Axis Strategic Heavy Bombers?

[Admiral Beez]

However - any daylight bombing operation will still require the presence of fighter escort.

That's what the Luftwaffe needs for the Battle of Britain. Four engined bombers and long range single engine, single seat fighter escorts.

But they'd have neither Best Axis four engined bomber?

 

[glennasher]

Politically India was split. It was only the Indian National Congress that demanded independence before supporting the war. And the Govt in India moved quickly to quell that dissent in 1942. One arriving infantry division was deployed specifically for internal control in India for example. 60,000 INC leaders found themselves in jail, some until mid-1945. Over 3.35m Indians volunteered to fight in the Indian Army making it the largest volunteer army in history, and fighting for the Allies around the world. Even during the worst of the 1943 Bengal famine, the Govt in India retained control.

So what heavy bomber is to be used? The G8N Tenzan? Range (per Wiki) 2,451 miles. So combat radius c1,000 miles at the very most. Carrying what bomb load? What is the target?

Rangoon (Yangon) Burma, probably the most forward point with decent runways to Madras (Chennai) in eastern India is 1,100 miles.

Rangoon to Delhi (the seat of the Govt in India) is 1,450 miles.

You can look to the bombing of places like Singapore, Rangoon and Calcutta for signs of what might happen. In Calcutta in Dec 1942 there was a mass exodus of civilians (estimates range into the region of 2.5-3.5 million) from the city after the first Japanese bombing when the city was virtually defenceless and morale was poor following a string of defeats. But "panic" is not a word you see used in British (obviously!) or Indian accounts. The docks were virtually closed. BUT people did return. The docks did reopen when the aerial assault died out.

And unlike cities in the west, we are not talking about an industrialised nation. Most of the population lives out in the country in small villages with extremely poor communications.

IMHO to even begin to think about triggering a general revolt of the population in India is going to take a large scale, widespread and sustained bombing campaign. And the Japanese are still only going to be hitting a relatively small part of the sub-continent. And then, as other colonies across the Far East found, the Indians would simply have been swapping one master for another.

Disrupting the materiel coming over the Hump would make it a lot harder to keep the Chinese in the war, the Japanese DID raid some of those fields several times. It was tough enough getting the goods to India, and then the problems transporting those goods all the way to China were multiplied several times getting the stuff from the docks in Calcutta to the airfields, requiring trains of varying widths, and a ferry crossing, then back on trains that had differing widths. It was a logistical mess, a few air raids could really mess up the balance the US/Brits had put together. It wasn't until the very end of the war that they got more than a piddling percentage of what Chiang was asking for.

 

[EwenS]

Disrupting the materiel coming over the Hump would make it a lot harder to keep the Chinese in the war, the Japanese DID raid some of those fields several times. It was tough enough getting the goods to India, and then the problems transporting those goods all the way to China were multiplied several times getting the stuff from the docks in Calcutta to the airfields, requiring trains of varying widths, and a ferry crossing, then back on trains that had differing widths. It was a logistical mess, a few air raids could really mess up the balance the US/Brits had put together. It wasn't until the very end of the war that they got more than a piddling percentage of what Chiang was asking for.

Turn the argument around. Would the loss of supplies across the Hump actually have forced China into some kind of settlement with Japan? It sure wasn't going to lead to a total occupation of China. Just look at the map. Would it have allowed massive withdrawals of Japanese troops beyond those withdrawn during 1943 for use in the Pacific and then again in 1945 for the defence of the Home Islands, sufficient to affect the war elsewhere? Those Chinese territories captured still have to be protected. The threat of Soviet invasion remained and tied down significant numbers of troops on that border throughout the war ( in Aug 1945 there was still nearly a million Japanese troops in Manchuria).

The truth is that in 1942-44 at least half, if not more of what was shipped across the Hump was being used to keep the relatively small 14th AF and later the B-29s of XX Bomber Command flying.

Despite that the Japanese were able to withdraw troops from China in 1943. The reasoning behind Operation Ichi-go in Mar-Dec 1944 was to capture the airfields being used by US bombers, or at least to push them back outwith the range of eastern China and Japan itself. No Hump supplies, no USAAF presence in China, no need for Ichi-Go.

In Aug 1944 the Hump was supplying about 30,000 tons per month. It was 51,000 by the end of the year but didn't peak until July 1945 at 73,000 tons. By that time the Burma Road had reopened (Feb 1945) and a fuel pipeline constructed (supplies flowing from March/April). In June / July supplies by sea to southern China became possible as Japan withdrew its forces northwards in preparation for transfer to the Home Islands.


