Best Air Force 1939-1941

Best Air Force 1939 to 1941?

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Very true, looking at things out of context always leads to wrong conclusions. RAF, as other parts of the armed forces, was assisted by convoys and LL equipment but its them that did what had to be done in the air to defend their homeland. In that struggle, Hurri and Spit played important roles, regardless if the steel used in them came from UK or the US.. What woul stop the British from designing an all-wooden Spitfire for example?
 

Uh, the fact that England had darn little wood left?

Seriously. Aircraft grade wood is not that easy to come by and hard as it may be to believe, large areas of England had been deforested at times in the last 400 or so years, While the trees grow back a lot of second and 3rd growth wood is more twisted and knotty than"original" growth. One reason the British went to "all metal" aircraft (all metal could still mean fabric covered, the frame was all metal) in the early 30s was a shortage of suitable wood, while it may still have been available the cost of suitable wood was rising to the point of being more expensive than metal construction. Basically you need a lot of Spruce and some other selected woods. The Balsa that went into the "Sandwhich" on the Mosquito had to be imported. Balsa doesn't grow in England.
 

Your very comments are why I used the word doubtful and not the word impossible. Another reason why I just do not believe it would be a successful invasion is that unlike the Poles and French the British now knew how the magic trick was performed and knew the consequences of failure. The amount of resistance from not just the uniformed military would be enormous and I think pressed to the point of suicidal. We are talking about a populous that has no concept of capitulation to an occupier. Poland and France had centuries of foreign occupations of their soil. Until Nazi occupation no one knew how much worse it would be than anything in the history of Western Europe. Even though the worst of Nazi occupation in the West was yet to come, important leaders in Britain had some idea of what was to come. Now I do know there was a part of the political class that still entertained the idea that an accommodation could be made with Hitler and there was a small part of the civilian population with Nazi sympathies, but neither of these would have swayed John Bull to accept domination without near extermination. The whole lend-lease fandango from this thread to the new thread was started by a poster who vastly underestimated the remaining strength of the U.K. Yes with an impotent RAF there would have been hell to pay from the Luftwaffe, but much of the Luftwaffe's success on the continent hinged on the ultimate air superiority of the Heer placing a tank on the enemy's airfield. That task would have been orders of magnitude more difficult for the Heer. Many British resources not located in the South would have now been able to concentrate on the invaders. The invaders would not have the surprising speed used against a poorly armed Poland or the mask of the Ardennes to surprise a poorly coordinated, dispersed force of multiple opponents using two different languages to in-fight among themselves as much as plan against the enemy. The Royal Navy while suffering the greatest losses in History would still be very a difficult obstacle for the Germans. Have you ever read about the havoc a few German Scnellboats caused to a D-day rehearsal? The casualties in men and ships were all out of proportion to the attacking force. The news of event was suppressed and immediately classified by the Allies to prevent adverse affects to Overload. Imagine the bulk the RN making attacks without concern for preservation of the Fleet. The Germans let the Genie out of the bottle on the Continent. The British now knew what the bottle and cork looked like and despite being greatly weakened would do whatever it took to put the Genie back in the bottle, tamp in the cork, and throw it back into the Sea. I have very little doubt of that. I wonder how many more times some nation will through number crunching determine military weakness and yet fail because they underestimated the resolve of John Bull?
 

Yea, if it wasnt for the Armada and Napoleon we could have made wooden Spitfires.

Seriously making a wooden aircraft is a completely different skill, de Havilland had experience of it which is how they could make the Mosquito, I am sure Supermarine could have got a wooden spitfire in the air if we could wait until 1941.

If you use the mosquito as an example it used Balsa and some very special laminates from the USA I believe, Equadorean Balsa Canadian Birch and a lot of other special glues etc. Using wood saves on using expensive metal alloys but it isnt as simple as walking into a forest with an axe and emerging a week later with a plane. The technology is just as difficult to master.


On the subject of operation sealion, another poster said that Adolf and some others considered crossing the channel as a glorified river crossing, it simply isnt.
The plan to supply the invading force with towed barges is simply off the wall. I read the speed of some towed barges was 2 knots, the currents in the channel frequently run at 8 knots or more. With an invasion planned in September unless the British capitulate immediately the army would be left without supplies. One Autumn storm in the channel would wipe the supply fleet off the map. After D Day one Mulberry harbour was wiped out in a storm and that was in late June. Hitler was a soldier he had no concept of naval operations neither did many in the Sealion plan.
 
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parsifal said:
the problem is, that the argument being put forward is that the british AF was completely and 100% dependant on "US charity"
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I do not think there is anyone said that. I think what was pointed out that Britain was heavily dependent on US. Fuel I know was from US to large extent. No fuel, planes do not fly.. If money is not spent on fuel, Shermans, C-47, it can be spent on other planes etc.
 

