Was the Nazi War machine really that powerful?

Jawgap

beauf wrote: »

Are you overselling it a tad?

Figures maybe be very approx. But from a quick google it seems only the first 481 or so had fabric wings. After that they were metal skinned. Some of the older ones were also retro fitted with the metal skin wing. At the time of the Battle of Britain there were 1,715 hurricanes. Which suggest the vast majority were not fabric covered.

I thought the main advantage in repair was they were wooden, and also very strong, so took alot of damage, that could be repaired.

Open to correction.

The Spit was a monocoque construction with a stressed skin - meaning it was strong, light but required specialist equipment and jigs to repair it when it was holed.

The Hurricane was less advanced and the 'skin' did not provide structural strength to the airframe. Making it easier to repair, less aerodynamic but very stable as a gun platform. It had a relatively low wing loading meaning it could turn tighter than even an Me109.

The Merlin engine was a great bit of kit but lacked fuel injection meaning it stalled during negative g manoeuvres - the Me109s with their fuel injection systems suffered no similar problems.

beauf

The fabric wings were replaced because of ballooning in a dive (I think) also "the metal skinned wings allowed a diving speed that was 80 mph (130 km/h) higher than the fabric-covered ones".

Jawgap

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

OK fair enough

But yeah mean time to repair was the critical factor

and they did shoot down more enemy aircraft than all the other defences put together during the Battle.

That is true, but the critical battle was fighter -v- fighter.

Galland estimated that the Luftwaffe needed to score a 5:1 kill ratio to defeat Fighter Command and have enough force left to support the invasion. The Hurricane played its part and it was significant, but the Spit's contribution while quantitatively less, was qualitatively as important.

beauf

You have to wonder about the resources that the heavy bombers consumed. Might have been better used elsewhere. I like the point about the Mossie doing two trips for the same bomb load. Probably more accurate too. Sharkey Ward made a similar point about the Black buck raids in the Falklands. Harriers could have dropped the same tonnage for far less resources.

There always a lot of inter-service politics involved with Heavy Bombers.

beauf

Jawgap wrote: »

That is true, but the critical battle was fighter -v- fighter.

Galland estimated that the Luftwaffe needed to score a 5:1 kill ratio to defeat Fighter Command and have enough force left to support the invasion. The Hurricane played its part and it was significant, but the Spit's contribution while quantitatively less, was qualitatively as important.

As you say, the Germans realized they need air-superiority, and didn't achieve it.

Jawgap

beauf wrote: »

You have to wonder about the resources that the heavy bombers consumed. Might have been better used elsewhere. I like the point about the Mossie doing two trips for the same bomb load. Probably more accurate too. Sharkey Ward made a similar point about the Black buck raids in the Falklands. Harriers could have dropped the same tonnage for far less resources.

There always a lot of inter-service politics involved with Heavy Bombers.

Wouldn't have had the same psychological impact. Black Buck was as much about showing the Argies that the RAF could reach out and touch them if they wanted as it was about disabling the runway at Stanley.

If the Combined Bomber Offensive wasn't prosecuted all those fighters, flak gunners and 88s would have been off doing other things.

saabsaab

The damage to the British airforce was far greater than the damage inflicted on German war production and stiffened the German will to fight on. Although even a little damage and resources diverted from the war in Russia must have helped the Soviets it has been said that far more damage to the German war effort would have resulted from using Mosquito fast bombers for pinpoint industrial attacks only and abandoning the carpet bombing approach.

beauf

I would agree with more focus on tactical bombing. But not necessarily war production. As they managed to keep production up till quite late in the war, moving factories around and even underground.

