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Agreed, add to that the dearth of fuel, and the lack of trained pilots and the increased production really wouldn't have mattered much.If 34,000 Bf 109s could not turn the tide of war, I doubt another twenty thousand would. You don't win a ground war with fighters. Now, twenty thousand more trucks…. or half and half trucks and AFVs… now we can take and hold ground.
This is not correct. Following attacks from 12th August onwards, Manston was finally abandoned on 24th August and became an emergency landing ground. Squadrons were simply withdrawn to Hornchurch.There was no need to fight over London, to destroy the RAF there were many airfields in and around Kent and not one was forced to be abandoned.
With all the changes in guns, radios, and other equipment this gets hard to sort over the years.Playing with various scenarios recently, i just realized this: if the germans somehow don't get into the whole destroyer thing and drift toward a more soviet style rationalization of aircraft production (concentrating on fewer and most useful types), which destroyer obsession overall did a lot more harm than good (even if the Me-110 was a fairly useful night-fighter), and use those resources to just build more Bf-109s instead, and assuming engine production is similar, replacing the over 6000 Me-110, 700 Me-210 (but the whole debacle cost another potential 1500 airframes) and 1200 Me-410 will give us no less than roughly 15,000 (!) Bf-109s and roughly 2500 FW-190C normaljagers (which is an ATL in itself, as i understand the FW-190C could face the P-51 and P-47 at least on equal terms). PLUS if those 1500 potential zestrorers production is not lost, we have ANOTHER 3000 Bf-109s.
And if we really go the whole hog, scrapping the He-177 debacle gives us enough engines for another say 4500 Bf-109s easily.
Yes, they need more nightfighters to cover for the lack of Me-110s, but building more Ju-88s for instance instead of the He-177 (remember the overproduction of Jumo-211, with 7000 engines sitting around in depots) gives us about 2500 Ju-88. And if for instance they don't mess about Henschel and they let them keep building Ju-88s (and just forget about Hs-129 too), probably number wise the lack of Me-110s is almost covered.
The Me-109 of course has shorter range, which can be partly compensated by putting drop tanks on the 109 before the war. But whereas the Me-110 proved unable to cope with opposing fighters except early in the war and mostly against obsolete opponents, the Bf-109 was deadly all the way to 1945, especially so until 1943. One 110 actually consumes more fuel than two 109s.
So, how this affects the airwar? More Bf-109s means daylight bomber or Stuka attacks are better protected so there will somewhat fewer losses, and with drop tanks the 109 can fight over London for another 20 minutes or so. RAF will be more hard pressed as the 109 had a positive kill ratio against the RAF fighters, unlike the lumbering 110.. There would be more 109s over places like Malta, or Crete, North Africa, the Channel or in the east where the Bf-109 was always deadly against contemporary british, US or soviet fighters. There could be more exports to Italy, Hungary, Romania or Finland, which would be absolutely thrilled to exchange the obsolete motley collection of machines they were using all the way into 1944 for the deadly 109s. There were a lot of very experienced pilots in those countries flying obsolete planes, with Bf-109s they would be far more effective and deadly to the opposition, be it british, american or soviet.
What you make of this? Could those 20,000 Bf-109s actually tip the balance in some crucial battles/campaigns?
The lack of strategic alloys and management failures in engine development just mean (by say 1943) more semi obsolete short lived unreliable planes. You can do stuff like this but you need about three other major things fixed at the same time.Playing with various scenarios recently, i just realized this: if the germans somehow don't get into the whole destroyer thing and drift toward a more soviet style rationalization of aircraft production (concentrating on fewer and most useful types), which destroyer obsession overall did a lot more harm than good (even if the Me-110 was a fairly useful night-fighter), and use those resources to just build more Bf-109s instead, and assuming engine production is similar, replacing the over 6000 Me-110, 700 Me-210 (but the whole debacle cost another potential 1500 airframes) and 1200 Me-410 will give us no less than roughly 15,000 (!) Bf-109s and roughly 2500 FW-190C normaljagers (which is an ATL in itself, as i understand the FW-190C could face the P-51 and P-47 at least on equal terms). PLUS if those 1500 potential zestrorers production is not lost, we have ANOTHER 3000 Bf-109s.
And if we really go the whole hog, scrapping the He-177 debacle gives us enough engines for another say 4500 Bf-109s easily.
Yes, they need more nightfighters to cover for the lack of Me-110s, but building more Ju-88s for instance instead of the He-177 (remember the overproduction of Jumo-211, with 7000 engines sitting around in depots) gives us about 2500 Ju-88. And if for instance they don't mess about Henschel and they let them keep building Ju-88s (and just forget about Hs-129 too), probably number wise the lack of Me-110s is almost covered.
The Me-109 of course has shorter range, which can be partly compensated by putting drop tanks on the 109 before the war. But whereas the Me-110 proved unable to cope with opposing fighters except early in the war and mostly against obsolete opponents, the Bf-109 was deadly all the way to 1945, especially so until 1943. One 110 actually consumes more fuel than two 109s.
