BoB Mathematical Modeling of Alternative Outcomes

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What assumptions?
It was fairly easy to follow and comprehend.

By changing times or dates, by keeping the bombing focus on RAF bases and aircraft manufacturing sites and not turning to population centers, Britian would have been in trouble.

Germany screwed up on many accounts:
They started by allowing the BEF and Allies to escape at Dunkirk.
They did not have a cohesive bombing strategy for Britain.
They did not have an effective bomber escort tactic.
They did not have long enough range for the fighters.
And they changed tactics mid-stream and started bombing cities, which steeled the resolve of Britain to whip Hitler's ass.

And lastly, so Germany wins the BoB airwar...then what? They had no effective means to invade and the U.S. is starting to provide aircraft and material to the U.K. meaning Britain is still in the game.
 
Hi,
I think I have to agree with RCAFson in that there are certain things that seem to me to be unclear from the Word Document paper. For instance in the example they give for a notional 100 day war they talk about choosing the order of the results of each 100 days in "random" from the list of actual events from a given 100 day period (if I am understanding correctly). However this would seem to suggest to me that each day is being treated as being able to happen independent of whatever may have happened on the days before it. But to me this seems to potentially be a suspect assumption in that if a squadron flies a number of high intensity sorties on any one given day they may not be able in reality to keep up that tempo on the next day. However, if they are choosing to apply the results of a given day as being "randomly" chosen then it would seem to me that you may be addressing whether the operational tempo that for given units is feasible.

Beyond that, although I have only been able to quickly look over the paper, there are also some statements made that I am not sure are fully supportable. Specifically a reference is made that if fighter command were to pull its forces back north of the Thames, that the Luftwaffe could potentially achieve "air supremacy" over an invasion in Southern England. While it would seem logical that withdrawing forces north would likely cede some advantage to the attackers the fact that the attackers are still having to fly from Northern France and Belgium or the Netherlands would still mean that they too have some distance to fly prior to entering the combat zone and as such would still be hard pressed to exert "air supremacy" over a given region.
 
Hi,
I had a chance to read the paper more fully and while a very interesting study I can't help but have concerns about two main underlying assumptions that the authors made.

1st off, as noted in my previous post they seem to treat each "day" as being fundamentally independent events, while as I noted before, I would have concerns that days with a higher optempo for some air units may result in the need for a lesser optempo (or partial down time days) in their aftermath to allow for aircrew to recoup, aircraft to be repaired and supplies to be refurbished. As such I am somewhat uncomfortable with the assumption that the "events" that they model (ie the different days of battle) are fully independent of each other.

This is especially of concern to me in that when talking about trying to address the impacts of alternate weather conditions the authors appear to specifically caution that "weather is time dependent" and as such potentially not fully suitable as a variable to analyze (if I am understanding correctly). As such I am left wondering whether "if" the ability to conduct certain missions on one day may be impacted by whatever missions may have been conducted on a preceding day (eg whether a high optempto on one day may necessitate lower optempos on other days) then the results of each day may be in some ways at least partially time dependent also.

My 2nd main concern is that the analyses appear to solely focus on RAF pilot strength, while not really appearing to address AXIS "strengths" (either in terms of pilots, planes, fuel or munitions) at all. My initial thoughts would be that these various AXIS strengths may ebb and peak throughout the battle based in part on the missions that they are undertaking and that as certain numbers rise or fall they ability to undertake certain missions on any given day may vary. In particular attacks on coastal areas, which would likely be much closer to AXIS airbases may potentially be undertaken more frequently, with perhaps even more than a single sortie per squadron per day, whereas an attack on a major city, further from airbases may be more limited (perhaps even to "only" being nightly raids) with each different type of ":daily attack" having different potential impacts on the number of pilots (and other aircrew) bombers, fighters, fuel and munitions consumed, etc.

Regards

Pat
 
The "assumption" of weather can have a major impact on an operation.
Case in point: the Battle of the Bulge offensive was partially successful because it was planned during a known period where weather grounded aircraft.
Had the Germans launched their offensive on either side if the weather window, the Allied air response would have been devastating.
Same can be said for Operation Overlord, where the difference was literally measured in days.
Had the invasion commenced on the 4th of June as originally intended, there would have been high winds and rough seas, which would have spelled disaster for the landing elements.
 