Reekwind

Wibbs wrote: »

I'd agree with this. Now I do take Reewind's "driven by necessity" point and how that helped screw up the chances of local help. Even so reading german guys stories about life on the ground, in the early stages the locals were only too pleased to help. They were quick to point out/hand up the local communist party head(usually schoolteachers). The locals were also surprised that the Germans were cool with, even encouraging them in resuming their then underground religious practices. While some German units(mostly infantry) tended to take what they wanted(as was common with all infantry back then. see Allied troops later on in Germany and elsewhere), others like Luftwaffe units who put down roots traded with the locals. It was certainly an opportunity missed in a big way

There's a great quote in Mark Mazower's Hitler's Empire from a Hungarian official to the effect that the occupying Germans never asked for anything, preferring to simply take it, and would only tolerate the the most supine of local governments.

This was why in every country under occupation, even those ruled by regimes eager to collaborate, German demands caused friction and gave rise to resistance of some sort. Partly this was the natural high-handedness of conquers but largely it was the German need for maximum exploitation to fuel the stuttering war economy at home. Vast amounts of resources, material and human, flowed into the Reich, generated by German arms in the occupied territories. It was pillaging on an unprecedented scale.

And that was the explicit rationale for the conquest of Russia and the Ukraine. Particularly so in the case of the latter, with its grain-producing tradition that would (in theory) satisfy the Reich's desperate need for bread. The Nazis didn't initially set out to starve Slaves, they only began to do so when it became clear that there wasn't enough food to satisfy both Germany and its eastern conquests. The latter would be stripped bare to feed German soldiers and workers.

In 1941 Stalin cannily, and cynically, noted that it would take up to six months for the Russian peasantry to wake up to the reality of German occupation. He wasn't wrong: the Nazis wanted the same thing the Soviets did (ie, grain) and were prepared to be equally brutal about extracting it. More so in fact.

So it's not a matter of unit level relations with the locals because the fundamental problem was economic, not simply racial superiority. (Obviously the latter turned a campaign of exploitation into one of genocide but that's almost by the by for our purposes.) Germany needed to get as much grain, in the Ukraine, as cheaply as it could to feed the Reich. Once the initial honeymoon period was over, that was inevitably going to create friction and resistance with the Soviet peasants

(Incidentally, Mazower also points out the similarities with German occupation during WW1: the overbearing presence of the military, racist laws that favoured Germans, the mobilisation of forced labour armies and, ultimately, the unrest that this generated in Poland and the Baltics)

(Second note, school teachers were rarely Communist Party members in the countryside. Most peasant teachers in the 1930s were the children of prosperous peasants or priests and thus occupied a very ambiguous role in the Soviet order. They certainly wouldn't have been local Party heads - teaching was a low status and low paid profession whereas heading a local Party apparatus would have been a well paid and full time job)

As an aside it's also an attitude interesting for me in another way. The whole Nazi paraphernalia and thought had a real hard on for the Roman empire, yet they missed one vital thing that made Rome grow, namely getting locals on your side. More making locals "Romans" so long as they were swore allegiance to same. A Roman could be from anywhere, so long as they were faithful to Rome. Making Rome an aspiration rather than an enemy. The Nazi's shot their bolt there with the Jews and others they saw as "undesirables", but they could have made a philosophical exception for "white" Russia. It would have likely made a huge difference.

Leaving aside the thorny question of Roman citizenship (and their habit of occasionally exterminating local cultures), the Nazis wouldn't have been Nazis if they didn't see the Slavs as inferior. And if they didn't think that, or weren't planning on stripping the East bare for the aggrandisement of Germany, then why bother with the war in the first place?

Both genocide and economic exploitation were inherent in the Nazi platform. Both mitigated against reaching any friendly relations with the locals

*though maybe not. Staling was hours away from running from Moscow with his tail between his legs, his special train was fired up and ready to steam away to the east. If the Germans had developed longer range strategic bombing to even a small degree, bombing Moscow at that point would have likely had him keep running

He also had quarters in the Metro system. If tanks at the gates of Moscow didn't have him running then it's unlikely that some additional bombs would have.

I say 'additional' because Moscow was bombed heavily during the war, from as early as July 1941 and all the way through Typhoon and beyond. Mind you, Moscow was as heavily fortified as any city in Europe and by all accounts its AA defences were very formidable.