So, how this affects the airwar? More Bf-109s means daylight bomber or Stuka attacks are better protected so there will somewhat fewer losses, and with drop tanks the 109 can fight over London for another 20 minutes or so. RAF will be more hard pressed as the 109 had a positive kill ratio against the RAF fighters, unlike the lumbering 110.. There would be more 109s over places like Malta, or Crete, North Africa, the Channel or in the east where the Bf-109 was always deadly against contemporary british, US or soviet fighters. There could be more exports to Italy, Hungary, Romania or Finland, which would be absolutely thrilled to exchange the obsolete motley collection of machines they were using all the way into 1944 for the deadly 109s. There were a lot of very experienced pilots in those countries flying obsolete planes, with Bf-109s they would be far more effective and deadly to the opposition, be it british, american or soviet.
What you make of this? Could those 20,000 Bf-109s actually tip the balance in some crucial battles/campaigns?
The 109 with drop tank doesn't give quite the range you need for the targets further to the west in England.
British can also strip the 109s of their drop tanks by attacking as they cross the British coast, then disengage and having a second wave of fighters intercept the German formation a bit further in. The 109E was also ammo limited. After about 6-7 seconds it was out of cannon ammo and was relying on it's twin 7.9mm mgs.
110s could carry the standard photo recon cameras and have access for the crew in flight. Germans used, among other cameras, a large one that used a negative about 4 times the size of the cameras used by most British photo recon planes. This gets a bit long winded/technical as the ability of the cameras were dependent on the grain size of the film (think pixels per inch) ability to keep the film flat and the lenses. British just took more pictures to cover the same area, both countries got about the same detail in the photos.
And we haven't even gotten to the 110D, 110E, and 110F versions
The lack of strategic alloys and management failures in engine development just mean (by say 1943) more semi obsolete short lived unreliable planes. You can do stuff like this but you need about three other major things fixed at the same time
You are right.Expecting that British strip all of the escorting 109s (600-700-800?) of their tanks assumes that Germans are flat-out panicking and/or are tactically inept - and that is for every day of the BoB. It also assumes that LW will not do the fighter sweeps, despite they actualy doing that before the close escort order.
Even with a number of squadrons dropping their tanks above Kent, that means they have full 400L of fuel when the combat starts, vs. 300+- as they had historically.
Not all Bf 109Es were with just two LMGs in 1939-40, a lot of them was with 4 LMGs. Even having such fighter escort above Midlands beats the hell out of no-escorts situation.
So the idea is to stop 110s which use two engines and substitute more Do-215s which use two of the same engines?Make a handful of Do 215s to do the long-range photo-recon job.
Note that I've said 'handful'So the idea is to stop 110s which use two engines and substitute more Do-215s which use two of the same engines?
The 110C will max speed cruise about 10mph faster than the Do-215 will go at full speed. In fact the 110C will max cruise at about 50mph higher than the Do-215 will max cruise at.
Maybe that is not fast enough but trying to use Do-215s wasn't going to work well in a high threat area.
Before anybody gets the bright idea of using Ju-88s the Ju-88s of 1940 (mostly) had the 1200hp engines and were lucky they could do 280mph max speed. DB was not delivering the latest 601 engines and Junkers was running well behind on the newest Jumo 211s.
The Ju-88 didn't get to be a speed demon until they stuck BMW 801s or Jumo 213 in them. It could barely break 300mph with even the best Jumo 211s.
And neither the Do-215 or the JU-88 will perform the fighter-bomber role quite like the 110, max load for a 1940 110 was a pair of 1100lb bombs. Later versions (1941) could carry more or add a pair of 300 liter drop tanks to the pair of 1100lbs and long range fighters could hang big drop tanks.
Well, for patrolling the Med (and perhaps sometimes flying from Greece) such tanks allow for a long patrol time (endurance) and the most dangerous aircraft the British have were Beaufighters. with full internal fuel the 110 can engage the Beaufighters (or other Long range British aircraft of the time) and still fly hundreds of miles to an axis base.Not very conductible to the high threat environment, don't you think?
Well, for patrolling the Med (and perhaps sometimes flying from Greece) such tanks allow for a long patrol time (endurance) and the most dangerous aircraft the British have were Beaufighters. with full internal fuel the 110 can engage the Beaufighters (or other Long range British aircraft of the time) and still fly hundreds of miles to an axis base.
You could hang multiple tanks off a 109 but once you are a certain distance from shore if you have to drop them your chances of return are just about the same (or worse) than a Hurricat pilot.
For the US and British (?) the return line from the Carb ran to one of the main tanks, the one the plane started, warmed up and took off with. Depending on length of flight (and time to form up and climb to altitude) a fair amount of the fuel used in the first 15 minutes or so of engine operation (10-20 gallons unless really thirsty) was refilled into the tank.BTW - German drop-tanks installations on Bf 109 and Fw 190 were feeding the internal tanks, not the engines directly, meaning that internal fuel was always close to 100% if the drop tanks are dropped with some fuel still in them.