WW2 RAF with just these three combat aircraft....

Is the RAF any worse off if they have just the Spitfire, Mosquito and Lancaster?

For this to work in time to cover all all RAF ops from Sept 1939 onwards, we need the Avro Manchester to go four engine right from its onset and the Mosquito to get more Ministry support. Neither is ASB, especially if these three aircraft are to form the RAF's strike and fighter force.

Of course I've chosen the three best aircraft that could be available 1939-1945, so yes there is an element of ASB here. However, if we give the RAF just these three combat aircraft, can they still do as well or better than OTL? Some losses, such as the Sunderland and Beaufighter will be hard felt, the Blenheim and Hurricane less so.
 
The Spitfire would have to have her engines constantly up-graded and gain more horsepower in order to combat the newer FW-190 and TA-152 fighters

The Mosquito, I believe, came into active service in 1941? or late 1940??
And likewise her engines would also have to be up-graded in Horsepower in order to gain more speed and possibly altitude ....
 
The Spitfire would have to have her engines constantly up-graded and gain more horsepower in order to combat the newer FW-190 and TA-152 fighters
This was done OTL. For example, per Wikipedia, the Griffon-powered Spitfire Mk.XIV had a top speed of 446 mph at 29,500 ft and a ceiling of 43,500 ft. The TA-152 is still a winner, but with only 43 built I think the Spitfire had better more worry about the run of the mill FW-190 and Bf-109, and it's more than up to the task.

The Mosquito, I believe, came into active service in 1941? or late 1940??
True, but it was proposed much earlier, with the Air Ministry always pushing back. Let's make them more amenable and I'd say first flight a year or more earlier should be possible, so Mosquito takes to the air Aug 1939 instead of Nov 1940.
 
I started replying to this one, then hit a snag. How do you get the organisational setup that can do this? Throw enough designs at the wall to get a few good ones that stick- explore all the possibilities on the drawing board, then pick the best for production?

Now, ships you can build like this, shipbuilding firms can produce to common plans and there was only to all intents and purposes one warship design firm- the Admiralty- in the country;

but how do you make that happen for aeronautics, especially after a setup like that turned out disaster after disaster in the first world war, and the RFC was only saved by the types the RNAS had commissioned from a multiplicity of private contractors? There is timeline fodder here, I reckon.

You have to decouple aircraft production and aircraft design, which means firms don't have their own warplane design teams- and there isn't enough civil aviation trade to support them, so- you'd have to destroy the organisational basis of the trade, and how to teach it in those circumstances? University departments of aeronautics perhaps? Hm.

(Almost anything has to be better than bloody BAE, though.)

So these departments produce designs to Air Ministry order, assess them, the ministry pick the best- and administrative arteriosclerosis is going to be a big, big problem here- and order them from likely looking aircraft firms?


In that unlikely event, and the even more unlikely event of their actually getting it right, which those three seem to be, you basically have single engined jobs, twin engined jobs and four engined jobs.

Single engine, Spitfire as jabo, bit fragile but fast and difficult to intercept, but Army Cooperation (artillery observation) is right out- and training? Dear god. Desperately need a simpler basic trainer.

And there are a lot of single engined carrier aircraft, and oops. The idea of a torpedo bomber Spitfire just... no. Endurance is going to be problematical, to say the least, and there would need to be some fairly radical changes made.

Twin engined jobs, getting the Mossie to do every warlike job that might be asked of a twin engined aircraft isn't really that much of a stretch at all- I take it we are still allowed variants? The low speed, high endurance, stooging work like anti- U-boat patrol is the only thing I can't readily come up with an existing Mosquito variant for, actually.

It's the unwarlike jobs, the squadron hacks and personnel transports and advanced trainers and the like, that the Mosquito is too much the high performance thoroughbred to stoop to.

Four engined- on a pure Lancaster diet you may need to muzzle Pierse, Portal and Harris at this point, because they will demand them all, and there are other jobs that need doing- MPA for instance, although well, Shackleton, and transport/glider tug, and it would have to do all the utility/hack work accomplished by humble things like the Bristol Bombay and the Avro Anson and other twins that the Mosquito is too lean to fill the role of. Might get a Griffon engined version, though.

You'd have an awful lot of thoroughbreds pulling milk floats, but on the whole yes, probably better off, especially the light/medium bomber units.
 
Is the RAF any worse off if they have just the Spitfire, Mosquito and Lancaster?
I dont think it will work since 2 of them will really not be ready for the first decisive years.

