Game changers!

Ah, thanks guys. Never heard of it before.

Hi Siegfried

The allies on the other hand could more easily have lived without it.

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Hmmm, I find that one hard to stomach. In the case of the Atlantic, finding a submarine without it would have been a damn sight harder. It's one thing to roughly know where a submarine might be, but when you have a search area of anywhere up to a hundred miles, it would prove extremely useful. I'm pretty certain that all branches of the British armed forces that used centimetric radar would sternly disagree with you.

H2S was far from having little value; it was a ground mapping radar used for finding the bombers' way to the target more effectively at night; to all intents and purposes, it worked quite well. The problem was it often got 'confused' with too much ground clutter in built up areas, but I've seen screen shots of H2S where the difference in terrain can be easily seen. Such a thing was extremely valuable. In fact, H2S was still in use aboard British jet powered bombers in the Cold War.

Interesting about the Japanese developing centimetric radar; I did not know that. I found some info on their work on the net. Fascinating stuff. Compared to the British scientists Randal and Boot's unit of 1940, the Japanese on of a year earlier had a lower power output, but unfortunately for them (and perhaps fortunately for us), the Japanese military saw little use for the device!

H2S was okay as long as the difference on terrain was very different . it was almost useless in Berlin the only geographic features that it could differentiate was
between ground and water , it was super for a port like Hamburg but in Berlin the only the small lakes could be used as way points

Nomonon images on Google:

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MM

@nuumann,

Don't forget that it is possile to make radar without microwaves. Around 1941 the Royal Navy Started to introduce 50cm radar for fire control of main guns and AAA direction (Type 285, Type 284). It remained the dominant radar for ship to ship fire control till the end of the war. This radar can be formed into a tight beam in an antenna small enough for a destroyer, tight enough to make a PPI display.

The problem was that the British were opperating at 7.5m (type 279) and 3,75 (type 279Y) whose beam is so broad it confuses targets from multiple directions and was poor at detecting a u-boat conning tower.

The Germans had by then been opperating in the 50cm to 80cm range on their Wurzburg and Seetakt radars for years since 1938 and had completely bypassed these longer wavelengths. They had no problems picking up a u-boat with their own radar.

Magnetron 10cm radar was brought in as surface search radarby the RN but it is generally ackknowleged that the 50cm radars would have done the job.

So the British kind of jumped a step. The Germans didn't have the same problem as their radar worked OK and they fitted on a destroyer, they had no great need for sub hunting nor did they have a great need over the horizon navigation. There were those pushing microwaves in the German camp put their arguments didn't get priority. In the end the magnetron ended up having huge advantages not fully appreciated.

I am highly dubious of H2S, the USAAF experience, with carefull analysis of their 3cm H2X version was a CEP of around 5 miles. Louis Brown gives 1.2 or 2 km for the 3cm version. Post war H2S moved down to 1.5cm and a lot more signal processing and may have become usefull. There may have been greater accuracy if used on port/harbour cities.

It seems to have been an aid to visual bombing through partial cloud cover rather than a blind bombing system.

In my opinion there are certain aircraft that played critical roles in the progress of the war. they are not particularly technologically outstanding, but technology is not the aim of the exercise....achieving a strategic outcome is the main aim, and airpower, whether it is the allied view of "strategic" warfare or the more "tactical" continental view is still just an adjunct to the overall campaign.

That said, what aircraft contributed most to victory, or near victory (in the case of the axis)???? this is my list


1) C-47 Dakota. Without it, more than any other single aircraft the whole campaign in the pacific TO would have changed. it enabled major offensives to occur in NG and burma, it enabled China to be kept in the war, without which it would have been far more difficult to advance across the pacific. It allowed many far flung garrisons to be maintained and sustained, and it allowed airborn operations such as Arnhem to be undertaken with unsung and substantial strategic implications. the Dak did more to win the war than any other single type

2) Ju87 Stuka and Il-2 Sturmovik. Both these aircraft transformed the nature of mobile warfare and influenced the outcomes of land battles far in excess of any other type. The allies had similar aircraft in the forms of the typhoons and p-47, but their effect was never quite so profound

