Bombers defensive armament: a misconceived idea?

[wmaxt]

You know as defesive armament it was a good Idea - however the idea of unescorted bombers was ludicriss. A sad part of this was that after escort fighters were flying the bombers became bait to get the German aircraft where they could be destroyed.

 

[Anonymous]

The heavily armed A-8/R2's and 3's constantly had B-17 gunners rounds bouncing off them as they pressed in... It freaked the bomber crews out..... Kinda surprised u put a goof in like that RG... Normally ur very accurate....

There were some A-8's (R2's and R3's) that were very heavily armored from the front, specifically modified for bomber attack. Even so, .50 rounds would only "bounce off" if they hit the armor at a sufficient angle. If they hit it directly they would penetrate. Since most gunners would be shooting at the plane's nose (a very hard shot), the odds of oblique hits are very high, so yes they might well see some tracers bounce off, but quite likely other rounds were penetrating the engine or the canopy.

The .50 API would penetrate up to 19mm's of homogonous steel in WWII (more today), which was far more than any fighter carried. Against face hardened armor, it would penetrate more than half that thickness, and the first hit would probably shatter the face hardening allowing subsiquent rounds to fully penetrate.

Day fighters generally attacked at very high relative speeds, making it very hard to hit them. Night fighters on the other hand, hung behind or below the target seeking a perfect firing position and then opened up. In this situation, if the gunner sees the fighter, it would have a very good chance of scoring hits compared to the daylight situation and the odds of scoring on the canopy front or engine would be a real concern to the night fighter pilot. If he is confident the rounds will not penetrate the canopy armor glass or engine blocks, he is much more likely to press home his attack.

=S=

Lunatic

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

you gotta love that pic though..........

 

[cheddar cheese]

Yeah it is pretty cool.

 

[the lancaster kicks ass]

A sad part of this was that after escort fighters were flying the bombers became bait to get the German aircraft where they could be destroyed.

that was a risk they had to take, if the escort fighters were up to it, the bombers'd be safe...........

 

[Anonymous]

A sad part of this was that after escort fighters were flying the bombers became bait to get the German aircraft where they could be destroyed.

that was a risk they had to take, if the escort fighters were up to it, the bombers'd be safe...........

Actually, escort never really worked. If the fighters stayed with the bombers, the enemy would succeed in penatrating the fighter screen and reaching the bombers. This is true in Fighter Ace (the game) and it was true in real life. By the time the escorting fighters can engage the attackers, they are already hitting the bombers.

To be successful, the fighters must sweep an area in front of the bombers, both high and low, and clear the path. There is a famous story about how when Gen.'s Spaatz and Doolittle took over the 8th Airforce from Eaker just before Operation Pointblank, their was the pharase "stay with the bomber" (or something to that effect) written on the chalkboard in the fighter ops briefing room. Doolittle (or Spaatz) scratched that out and replaced it with "kill the Luftwaffe'" (or something to that effect). He then instituted phased escort, where instead of hugging the bombers, the fighters would fly at speed, join the bombers for a short period of escort, and then move on to sweep for fighters and finally to raid them low. Sptifires covered the first part of the mission out to the coast of France, P-47's then took over covering for the next 150-200 miles, then P-38's and P-51's from there on.

This is where the P-51 shined. German fighters already had poor endurance (range), and if they were to cruise while trying to setup for their attacks on bomber formations, they were easy meat for the P-51's. P-51's had a fast cruise speed of 395 mph, where the German fighters cruise speeds were around 250 mph or slower. This meant that if the German fighters were at cruising speed, the P-51's would slaughter them, so they had to fly in rich mode, giving them even less endurance, and making thier operations extremely predictable as they had to take off and head strait for the bombers. Within a few months the Luftwaffe' was all but finished.

