# The Eastern Front and Germany's lack of a long range heavy bomber.



## DogFather (Jun 26, 2014)

The SU (Soviet Union) was able to pack up factories and move them out of range of German bombers. It is said the lack of a long range heavy 
bomber is the reason for this. The Luftwaffe was also not able to stop forces coming from Siberia to help defend Moscow. I would think German 
forces could have at least attacked the railroad tracks, which would have stopped some of this movement of men and equipment. I would think 
setting up new airfields closer to the targets would also have been possible.

The Luftwaffe did bomb Moscow, so they did get fairly close. They had a four engine plane, that started life as an airliner. The Fw 200 Condor. 
It was used for recon in the Battle of the Atlantic and in some cases as a bomber. My understanding is that very few were made. It would seem
like they could have built more without too much trouble or modified a different bomber, to give it more range (like the US did with the VLR Liberator). 

Any ideas on why these things were not done, or were they tried and failed maybe? It was pretty clear Germany needed to defeat the SU, before
the resources of the US, started playing a role in the war. Well, at least some people knew that reality.


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## VBF-13 (Jun 26, 2014)

I think they just thought they'd have had a much easier time of it. Had they succeeded, and Japan delivered from the other end, their Eastern front is neutralized.


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## davebender (Jun 26, 2014)

Cost. 

Heavy bombers are very expensive to build and operate. German defense budget had higher priorities.


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## GrauGeist (Jun 26, 2014)

Good discussion about Luftwaffe long-range/4-engined bombers (or lack of) in this thread: http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/aviation/four-engined-junkers-288-delurk-40908.html


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## Shortround6 (Jun 27, 2014)

part of the problem is the Russia is actually huge. Around 700-900 miles from Moscow to the Urals compared to 580 miles from London to Berlin. Russia is not easy to navigate over, some times hundreds of miles between major cities/landmarks. 

As for bombing railroads. Plain rail line is actually not that hard to repair. It often took 24 hours or less to repair a direct hit on a rail line by a large (500-1000lb) bomb. 

Switch yards are another story as many switch yards were laid out rather precisely, switches have to work or you get derailments and the yards themselves were often laid out either dead level or with a slight hump (hump yards) so a few men could actually shift a car or once over the hump, gravity was used to move cars along the tracks and to the proper siding. Switch yards/marshaling yards are were trains are broken up and reformed so the right cars coming _from_ various locations are formed into the proper trains going _to_ new locations. If there is a slight dip or hump in the main line track it may make the ride a bit rough but does not decrease the carrying capacity of the line. Rough switchyards can affect the through put even *if* the tracks are replaced.







Switchyard is a lot easier to hit too


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## imalko (Jun 27, 2014)

Precisely because it was originally designed as an airliner, the Fw 200 Condor was to weak structurally to be used as a heavy bomber. Even those used for long range reconnaissance and with modest bomb load and defensive armament often broke their back on landing as it can be seen on many pictures.


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## redcoat (Jun 27, 2014)

In the lead up to the war, a shortage of resources and bottlenecks within the aircraft industry in Germany forced a choice on the Luftwaffe leadership, either a large tactical bomber force or a smaller mix of tactical and strategic bombers, but not both.

So the question on whether the Germans should have built a strategic bomber force is redundant, they were never in the position of being able to build a large enough strategic bomber force capable of achieving any significant results.


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## wiking85 (Jun 28, 2014)

redcoat said:


> In the lead up to the war, a shortage of resources and bottlenecks within the aircraft industry in Germany forced a choice on the Luftwaffe leadership, either a large tactical bomber force or a smaller mix of tactical and strategic bombers, but not both.
> 
> So the question on whether the Germans should have built a strategic bomber force is redundant, they were never in the position of being able to build a large enough strategic bomber force capable of achieving any significant results.


They built 1200 of the non-functional He177s during WW2. Having it work in the form of the He177B and they are good to go; the real issue if fuel though.


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## redcoat (Jun 28, 2014)

wiking85 said:


> They built 1200 of the non-functional He177s during WW2. Having it work in the form of the He177B and they are good to go; the real issue if fuel though.


Couldn't agree more about the fuel, but 1200 heavy bombers even if they were available at the same time instead of over a couple of years is nowhere near large enough to form the basis of a effective strategic bomber force.


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## wiking85 (Jun 28, 2014)

redcoat said:


> Couldn't agree more about the fuel, but 1200 heavy bombers even if they were available at the same time instead of over a couple of years is nowhere near large enough to form the basis of a effective strategic bomber force.



