1936-1941: your best RAF

[Admiral Beez]

What is all this chatter about the Roc, Botha, etc....?

Surely "the best RAF" would require only three combat aircraft: Spitfire, Mosquito and Lancaster. Get all three into earliest possible service. I'd add onto these three the Sunderland and if Mossie isn't ideal for torpedoes, the Beaufighter.

That's it. Four or five combat types. Anything else is transports, liaison, tugs and trainers.

 

[Shortround6]

Your "what ifs" tend to differ from other peoples.

Yours tend to need time travel. As in develop engines or aircraft several years before they became available. Or fuel or........?

Other people are asking what could have been done with existing knowledge and resources if applied in a different way.

For example the British lost a fair number of airplanes due to using crappy propellers. Losing an engine on an overloaded bomber often meant the loss of the plane when you were using two pitch props or even constant speed props. The British were not only late in fitting constant speed props but almost criminally late in fitting fully feathering props, which while not a guarantee of returning with a single engine improve the single ceiling by thousands of feet due to lower drag of the prop and less drag due to trim changes.
Fully feathering propellers were in use by 20 different airlines around the world in 1938. Why the British were fitting two pitch props to combat planes in 1940 has never been really explained. It doesn't require much to ask what would better propellers, which existed in a number of other countries and were available for licence (companies were actively seeking foreign companies to licence their product), have done for both performance and loss rates of British planes in 1939-41.


The British didn't need Lancasters in 1939/40 for anti sub patrol (Spitfires sure weren't going to do it) and the Avro Anson was not up to the task by any stretch of the imagination even though it was used. There was no "Atlantic Gap" in 1939-40 because many of the German subs could NOT reach the mid Atlantic stay for even 2-3 days and make it home without running out of fuel. Lockheed Hudsons and Blenheims (created by changing Botha production?) would have increased Coastal commands effectiveness quite a bit over many of the planes actually used at this time. 12-16 Catalinas would have made a considerable difference, as some of the British flying boat squadrons only had 6-8 planes.

Sunderlands are great but you don't need a Sunderland to get a more effective plane than this

Equipped two squadrons in Scotland and one at Gibraltar at the start of the war.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Your "what ifs" tend to differ from other peoples.Yours tend to need time travel. As in develop engines or aircraft several years before they became available.

I'm aiming for the best RAF at the end of the 1936-41 timescale. By 1941 all of the aircraft I've identified are flying. I'm suggesting that they be identified earlier as superlatives of their types and the other divergent types made up to then be disregarded.

 

[Shortround6]

And how do you identify them? and when do you make your decision.
The Hawker Typhoon flew in Feb 1940, the Vulture powered Tornado flew in Oct 1939 and the Centaurus powered version flew in late 1941.
The Lancaster doesn't fly until Jan 1941, and it is a Manchester with a longer wing and 4 engines designed as a desperate attempt to keep from having to produce Handley Page Halifaxes under licence.

What do you produce and equipe your air force with while you are waiting for these aircraft?

It also takes a while to build up the manufacturing net work for large scale production.
For the Halifax. " At the peak, 41 separate factories and dispersed units were involved in production, along with 600 subcontractors and 51,000 employees"

You better pick your winners real early, British actually picked the Halifax as it was ready over a year before the Lancaster.

 

[Admiral Beez]

You better pick your winners real early,

I agree. Obviously a thread like this has the benefit of hindsight and foresight, otherwise the RAF we got is pretty much what we'd get.

 

[Glider]

As for picking winners, it's worth remembering that the most effective four engine bomber with the lowest losses of the early threesome, Stirling, Halifax I/II and Manchester was surprisingly the Stirling. So it would have been very easy to pick the wrong horse in that critical area.
When the Halifax III and the Lancaster arrived they of course totally eclipsed the Stirling, so jumping too early for the 'winner' is a dangerous game.

With hindsight I think most would agree, that to drop the Stirling and get Shorts to concentrate on the production/development of the Sunderland wouldn't have been a bad move. However to make that decision in 1940/1 before the Halifax III and Lancaster were around, would be a major leap in faith

 

[swampyankee]

Your "what ifs" tend to differ from other peoples.

Yours tend to need time travel. As in develop engines or aircraft several years before they became available. Or fuel or........?

Other people are asking what could have been done with existing knowledge and resources if applied in a different way.

For example the British lost a fair number of airplanes due to using crappy propellers. Losing an engine on an overloaded bomber often meant the loss of the plane when you were using two pitch props or even constant speed props. The British were not only late in fitting constant speed props but almost criminally late in fitting fully feathering props, which while not a guarantee of returning with a single engine improve the single ceiling by thousands of feet due to lower drag of the prop and less drag due to trim changes.
Fully feathering propellers were in use by 20 different airlines around the world in 1938. Why the British were fitting two pitch props to combat planes in 1940 has never been really explained. It doesn't require much to ask what would better propellers, which existed in a number of other countries and were available for licence (companies were actively seeking foreign companies to licence their product), have done for both performance and loss rates of British planes in 1939-41.