People really tend to underestimate the P-51 because of various "specs". In real-life terms it was an excellent fighter, able to achieve the advantage for a number of reasons. If you compare it in a "fair fight" where both it and the enemy start at equal altitudes and speeds, it does not fair so well. But this is very misleading, the P-51 was all about being able to start at the advantage.

=S=

Lunatic

 

[wmaxt]

A sad part of this was that after escort fighters were flying the bombers became bait to get the German aircraft where they could be destroyed.

that was a risk they had to take, if the escort fighters were up to it, the bombers'd be safe...........

Actually, escort never really worked. If the fighters stayed with the bombers, the enemy would succeed in penatrating the fighter screen and reaching the bombers. This is true in Fighter Ace (the game) and it was true in real life. By the time the escorting fighters can engage the attackers, they are already hitting the bombers.

To be successful, the fighters must sweep an area in front of the bombers, both high and low, and clear the path. There is a famous story about how when Gen.'s Spaatz and Doolittle took over the 8th Airforce from Eaker just before Operation Pointblank, their was the pharase "stay with the bomber" (or something to that effect) written on the chalkboard in the fighter ops briefing room. Doolittle (or Spaatz) scratched that out and replaced it with "kill the Luftwaffe'" (or something to that effect). He then instituted phased escort, where instead of hugging the bombers, the fighters would fly at speed, join the bombers for a short period of escort, and then move on to sweep for fighters and finally to raid them low. Sptifires covered the first part of the mission out to the coast of France, P-47's then took over covering for the next 150-200 miles, then P-38's and P-51's from there on.

This is where the P-51 shined. German fighters already had poor endurance (range), and if they were to cruise while trying to setup for their attacks on bomber formations, they were easy meat for the P-51's. P-51's had a fast cruise speed of 395 mph, where the German fighters cruise speeds were around 250 mph or slower. This meant that if the German fighters were at cruising speed, the P-51's would slaughter them, so they had to fly in rich mode, giving them even less endurance, and making thier operations extremely predictable as they had to take off and head strait for the bombers. Within a few months the Luftwaffe' was all but finished.

People really tend to underestimate the P-51 because of various "specs". In real-life terms it was an excellent fighter, able to achieve the advantage for a number of reasons. If you compare it in a "fair fight" where both it and the enemy start at equal altitudes and speeds, it does not fair so well. But this is very misleading, the P-51 was all about being able to start at the advantage.

=S=

Lunatic

Cruise on the P-51 was less than 300mph like all WWII fighters. Cruise fast or not is a partial throttle setting that will give a max range/max speed compramise. Often the cruise was dependant on the aircraft that was being escorted and the escort orders ie. close escort or able to sweep ahead/leave the bombers to persue. The tactics that allowed the fighters to roam made a tremendous difference in both overall effect and in decimation of enemy aircraft. Speeds of over 300 were not used until enemy contact or after being freed from the bombers and it was determined that fuel existed for fast fighter sweeps. It is also interesting that with these tactics and the far greater numbers of P-51s they never bettered the Close support loss percentages of the P-38s of 4/5%

 

[Anonymous]

Cruise on the P-51 was less than 300mph like all WWII fighters. Cruise fast or not is a partial throttle setting that will give a max range/max speed compramise. Often the cruise was dependant on the aircraft that was being escorted and the escort orders ie. close escort or able to sweep ahead/leave the bombers to persue. The tactics that allowed the fighters to roam made a tremendous difference in both overall effect and in decimation of enemy aircraft. Speeds of over 300 were not used until enemy contact or after being freed from the bombers and it was determined that fuel existed for fast fighter sweeps. It is also interesting that with these tactics and the far greater numbers of P-51s they never bettered the Close support loss percentages of the P-38s of 4/5%

That is partially correct. The P-51D had a cruise speed of 275 mph yeilding an 1180 mile range, or at 325 mph an ~1050 mile range. But it also had two fast cruise speeds; at 370 mph the range was ~1000 miles, at 395 mph the range was reduced to ~950 miles (some sources give fast cruise ranges of 50 miles less than these figures). Cruise being defined as running in auto-lean mode as opposed to auto rich mode (which gobbles fuel).