Against Germany, by US standards, sure. Against the USSR as a support force for attacks on their very concentrated electrical infrastructure and certain vulnerable industrial targets (oil refining, synthetic rubber, aviation engines, potentially even steel) it would be extremely useful and helpful. Even just as a 'fleet in being' effect of forcing the Soviets to guard against the potential threat of a German strategic bombardment would cause a massive shift in resources to defense away from offense, just as the Germans had against the RAF and USAAF. Plus the Soviets had a very huge area to defend so couldn't afford to build up anything integrated, rather only point defenses on a huge number of potential targets.


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## stona (Jun 29, 2014)

wiking85 said:


> They built 1200 of the non-functional He177s during WW2. /QUOTE]
> 
> But put that in perspective. The British built 14,000 Lancasters and Halifaxes, which functioned very well. In addition thousands of other bombers bombers which could be considered strategic were produced.
> Now add about 23,000 B17s and B24s and you have a total bomber production of well over 30,000. Not all operated against Germany, but a large majority, particularly the British types, did.
> ...

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## Elmas (Jun 29, 2014)

stona said:


> ..................
> You haven't just got to produce that force, you have to support it, something the Germans failed to do even on this limited scale.
> Cheers
> Steve



Training the thousands of crew needed..... fuel in quantity, necessity of huge and calm airspace and airports......

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## stona (Jun 29, 2014)

Elmas said:


> Training the thousands of crew needed.....



Yes indeed, _ten of thousands_, over a hundred thousand for the RAF alone, most with secondary education who must be found from somewhere. Britain was able to draw on the resources of a Commonwealth with large numbers of men from the 'Old Commonwealth' in particular. The crew of many bombers comprised such men from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and then there were the Canadians comprising about 20% of Bomber Command crews. We should not forget the numerous other nations, Commonwealth and otherwise who contributed too.
This is just aircrew. For every man in the air there were several on the ground. 
This was simply not possible for the Germans.
Cheers
Steve

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## wiking85 (Jun 29, 2014)

stona said:


> wiking85 said:
> 
> 
> > They built 1200 of the non-functional He177s during WW2.
> ...



I think an overstrength Geschwader is about what the Germans could support in the field, something like 120-150 aircraft by 1943. That's plenty for Eisenhammer, given that Germany was planning on using that many or slightly more twin engine bombers for that mission in 1944.

Bombing Germany is not bombing the USSR; the Soviets were highly concentrated in production of everything, including electricity, so were highly vulnerable in a way that Germany was not with its dispersed production. Perhaps comparable is the bombing of the German synthetic oil facilities, though even these were more dispersed than the Soviet electrical industry. 120 strategic bombers with the payload of the He177B would have been enough to achieve that mission.


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## stona (Jun 29, 2014)

wiking85 said:


> Bombing Germany is not bombing the USSR; the Soviets were highly concentrated in production of everything, including electricity, so were highly vulnerable in a way that Germany was not with its dispersed production.



This is simply not true. Even if the targets are relatively concentrated they still have to be hit. The further the bombers flew, and the less able they were to rely on electronic aids the less likely they were to find the targets, let alone hit them. Even in 1944/45, on longer raids, the RAF and USAAF were occasionally bombing the wrong cities not the wrong factories. That was with the benefit of many years experience.

120 He 177s would have had no significant effect whatsoever on Soviet production in my opinion. The occasional inconvenience for sure, but in terms of total Soviet output, irrelevant. It would certainly not have been enough to force the Soviets to jump through the kinds of hoops that the Germans did to disperse and protect their production facilities, nor would it force them to commit the vast resources to air defence that the Germans did.

Cheers

Steve


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## wiking85 (Jun 29, 2014)

stona said:


> This is simply not true. Even if the targets are relatively concentrated they still have to be hit. The further the bombers flew, and the less able they were to rely on electronic aids the less likely they were to find the targets, let alone hit them. Even in 1944/45, on longer raids, the RAF and USAAF were occasionally bombing the wrong cities not the wrong factories. That was with the benefit of many years experience.
> 
> 120 He 177s would have had no significant effect whatsoever on Soviet production in my opinion. The occasional inconvenience for sure, but in terms of total Soviet output, irrelevant. It would certainly not have been enough to force the Soviets to jump through the kinds of hoops that the Germans did to disperse and protect their production facilities, nor would it force them to commit the vast resources to air defence that the Germans did.
> 
> ...