Dowding and Park could have done a better job, if they knew then what we know now. Just getting rid of Leigh Mallory would improve things. Start using the Polish/Czech squadrons sooner? Don't use the Defiant in the South? What would a victory for Germany in the BoB look like? Would Dowding hand such a victory to Adolf? What the LW did was based on what their intel told them and what they actually could do. By the time raids were switched to London the LW were themselves down to around 200 serviceable bombers and crews and some commanders were convinced the RAF were down to 50 fighters. The LW could have done with better (longer ranged) fighters but then the RAF could have done with some functioning belt fed cannons too.
 
Too many if's but's and maybe's for me, the RAF could have moved from the coastal fighters bases to the inland ones if the bombing got too severe, history has shown that trying to knock out open fields used for fighters is an impossible task. As mentioned the article does not allow for the RAFs response to German tactics.
 
I don't think it's ever been disputed that the LW could achieve a temporary area of air superiority over the Kent and East Sussex coast. Then what do they do with it unless the German army has found a way of driving straight across the Channel.
 
GrauGeist said:
And lastly, so Germany wins the BoB airwar...then what? They had no effective means to invade
Click to expand...
Exactly. Goering succeeds, fibs or exaggerates, saying he can provide aerial superiority over Operation Seelöwe. Thus, Sept 1940, the barges are amassed in France, and loaded with the allocated 26 infantry and panzer divisions, left their French ports and entered the English Channel. Luftwaffe air cover was provided, and a KM escort consisting of, I suggest Scharnhorst (field repaired in June 1940), Admiral Scheer, Lutzow, Admiral Hipper, Prinz Eugen, Nurnberg, a dozen destroyers, 20 e-boats and 30 U-boats.



Britain knows they're coming and has been recalling her warships into ports across the south, and holding back her fighters (one reason Goering is so confident). When the Germans are almost mid-channel, they are met by the RN's battlecruiser squadron (Hood, Repulse, Renown), 30 cruisers, 85 destroyers, three flotillas of MTBs, 20 submarines (and their Perisher qualified COs), along with dozens of FAA, Bomber Command and Coastal Command strike aircraft, under the cover of over 500 radar-vectored Spitfires, Hurricanes and Whirlwinds (4x20mm in the nose). Behind them, coming down the coast at 25 knots, are HMS Nelson and Rodney, all five QE class battleships and further destroyers. The four slow Revenge class will eventually show up as well.

In short, it's a bloodbath. It's not all one sided, and there are significant losses to the RN, but the Royal Navy from its founding 394 years ago has but one priority in its existence, beyond escort duties, flag waving or colonial protection, and that task is defence of the homeland from invasion. Thus there's no chance any RN ship with a man and a gun operational will let the Germans pass. In the end, every single invasion barge is destroyed, along with all but one or two KM destroyers and the smallest of the escorts. The Luftwaffe air cover is smashed. This one day surpasses the Siege of Luknow in 1857 as the greatest number of Victoria Crosses awarded in a single action.

So, what is the impact on the war of a foolish German attempted invasion as I describe? Surely Goering is shot, Raeder or KM brass likely arrested. But Hitler just lost 26 divisions of top soldiers and tanks, along with the KM's surface fleet and much of the Luftwaffe. How does Gobbels spin this one? Are the French willing to return to the fight? What of Norway, Greece and North Africa? Mussolini must be questioning himself, especially once Taranto is attacked by the FAA's carriers that November. Japan may start muttering under its breath that they might have underestimated British fighting resolve. Stalin may be looking hungrily at a now weakened German frontier.
 
Last edited:
fastmongrel said:
I don't think it's ever been disputed that the LW could achieve a temporary area of air superiority over the Kent and East Sussex coast. Then what do they do with it unless the German army has found a way of driving straight across the Channel.
Click to expand...
Mit der BalkankrezuberkanalpanzerwagonFlugzoigQ (Bf109Q for short). Attaining air superiority over southern England long enough to bomb a port or London itself is a completely different issue to defending a bridgehead from sunrise to sunset, as the British found at Dunkerque and Dieppe. The weather was already playing a part in the battle in August - September, if the Germans had landed in September there would certainly have been a period of days or a week where their bridgehead and supply fleet had almost no air support or protection. Then the situation would be how much of your air force and navy are you prepared to lose to support the bridgehead.
 
"There's a difference between air superiority and air su- premacy, terms often used synonymously. Air superiority is defined as being able to conduct air operations "without prohibitive interference by the opposing force." Air supremacy goes further, wherein the opposing air force is incapable of effective interference."