That it is. Back in the 1700s The British were importing trees for mast and spars from what is now the state of Maine, after the American revolution they imported a lot of masts and spars from the Russia (the Baltic states?) In both cases special transport ships were needed to handle the lengths of wood.

Some of the glues/resins were needed in large quantities and raw materials for them might have to be imported. Some US and Russian "wood construction" methods required parts to baked for hours in large ovens or autoclaves. Large scale wood production is not as easy as it may appear. And with spars, ribs and skin all having to be thicker there may be a lot less room left inside the wing.

As far as "expensive metal alloys" goes. Suitable wood can get pretty expensive since the wastage can get really high. You have to by an awful lot more than you really need because a lot of it won't pass inspection.
 

If that was what was said, I would not be kicking up the fuss that I have....but unfortunately that is NOT what was said. infact this was the start of the debate

Originally Posted by ctrian
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say . Without lend lease UK would have to stop the fight because they would run out of everything ,see in the real world you need money to buy things and the ''Empire'' had none.T

And you are wrong about the fuel. it actually came from two sources Curacao and Kuwait. What did happen is that for certain Higher Octane rated fuels, the US processed that oil for Britain. I have no idea what that cost
 
parsifal said:
And you are wrong about the fuel. it actually came from two sources Curacao and Kuwait. What did happen is that for certain Higher Octane rated fuels, the US processed that oil for Britain. I have no idea what that cost
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Actually both sides produced high octane fuels which created problems as high octane fuels can be corrosive it took some time to standardise so that both sides could use each other without serious damage.
 

Good points shortround. I wasnt trying to say that wood is a cheap option I dont think the mosquito was cheap. The attraction of the mosquitos wooden construction was more to do with labour. The war meant there were thousands of people un employed from the furniture and other industries whos skills were more easily adapted to making a wooden plane than a metal one. Happily it also meant it could be modified with a drill and a saw

De Havilland didnt choose wood as a cheap option but as the best option. Saying a mosquito was made of wood is a bit of a misnomer which makes it sound primitive. If you say it was made of laminates and composites it sounds advanced. The fact that the laminates and composites are actually wood is just a coincedence. De Havilland used the "precious resources" handle as a selling point it wasnt why he actually chose it.
 

The laminated wonder doesnt quite work though does it
 
By the time of Elizabeth I and the Spanish Armada wood of sufficient size and quality for ship building was so critically in short supply that almost all of it was imported from Russia if I am not mistaken. If I am also not mistaken Francis I of Spain annihilated the forests of Spain making the Armada thereby ending any chance of replacement with indigenous timber.

When you think about it, using wood to build a Mosquito is a more advanced technology than building one out of metal. No one succeeded in making something comparable in metal, and Focke Wulf even with out the hinderance of having their glue supplier bombed out of existence was unlikely to succeed using wood to make their Moskito comparable to the Mosquito.
 
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vikingBerserker said:
I think as a night/all weather-fighter the Ta 154 could have more then matched the Mosquito, but then again it was built primarily for that role.
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Germans didnt have the necessary time to properly develop the Ta 154 , delays cause by engine development, composites and glue factories being bombed, accidents that caused prototype crashes..

It was a recognition of the Germans of the effectiveness of the Mosquito, some application of humor in the naming of it, but above all an aircraft that "could have"m it never did..


P.S. Which is fortunate for the beautiful forests still remaining in Europe in 1940s!!! Imagine Hitler attacking Soviet Union not only for the oil drills in the Caucasus region but for timber as well!
 
The Ta 154 was smaller and heavier than the Mossie with over a 100 sq foot smaller wing this leads me to think that maybe the structure was a lot heavier. Does anyone know how the Ta 154 was built wiki just says plywood fuselage with metal cockpit.
 
MaximusGR said:
Germans didnt have the necessary time to properly develop the Ta 154 , delays cause by engine development, composites and glue factories being bombed, accidents that caused prototype crashes..
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It was stated that "even without the glue factory being bombed" so that removes it from the equation.

Warplanes of the Third Reich by Green has a pretty good write-up about it. The first batch of 15 pre-production aircraft were performing quite well (with a few accidents - nothing unusual) and further development of the aircraft were already on the drawing boards, the Ta 154C and Ta 254, with the Ta 254 being more of an equivalent to the Mosquito.

IMO the only thing that really killed the project (beyond the glue issue) was politics.

fastmongrel said:
The Ta 154 was smaller and heavier than the Mossie with over a 100 sq foot smaller wing this leads me to think that maybe the structure was a lot heavier. Does anyone know how the Ta 154 was built wiki just says plywood fuselage with metal cockpit.
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From the book mentioned above, page 242:

""...a wooden oval-section fuselage built in one piece from the front bulkhead to the axis of rotation of the rudder, and a one-piece two-spar wooden wing.... Apart from the forward fuseloage and the engine nacellas, which were covered by duralumin panels, and the elevators, which had fabric skinning, the entire aircraft was covered by laminated plywood. The ailerons, the variable -chamber slotted flaps, the rudder and the elevators were of light metal contruction."

