is in North Africa or when don't try to take anything in Libya or Cyrencia until 1943. As long as the British hold Alexandria and Gibralter they can start the ultimate counter offensive eventually whenever they want and win.
6) Don't get too immediately worried about Vichy colonies or its Navy. Initial policy should be as long as Vichy isn't moving their fleet units between bases and are keeping the Germans out we are not going to worry if the fleet is in Oran or the West Indies. USA diplomacy can help here.
7) Once USA is in the war, you are going to win eventually, reduce bulk imports into Britain even if British manufacturing production starts to slip.
8) Be more passive in the Pacific. The risk/reward of committing major fleet units to Midway/Coral Sea/Tokyo raids/Guadacanal really don't seem worth it. If the Japanese try to invade Midway sit back and watch the Marines shoot up the Japanese trying to wade in. Rely on submarines (if the Germans get to fix their torpedo problems its only fair the USA fixes theirs too). Put a USA fleet carrier on Atlantic convoy cover duty.
I would only reduce if absolutely necessary. (Soviet Union was really only in serious danger October through December 1941, Bomber command raids and even the beginning trickle of Lend Lease help Soviet morale in this critical time even if only symbolic). From the lens of the time. I would be really worried about the Soviets in October 41 if I were the British.
1) Keep up Bomber command raids in 1941 (but reduce in 42 or later)
2) Keep up Lend Lease in 1941 (but reduce in 42 or later)
Actually, I'd have said Britain had very little slack in 41-42, while America's industrial strength (which is what gave the Allies slack) wasn't really mobilized until well after Dec41.
Sure the Allies have more slack, but it does not mean improvements come automatically. It takes time. Let's take a real example. T-34 comes into wide use in summer 1942. Quite a shock to Germans. They do some immediate things working with existing equipment to help limit losses. But it takes months, leaning towards years, to get the counter tanks deployed. At no point in WW2 is Germany better off than if the Russians produced a much crappier tank as some ATL T-34 with defective armor and an unpowered gun. Germany is only better off than if they had taken no counter measures.
Same here. If Germany has better torpedoes, the Allies have more losses. Over time as the POD develops, they Allies will take some counter measures. Some obvious potential ones are things like slowing operations in the Pacific, building a few more escorts, cancelling a few ops. All these come at a cost to the Allies, and they do worse than OTL.
The bottom line is that the Germans were the gambler playing roulette against the house. You can get the occasional lucky outcome, sure. For a while.
The Allies were the house. Not only the game is stacked in favor of the house; the house also has the deepest pockets, and that makes all of the difference, no matter how lucky the gambler may be a few times. The house can afford losing some hefty wads of money; if the gambler keeps playing, he'll lose amounts that he cannot afford, in the end.
Related to this is the tacit assumption that, with German improvements starting in 1933, everything the Germans do up to Sickle-Cut goes exactly as it does OTL. It's kind of the equivalent of asking for a do-over in a game of cards, but insisting you get the same royal flush you did in the third hand last time - because it happened!
Not only did you not understand why I wrote what I wrote, you kept up arguing about it.Whilst I'm sure Plutonium is very sorry to be an inconvenience to the Nazis, the reality is that if Germany is still in a position to put up a fight in August '45 then the bomb's dropping. Maybe not on Berlin mind but that isn't my scenario.
The Germans, yes. The ones that were trying to run the war on a shoestring.
Or maybe the Allies cancel some of the 1941 strategic air operations against Germany, which had little effect if any, use the long-range aircraft for ASW, and they are actually better off. And/or maybe the Allies are initially worse off in 1941, yes, but by the law of unintended consequences their reaction to the increased submarine threat is so decided and successful - and they have the wherewithal for that - that by the end of 1942 the German submarine threat is way less present than in OTL, and the Allies, taking into account the whole war, are... you guessed it... better off.
The bottom line is that the Germans were the gambler playing roulette against the house. You can get the occasional lucky outcome, sure. For a while.
The Allies were the house. Not only the game is stacked in favor of the house; the house also has the deepest pockets, and that makes all of the difference, no matter how lucky the gambler may be a few times. The house can afford losing some hefty wads of money; if the gambler keeps playing, he'll lose amounts that he cannot afford, in the end.
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As a corollary to this, I was thinking about the idea that in order to have efficient German torpedoes in 1939 one only has to take a clever, hard-working officer and use him to replace the stoopid sloth that it is assumed the Germans had supervising the torpedo program.
Is that it, really?
Won't the intelligent, energetic officer demand more tests, more torpedoes to try, more work on designs, more personnel?
So we go back to the First Law of Everything:
"For everything, you need more time and money"
In other words, won't it still end with with an admiral saying: "Sorry, those are good ideas, but we can't fund them right now, we're building those big prestige warships that will be mostly useless"?
I don't know. Wiking has clearly a deeper knowledge of the issue than me, so maybe he can show the improvements wouldn't cost much more and wouldn't require much more time and personnel.
But if it's so, let's be aware that is an exception rather than the rule as to how Everything usually goes.
I don't know where you are even getting this from. If we are talking about a radical overhaul of naval strategy going back to 1933, then yes. But we are not doing anything radical. We are looking at some additional weapon testing, probably in 1940 for this POD. We are looking for better training among at most thousand but probably a few hundred people using the radios. Training on the little things such as not miscoding stuff, not sending needless messages like "Happy Birthday Hitler", better use of the point plus angle plus distance system to give location.
It's not just this particular thread, and not even mainly this one. But if I had a pound for every time someone had had a pre-Sickle-Cut PoD for an attempt at a successful Sealion and not even bothered to address the defeat of France, as if it was a fait accomplit from the point Hitler took power... well, I'd be a fair bit better off.
In any case. To get that kind of change, you need a structural change. An all-up shakeup, in fact. That kind of institutionalized effort is hard to achieve, which is why so many forces don't do it, and it has knock-on effects. (e.g. how much more does it cost in acceptance time for the later models of U-boat if there's rigorous testing of the things that, OTL, they happened to get right easily?)