Your statement about cruise being a partial throttle setting is incorrect. Cruising was (on most planes) done using a lean fuel mixture setting (usually refered to as "auto-lean" for American planes which had automatic mixture controls), where combat is done using rich fuel mixture settings ("auto-rich"). Auto-Lean settings keep the plugs from fouling and are more economical but limit the available boost and quick throttle changes because of detonation issues. Auto-Rich settings allow higher boosts and more agressive throttle handling, but gobble fuel and, espeically at partial throttle settings, tend to foul plugs.

On your beloved P-38, until very late in the J series, this was a major problem because going from auto-lean to auto-rich was more complicated than on most other fighters (and there were two sets of controls) and part of a long series of steps involved in going from cruise to combat condition. Many P-38's were lost when bounced because the pilot was so busy trying to get into combat configuration that no evasive action was taken at all, making them a sitting duck for the attacking fighter.

Because the range curve is so little effected by the speed I've seen many different cruise speed ratings for the P-51.

275 mph <--- click to see site
325 mph
363 mph

And of course, the 395 mph cruise info:

Specification of the P-51D-25-NA:

One 1695 hp Packard Merlin V-1650-7 twelve-cylinder Vee liquid-cooled engine. Maximum speed: 395 mph at 5000 feet, 416 mph at 10,000 feet, 424 mph at 20,000 feet, 437 mph at 25,000 feet. Range was 950 miles at 395 mph at 25,000 feet (clean), 2300 miles with maximum fuel (including drop tanks) of 489 US gallons under most economical cruise conditions. Initial climb rate was 3475 feet per minute. An altitude of 5000 feet could be reached in 1.7 minutes, 10,000 feet in 3.3 minutes, 20,000 feet in 7.3 minutes. Service ceiling was 41,900 feet.
http://home.att.net/~jbaugher1/p51_10.html

That jbaugher site is very well respected. However, I personally go by the NA documents which are available at the Cal Tech library (or at least they were about 20 years ago). They had charts showing speed vs. fuel consumption in the auto-lean and auto-rich settings at different altitudes. Next time I am in the LA area and have some free time, I'm planning to go back to the libarary and see if I can photo the pages (they are in a huge format in binders, and you have to ask to see them by appointment unless they are on display in which case they're in glass cases).

It should be noted that 250 mph is the recommended maximum cruise speed for civilian Mustangs, but this is to prolong engine life (about 2200 rpms at low hg), something that was not a concern during WWII for combat aircraft. Also, this is done at 10,000 feet, which greatly reduces the cruise speed. Few civilian P-51's even have O2 equipment.

=S=

Lunatic

 

[TheMustangRider]

Escort fighters being useless defending heavy bombers, where did you get that from? Pilots from both sides agree that it was the use of long range fighters that changed the curse of the war for the USAAF and officials records shows that the loss of heavy bomber droped 70% from the spring of 1944 until the the end of the war.

 

[drgondog]

To echo a point already made, the aim of the USAAF's 'Combat Box' was not to ensure the accuracy of individual gunners when engaging German interceptors. Like the box barrage used by German flak batteries, and by every surface fleet of WW2, it was designed to ensure the maximum amount of lead in the air during an inteceptors pass, hopefully crippling it. IMHO, the mistake of the USAAF was in underestimating the power of contemporary fighter armament. Against six- or eight gun fighters, such as the USAAF used, the Combat Box may well have succeeded, as each fighter would need to make a number of passes to destroy a B-17 sized target. However, cannon-armed LW fighter, especially the Fw190, were capable of destroying or seriously damaging a heavy bomber in one short pass, thereby negating the Combat Box principle.

.

While the defensive firepower was ultimately not enough - the Combat Box formation had two objectives. First to achieve higher concentrations of bombs over the smallest formation footprint. The second was to uncover and concentrate the most possible defensive fire on attacking fighters.