Another area the Germans might have tightened up was in their continued production of non military commercial type industry. EG it was only towards the end of the war that the shops started to go bare of german made consumer goods and food rationing came late too. That was energy diverted that they could ill afford to waste.

The key area was food. Rationing was introduced in 1939 but was relatively generous for the first two years, when compared to the UK. Largely because the rest of Europe was being bled dry to provide for the Reich (see above).

In terms of other industry, keep in mind that Germany had effectively switched to a war economy by 1937 at the latest - the recovery of the 1930s was driven by the expansion of the war and producer industries. When war did break out the Reich Finance Ministry intentionally sought to depress consumer demand so as to finance the war through tapping people's saving accounts. This worked: according to Tooze German household consumption in 1941 was down approx 20% from the 1939 figure, as people had no choice but to save instead of spending (on non-existent consumer goods).

Now I don't know how this compares to the UK (it certainly didn't approach the sacrifices in the USSR... but that was a very different case) but we should be careful not to overstate the burdens in this area. The reality is that living standards in Germany fell continuously throughout the war years

Capt'n Midnight

Jawgap wrote: »

Wouldn't have had the same psychological impact. Black Buck was as much about showing the Argies that the RAF could reach out and touch them if they wanted as it was about disabling the runway at Stanley.

They burned a lot of the remaining hours off the Vulcan airframes.

If the Combined Bomber Offensive wasn't prosecuted all those fighters, flak gunners and 88s would have been off doing other things.

They didn't need such pressure, just keep up the raids. Like a fleet in being. As long as the threat is there to bomb cities you have to provide a defence. On the other hand with the V2 there wasn't any point in patrolling the cities since you couldn't intercept them. Since the V2's were launched near enough the front line they didn't draw that many resources away from other things. And IIRC ground attack fighters chasing V2's were going for targets of opportunity too.

sawdoubters

the winter stopped the germans in Russia

and for some strange reason the germans did not invade uk,they would have over run it,it was probably the royal family are german

then usa stepped in and dropped the nuclear bomb


http://bevinalexander.com/books/hitler-world-war-ii.htm

beauf

Jawgap wrote: »

Wouldn't have had the same psychological impact. Black Buck was as much about showing the Argies that the RAF could reach out and touch them if they wanted as it was about disabling the runway at Stanley.

If the Combined Bomber Offensive wasn't prosecuted all those fighters, flak gunners and 88s would have been off doing other things.

What ever the intent the Black Buck achieved little. Remarkable effort that it was.

I wonder did the Bomber Offensive consume more resources than it tied down.

Reekwind

sawdoubters wrote: »

the winter stopped the germans in Russia

And the millions of Soviet soldiers who died while bleeding the Wehrmacht dry on the road to Moscow needn't have bothered?

Typhoon failed not because of the mud or the rain but because the Germans were throwing depleted units at the end of their logistical tether against a foe whom they had completed underestimated.

Fox_In_Socks

tac foley wrote: »

FiS - many thanks for your excellent post, however, please note that the US 8th Army Air Force arrived in UK in early 1942, not long after they joined the rest of us already fighting -

Apologies. What I meant was that it started to have a major impact on the civilian population in Germany from 43 onwards. Up to then, the average civilian had been spared carpet bombing. After 43, with gigantic resources been pumped into Britain, this was now becoming a norm.

Wibbs wrote: »

I;d argue a little with the details of some of that FiS. A lot of their diversion tactics came from Italian fcukups that they felt bound to help their ally. Greece being a perfect example there. North Africa another example. What's impressive about the German war machine is how quickly they could mobilise and send huge amounts of men and materiel into a conflict. They got their stuff from France to Greece in little more
than a weekend. This really rattled British observers at the time.

Oh definately. Those were political wars...the Reich had to be seen to be supporting it's Facist ally, but ultimately they were distractions. No oil/resources/enemies/threats in Greece, North Africa, Yugoslavia so no point in going there was my point. (No oil at least in the 40s, it was afterwards that Libya found major quantities). But a gigantic drain on resources was my point. How many hundreds of thousands had to surrender in North Africa? No navy to take them home...