But I think you can get a successful AH RAF with just 3 types,
My go with,

1) Hurricane my main fighter/fighter bomber. (would prefer Spits but they might not be ready) in Huge numbers from all the spare engines you now are not using on Battles etc.

2) Miles M.14 Magister as my trainer.

3) Spitfire a few Photo Reconnaissance ready to find where the Panzer divisions are in 1940 :p and any spare as fighters.

Trenchard and others would hate it but you might win air superiority over the Ardennes in may 1940 and that might decide the war.

Other roles would be missed but with a short war the
Armée de l'air and fleet air arm will have to provide the rest.
 
Not the Hurricane; the Spit's early problems were almost entirely in the field of production- and if you are lining down to just three types, that's an awful lot of empty factory floor to be put to use, some of whom must be better than the (apparent) cretins at Castle Bromwich. The Hurricane would likely not be needed as a stopgap in that case.

There's also no operational depth to that at all; it's even more a shop- window force than the Luftwaffe, specifically tailored to counter a specific enemy course of action. One punch, and if it misses or the enemy does something different, you're screwed.

Holding off the Luftwaffe is one thing, maybe- at least the Mossie makes a night fighter, so once they change to night operations you can't even do that- but what are you going to do about U-boats? Spitfires do not MPA make.

A stalemate in the front plus the Atlantic seabed being progressively carpeted with Allied merchants does not have the sound of victory about it, really- granted the relative uselessness of Bomber Command up to 1942, it's the maritime patrol mission you need to serve, and naval strike wouldn't go amiss.

I'm almost tempted to suggest the Stringbag, actually, for the light strike/naval/MPA/tactical bomber/trainer mission, but they're too slow, too vulnerable; still a mission that needs to be served.



A major tangent incidentally- WWI; the RFC damn' near did make do with three types, from 1917 on, and would definitely have been better off if it had managed to do so entirely. DH4s (and all right, descendants thereof), SE5s, Camels- two seat bomber/recon/art obs/MPA, single seat photorecon/fighter- interceptor, single seat fighter/ground support/light attack. Historical inspiration?
 

hammo1j

Donor
If there was no Spitfire and just the Hurricane. The UK would have still won the battle of Britain.

Ironically they could have concentrated on the design they commissioned from North American as a stand in.

They could have produced the Mustang under license, but rather than the original Alison engine decided it was to run with the Merlin...
 
if only 3, then the Mosquito, Spitfire and the Typhoon /Tempest ...
outstanding long range light bomber that can carry a really good bomb load for its size

outstanding air superiority fighter / interceptor

and the Typhoon and its replacement the Tempest were outstanding fighter bombers (and the Tempest was also an excellent interceptor)

buy B24s for heavy bombing duties and Atlantic maritime duties. I am not entirely convinced that the Bomber Command inflicted enough damage to be worth the heavy cost in British aircrew lives and infrastructure/manpower requirement to be worth the damage inflicted
 
An all-Mosquito medium fleet would have suffered far more landing accidents because it was far faster than any previous RAF twin and flew worse than most of them slower than 200 knots. The bare minimum fix would require a dorsal strake (ala. DH Sea Hornet), soon followed by a larger rudder, but they would probably still need ventral fins (ala. Hurricane) to improve low-speed yaw control.

As for Hurricanes scoring better than Spitfires during the Battle of Britain .... They were assigned different missions. Spitfires were assigned to distract Me-109 escorts while Hurticanes savaged bombers. Of course Hurticanrs scored more kills!!!!
 
Originally Posted by Admiral Beez:
Is the RAF any worse off if they have just the Spitfire, Mosquito and Lancaster?

Whaat? A fighter, a heavy bomber and a twin that can be either a heavy fighter or a light bomber... So what about transport planes, army cooperation, trainers, long range/high alritude recognaissance
And that is even supposing we are talking strictly about the air force and that all air/sea rescue, patrol planes and submarine spotters are part of the fleet air arm and therefore not strictly covered by this discussion.
 
I started replying to this one, then hit a snag. How do you get the organisational setup that can do this? Throw enough designs at the wall to get a few good ones that stick- explore all the possibilities on the drawing board, then pick the best for production?

Now, ships you can build like this, shipbuilding firms can produce to common plans and there was only to all intents and purposes one warship design firm- the Admiralty- in the country;

but how do you make that happen for aeronautics, especially after a setup like that turned out disaster after disaster in the first world war, and the RFC was only saved by the types the RNAS had commissioned from a multiplicity of private contractors? There is timeline fodder here, I reckon.