Both of these obejectives were achieved over alternative approaches.

One additional benefit to the staggered combat box formation is that few bombers seen from the ground were actually at the same altitude - with a couple of thousand feet between the high flight of the high formation to the low flight of the low formation. This forced many variations on fusing and diluted the volume of fire 'effectiveness' as well as forced German gunners to figure out the which formations were at which altitudes.

If for example the formations had not been flown in eschelon up or down, instead flying at same altitude, then the volume of space containing the bombers would be much smaller and making German fusing that much easier and more effective.

 

[Colin1]

1. The Luftwaffe rather saw speed and maneuverability of its medium bombers to make interception an unlikely event - even if this was a pre world war two notion-.

2. I also happen to have rear gunner camera footage of a Stuka, where a Spitfire tailing the dive bomber is set on fire and disengaes in a cloud of smoke and fire

3. Still, the failure of the USAAF heavies was a disaster which surpassed that of the Germans during the Battle of Britain, both in terms of bombers and aircrews lost.

4. Meeting with USAAF veterans, they accepted the claims of the USAAF gunners reached levels of insanity. Example: they could return claiming to have shot down 40 fighters, while during the complete bombing run they were intercepted in total by 35 fighters.

What are your thoughts?

1. Germany didn't adopt speed and manoeuvrability as a philosophy for their bomber designs, they simply hadn't designed or developed a heavy strategic bomber.
When they bombed Britain in 1940, they used what they had and what they had was a corps of bombers designed to support blitzkrieg. You fail to mention the glaringly obvious ie that the German bomber offensive failed. Certainly, they knocked out dozens of interceptors but they just couldn't bomb us hard enough or intensely enough to knock us out completely.

2. Carrying out a stern attack on the only other aspect in which an otherwise poorly-defended aircraft could defend itself, in an interceptor with lots of fragile coolant pipes, is probably asking for it.

3. Aren't we forgetting a couple of things here

(a.) economies of scale: A 'big effort' over London in 1940 would have looked a tiddler heading out over Germany in 1944; with a similarly proportionate elevation in the number of defending fighters surely you are going to see more aircraft shot down?

(b.) armament: as you pointed out yourself, in 1940 cannons were generally the exception, in 1944 not only were they the rule but the Luftwaffe were coming up with specialised ways of deploying them eg the Sturmbock Fw190. Underwing ordnance in the various forms of rocketry were used and whatever their effectiveness, the point is they weren't available in 1940. USAAF heavy machine guns, when they did find the target would often meet with heavily armoured protection.

4. I'm not disputing exaggerated claims but I think 'insanity' is a little excessive; you imagine a fighter rolling through a defensive box being hit by the waist gunner on the side where the fighter entered the box "Yo, chalk one up". The same fighter is tagged again, maybe by the dorsal gunner of a bomber in the middle of the box, he says the same thing and finally by the Sperry operator of a bomber on the side where the fighter exits the box and it's perhaps a little easier to see why things got confused. In a fight-or-die situation like that I can't see many gunners wondering if someone else possibly got him before he did and discounting the kill.

 

[Kurfürst]

1. Germany didn't adopt speed and manoeuvrability as a philosophy for their bomber designs,

They both actually. All German bombers at the start of the war and in Spain were fast enough to outrun or at least be as fast as the biplane fighters of the 1930s - it worked pretty well in Poland BTW. The very fast and agile and versatile Ju 88 also comes into mind, which was probably the finest example of this concept in Germany, and becoming the most important German bomber in the second half of the war. But its equally obvious that the older Do 17 was also optimized for speed, for example.

Udet is correct to note that wasn't only a German notion at the time, generally, air forces saw the monoplane bomber a threat that 'always gets through'.

they simply hadn't designed or developed a heavy strategic bomber.

They had - the He 177 comes to mind, very much of a strategic heavy bomber in every sense of the word indeed.