IMH their biggest error was fighting the battle of Britain in the first place. They simply had little chance of winning it. The luftwaffe was an extension of their ground forces, a tactical force, a mobile artillery of the air. It made blitzkrieg very successful. At that stage of the war they were pretty much unbeatable on land as the French and British forces found when they routed them. However the luftwaffe was never seen as a strategic force. Before they faced the channel, regulations had to be hastily torn up, like the order that single engined aircraft couldn't cross many miles of open water. They added life vests and rafts for the same reason. They simply hadn't thought enough ahead.

But let's imagine they continued to concentrate on UK airfields. This idea has gained currency since the war as a turning point for their campaign, I say shenanigans. Why? It takes a stupid amount of bombs to put an airfield of that time out of action. They were as the name suggests mostly glorified fields, few had metaled runways, which are easier to put out of action. Take out one and they can just move down the road remove some hedgerows and they're back in action. Depending on aircraft, all you need is 6-800 yards of clear rolling grass. The Germans knew this. They had been operating from just such cobbled together farmers fields in France. OK let's say they just concentrated on winning the fighter war in the air. Unlikely. Their fighters didn't have the range to roam about shooting down Hurricanes. Also the British contrary to popular were not fighting a foe who outnumbered them in the air. Yes the Germans had more bombers and the like, but they were equal on fighters, which was the type that mattered and they were building them in greater numbers than the Germans and losing less in the first place.

Airfields and/or strategic factories. The means of aircraft production. I know they tried to target aircraft factories as best as they could, but if you are carpet bombing London or Coventry...are you really doing the best that you can? Rather than bombing civilians, you need to target actual relevant targets.

Even if they had won the air war outright in the south, that left the rest of te UK out of range of the luftwaffe, so they could continue the fight. Even then they didn't have enough ships to transport the German army across the channel, relying on cobbled together canal barges. Julius Caesar had a better invasion fleet.

No need for invasion fleet. The British navy would always have anniliated anything Germans could bring at that stage in the war. And the British army itself, though small, was formidable. The best bet the Germans could have done was to decimate the RAF enough before the USA could bring large amounts of material into the UK.

What they should have done was ignore the UK. A few high ranking types thought this and that only Hitler bought Goerings BS(for a while) it may have been very different. After all they had already kicked their arse in France, they had already won the battle of the English channel by effectively closing off the channel ports through bombing and the channel itself through bombing and torpedo attacks. They were even flying missions up the Thames estuary causing mayhem. Leaving the UK cut off from mainland Europe and not wasting time, men and materiel on the Battle of Britain would have left them in a much better position. Of course the second they crossed into Russia all bets were off*. Which brings us to..

I'd agree with this. Now I do take Reewind's "driven by necessity" point and how that helped screw up the chances of local help. Even so reading german guys stories about life on the ground, in the early stages the locals were only too pleased to help. They were quick to point out/hand up the local communist party head(usually schoolteachers). The locals were also surprised that the Germans were cool with, even encouraging them in resuming their then underground religious practices. While some German units(mostly infantry) tended to take what they wanted(as was common with all infantry back then. see Allied troops later on in Germany and elsewhere), others like Luftwaffe units who put down roots traded with the locals. It was certainly an opportunity missed in a big way.

As an aside it's also an attitude interesting for me in another way. The whole Nazi paraphernalia and thought had a real hard on for the Roman empire, yet they missed one vital thing that made Rome grow, namely getting locals on your side. More making locals "Romans" so long as they were swore allegiance to same. A Roman could be from anywhere, so long as they were faithful to Rome. Making Rome an aspiration rather than an enemy. The Nazi's shot their bolt there with the Jews and others they saw as "undesirables", but they could have made a philosophical exception for "white" Russia. It would have likely made a huge difference.