The targets for Eisenhammer were near clearly identifiable physical features; the targets could be hit by daylight and the Soviets lacked an integrated defense system, so would only have point defense by some of these targets. I've read the planning documents for Eisenhammer, as they have been published in English by Richard Muller in "The German Air War in Russia" and "The Luftwaffe's Way of War". It was certainly doable with 120 strategic bombers had they been available in June 1943. Especially as the He177B would have been able to use its full warload of 6 SD1000 bombs on all of these targets from bases available at that time due to the relatively close proximity. Add in a Geschwader or two of Ju188 or Do217s with incendiaries to follow up and the targets would have been taken out.

Operation Eisenhammer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


> The plan of the operation was created in 1943 by Professor Heinrich Steinmann (1899–1969), an official at the Reich Air Ministry. A bombing raid was to destroy twelve turbines in water and steam power-plants near Moscow, Gorky, Tula, Stalinogorsk and under the Rybinsk Reservoir, as well as to attack certain substations, transmission lines and factories. If the attack were to succeed in destroying just two thirds of the turbines it would have knocked out about 75 percent of the power used by the Soviet defence industry. Only two smaller energy centers behind the Urals and in the Soviet Far East would have been left intact. At this time the Soviet Union had no turbine manufacturing capabilities and the only repair facility (in Leningrad) had been heavily damaged.


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## Elmas (Jun 29, 2014)

stona said:


> ......................................
> Even if the targets are relatively concentrated they still have to be hit.
> ....................................



The word "_concentrated_" has a different meaning in Russia than in Europe: where in U.K. or Germany factories occupied a couple of acres, tens, in the best case, in Russia factories occupied hundreds, if not thousands of acres, with lots of void space in between. Space is not a problem in Russia.
So I seriously doubt that 120 flying bombers ( that means at least 240 on the front line, that means a capacity factor of 50%, extremely high in a front like Russia in war conditions, with airplanes that never went out of theeting problems: and not to speak of training) could have obtained the necessary bombing saturation not to destroy completely the factories, but just to do significant damage.
And that in the best possible condition; daylight, not efficient A.A. or fighters, perfect identification of the targets etc.
Luftwaffe made simply a multiplication: how may bombs per acre to destroy the XY target? How many acres?
The result was a very conspicuous number......
And this was mainly the reason why Germans so much insisted on dive bombing, as a better accuracy implies less bombs and less airplanes. The result of this doctrine are well known.
The whole of the 8th A.F. could not succeed in destroying the Schweinfurt ball bearings factory completely.....


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## stona (Jun 29, 2014)

A small number of aircraft, which is all the Luftwaffe could have fielded, would have been very lucky to do any significant damage even to such a target, assuming that they could find it.
The British and I assume the Americans, did similar calculations to those mentioned above and it was the basis for the decision to employ ever larger numbers of bombers. By dropping literally thousands of bombs they had a reasonable, they thought, chance of actually hitting something that mattered. When this didn't work very well the solution was to burn down whole swathes of a city by dropping ever higher percentages of incendiary munitions.Again this assumes that the attacking force has succeeded in navigating to the correct place, by no means a given.
There is a general tendency to over estimate both the radius and level of damage caused by high explosive bombs, particularly against machinery and factory installations.
Cheers
Steve

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## wiking85 (Jun 29, 2014)

Elmas said:


> The word "_concentrated_" has a different meaning in Russia than in Europe: where in U.K. or Germany factories occupied a couple of acres, tens, in the best case, in Russia factories occupied hundreds, if not thousands of acres, with lots of void space in between. Space is not a problem in Russia.
> So I seriously doubt that 120 flying bombers ( that means at least 240 on the front line, that means a capacity factor of 50%, extremely high in a front like Russia in war conditions, with airplanes that never went out of theeting problems: and not to speak of training) could have obtained the necessary bombing saturation not to destroy completely the factories, but just to do significant damage.
> And that in the best possible condition; daylight, not efficient A.A. or fighters, perfect identification of the targets etc.
> Luftwaffe made simply a multiplication: how may bombs per acre to destroy the XY target? How many acres?
> ...



The issue for the Germans is not to totally destroy the target, just destroy enough of the irreplaceable machinery in the power stations to render them inoperable; looking at the raids on Schweinfurt, the first one included 230 bombers (183 made the attack) with about two tons of bombs each, rather than 120 He177Bs with 6 tons each. Using the Norden bombsight they cut out 34% of production; the Germans were forced to disperse their production as a result. 

The Germans had the Lotfernrohr 7D, which was copied from the Norden, but simplified and improved and in large numbers by 1943; plus the Fritz-X and Hs-293 were available for strategic bombing by then too. For Eisenhammer the Luftwaffe also were going to use the AB1000 cluster bombs with incendiaries on the target after the SD 1000 armor piercing bombs wrecked the machinery; they were expecting about a 33% hit rate on the target with even less striking the machinery in question, but that would sufficient to damage it enough to render it useless; total destruction was unnecessary. The incendiaries would complete the damage to make it irreparable, which, given the lack of repair facilities once the ones in Leningrad were bombed out in 1941, then they would need to wait for the US to make all new equipment and ship it to them, which would take a minimum of 12 months until they could start to ship replacements.