Of course, the 12mm 8mm cockpit armour was metal as well.
 
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That's the point it doesn't have to be 100% to be vital only someone really stupid would think that .LL to the SU was 10-15% of the war effort but it was vital because it covered things that could not/would not be built by the Russians.If the figure is 25% for Britain even you can understand that there can be no room for discussion.Look up
Liebig's law.
 
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I would never argue that US production was not vital, but this was not your point of claim. your point of claim was/is that the british would have to capitulate without "US charity". The basis of your argument was that Britain was bankrupt, and could not afford to purchase any further equipment from the US. You also claimed that the dominions were also bankrupt, and that they lacked the industrial and technological basis to do anything other than shear some sheep and harvest some corn.

Your argument changed over time, however, initially it was that Britian would collapse if Lend Lease was not put into action from 4/41. Then it changed, to what might happen if the US productive output were removed from the equation. The two propositions are, however, entirely different from each other.

I dont have any problem with agreeing that a 25% reduction in imports would cripple the UK. This could only happen if Britain were actually bankrupt in the modern sense. an example of a nation nearing bankruptcy is greece (no cheap shots, its just a very good example of what a bankrupt state looks like).

Britain in 1941 was nowhere near that. It was running out of cash reserves, which meant it had to secure a line of credit, or find another way to continue the flow of goods from North America. It was nowhere near bankruptcy, as Andrew Clark points out. he is supported in this by the famaus Historian / economist, Overy. I suggest you read him. The British government was running short of liquid assets, but Britain itself was still a net creditor nation. Britain even today is one of the banking and finacial hubs of the world, and has been since the mid 1700s. There were huge investments in overseas pieces of infrastructure that the UK was still receiving cash credits for throughout the war. Britain was still a substantial exporter of goods to the world in 1941. So, whilst they might not be able to purchase quite as much as they would receive as a lend lease assistanc package, they would still continue to receive a portion of that. And, if you look at the amount of aid received, it was not 25% for the duration. It reached a peak in 1944, at around 25%. In 1940, it was 0%, since ther was only cash and carry in 1940. In 1941, it was around 8%, since a portion of the 12% of aircraft received (using aircraft received as a surrogate measure of assistance) were still cash and carry items. In the years of 1942 and 1943, the amount of aid received, as a fraction of the domestic production was about 15% in 1942 and about 20% in 1943. If we disregard the part years of 1939 and 1945, the average amount of lend Lease Aid for the duration was about 13.6% give or take.

If we assume that a cash and carry policy can secure 1/2 what a lend lease arrangement can secure, then the British military hardware availability only drops by about 6% or so.

However, this model does not take into account the response by the dominions. I think it has been pretty well comprehensively shown that the dominions had no real liquidity problems, and had considerable untapped potential in their respective economies. They had the technological basis, the industrial capabilty to increase domestic production considerably. They also had considerable ability to increase their share of foreign purcahses (ie direct cash and carry purchases from the US) to make up the shortfall in place of the UK. faced with a decreased level of support from the US, as a result of the non-signing of the LL agreement, I think it entirely likley that the Dominions would either increse their direct purchases from the US, or increase domestic production, or a mixture of both

And finally, of course, any unused output not taken up by either the dominions or the UK is going to be absorbed and used domestically by the US. This would mean, almost certainly, that the US would be able to mobilise faster and get into the war quicker than she did historically

So, my opinion is that whilst Lend Lease was a good efficiency and mutual assistance package with the US, it cannot at all be argued that it would lead to a collapse, or even a reduction in operational; strengths or capabilities by the allies, or britain, or any other cockeyed permutation that you would care to serve up.

lastly, your argument that the US was fulfilling a "niche market" in the materiel it was supplying is a nonsense also. If anything the "niche markets" in military outputs were being filled by the British and the dominions. The US could mass produce the main items of hardware in greater volume and more cheaply that anybody, which explains why Australia did not produce more sentinels and why the majority of tanks in the british army in 1944 were of American manufacture. It makes a lot of sense to standarise, and who better to standardise with than th tank most easily produced and the most numerous. The same logic could be applied across the whole range of miltary purchases. But The US was not especially important for supplying specialist equipment...perhaps in the case of the Soviet Union to a very limited extent, but only to an extremely minor extent for US's western allies.
 
vikingBerserker said:
I think as a night/all weather-fighter the Ta 154 could have more then matched the Mosquito, but then again it was built primarily for that role.
Click to expand...
I would have cast my lot with the Heinkel He219 "Uhu" instead of Kurt Tank's "Moskito" as it was further along in development and had pretty impressive performance (the latter variants)
 
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