There is a nice summary of the China theatre in WW2 in this article:-

WWII Campaigns: China Defensive | U.S. Army Center of Military History

This from the conclusion:-

"The major U.S. failure in China was logistical: America was not able to meet its lend-lease commitments. The closing of the Burma Road in 1942 made it impossible to deliver sufficient equipment, weapons, and munitions to build the dream of a well-equipped and trained thirty-division Chinese force. By the time the Burma Road reopened and supplies flowed freely across the border into China, operations in other theaters had shaped the course of the war against Japan. A paucity of available airlift capacity meant that deliveries of supplies to China over the Hump proved barely adequate to replace Chinese war losses, but not to sustain a major unit modernization and training program."

So was and is the argument about keeping China in the War simply overplayed?

 

[Shortround6]

That's what the Luftwaffe needs for the Battle of Britain. Four engined bombers and long range single engine, single seat fighter escorts.

Why?

The Germans had a big advantage in Range, they didn't need 4 engine bombers to reach most the British Isles.
The range advantage was geography. Once Germany had Belgium, Holland and the Northern French coast 400 mile radius bombers could hit anywhere from Western Ireland (Dingle to Galway) curving up to Belfast and over to Scotland just short of of Glasgow but just hitting Edinburgh. This does require air bases from just north of Amsterdam down to Brest but I hope it gives the idea.
British 400 radius bombers from Britain (and moving bases along the coast) can cover From Stuttgart to Würzburg to Gottingen to Wolfsburg to Lubeck to Kiel.
Maybe 30-40% of Germany. Now a lot the area they cannot hit may be rural but you get the Idea.
The Germans don't need long range bombers to cover most of England. In fact 300 mile radius bombers or fighters can cover (leaving out Ireland) from Hartlepool to Blackpool.
The Germans used captured territory to shorten the needed range while use the captured territory to extend the range the British needed to fly.

 

[glennasher]

Chiang Kai-Shek used the THREAT of pulling out of the war to get those supplies, That was his whole thing, he never wanted to fight the Japanese, he was thinking of the upcoming civil war with the Communists. He only fought the IJA because he didn't want to get too far behind in armaments and the needed materiel to fight Mao. Churchill was completely against helping him, and Roosevelt came to that conclusion too late to matter.
Churchill didn't want to waste the resources, but eventually bowed to Roosevelt's will. Roosevelt had a LOT of people lobbying for the Chinese, and they had his ear from the git-go.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Why?

This…

Rarely contemplated advantage of really heavy bombers vs. 2-engined bombers is that one good heavy bomber will be carrying as much as 3 good 2-engined bombers. So that is a definitive advantage for a 4 mot. Heavy bombers usually have far better bomb bays (He 111 and Ju 88 were with very restrictive bomb bays) due to starting out with a more voluminous fuselage. It means not just that it will be easier to carry the really big bombs, but also means that there is no need to carry these outside the aircraft, so the mileage and cruising speed improve.

Another advantage is that a bomber force comprised mostly of big bombers will require half of the trained pilots when compared with a bomber force comprised of 2-engined bombers. Requiring thousands pilots less for the same on-target effect is a substantial saving for a country ill able to well train it's pilots.

A big bomber with 4-6 dedicated defensive gunners is in advantage vs. let's say He 111 with 4-6 defensive posts while having just 3 defensive gunners. It will also be much easier to outfit a big bomber with a tail turret with big firepower than it will be the case with the smaller bombers.

 

[Shortround6]

Still asking why.

Modern 4 engine bomber with modern guns and mounts compared to older twin engine bombers with guns and mounts only slightly newer than WW I?
Yeah, that really proves the 4 engine bomber is better.

A German 4 engine bomber in 1940 would have the same crappy guns and mounts as the He 111 and the Ju 88 and the Do 17.
Would it be any faster? Let's all remember the Ju-88A-5. Built using the engines of the same model as the A-1 because the version of engines for the A-4 were delayed so they stuck the engines from the A-1 in the larger A-4 airframe/wing for increased decreased performance.

Germans didn't get a working tail turret until very late in the war.
This is not really a tail turret. It is tail gun mount.

Not really too bad, it just shows up in April of 1943. Now this is tail turret.

Four 7.9mm MGs (?) shows up in May of 1944, just a little late for the BoB.

early He 177 tail gun, gunner lay on his stomach and operated the single 13mm machine gun in the ball. By arm strength. 13mm guns were very rare during the BoB.
This version of the He 177 showed up in Nov 1941 was a little late for the BoB. But that was the state of the art for German defensive guns in late 1941.
You want German 4 engine bombers in numbers in August 1940?
Use German summer of 1940 engines (types available in large numbers) and use summer of 1940 guns and mounts.
Maybe they would be better than the He 111 (a low bar) but you are not going to get either performance/bomb load of 1941-42 British bombers or the defensive gun set ups the British had in 1941/42/43.

What the He 177 did in 1940 was slow down development of the He 111. He 111 got the same engines as the JU-88A-4 over a year later than the Ju-88 got them and didn't get even a semi power dorsal turret with single 13mm gun until over a year after the Do 217 got it. He 111 got a power mount 3-4 years after the Blenheim.
Not saying that would have made a huge difference in losses. But lets compare apples to apples.