Actual definitions have changed over time.
The Germans might well have achieved air superiority along the coast from Ramsgate to Brighton and south of London, allowing them to pretty much bomb targets at will. However preventing the British from attacking the landing zones and/or convoys is another thing entirely. That would be Air supremacy. The Germans have no early warning system to protect the beacheads and shipping. Knocking out the British radar in that area does not mean the Germans automatically get a radar system (and a control system) which means the Germans have to resort to standing patrols to intercept British raids, a very costly and not very effective method. Germans may have good radar coverage of Dover from Calais if they could set up radar in time but from Bexhill west things get iffy real quick if not downright impossible. British aircraft operating from North of London and west of Portsmouth could certainly conduct raids on German Beach Heads or shipping.

Luftwaffe has only a few specialized anti-ship units in the fall of 1940, I don't believe any He 111 units with torpedoes were in service at this time leaving the He 115 Floatplane as the primary German torpedo bomber (assuming they had a decent supply of torpedoes).

Starting the BoB several weeks early calls for a major change in logistics/supply in getting fuel and bombs (and spare parts) to the airfields supporting the air offensive. It doesn't matter how many planes survived the Battle for France if there is insufficient supplies to support a large scale campaign and not British style/penny packet raids (5 planes here, 8 planes there and 6 planes three days later)

The German Navy is almost a non starter.
Scharnhorst (field repaired in June 1940), Field repair leaves starboard shaft out of service and some machinery still damaged. Actual repairs in dockyard took 6 months.
Admiral Scheer, Available.
Lutzow, HIt by torpedo April 11th, collapsed stern and steering gear heavily damaged. She is not recomishend until March 31st 1941,
Admiral Hipper, Available.
Prinz Eugen???? Comishend Aug 1st 1940, spends the next 6 months training and having minor improvements (main guns might not have been fired for months) Sending her into combat when only 1 1/2 to 3 months out of builders yard is suppling the RN with target
Nurnberg, Available
a dozen destroyers? maybe, depends on how the repairs to 4-5 of them are going.
20 e-boats Most of these would slightly smaller and slightly slower than the later boats. Gun armament of the early boats was one or two 20mm guns.
and 30 U-boats.

There were some other assorted small ships (900 ton steam torpedo boats, escort-sloops, steam minesweepers).

However all the bigger ships and most of anything bigger than E-boats or motor minesweepers where in Germany and would need to go from Wilhelmshaven to the area/s were the barges were being formed up.
Two can play the Submarine as escort/blocking ship as the Kriegsmarine had found out in the Norwegian campaign.
 

cool, a what if scenario, i like that

As i agree with most of being said above in this discussion, especially about the german navy and it's small numbers especially compared to the royal, but i still have to add that the kriegsmarine seems to have been equipped with radar in 40 on least on the capital ships, what means they "could" cover english land with them, serving as radar and control stations if placed at the right places.
The other point i see is the fact of forgetting the Stuka Staffels in such a scenario. Even if the Royal navy had a serious number advantage, they "would" be harrassed by hords of Stuka's leaving their offensive operations aside to defend themselves . Then we also have to take into account the He-111/Do-17 that even if only carpet bombing capable, they also could have been send against the navy, there is always a bomb that will hit the target, even if it's one of 200 .
So, if the LW had air superiority (or even supremacy if most of the southern airfields have been levelled by previous bombing, leaving the spits and hurris in the same position as the 109 qua fuel, because had to take off from further airfields) the Royal wouldn't be as strong as depicted in previous posts as it wouldn't be able to naviagte freely , being always under attack.
Now , the question is: did the moustache-guy really wanted to invade england or did he want to break them enough to sign a peace treaty so he could do what he wanted on the continent and the whole barge-operation whas just a bluff?
Just adding more whatif in the whatif scenario
 
Hmm, started reading this and got turned off by the string of symbols and numbers, but I like the gist of it. I feel it skirts around a few fundamentals, which are very rarely touched on, although the strategic aspects of these are mentioned, but are left hanging there without follow up on how they might affect the outcomes being proposed.

The first thing I know about the battle, and what we all know, is that the Germans lost as much as the British won. They did so because of their poor understanding of the strategic situation at any given time throughout the campaign. We can definitely credit the decisions made by Dowding, Park et al as being crucial to victory, and thus by placing their strategic implications against a different set of circumstances (as proposed in the paper) we can come up with the probability of victory to the British in most cases. Just because the timeline has been changed, why would the British approach be any different? All the key players are there or nearly there, advancing the timeline just brings about a state of initial unpreparedness that could be overcome by the eventual course of the traditional timeline.