For this it was estimated that 4x 90 aircraft sortees would be needed, but these aircraft were He111s or Ju88s, which had a 2 ton maximum (2 SD1000s or 2 AB1000s) payload for the ranges involved (or less depending on the furthest targets). Using the 6 tons of the He177s fewer sortees/aircraft would be necessary and all of the 3 target areas (with three targets each and the Rybansk reservoir adding two more) it could have been accomplished by the He177s alone in a week; add another Geschwader of He111s, Ju88/188s, or Do217s and its done in a matter of days. The electrical targets were so concentrated that two Geschwader could have handled them, something the USAAF and RAF did not have the luxury of in Germany

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweinfurt-Regensburg_mission


> In Regensburg all six main workshops of the Messerschmitt factory were destroyed or severely damaged, as were many supporting structures including the final assembly shop. In Schweinfurt the destruction was less severe but still extensive. The two largest factories, Kugelfischer Company and Vereinigte Kugellager Fabrik I, suffered 80 direct hits.[23] 35,000 m² (380,000 square feet) of buildings in the five factories were destroyed, and more than 100,000 m² (1,000,000 square feet) suffered fire damage.[24] All the factories except Kugelfischer had extensive fire damage to machinery when incendiaries ignited the machine oil used in the manufacturing process.[25]
> 
> Albert Speer reported an immediate 34 per cent loss of production,[26]





stona said:


> A small number of aircraft, which is all the Luftwaffe could have fielded, would have been very lucky to do any significant damage even to such a target, assuming that they could find it.
> The British and I assume the Americans, did similar calculations to those mentioned above and it was the basis for the decision to employ ever larger numbers of bombers. By dropping literally thousands of bombs they had a reasonable, they thought, chance of actually hitting something that mattered. When this didn't work very well the solution was to burn down whole swathes of a city by dropping ever higher percentages of incendiary munitions.Again this assumes that the attacking force has succeeded in navigating to the correct place, by no means a given.
> There is a general tendency to over estimate both the radius and level of damage caused by high explosive bombs, particularly against machinery and factory installations.
> Cheers
> Steve





stona said:


> A small number of aircraft, which is all the Luftwaffe could have fielded, would have been very lucky to do any significant damage even to such a target, assuming that they could find it.
> The British and I assume the Americans, did similar calculations to those mentioned above and it was the basis for the decision to employ ever larger numbers of bombers. By dropping literally thousands of bombs they had a reasonable, they thought, chance of actually hitting something that mattered. When this didn't work very well the solution was to burn down whole swathes of a city by dropping ever higher percentages of incendiary munitions.Again this assumes that the attacking force has succeeded in navigating to the correct place, by no means a given.
> There is a general tendency to over estimate both the radius and level of damage caused by high explosive bombs, particularly against machinery and factory installations.
> Cheers
> Steve


Your framing is a-historical; the British resorted to burning cities down when they couldn't operate by daylight anymore and it was thought that dehousing workers would wreck production and moral better than going after production itself; yet by 1944 the oil and transport plans were by daylight once escorts with range were available, as were continental airbases making the trip shorter; the precision missions by day against those targets wrecked the German economy in a matter of months. That was against a much more decentralized economy. The USAAF never focused on burning cities down other than participating in the Hamburg and Dresden raids, though these were even against specific targets in those cities. US precision bombing of German factories had a large impact on the German economy throughout 1943-45 and they never wavered; it just took them time to find the pressure point to cause an economic collapse, which they found in 1944 with oil and transportation. For the Luftwaffe, they had identified Soviet electrical generation as the pressure point, which the Soviets agreed after the war would have collapsed their production; the key was that destruction was unnecessary, rather damage to the machinery was all that was needed, due to it being irreplaceable except by foreign companies, which would take at least 1 year to start receiving replacements; in the meantime something like 75% of Soviet defense production would be out of power; they lacked domestic electrical engineering production, so pre-war sourced from Germany, which gave Germany a deep knowledge of Soviet electrical infrastructure, as they had built and installed most of it in the 1920s and 30s. So the standard of effectiveness is much less for German bombing of Soviet electrical infrastructure than of USAAF and RAF bombing of German industry or electrical infrastructure. 