*though maybe not. Staling was hours away from running from Moscow with his tail between his legs, his special train was fired up and ready to steam away to the east. If the Germans had developed longer range strategic bombing to even a small degree, bombing Moscow at that point would have likely had him keep running

Jawgap

saabsaab wrote: »

The damage to the British airforce was far greater than the damage inflicted on German war production and stiffened the German will to fight on. Although even a little damage and resources diverted from the war in Russia must have helped the Soviets it has been said that far more damage to the German war effort would have resulted from using Mosquito fast bombers for pinpoint industrial attacks only and abandoning the carpet bombing approach.

beauf wrote: »

I would agree with more focus on tactical bombing. But not necessarily war production. As they managed to keep production up till quite late in the war, moving factories around and even underground.

Accuracy in bombing in WWII was a function of altitude. The heavies were less accurate than the medium, light and fighter bombers because they bombed from higher altitudes. If they brought them down to lower altitudes like LeMay did in the Pacific when firebombing Japan, accuracy would have improved but so too would the casualty / loss rate.

Wonderful and all as the Mossie was it couldn't have carried a sufficient bomb load to have had an impact. The US Bombing Survey found after the war that hitting factories wasn't enough - to have a real impact you had to destroy machine tools, jigs, gauges etc. A Mossie could hit a factory with impressive accuracy but likely would not have destroyed the equipment in the factory.

The dispersal forced on German industry was not insignificant - it reduced efficiency and forced the Germans to burn more fuel and tie up more manpower to keep their production up. Every motorbike used to ferry parts between production sites was one less rider carrying messages on a front somewhere.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

They burned a lot of the remaining hours off the Vulcan airframes.

They didn't need such pressure, just keep up the raids. Like a fleet in being. As long as the threat is there to bomb cities you have to provide a defence. On the other hand with the V2 there wasn't any point in patrolling the cities since you couldn't intercept them. Since the V2's were launched near enough the front line they didn't draw that many resources away from other things. And IIRC ground attack fighters chasing V2's were going for targets of opportunity too.

The problem is that a battleship is a battleship and can't be used for much else beyond fighting other ships and shore bombardment. A fighter can be quickly converted to a fighter bomber and 88s and medium and light flak guns can be readily used to support ground troops - the existence of a bomber fleet would not have had the same impact on air defence as a navy would have on sea defence.

In Italy, the Allies once the air threat was sufficiently reduced converted their AA troops to infantry.

The V2 were 'uninterceptible' but were a wasteful weapon system when you consider the resources that had to be poured into their construction and operation. As with many things the Germans did, it was a far superior technology - but as the Allies found out your weapons don't have to be the best, they just have to be good enough.

beauf wrote: »

What ever the intent the Black Buck achieved little. Remarkable effort that it was.

I wonder did the Bomber Offensive consume more resources than it tied down.

The best thing about Black Buck was that the Yanks said it couldn't be done!

In respect of the CBO it probably didn't tie up as much as it consumed, but the Allies (really the Americans) could afford it. By Spring 1945 plans were already well advanced to convert 12th Air Force in Italy to B-28s and P-80 Shooting Stars - they didn't need to husband their resources the way the Germans did.

Capt'n Midnight

beauf wrote: »

What ever the intent the Black Buck achieved little. Remarkable effort that it was.

Still the longest bomber raid.

Technically the US has flown longer ones but not in harms way and nowhere near as far from a friendly airfield. http://www.barksdale.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=4553

On Jan. 16-17, 1991, the 2nd Bomb Wing fired the opening shots of Operation DESERT STORM. Seven B-52Gs and crews executed what was then the longest combat mission in aviation history from Barksdale AFB to the Persian Gulf and launched conventional air-launched cruise missiles against strategic targets in Baghdad.

I wonder did the Bomber Offensive consume more resources than it tied down.

yes.

and it was known at the time.

Bomber Harris know that bombers didn't break the moral of Londoners.