When they bombed Britain in 1940, they used what they had and what they had was a corps of bombers designed to support blitzkrieg.

The only German bomber I know of that was designed to support the 'Blitzkrieg' as a tactical bomber was the Ju 87 Stuka. But Stukas were only a fraction of the bomber force.

All the others - He 111s, Do 17s, Ju 88s and older Ju86s - were characterized by long range, some very serious navigational aids for blind bombing at night, and respectable bombload for the time.

None of these are needed for tactical support, as far capability goes, the Germans were the best equipped in 1939 for any sort of 'strategic' air war - they had advanced long ranged bombers (for the time), and plenty of them.

It is another matter that in 1940 these were primarly used to cut off communications, hinder deployment of the troops, bombing down marshalling yards and lines of communication behind the frontlines but also in the Hinterland - ie. on the operation level, but its somewhat difficult to criticize them for this, given the results which were stunning.

You fail to mention the glaringly obvious ie that the German bomber offensive failed. Certainly, they knocked out dozens of interceptors but they just couldn't bomb us hard enough or intensely enought to knock us out completely.

By that definition, all bomber offensives of WW2 failed, and with them, Douhet's theory as well. Air Power did not win wars, it only helped in winning them.

 

[Colin1]

1. All German bombers at the start of the war and in Spain were fast enough to outrun or at least be as fast as the biplane fighters of the 1930s - it worked pretty well in Poland BTW. The very fast and agile and versatile Ju 88 also comes into mind, which was probably the finest example of this concept in Germany, and becoming the most important German bomber in the second half of the war. But its equally obvious that the older Do 17 was also optimized for speed, for example.

They had - the He 177 comes to mind, very much of a strategic heavy bomber in every sense of the word indeed.

2. It is another matter that in 1940 these were primarily used to cut off communications, hinder deployment of the troops, bombing down marshalling yards and lines of communication behind the frontlines but also in the Hinterland - ie. on the operation level...

3. By that definition, all bomber offensives of WW2 failed, and with them, Douhet's theory as well.

4. Air Power did not win wars, it only helped in winning them.

1. Within the context of the Battle of Britain, speed and manoevrability were not decisive, the trade-off for speed and manoevrability is a lighter bomb load, that's why the Luftwaffe couldn't hit us hard enough and what defined the Dorniers and Heinkels as being geared to support blitzkrieg. Germany built her fleet of medium bombers to support blitzkrieg.

You mention development of the He177, well, why do you think it was developed? What lessons do you think the Luftwaffe had learned from attempting dedicated strategic bombing with a fleet of medium bombers, in order to inaugurate such a project?

2. It is another matter that in 1940 these were primarily used to...?
I don't understand how their primary task could be considered 'another matter'. Their 'primary task' makes them sound ominously good at supporting blitzkrieg...

3. Hiroshima? Nagasaki? Taking Denmark's surrender by flying bombers over Copenhagen (without dropping a single bomb)?

4. I think you just echoed the sentiments of every theatre commander in history who had air power at his disposal.

 

[Kurfürst]

1. Within the context of the Battle of Britain, speed and manoevrability were not decisive, the trade-off for speed and manoevrability is a lighter bomb load, that's why the Luftwaffe couldn't hit us hard enough and what defined the Dorniers and Heinkels as being geared to support blitzkrieg. Germany built her fleet of medium bombers to support blitzkrieg.

The reasoning is sound about the lighter bombload, but on the other hand its just not true. Even the early war variants of the He 111 could carry 2000 kg internally, which was actually slightly more what the RAF's medium bombers like the Wellington and Hampden - there were no meaningful heavy bombers around at the time - could carry (4000 lbs or 1814 kg), the third most numerous type, the Blenheim, could carry IIRC a mere 600 kg.

The Ju 88 could carry up to loads of 3000 kg, the Heinkel could carry later 2500 kg, which was further increased later on to 3+ tons.