As I said the concentration and low level of damage needed to shut down electrical production, which was already in short supply for the Soviets, would have been fatal to their industry and required a minimal commitment of bombers to the task, once the Lotfe 7D was available. The He177's longer range and bigger payload just reduces the necessary commitment of bombers to achieve success. The Fritz-X makes things even easier given its greater precision, especially against the much larger Soviet facilities given the Fritz-X was designed to hit much smaller maneuvering warships. It even let the bombers attack from higher altitudes without loss of accuracy, which would frustrate AAA, especially given the Soviet's lack of gunlaying computers and radar.


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## Elmas (Jun 29, 2014)

120 He 177Bs seems to me very optimistic as I already said, not to speak of carrying 6 tons of bomb each, not to speak of the 33% hit rate.
If the RAf or 8th Air Force hat an hit rate of 33% the war would have ended in 1943.
But how many acres the target? How many bombs per acre?
And, to wind it all up......
_Amateurs think strategics, Professionals think logistics......_


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## wiking85 (Jun 29, 2014)

Elmas said:


> 120 He 177Bs seems to me very optimistic as I already said, not to speak of carrying 6 tons of bomb each, not to speak of the 33% hit rate.
> If the RAf or 8th Air Force hat an hit rate of 33% the war would have ended in 1943.
> But how many acres the target? How many bombs per acre?
> And, to wind it all up......
> _Amateurs think strategics, Professionals think logistics......_


Assuming the four engine nacelle version from the start here is the historical production numbers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinkel_He_177#Production
By June 1943 they would have that 240 aircraft number built and in service. The full payload of 6 tons could be carried to a combat radius of 900 miles, which from bases near Smolensk and around Novogrod would be well within range. The He111s and Ju88s were within range from there. Notice I said combat range, which includes the 25% fuel reserve. 
The 33% hit rate was based on the fact that the facilities they would be hitting were so large, the altitude they could strike at would be pretty low (3-4k meters), which is a 45-90 meter dispersion with the Lotfe 7D, and the bombsight they were using was better than the Norden. The coal fired plants were 200 meters by 30 meters, while the hydroelectric turbines were 90 meters by 30 meters and required Fritz-X or Hs-293 bombs to avoid requiring a full Geschwader to hit. The SD500 or 1000 bombs were intended for smaller aircraft, while the He177s would use SD1000s for damaging the turbines in each facility, while the AB1000/2 cluster incendiary bombs would follow up the main attack, as experience had shown in Kiel when the RAF attacked there that incendiaries were necessary to really melt the damaged turbines and damage the facility. 

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Рыбин....82.D0.B5.D0.BB.D1.8C.D1.81.D1.82.D0.B2.D0.BE


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## stona (Jun 29, 2014)

The Americans resorted to burning down cities in their daylight raids too. They were just a little more coy about what exactly they were doing. They almost always maintained a target of some military importance, though late in the war entire cities might be designated a 'transportation target' for example.

How dispersed was the German economy really? Both allied air forces spent an awful lot of time dropping thousands of tons of bombs on a relatively few towns and cities along the Ruhr valley. Not exactly a large area when measured against Germany as a whole.

I would echo the post above. What concentration of bombs could so few aircraft hope to achieve over the target areas? Post war analyses of the results of allied bombing make for depressing reading, particularly if you only have a few aircraft to send.

Operational research found that operating unopposed and in good conditions on 10 raids in Normandy, post invasion, 100 RAF bombers would achieve a bomb density of 10 bombs per acre _at the centre of their bomb pattern _. Despite this less than 30% of the ground at the centre of the pattern was cratered. It was wryly noted that' in view of the fact that the destructive effect of a high explosive bomb extends little beyond the crater this seems unimpressive'. 
The average radial standard deviation of the bomb pattern on these ten attacks was 620 yards. The USAAF was achieving very similar accuracy. With this order of accuracy, bomb density at the assigned aiming point and over the whole bomb pattern simply depended on the number and calibre of the bombs employed.
The Luftwaffe would do well in similar conditions, but following a significantly longer flight with all the navigational problems that might entail, to achieve this level of accuracy.

It was also established by comparison with other air forces that the bomb density, for a given number of bombs dropped on a point target by medium bombers was 2.5 times greater than that achieved by the heavies. Heavy bombers were a very blunt tool in the 1940s. To have a 50% chance of hitting an area of 1000 square feet ( a relatively small commercial building) required at least 18 medium bombers to drop their loads according to a report by the US 9th Bombardment Division. It would need, statistically, 45 heavy bombers to achieve the same.