Operations research at the time knew that bombers couldn't defend themselves effectively. Stripping a Lancaster of turrets and guns and gunners would give it an extra 50mph which would have reduced the loss rate, even if it hadn't there would have been less casualties. The stats on wounded are scary. Something like you were five times more likely to die than be wounded. Being a rear gunner was hazardous since one blind spot was directly underneath. It got to the stage where a DSO ( Distinguished Service Order ) was referred to as Dickie Shot Off. :eek:

beauf

Jawgap wrote: »

Accuracy in bombing in WWII was a function of altitude. The heavies were less accurate than the medium, light and fighter bombers because they bombed from higher altitudes.


If they brought them down to lower altitudes like LeMay did in the Pacific when firebombing Japan, accuracy would have improved but so too would the casualty / loss rate.....

What LeMay was doing was still area bombing if from low level, not tactical bombing. It was also firebombing cities which is as far from tactical bombing as you can get. It wasn't really that accurate either, a firestorm doesn't need to be.

Jawgap

beauf wrote: »

What LeMay was doing was still area bombing if from low level, not tactical bombing. It was also firebombing cities which is as far from tactical bombing as you can get. It wasn't really that accurate either, a firestorm doesn't need to be.

Yes, I know - the point I was making was accuracy is a function of altitude.

Tactical bombing was not as physically destructive as people think when it came to attacking forces in the field. The Operational Research Sections in the Desert Air Force, 2nd TAF and the various US Tactical Air Commands showed they had a much greater psychological and morale impact.

beauf

Can't argue with any of that.
I can't disagree with any of that. You have the clear example of the Falaise Pocket which a lot of amour was abandoned. The hit ratio of the A2G was over stated Most of the destroyed equipment was soft targets.

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?p=429625&sid=00f47bf284dacd2b6ccc0d7313ff7ff1#p429625

it still was effective if not quite in the way intended.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

...

and it was known at the time.

Bomber Harris know that bombers didn't break the moral of Londoners....

The Blitz wasn't anything like the same scale as the Bombing of Germany. So doing the same thing on a vast scale might work.
We now know it didn't. I think it was partially a case of throwing good money after bad, thinking that would eventually work. Of course there were other reasons for doing it too. You could debate this forever.

Going back to the topic title. It hard to argue that the German War Machine wasn't powerful. Considering the ground it covered, the armies it smashed, and how long it took the combined effort of the largest countries with vast resources to defeat it.

Jawgap

Speer in his interview with the US Strategic Bombing Survey investigators said Hamburg put the fear of God in him. Area bombing (including the USAAF) drove morale down in the cities but not to the point where there was a push for surrendering.

He did, however, think that an moderate intensification of the bombing effort would have pushed civilian morale over the edge.

Capt'n Midnight

Oddly enough the American attempt to destroy the ball bearing factories might have worked if they'd kept it up.

And the strange bit is the reason it nearly worked is that the Germans had stripped factories all over Europe and sent the machines back home but hadn't set them up.

Raids on refineries weren't much use since there was a shortage of fuel, so they had redundant capacity.

It's been suggested that targeting power stations and the gird could have taken industry out more easily.


Over in the Pacific it was reckoned after the war that the best use of the B29's by far was dropping mines at sea.

beauf

Hindsight is 20:20 was never more apt.

Capt'n Midnight

Jawgap wrote: »

Wonderful and all as the Mossie was it couldn't have carried a sufficient bomb load to have had an impact. The US Bombing Survey found after the war that hitting factories wasn't enough - to have a real impact you had to destroy machine tools, jigs, gauges etc. A Mossie could hit a factory with impressive accuracy but likely would not have destroyed the equipment in the factory.

The Mossie could carry as much to Berlin as a B17 since it didn't have to drag along all the extra crew and turrets.

The problem is that a battleship is a battleship and can't be used for much else beyond fighting other ships and shore bombardment. A fighter can be quickly converted to a fighter bomber and 88s and medium and light flak guns can be readily used to support ground troops - the existence of a bomber fleet would not have had the same impact on air defence as a navy would have on sea defence.

The point is that if the UK have a fleet of bombers then the Germans have to keep a fleet of fighters on standby in case of another 1,000 bomber raid. Even if there isn't one every week.

The V1's tied up a lot of resources. Because it was possible to shoot them down you had to try.