Of course, this all depends on what the Germans do and if they realise midway through the thing that the way they were doing things was flawed to begin with. This is where the statistical modelling falls down. The presumption that on a particular day, a particular airfield was being attacked, but what decides whether or not that airfield is rendered completely useless or whether the aftermath is simply cleaning up the taxiways? This is the crux of the matter behind the German loss - they had no accurate means of quantifying their results in the real life battle, so why would this change in the fictional scenario - that is, without an enormous sea change in their approach, or to be more specific, being aware that their intelligence was faulty to begin with, what else could the result be?

With each air raid, a reconnaissance aircraft, usually a Do 17 or He 111 was sent out to photograph the target. These lone bogeys were detected and intercepted by fighters, often resulting in them not returning home. That means that other than the reports made by the bomber crews, the Germans have no way of deciding whether their attack on their target was successful or not. If not, then presumably to achieve their objective, they have to go back and attack it again. Ultimately, if they want to change the fact that their recon aircraft are not coming back, they need to re-think how they collect their intel, specifically, how to conduct aerial reconnaissance with a higher probability of the aircraft returning, and that requires them to come to the realisation that their intelligence they have was faulty to begin with - something they did not do.

In hindsight we know what to do and it is a measure the Germans ended up using, placing cameras in small fast machines, Bf 109s etc, and carrying out a high speed dash over the target area at low level or high level, depending on what the need requires. This kind of thinking was certainly not beyond the Germans, but the fact they were so easily swayed by flawed intelligence - fighter pilot kill claims are included in this too, as they allowed the Germans to believe the RAF had fewer aircraft available to them that what they actually had, meaning they believed they were doing better that they actually were. This, of course leads them to begin bombing London sooner than anticipated, and we know where that led. Perhaps a continuation of attacks against airfields and radar sites while bombing the capital by night might change the outcome?

The next question is that if the Germans become better aware of the strategic situation, then what? The dawning realisation that this was never going to be a quick campaign and that a longer campaign of attrition was what was needed to do what they wanted to achieve, might have changed their approach significantly. We'll probably never know and it's this imponderable that makes the statistical approach less plausible in bringing out a different conclusion to what actually happened.

I have to admit, I have not read through the entire Word document, and I will, but I suspect my questions regarding the Germans' strategic approach will not be answered.
 
All of German intelligence seemed to conspire against them. Their info and estimates of UK fighter production were way off mark, but who would tell Adolf that they were being out produced by around 2 to 1 in fighters, who would believe it? They attacked some airfields successfully but they weren't fighter fields, and their approach to Chain Home makes little sense. Just looking at the locations in the south east it is obvious you need to knock at least 3 stations out to make any sort of hole in the system, then you must keep attacking it. The LW just had a few goes and it didnt seem to have an effect so they gave up.
 
What a lot of these simulations do is allow side A to change the timeline. For example RAF Bumblemere is bombed on the 20th as per history but the simulation then allows side A to bomb RAF Bumblemere on the 21st, 22nd, 23rd and 24th completely knocking it out of action. Ignoring the fact that in the real time line on the 21st the LW bombed the Blodgett aircraft company destroying dozens of Blodgett Bullfire fighters and forcing the factory to disperse.

Having the LW cover a lot of large fields with holes doesn't work once RAF command and control is moved away from the large fields. A Spitfire or Hurricane with +12 psi boost and a constant speed propeller could use a not particularly large paddock.
 

Yup, it changes the timeline, but not the outcome, not if the Germans believe that their attacks on RAF Bumblemere was sufficient to destroy X amount of Bullfire aircraft, when in actual fact, the nominal squadron of fighters at that airfield had been dispersed to a satellite site. And how would they know that? Their Dorknocker Do 57 recon aircraft failed to return, again...
 

The German Navy in fact invented radar. In 1933 nearly 1 year ahead of Watson Watt they were ranging ships and a little time latter picking up aircraft (a seaplane).
The Physicist who was head of the signals branch, a von Kunhold, who had been developing both echo location and passive sonar and working on using to fire artillery at ships.
This was unsatisfactory enough for him to try microwaves and radar (13.5cm) and 50cm. This resulted in Seetakt radar. (Sea Tactical).

See "GEMA birthplace of German Radar" by Harry von Krogge for the dates. von Kunhold wanted to use microwaves incidently.

The 13.5cm microwave radar didn't succeed due to the low power output of the Barkhausen-Kurz Valves (600mw) but they did succeed at 50cm with a split anode magnetron and 60cm with acorn valves/tubes.

The aiming by sonar over several kilometres eventually succeeded though was used in the Type XXIII U-boat to aim without using a periscope. They used a passive array sonar accurate to 0.25 degrees then a final exact range and speed closing data from 3 quick doppler pulses that couldn't be direction found.
 
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