An interesting comparison can be made with contemporary (produced from July 1940) B-17C, which was very much unlike the later ones we know of. It carried just four .50 caliber guns in single mounts and not yet in powered turrets, and maximum internal bomb load was 4800 lbs (2179 kg), practically that of the contemporary He 111P/H's (2000 kg). It was, in effect, a very long ranged medium bomber from the start.

The idea that these LW bombers carried less bombload in 1939/40 than the typical foreign bombers of the time is simply not true. Its only somewhat true in some comparisons for the Do 17, but that was an older design, which although was very advanced for its time, was already considered obsolete by 1940 and was being withdrawn from front-line service. This was replaced by a new Dornier design, the twin engined Do 217, which fell in size somewhere between medium and heavy bombers, carried a very heavy bombload (4000 kg or 8800 lbs, 2500 kg internally) and was rather fast for a bomber at the same time.

These bombers were not designed with direct support of the army in mind - long range, significant bombload, advanced bomb sights and blind bombing equipment makes it clear - although they were capable of that, just as B-17s and Lancasters were used in tactical roles over Normandy. I believe Corum has throughly adressed the false notion of the Luftwaffe as a 'tactical support' force.

The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1918-1940 Book Reviews

You mention development of the He177, well, why do you think it was developed? What lessons do you think the Luftwaffe had learned from attempting dedicated strategic bombing with a fleet of medium bombers, in order to inaugurate such a project?

Again, the reasoning is fine, but the fact is that the He 177 goes back to a pre-war specification ('Bomber A') specifying for a high speed, extremly high range (6600+ km) heavy bomber with also some dive bombing capability. The prototype flew by November 1939.

In short, the He 177s development has nothing to do with performance the Luftwaffe's medium bombers at time.

 

[BombTaxi]

Woah, I think this was one of the first five threads I posted in when I joined this board 4-and-a-bit years ago 8)

The fallacy, IMHO, of many arguments regarding the 'tactical' nature of the LW bomber arm, is that they focus on equipment rather than employment. As I see it, the LW employed it's bombers in 'tactical' roles designed to secure strategic objectives. Examples which spring to mind are the bombing of 11 Group airfields to secure air superiority during the BoB, and the concerted joint effort with the Italians against the Pedestal convoy, with the aim of securing Malta's collapse. The enemy's material was attacked directly in order to secure a strategic advantage in a specific theatre.

The Allied strategic bombing campaign, on the other hand, struck at the enemy's means of production and at distribution and C3I infrastructures as a means of reducing the Axis capacity to wage war in all theatres simultaneously. To my mind, there is no doubt that the Allied approach was more efficient, as attacking production/distribution nodes has a more widespread effect than simply attacking the material on the front line.

Having said that, there were cross-overs between the two doctrines - the Blitz foreshadowed the tactics that the RAF would employ against German cities, and Bomber Command's strikes on individual major surface units of the Kriegsmarine echoed German concepts of making tactical strikes for overall strategic advantage.

The Germans obviously anticipated the need to for bombers to make deep penetrations of hostile airspace - I would argue that this is at least part of the origins of the doctrine that flew Bf110s as close escort to bombers during the BoB. As such, they must have been expecting to make some kind of 'strategic' attack far beyond enemy lines - something that a strictly 'tactical' air force would be less likely to do.

What I am trying to say, I suppose, is that both sides engaged in 'strategic' bombing during the war, but thier definition of 'strategic' bombing differed. I would also argue that although German bombers were equivalent in performance to Allied types in the first few years of the war, they eventually fell behind. I believe this is because Germany invested much more effort in her fighters. As they needed to secure total air superiority to facilitate Blitzkrieg, then needed to protect the Reich from 24-hour bombing raids, this focus is perfectly understandable, and almost inevitable.

Lecture over folks 8)

BT

 

[Waynos]

Germany could have had an operational 4 engined heavy before the RAF, remember the Do 19. I believe it was killed for political or doctrinal reasons rather than for any shortcoming of the plane itself? I wonder how the BoB might have looked with this aircraft in LW service in large numbers?