That's probably the main effect of the bombing campaigns, that later in the war when the escort fighters could fly to Berlin it became a war of attrition between the German and Allies pilots because the Germans had to defend. That and the lack of fuel gained air superiority.

As with many things the Germans did, it was a far superior technology - but as the Allies found out your weapons don't have to be the best, they just have to be good enough.

True.
Even today the comparison would be between American kit that works in tests and then needs to be updated in the field and Russian kit that isn't as precise but will stand up to abuse from conscripts.

beauf

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

...Even today the comparison would be between American kit that works in tests and then needs to be updated in the field and Russian kit that isn't as precise but will stand up to abuse from conscripts.

It wasn't enough to be robust. You need vastly greater numbers to overwhelm a technologically more advanced opponent.

Jawgap

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Oddly enough the American attempt to destroy the ball bearing factories might have worked if they'd kept it up.

And the strange bit is the reason it nearly worked is that the Germans had stripped factories all over Europe and sent the machines back home but hadn't set them up.

Raids on refineries weren't much use since there was a shortage of fuel, so they had redundant capacity.

It's been suggested that targeting power stations and the gird could have taken industry out more easily.


Over in the Pacific it was reckoned after the war that the best use of the B29's by far was dropping mines at sea.

The ballbearing plan was doomed to failure. Not only had the Germans stockpiled significant quantities, they were designing them out of their equipment to reduce their reliance on them. And they had also had access to ball bearing production in Sweden sufficient to meet their needs, which meant bombing the plants there if the plan was to have any chance of success.

Only when their theory of targetting shifted to a 'systems approach' did the strategic bombers begin to see see some desired effects. It took them about 3 years to work out that infra-structure approaches to target selection were ineffective. Oil and transport, when targeted as a system proved very profitable.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The Mossie could carry as much to Berlin as a B17 since it didn't have to drag along all the extra crew and turrets.

That is true, if you don't use the overload capability of the B-17. Plus bombers are not just about bomb load - a Mossie laden with 4000lbs of bombs would need to fly direct to Berlin and would need a fighter escort (on the way in at least) in the same way a B-17 would. And the Mossie for all its grace and lethality was a vicious bitch when it lost an engine, especially on climbout.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The point is that if the UK have a fleet of bombers then the Germans have to keep a fleet of fighters on standby in case of another 1,000 bomber raid. Even if there isn't one every week.

True, but fighters can easily be converted to fighter-bombers and operate in both modes quite easily. The German's radio listening service gave them ample warning of which days a raid was being worked up on and could have switched or reserved aircraft on given days when the preparations for a raid were detected.

Only constant action kept the resources tied up in defence.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The V1's tied up a lot of resources. Because it was possible to shoot them down you had to try.

That's probably the main effect of the bombing campaigns, that later in the war when the escort fighters could fly to Berlin it became a war of attrition between the German and Allies pilots because the Germans had to defend. That and the lack of fuel gained air superiority.
......

I take it you meant V2s rather than V1s? Because they brought down plenty of V1s

My point about the resource cost (of the V2) related to the Germans - a lot of effort had to go into producing the rockets, and as you say they were impossible to knock down in flight. But if you set the damage they caused in the context of the resources required to produce and deliver that tonne of explosive you can see how inefficient it was, despite its technological brililance.

When Doolittle took over the 8th USAAF he deliberately targeted the German fighters. For a lot of 1944 he used the bombers as fighter bait to draw them out then sequenced attacks of US fighters to meet them and destroy them. The destruction of the fighters was the main rather than an ancillary purpose to a lot of the missions. It wasn't so much a battle of attrition as an offensive against them.

Reekwind

beauf wrote: »

It wasn't enough to be robust. You need vastly greater numbers to overwhelm a technologically more advanced opponent.

But the Germans weren't the latter. The one field in which Nazi Germany can be said to have had a clear and decisive technological advantage (rocketry) was entirely irrelevant to the outcome of the war. Otherwise the Allies fielded equipment that was either better than or competitive with that of Germany

Hence I don't like the whole quality v quantity dichotomy. It's too often used to excuse poor German engineering. When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union it was their opponent that was fielding tanks with sloped armour and 76mm guns.