Cheers

Steve


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## wiking85 (Jun 29, 2014)

Stona, what altitudes were they bombing at? My understanding was that at 24000 feet there was a lot of dispersion, which is why the heavies were usually that inaccurate, plus the AAA disrupted bombing procedures. 14000 feet achieved high degrees of accuracy. In fact the Norden was meant for bombing around 10000 feet IIRC. 
Daylight Precision Bombing


> In everyday practice in 1940, the average score for an Air Corps bombardier was a circular error of 400 feet, and that was from the relatively forgiving altitude of 15,000 feet instead of 30,000.
> 
> The planners were not misled by pickle barrel assumptions. According to data from training and practice bombing, a heavy bomber at 20,000 feet had a 1.2 percent probability of hitting a 100-foot-square target. About 220 bombers would be required for 90 percent probability of destroying the target. AWPD-1 forecast a need for 251 combat groups to carry out the plan.
> 
> Eighth Air Force in Great Britain put 31.8 percent of its bombs within 1,000 feet of the aim point from an average altitude of 21,000 feet. Fifteenth Air Force in Italy averaged 30.78 percent of its bombs within 1,000 feet from 20,500 feet.


The attacks were planned for around 3-4000 meters, which was 10-14000 feet. Higher altitude missions would use the Fritz-X bomb, which was highly accurate even as high as 5-6000 meters. 

The targets were 200 meters by 30 meters (656 feet by 100) a 65,600 square foot area from 10-14000 feet. 

If the Fritz-X was used:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_X#Combat_procedure


> Accuracy is the main reason for developing a weapon system of this kind, rather than continuing to use so-called "dumb bombs". A skilled bombardier could manage to guide 50% of the bombs to within a 15 m (50 ft) radius of the aiming point, and about 90% hit within a 30 m (100 ft) radius. (Other sources say 60% hits within 4.6 meters radius.)[17]





> he minimum release height was 4,000 metres (13,000 ft) and a release height of 5,500 metres (18,000 ft) was preferred assuming adequate visibility. The Fritz X had to be released at least 5 kilometres (3 mi) from the target. The plane had to decelerate upon bomb release so momentum would carry the bomb in front of the aircraft where the bombardier could see and guide it. This deceleration was achieved by making a steep climb and then level out. The bombardier could make a maximum correction of 500 metres (1,600 ft) in range and 350 metres (1,150 ft) in bearing. The bomber was vulnerable to fighter attack as well as ship-based air defense weapons while maintaining a slow, steady course so the bombardier could maintain visual contact to guide the bomb.[12] When working properly, the missile was able to pierce 130 mm (5.1 in)[3] of armor.



The cluster bombs of 1000kg (~650 bomblets IIRC) required less accuracy, more saturation and a lower altitude open for better concentration.


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## Juha (Jun 29, 2014)

Firstly
The idea of vulnerability of the Soviet electricity gird seems to have been only a product of German wishful thinking. Soviets seems to have had plenty of extra capacity.
The accuracy of Fritz X wasn't as good in 44 as Germans hoped in early Aug 44 KG 100 was unable to hit the bridges S of Avranhes, that as at least partly because of powerful defences but in Oct 44 a Fw 200 miss a bridge in Lapland with Hs 293s even if the Finns failed to act against the attack. An attack by guided missiles fired from a 4-engine bomber was totally unexpected by the Finns.


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## stona (Jun 29, 2014)

The raids around Caen were conducted from relatively low altitudes. I don't have the figures for all ten to hand, but one was from 13,000ft.
Steve


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## wiking85 (Jun 29, 2014)

Juha said:


> Firstly
> The idea of vulnerability of the Soviet electricity gird seems to have been only a product of German wishful thinking. Soviets seems to have had plenty of extra capacity.
> The accuracy of Fritz X wasn't as good in 44 as Germans hoped in early Aug 44 KG 100 was unable to hit the bridges S of Avranhes, that as at least partly because of powerful defences but in Oct 44 a Fw 200 miss a bridge in Lapland with Hs 293s even if the Finns failed to act against the attack. An attack by guided missiles fired from a 4-engine bomber was totally unexpected by the Finns.



