1937-42: airforce on a budget

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tomo pauk

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Apr 3, 2008
Something for a not-so-rich country (Yugoslavia, Romania, Belgium, Norway, Turkey, Netherlands, Poland...) that still wants an airforce , and as a back-up for a big country (Japan, Italy...) that looks to improve it's air services/forces quickly. Needed are fighters and bombers, plus of course trainers; new, not second-hand. Biplanes are to be avoided.
The rich and powerful (Germany, UK...) might not wan't to sell todays piece of kit, but probably will sell yesterdays bits & pieces, so the 'budget' part of equation is met.
 
In the case of the Netherlands it was anti aircraft guns. Didn't they bring down 500 Ju 52's?
 
Kevin J said:
In the case of the Netherlands it was anti aircraft guns. Didn't they bring down 500 Ju 52's?
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Would be hard as afaik only around 430 were deployed.

tomo pauk said:
From what I know, they destroyed 250?
Marcel
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Total losses of the LW in the Netherlands afaik was around 500 aircraft in total. Most of them due to the actions of AAA and normal artillery (remember, the Germans landed their Ju52's on the unfinished airstrip Valkenburg, where they got stuck in the mud and destroyed by Dutch artillery, on Valkenburg alone, the Germans lost 57 Ju-52's).
According to Cajus Becker, 2/3rd of the 430 deployed Ju-52's were lost ('Angriffshöhe 4000-die deutsche Luftwaffe im Zweiten Weltkrieg' 1980, page 112), According to Werner Haupt ('Sieg ohne Lorbeer' 1965, page 82), the Germans lost 280 Ju-52's on May 10th alone.
 
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GrauGeist said:
Romania and the Netherlands both had a good native aircraft industry (IAR and Fokker), though their military budget constrained their output.
The IAR 80 was world-class as was Fokker's G.1.
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Have to agree that the IAR80 and the G1 were very good places to start. For a bomber the PZL37 LOS didn't have to apologise to any other 1939 bomber of any nation.
 


Pre-war, most of the major powers were selling aircraft. The trouble is that most of them were ramping up production and replacing outdated aircraft and didn't have that much surplus capacity. The US was probably best-suited in this regard, having the largest industrial capacity, but relatively few designs that met the fashionable need for V-12 powerplants. From the US, the best fighter option would probably be the P-36 (there were variants with the R-2180 Twin Hornet and R-1830 Twin Wasp). Other possibilities -- I'm just looking at aircraft in production by 1939 -- would be the P-35, the Brewster Buffalo, and the Grumman Wildcat, although the last two barely meet my arbitrary cutoff. Bombers are easier: the Martin B-10 and the Douglas B-18 are pretty much it. For dive bombers, the Curtiss Helldiver (sorry, biplane), Great Lakes BG, and Northrop BT (which was developed into the Douglas Dauntless), and the Vought SB2U Vindicator. Since US torpedoes weren't very good (but who would know that....?), but the TBD was the only monoplane; potentially, there was also the Great Lakes TBG (which did not enter production), the Hall PTBH, and the Martin BM. Transports are obvious -- buy DC-3's; there were none better. Trainers are also easy, as there were many suitable aircraft.
 
The RAF could not receive Hurricanes as fast as Hawkers could make them, so Hawkers got permission to sell them. I have sometimes thought that the UK missed an opportunity, if they massively increased production of Merlins and Hurricanes before war was declared and flooded Europe with them could the LW have been taken out of the game by the end of the BoB or even the BoF?
 
No, because our army was too small. Its boots on the ground that win wars, so that means the French, but in 1938 they have crap aircraft. So while our Blenheim I's could have bombed Germany with immunity during the Munich crisis, the French could not have defended themselves from Luftwaffe attacks, neither their cities nor their armies.
 
Not really what I was meaning. The LW ran out of serviceable bombers so they had to give up daylight raids in the BoB. If the LW could have been reduced to a situation of not being able to even start the BoB the whole political situation may have changed. If, instead of being reduced to 500 S/E fighters the RAF was boosted by 500 planes and pilots flying across the channel the situation would have been much different. Just a fantasy scenario TBH.
 
The only bargain planes are going to be used ones from a first Rank Air Force that is upgrading.
Which puts the 2nd rank AIr Force at a disadvantage to begin with.

The British were selling Hurricanes and Blenheims and that was about as good as it was going to get from the UK
"hey buddy, Want to buy some low milage Gloster Gauntlets? Only flown on Sundays by Auxiliary squadrons?"

France may have been even worse. ALthough they did sell a few Potez 630s (of some sort) to Rumania, Greece and Yugoslavia.
for 1937/38 this was as good as it was going to get for a fighter from the US.

in 1939 the US finally figured out that if they exported military aircraft with retracting landing gear the world would not tilt on it's axis. (they had been exporting civilian aircraft with retracting gear for years).

The idea of cheap export fighter seems to draw in a lot of people but there is only so cheap you can go. you have to use an engine that is at least with spitting distance of a 1st rate engine (French tried to build 5 different "light fighters" with 2nd rate engines with limited success) or the plane simply won't work as a fighter. Same with propeller, British being leading exponent of fixed pitch props and we know the performance penalty that caused. 1st and 2nd rate fighters need about the same number of cockpit instruments and both need radios. Using 1/2 or less of the 1st rate fighters armament is not really saving money, You need twice as many planes to get the same amount of guns/ammo within striking distance of the enemy.
 
GrauGeist said:
Actually, the French had a collection of impressive and very capable aircraft like the Potez 630, Leo 451, MS.406 and so on.

They also had the Curtiss Hawk, Douglas DB-7 and others.

So it wasn't what they had, it was how they used it...
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It is both, some of the planes were crap (and there weren't enough of even them) so the French were buying up anything halfway decent they could get their hands on. Which really makes you wonder about what they were exporting
Some of the exports were political, Trying to beef up AIr Forces in the Balkans to counter German influence (or to maintain French influence).
 
We did a daylight Air offensive in 1941, lots of losses, with little gained in return.
 
Kevin J said:
We did a daylight Air offensive in 1941, lots of losses, with little gained in return.
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I was thinking more about if they ran out of steam before even thinking about the UK it may have stopped any idea of going into Russia.
 
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