Also the RAF's 'heavy' bomber at that time was the Whitley, and I think that both this and the Wellington carried a bigger load than the He-111, but I'll give you the Hampden and Blenheim without any argument. Ironically the Blenheim was the first British bomber designed to use speed and agility as its primary defence. With the abandonment of the Hawker P.1005 after the prototype was bombed we only had the Mosquito which got this right.

 

[Colin1]

...As I see it, the LW employed it's bombers in 'tactical' roles designed to secure strategic objectives. Examples which spring to mind are the bombing of 11 Group airfields to secure air superiority during the BoB, and the concerted joint effort with the Italians against the Pedestal convoy, with the aim of securing Malta's collapse. The enemy's material was attacked directly in order to secure a strategic advantage in a specific theatre...

That does resemble the doctrine underpinning blitzkrieg, the difference with the attack on the British mainland being that the rest of the blitzkrieg components couldn't roll forwards and take advantage of the temporarily incapacitated airfields, with the English Channel being in the way.

It's a measure of a good debate though, if it's lasted this long

 

[Kurfürst]

Germany could have had an operational 4 engined heavy before the RAF, remember the Do 19. I believe it was killed for political or doctrinal reasons rather than for any shortcoming of the plane itself? I wonder how the BoB might have looked with this aircraft in LW service in large numbers?

I don't think it would give them any advantage, the plane itself was a rather outfashioned design - maximum internal bombload was only 1600 kg, less than that of the Heinkel 111 actually, although I have seen sources that it could carry 3000 kg (which is still not very different from what the Ju 88/He111 was capable of). Its speed was also much inferior at a mere 315 km/h, although it had long range, but there would be no gain against Britain, which was well within range of the Luftwaffe's existing medium bombers at the time.

Also the RAF's 'heavy' bomber at that time was the Whitley, and I think that both this and the Wellington carried a bigger load than the He-111, but I'll give you the Hampden and Blenheim without any argument.

From what I gathered, the early Wellington could carry 2041 kg (later versions the same or less) , same as the Heinkel 111 (2000 kg, though I believe by the BoB the 111 could carry 2500 kg externally). The only advantage in payload it had was its longer range, 4100 km, altough bombload had to be drastically reduced in this case to just 454 kg, and with 2041 km it was very similiar to the Heinkel.

The Whitley could carry 3175 kg maximum, but this was possible for over very short ranges only (756 km), while its long range bombload was only 1360 kg with a range of 2650km. This was actually inferior to the Heinkel's long range load, given for the H-2 variant as 2,000 kg payload to a range of 2340 km. The H-2 only entered service after the BoB, but I believe its internal tankage was the same, it only differed from the earlier variants in being able to use half of the internal bomb bay to place an extra fuel tank to it, with reduced bombload, and earlier variants would be very much the same.

The Hempden could carry 1814 kg as maximum load, though range was somewhat less than that of the others at 1700 km or so.

There were six Squadrons of Whitleys (ie. roughly 70 operational planes) and 8 Squadrosn of Wellingtons (ie. roughly 100 operational bombers) and a similiar number of Hampdens in 8 Squadrons in the RAF at the start of the war. The rest were Blenheims AFAIK, fast but definietely lacking in payload and survivability.

So we are talking about 250-300 more or less comparable medium bomber aircraft in the RAF at the start of the war, against the balance of some 705 He 111s and 533 Dornier 17s the Luftwaffe had; the Ju 88 was only coming into service, and was available in very limited numbers in September 1939, though it became the second most important type by mid-1940.

The above is just a brief overview as to how the world air forces compared in strategic capability, and I think its understandable why I find it somewhat revolting to characterize the Luftwaffe, the air force that had arguably the most potent strategic bomber capacity at the start of the war, a 'tactical' air force.