Sourcing on the Soviet electrical grid? Also bridges are a lot smaller than a power station.



stona said:


> The raids around Caen were conducted from relatively low altitudes. I don't have the figures for all ten to hand, but one was from 13,000ft.
> Steve


The first part was done at night, so required the target to be marked, which was not done properly to avoid hitting Allied troops.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Charnwood#Air_attack.2C_7_July


> The pathfinders of No. 625 Squadron RAF, dropping the target markers for the bombers, were instructed not to allow the target zone to "drift back" towards the Allied lines as had been the tendency in earlier operations.[57] Together with the cautious shifting of the target zone during the planning stage, the effect was that in many cases the markers were dropped too far forward, pushing the bombed zone well into Caen itself and further away from the German defences. By 22:00 on 7 July the bombers had departed, leaving 80% of the city's northern sector destroyed.[81]
> 
> *Analysis by Operational Research Section Number 2 (ORS2) concluded that the bombing of the first aiming point north-west of Caen was accurate, finding that the centre of the 90% zone (the area where 90% of the bombs fell) was 200–300 yards (180–270 m) east of the aiming point, with some spillage to the south and west. Examination of the area after its capture, indicated some destruction of German equipment, including the wreckage of ten of the forty trucks believed to be in the area at the time of the raid.* The 48 hours that elapsed between the bombing and the Allied occupation of the area, allowed the Germans time to recover from any shock and disorientation and to salvage some damaged equipment. Examination of the second aiming point, "Northern Caen", failed to reveal a 90% zone but it was noted that the obstructive effect of bombing a suburb was significant and had caused substantial delays to vehicles of both sides, by cratering and blocking roads. ORS2 concluded that the success of Charnwood owed little to the bombing and made recommendations including changing to instantly fused bombs, dropping larger numbers of smaller anti-personnel bombs and rapidly following-up a bombardment with ground forces to take advantage of its main effect, which was the temporary suppression of German will to resist.



Goodwood worked out better:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Goodwood

Bluecoat too:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bluecoat

Cobra suffered from miscommunications and bombers approaching from the wrong direction, but was generally accurate from the aiming point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cobra


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## stona (Jun 29, 2014)

Well let's take Goodwood.

1,512 heavy bomber and 343 medium bombers delivered 6,000 one thousand pound and 9,600 five hundred pound bombs. There were five different attacks in three waves (which is where Wiki's three attacks comes from). Here are the results according to the ORS report.

The attacks were coded A1,A2,H1,H2 and M 

Displacement of mean point of impact (yards) was 100, 200, 670, 610 and 390.

Radial standard deviation of bomb pattern (yards) 810, 910, 560, 560 and 680.

The displacement of the mean point of impact for A1 and A2 are by far the best achieved in any of the ten raids studied, the next best is 290 yards. In this sense the bombing in support of Goodwood on those occasions was 'good' compared with the others at Caen and Caumont.

This is not the place to debate the efficacy of the bombing in support of Goodwood. After two days seven miles had been gained, 493 allied tanks (36%) had been destroyed and 4,011 allied soldiers were casualties. Harris observed that he had dropped 1,000 tons of bombs for each mile the Army had advanced and at that rate he would have to drop 600,000 tons to get it to Berlin. 

It is important to understand what we mean by accurate. Practical examples illustrate the problem best. The Mediterranean Allied Tactical Air Force was found to be bombing targets (with its medium bombers, much more accurate than heavies) with an overall probable radial error of 170 yards. Bomb density in the target area still does not mean the target is likely to be hit. To have a 95% probability of hitting a bridge occupying an area of 6,000 square feet the MATAF mediums had to drop 600 (that's six hundred) bombs. If you think that's bad the aircraft of the RAF desert Air Force needed to drop 2,400.

In the face of all this you wish to destroy or disable an entire nations power supplies with a few bombers and a few hundred tons of bombs.

Cheers

Steve


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## wiking85 (Jun 29, 2014)

stona said:


> Well let's take Goodwood.
> 
> 1,512 heavy bomber and 343 medium bombers delivered 6,000 one thousand pound and 9,600 five hundred pound bombs. There were five different attacks in three waves (which is where Wiki's three attacks comes from). Here are the results according to the ORS report.
> 
> ...



Not the whole electrical power grind, just that already under supplying the Moscow-Upper Volga armaments industry that was highly concentrated and vulnerable.

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## Juha (Jun 29, 2014)

Source was one Russian researcher when we talked on Oper Eisenhammer and checked the Lappland episode, 2 Fw 200s fired 4 Hs 293s.


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## Juha (Jun 29, 2014)

stona said:


> Well let's take Goodwood....This is not the place to debate the efficacy of the bombing in support of Goodwood. After two days seven miles had been gained, 493 allied tanks (36%) had been destroyed ...



Only knocked out, the number of total losses was much smaller, under 200 IIRC.

Juha


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## wiking85 (Jun 29, 2014)

Juha said:


> Source was one Russian researcher when we talked on Oper Eisenhammer and checked the Lappland episode, 2 Fw 200s fired 4 Hs 293s.



I'm happy to accept the German numbers were wrong, but I'm going to need something more verifiable than a researcher you talked to once.