The British didn't need Lancasters in 1939/40 for anti sub patrol (Spitfires sure weren't going to do it) and the Avro Anson was not up to the task by any stretch of the imagination even though it was used. There was no "Atlantic Gap" in 1939-40 because many of the German subs could NOT reach the mid Atlantic stay for even 2-3 days and make it home without running out of fuel. Lockheed Hudsons and Blenheims (created by changing Botha production?) would have increased Coastal commands effectiveness quite a bit over many of the planes actually used at this time. 12-16 Catalinas would have made a considerable difference, as some of the British flying boat squadrons only had 6-8 planes.

Sunderlands are great but you don't need a Sunderland to get a more effective plane than this

Equipped two squadrons in Scotland and one at Gibraltar at the start of the war.

I'm still trying to figure out why the RAF didn't use constant-speed props sooner. It is, as far as I can tell, one of life's great mysteries. As an aside, Dehavilland was a licensee for Hamilton Standard from the mid-1930s and remained so until its demise.

Anti-submarine patrol aircraft have some effect even if they have no armament, as long as some of them do: a submarine on the surface cannot safely assume that the aircraft coming at it out of the sun is armed or not, and it doesn't take much to make it unsafe for a submarine to submerge. Since the RAF had air-surface radar by 1940, a very high priority should be putting it onto any maritime patrol aircraft large enough to carry it. I'd also consider producing land planes for the anti-submarine role to be a high priority. Some of these could be aircraft without the performance to operate over the Continent or where Luftwaffe fighters could operate -- there weren't going to be many Luftwaffe aircraft operating west of the British Isles -- but some should have the performance needed to operate in more dangerous environments. Lancasters would have been great (although a copilot would have been nice on those long, hopefully boring night time over water flights) but Halifaxes would also serve (their poorer high-altitude performance wouldn't be problematic), as may Sterlings (same logic). Figuring out a reliable way to put holes in a surfaced U-boat's hull would be a nice touch. You're right: Ansons wouldn't do it. Blenheims and Beauforts might, but there's no necessity for seaplanes for this role. While I love seaplanes (and I think they had a very real role at the time), the RAF had places to base land-based maritime aircraft, and the only shortcoming of land-based aircraft in this role is that they couldn't alight and rescue people. Considering that seaplanes (floatplanes even more so) are severely limited in how rough the water they land and take-off from can be, this should not be a major consideration for ASW patrol. That Halifax or Blenheim or Beaufort could take off from land in the sort of weather where a Sunderland can't take off from the water.

Here's my logic:

• Submarines of the era are severely constrained in mobility and range if they're forced to submerge.
• A submarine commander cannot assume an aircraft isn't armed, so must submerge at any contact.
• If the submarine commander doesn't submerge, even minor damage is a mission kill.
• Forcing longer routes to avoid aircraft constrains time on station

Of course, pre-war, the assumption was made that France, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, and Belgium would not be available for submarine bases. Since, of these countries, only France had a significant chance of stopping Germany without a great deal of outside help, a bit of diplomacy may be useful here. British diplomacy between the wars was largely enabling of German expansionism as the UK permitted German violations of the naval terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler would have violated it in any case, but the Anglo-German Naval Treaty poisoned UK-France relations with no benefit to the British. So, how does British diplomacy help make these countries strong enough to resist German invasion? Obviously, the penurious defense budgets of Belgium and the Netherlands didn't help.

 

[Kevin J]

Perhaps if we'd assumed from the start that we would have been facing a Franco-German alliance, we could have made the right decisions. Given the Italians the spoils of WW1, like their African territories.

 

[swampyankee]

Perhaps if we'd assumed from the start that we would have been facing a Franco-German alliance, we could have made the right decisions. Given the Italians the spoils of WW1, like their African territories.

Another non-win for British and French diplomacy: reneging on the agreements that Italy on the side of Entente did little but encourage the fascists.

 

[Kevin J]

Another non-win for British and French diplomacy: reneging on the agreements that Italy on the side of Entente did little but encourage the fascists.

Well, the Americans always renege on their agreements, so why not us too.