Jawgap

They developed a lot of impressive technologies that were, for their time, quite advanced.

One-on-one, system on system they often had examples that were individually better than the Allied equivalent, or in some cases (the V2, the Hs-293D TV guided bomb etc) had no Allied equivalent.

Where they lacked innovation was in production. The Allied (especially the US) systems of production (and procurement) were superior to the point of providing a measurable advantage.

Reekwind

That's a false distinction, though. Failing to account for manufacture is poor engineering. Simple as. The way you produce a product has to inform the base design. This is not a new mantra: the war was over three decades after the Model T had benefited the importance of standardisation and placing the production line at the centre of design discussions

That German machines were more expensive to build and more expensive to maintain was a flaw located within the machines themselves. When it comes to designing a tank production considerations are as important as weight constraints

One-on-one, system on system they often had examples that were individually better than the Allied equivalent, or in some cases (the V2, the Hs-293D TV guided bomb etc) had no Allied equivalent.

Really? I hate taking hardware but let's look at a few key categories:

• Small arms: the M1 Garand and PPSh-41 were superior to their counterparts. Credit for the first assault rifle though
• Artillery: Both the US and USSR wielded the more effective formations and, in the USSR, the more technologically advanced
• Tanks: Arguably the Panther (or more extreme heavy units) but these were never decisively superior
• Fighters: We'll give that to the Me-262. Prior to that both British and US planes matched the Luftwaffe's best
• Bombers: Clear advantage to the US and UK

Now one of the reasons I don't like talking about hardware is that few, if any, of the above were decisive. With the exception of clear step changes in technology (eg the T-34 or Me-262) these merely gave an incremental edge... and a small one compared to training and organisation. For example, the M1 was clearly a better rifle than the K98k but would anyone argue that it automatically made the US infantryman a better soldier than one of the Wehrmacht?

The reality is that the Allies (both US/UK and Soviets) were producing hardware that was, at the very least, of similar quality to that of the Germans but they were producing it in greater numbers and less cost. That's not because they had some secret industrial technology but because they had the better design engineers

dtpc191991

Yes it was. Hitler made a massive tactical mistake by trying to take on three of the world"s most powerful armed fo at the same time with no decent local allies (Japan were cut off from Germany by Russia and British Aisian and Middle Eastern colonies and Italy were bankrupt and unable to sustain total war) yet despite surrounding themselves they still came extremely close to turning the tide on two occassions. Had the allies not retreated from Market Garden when they did and had the Germans not switched their assault from Stalingrad to Moscow they may have broken the Russian line and been able to camp out the winter (though again the Russian victory was more complicated than that and had as much to do with a complete relutionary overhaul if it's war effort and total restructuring of the army as it did with the German army being crippled by the harsh winter).

All that said the final and simple fact remains that to survive five years in a war on three fronts against three of the world's most formidable millitary powers is an undebatable testament to what was an incredibly powerful, determined and ruthless single nation armed forces.

Jawgap

I think engineering, design and production are used interchangeably and sometimes wrongly.

The T34 was better designed, but not as well engineered as the Panthers and Tigers - as a result it was easier to produce, maintain and operate. Combine that with the way it was used and you get a superior weapons system that was, in many ways, deficient in terms of engineering in the individual vehicles that made up the system.

I agree there's no point in getting into a hardware by hardware comparison.

Just on the point about artillery - that provided a real advantage to the Allies, and it was the one thing the British & Commonwealth did exceptionally well in NW Europe and Italy. The Army Group Royal Artillery formations (AGRAs) were highly effective in both the manner and volume of fire support they provided.

The Soviets and US could bring a greater volume of fire to bear on pre-registered targets, but when it came to processing and delivering requests in the course of a battle the AGRAs excelled at the task in terms of speed and flexibility - as did the RAF when it came to requests for ad hoc close air support.