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## Juha (Jun 29, 2014)

I cannot add anything specific, he commentrd _ "communism elecricity" program launched by Lenin in 20s wasn't just a propaganda slogan. The network was dense and secured by old unactivated stations working on peat or wood._ 

One must remember that German intelligence on SU wasn't very accurate, they usually tended to underestimate Soviet capacity, often badly. But who knows?


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## stona (Jun 30, 2014)

Juha said:


> Only knocked out, the number of total losses was much smaller, under 200 IIRC.
> 
> Juha



Well, knocked out isn't continuing with the offensive. Furthermore recovery of such vehicles imposes a further strain on resources. The point is that concentrated bombing by thousands, not hundreds, of heavy bombers at short range in day light manifestly failed to destroy the German anti tank defences. The ORS discovered that almost all the German guns destroyed were destroyed from the ground, not the air. To destroy something like an anti tank gun requires a direct hit, just like a machine tool or substantial industrial installation (like power transformers) and this, even in ideal conditions, was virtually impossible to achieve from the air with heavy bombers.

The concentrations achieved late in the war by the RAF and USAAF came as a result of a very steep learning curve and development and refinement of bombing techniques over several years. These methods were imposed on them by the realisation of the limitations of the tools to hand. As far as developing tactics and techniques for long range, heavy, strategic bombing, the Luftwaffe had barely put a foot on the first rung of the ladder.

Some of the opinions being expressed here remind me of those expressed by the proponents of strategic bombing in the 1920/30s, before the concept had been put to the test and found wanting.

Cheers

Steve

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## Juha (Jun 30, 2014)

wiking85 said:


> ..l. Even just as a 'fleet in being' effect of forcing the Soviets to guard against the potential threat of a German strategic bombardment would cause a massive shift in resources to defense away from offense, just as the Germans had against the RAF and USAAF. Plus the Soviets had a very huge area to defend so couldn't afford to build up anything integrated, rather only point defenses on a huge number of potential targets.



Was the Soviet industry very concentrated or was there a huge number of of potential targets?
SU had the PVO and it remained very powerful, AA defences of e.g. Moscow, Murmansk and Leningrad were very powerful and e.g. all 1000+ Spitfire IXs delivered to SU went to PVO which had plenty of other fighters as well, so I doubt that any 100+ bombers "fleet in being" formation would have forced any big shift in resources.

Juha


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## Juha (Jun 30, 2014)

Hello Steve 
out of 493 tanks lost during the Goodwood 132 were damaged - that is, they required less than 24 hours for repair and only 94 were total losses. I agree that much of effects of bombing were psychological, that is also true to Stuka attacks against enemy troops, and because the worst psychological effects of massive bombing wears off rather fast amongst good troops it wasn't so effective against good troops in deep deployment.

Juha


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## stona (Jun 30, 2014)

Juha said:


> I agree that much of effects of bombing were psychological, Juha



That is true. The efficacy of bombing in this respect depends very much on the quality of the troops being bombed, as you say. To elite troops it is little more than an inconvenience, unless repeated over and again. No airman would ever agree that this was an economic, effective or even valid use of air power.

The psychological effect of air attack is very difficult to quantify but can be significant. Several British ORS reports comment on the debilitating effect that attack by rocket firing Typhoons had on the target troops as evidenced by PoW interrogations, but without any means of quantifying this as there were no or few bodies to count. This is unfortunate because the hard headed officers and politicians who are justifying or paying for these weapons like some nice graphs or figures to show them what they are getting for their money. They still do.

Cheers

Steve

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## razor1uk (Jun 30, 2014)

In today's world of perceived high tech and supposedly infalible aiming assuming the kit works as sold when not in test/lab condistions, few people can sometimes get head around the fact that statistics they find upon and the anecdotal things they've read, seen or heard are just conjecture at best, and at the worst, lie, a lot.
If General Weaver had not died in a crash, then their mioght have been some chance of the LW having a greater chance of some/more strategic medium or heavy bombers, hell for all it isn't worth, he could have asked Heinkel to build a traditional 4 engined version of the 177 earlier than they did do by the back door - hence one reason why it took them so long to get around to it in between Heinkel 'usual' production shedules and dodging politcal mandates not to do so.

As it wasn't, and so with a few scores of 177Asomethings, if they can get turncoat spy's and or people that'd pass for soviet citizens into and survive long enough to get towards, locate and observe industiral targets deep behind in commissar controlled areas where the comrades are just as much spying upon each other as the commissars are on them, they could have a chance of doing as much *cough*(little) damage as the Flying Flea Me163 unit did against the 17's 24's upon the OKL picked targets - if they A/C survived getting there that is.


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