 

[Shortround6]

The British were planning/calling for large scale production on ASV radar in 1940, unfortunately reality got in the way. Production was not as quick as hoped (perhaps in part due to bomb damage of the industry?) and the diversion of many of the sets to AI Radar, The two may not have been completely interchangeable but did use many of the same components. Also the initial planning did not take into account either rapidly occurring improvements (better sets but slowing production) or the need for maintenance spares (?) and perhaps the target figure was unrealistic to begin with.
AS I have noted in other threads the 100lb anti-sub bomb was a huge failure that even rudimentary testing should have shown. There was no "live shot" (test bomb detonated against target) before the war even though the design work was done, approved and sealed in the late 20s. A production contract wasn't even put out until 1938 so had the War started at the Munich crisis even the Anson would have been reduced to using 40lb bombs and smoke floats.
While the Blenheim IV may have left a bit to be desired as far as observation goes, it had around twice the endurance of an Anson and 4-5 times the bomb load. Normal 250lb bombs may not have been anywhere near as effective as the 250lb depth charge but could not have been worse than the 100lb anti-sub bomb. The Blenheim can do two-three times the amount of time on station as the Anson and so can either provide more coverage for the same number of planes or a bit more coverage with quite a bit fewer planes.
The Blenheim being not that great of an asset in a strategic bombing campaign aside from making up numbers in reports.

 

[swampyankee]

Well, the Americans always renege on their agreements, so why not us too.

Not always; only when a president thinks it politically expedient (see just about all treaties signed and approved by the Senate ([added in edit]with Native Americans [/added in edit] that were reneged upon).

 

[Shortround6]

We often forget just how bomber minded the RAF/Air Ministry were in the mid to late 1930s. Or how much programs overlapped.

And how much the Battle and Blenheim helped drag/boost the British aircraft industry into the modern era.

By the time the Blenheim was entering service about 818 Blenheims were on order from Bristol and the shadow factory scheme was kicking in.
Rootes got a contract for 250 Blenheims soon raised to 1000.
Austin motor company got a contract for 500 Battles, soon also raised to 1000.
Bristol got another contract for 450 Blenheims.
Fairy got a contract for 500 Battles over and above earlier contracts.
A.V. Roe got contract for 250 Blenheims and would built 1000 before building the Manchester.
Hawker Hinds were ordered as late as 31st of May 1937
100 Vickers Wellesley were on order
400 Hawker Henleys (later cut to 200)
The Vickers Wellington was going into production'
Orders for the Whitley are increased
100 HP Harrows
180 HP Hampdens
100 HP Herefords
486 Bothas were ordered a this time
400 Beauforts were also ordered, this last two would not fly for several years.

By the time the Blenheim was entering squadron service the RAF had over 5000 bombers on order but only about 1000 fighters, the 600 Hurricanes and 310 Spitfires and 210 undelivered Gladiators.
Some types are not covered (FAA) but consider the 1495 Avro Anson I's ordered in 1938, 1500 in 1939 and 4,300 in 1940.

Aircraft available to the RAF at the outbreak of the war

Blenheims....................................................1089
Battles...........................................................1014
Anson..............................................................760
Hurricane.......................................................400
Spitfire............................................................270
Gladiator........................................................320
Hampden.......................................................212
Whitley...........................................................196
Wellington....................................................172
Gauntlet.........................................................145
Hudson............................................................78
Vildebeest......................................................101
Sunderland....................................................38

total..................................................................4,795

There were other, older aircraft in various squadrons not attached to the AASF, Bomber Command, Fighter Command or listed as reserve or overseas.
This list does not include FAA aircraft. It does not include army co-operation aircraft (Hawker Hectors and Lysanders), and does not include such things as the Hawker Henley which has already been shuffled off to target tow land.

It is a snapshot of most of the "modern" AIrcraft the RAF was equipped with in Aug/Sept 1939

Any plans on "improving" the RAF from 1936 to 1940/41 need to take this into account and remember what the state of the RAF was at the time of Munich Crisis.

 

[MikeMeech]

The British were planning/calling for large scale production on ASV radar in 1940, unfortunately reality got in the way. Production was not as quick as hoped (perhaps in part due to bomb damage of the industry?) and the diversion of many of the sets to AI Radar, The two may not have been completely interchangeable but did use many of the same components. Also the initial planning did not take into account either rapidly occurring improvements (better sets but slowing production) or the need for maintenance spares (?) and perhaps the target figure was unrealistic to begin with.

Hi

Reference the ASV radars. The initial order for ASV Mk. II was for 4000 sets from E K Cole and Pye Radio in Spring 1940. Yes, there were changes in priorities for AI plus a strong demand for CHL equipment manufactured by E K Cole plus effects of bombing , however, by October 1940 140 ASV transmitters and 45 receivers had been delivered to the RAF and by the end of March 1941 over 2000 transmitters and 1000 receivers had been delivered to the RAF (p.2-4 of 'Airborne Maritime Surveillance Radar, Volume 1 - British ASV Radars in WWII 1939-1945' by Simon Watts). In world wide radar manufacturing terms in 1940-41 that was large scale production. By the end of 1940 the USN ordered 7000 copies of ASV II from Philco, the US did not have a comparable system at the time.

Mike