While I think there is many countries that could have benefitted from more focused production - of the right types naturally, I think three types just leaves too much undone. Nevertheless, how a radical streamlining could be achieved is actually simple in the British case. The British supported a diverse aeronautics industry by diversifying orders. Basically, keeping them all alive by intent. Change that OTL approach to a regular "market rules" approach and most of them die out or merge and you are left with a few design teams with more resources.
 
There was room for rationalisation of RAF aircraft, but perhaps not to such a drastic extent. Some firms were limited in what they could produce in a variety of ways. The 1940 concentration on several types was a double edged sword.
 
Not the Hurricane; the Spit's early problems were almost entirely in the field of production- and if you are lining down to just three types, that's an awful lot of empty factory floor to be put to use, some of whom must be better than the (apparent) cretins at Castle Bromwich. The Hurricane would likely not be needed as a stopgap in that case.
My thinking was that the spitfire was high tech all metal in late 30s so most of the industry would not be able to make it anything like as fast and in the numbers as the Hurricane could be.

There's also no operational depth to that at all; it's even more a shop- window force than the Luftwaffe, specifically tailored to counter a specific enemy course of action. One punch, and if it misses or the enemy does something different, you're screwed.

Holding off the Luftwaffe is one thing, maybe- at least the Mossie makes a night fighter, so once they change to night operations you can't even do that- but what are you going to do about U-boats? Spitfires do not MPA make.

A stalemate in the front plus the Atlantic seabed being progressively carpeted with Allied merchants does not have the sound of victory about it, really- granted the relative uselessness of Bomber Command up to 1942, it's the maritime patrol mission you need to serve, and naval strike wouldn't go amiss.
Do you really need any of these if you win BoF ?

Early war bombing is not highly effective especially at night at very long range. (Ger-GB rather than FR-GB) (and the French bombers will probably do sufficient to act as a nuisance as OTL bombing did early on)

MPAs would be more than balanced by the added safety of all Uboats having to go the long way round the top of UK and anyway will take much longer to be decisive than the land war. (and some can be done by FAA as well as Navel strike missions)
 
My thinking was that the spitfire was high tech all metal in late 30s so most of the industry would not be able to make it anything like as fast and in the numbers as the Hurricane could be.
Nor as cheaply, Hurricanes were cheap enough that CAM ships were a viable concept up until the point that there was enough escort carriers that such desperate methods weren't necessary.

Going to reiterate what others have said, you need way more than three types, you need a trainer (which might be able to double as an army cooperation and spotter) and at least one transport (possibly two or more).
 
This entire scenario just doesn't work. Britain is nothing without a heritage, and Britain had numbers of heritage aircraft built and in service before any of the three chosen ones were dreamed of. The Air Ministry was ready to cancel the Spitfire if production wasn't sorted out, while Hurricanes were rolling out the factory doors in great numbers. Battles aren't fought, and countries aren't defended by production and performance estimates, but by men and machines. While the chosen three were the most notable, they did not make an air force, apart for not existing for much of the war. The impact on industry, of course, means no Canberra, Hunter or Buccaneer. Just a little too frivolous for my liking.
 
This is what you do because the other squadrons are reequipping with Vampire, Canberra and Valiant not to fight a war.

Prior to the introduction of Lancaster and Mossie already have flying very large numbers of perfectly good aircraft and the three quoted are not trainers, Martime recon, FGA liaison or general utility.

Its an HoI airforce and therefore silly.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
You have to add a fourth one: The Tiger Moth as a trainer, air taxi, spotter, behind-the-lines special delivery hack and pretty much everything else.

Nah.

Start 'em off in a Mosquito. Thin the herd.

To actually address the OP - While there were a lot of weak RAF entries, and a hodgepodge of U.S. types mixed in, to achieve this is more or less impossible short of a time machine. Two of these airframes were not in service until two years into the war. That mean 1939 is Spitfires, and more Spitfires, and then for variety, have some Spitfires.

In an ideal world it would be great. Rather like the USAAF only having B-29s, P-51Ds, and B-25Hs or the Luftwaffe having only Ta-152, He-177, and Ar-234. That isn't how thing work.
 
galveston bay said:
I am not entirely convinced that the Bomber Command inflicted enough damage to be worth the heavy cost in British aircrew lives and infrastructure/manpower requirement to be worth the damage inflicted
They didn't. The heavies could better have been applied to A/S patrol & to mining rivers & bombing canals & railyards. The first would have drastically reduced shipping losses (especially if Coastal Command had the sense to put a few squadrons in Newfoundland, which they weren't OTL til well past too late:rolleyes:). The second would have crippled German industry with enormously lower Allied aircrew losses, & vastly less destruction to German industry, which would have been good against the Sovs postwar.
 
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