3) SBD Dauntless, D3A Val, B5n Kate, Fairey Swordfish. These aircraft, collectively transformed the nature of naval warfare. They rendered battlefleets obsoleter in the traditional sense, and in the case of the allies, in the pacific, delivered critical victories that whilst not known at the time, were the seeds of ultimate victory. in the pacific there was Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons, Santa Cruz and o0thers, that really, would not have been possibloe without the existence of the Dauntless. In the ETO, destruction of the Bismarck, Matapan, Taranto, and a number of lesser battles, delivered victory at sea, that enabled the RN to then concentrate on defeating the greatest Axis threat of the war....its U-Boats. Even here, the Swordfish was instrumental in assisting victory because of its exceptional all weather usage

4) Mosquito Ju88 Airctraft. Were the future of aircraft development with their proven multi-role capabilities. High speed pinpoint accuracy was the future of "strategic" bombing, and should have been adopted by both the Britiah and Americans in their prosecution of the Nazis.


Note that i have not included SE fighters, in this list. Despite being the glamour pin up boys of all air forces fighters actually achieved the least effet on battles. There are one or two exceptions of course....Spitfire/Hurricane in the BoB, zeros/Oscars in the early stages of the pacific, P-51 in the later parts of the war, but even though very important, they are not as critical to the overall outcome as the aircraft I have mentioned. it was on the strengths and weaknesses of the aircraft I have mentioned that the strategic directions of the war were decided.

I know next to nothing about the technical side of radars. I do remember a British Air Ministry concern published about Bomber Command losses due to poor navigation. At one point just before Harris took over entire bomber squadrons simply never arrived at waypoints and never returned to base, later wreckage was found everywhere from Norway to the Danish coast on missions targeting northern France. I can understand the Ministry going a little ape on it, so they appointed Harris to clean it up and make losses return some of the investment for a change.

Anyway the way I was hearing it, H2S proved invaluable in...wait for it...finding the french coast at night. Apparently it was a weather thing, as it was missions were often scrapped because in the time it took to form up the bomber stream over england, weather over the channel had turned bad. Flights of aircraft wound up tossed like pieces of paper trying to cross, lost flights were a regular occurance.
I can't remember the British Ministry figure, but it was a significant proportion of Bomber Command combat losses in the early-mid war, simply losing them over water at night.


Given that kind of age of flight, I really don't picture radar operators as searching for topographical details. It would be pure artform just to be able to figure out where on the coast you are. I don't picture them as anything like a modern digital multimode operating flicking on terrain hugging and searching for a particular building complex on the screen. I really don't think it worked that way. It was just a line of squiggles on a round crt with squares drawn on the glass.

Hi Siegfried,

It seems to have been an aid to visual bombing through partial cloud cover rather than a blind bombing system.

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I think you need to re-read my post and the one above; nowhere did I mention that it was a blind bombing system; although - oddly enough, despite its apparent inadequacies, it was used as such. H2S was a ground mapping radar, and yes, it could differentiate different terrain, but as posted earlier, only if there were big differences in the terrain. As I said, it was practically useless over a city due to clutter. From books I've read, Berlin was always difficult because it was so flat (I've been to Berlin numerous times; you can see the Fernseh Turm - excuse the spelling - for miles! We nicknamed it the Death Star!).

Despite your reluctance to accept the value of H2S, it certainly aided in improving the RAF's ability to find thits target in night bombing. They considered it a big breakthrough in what they were doing. Whilst your knowledge of the technical details is impressive; you need to read some books on the operaytional side of the subject. Might I suggest "Bomber Command" by Max Hastings?

davparlr said:

The C-46, although there was not as many available at the start of the war. The C-46 was more capable.

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The C-46 was a great hauler with twice the load lifting capacity of a C-47. It also had a longer range but was a great gas guzzler. The problem with the C-46 is that none were made with self sealing tanks. So, if you were going into a defended drop zone you shouldn't be in a C-46 for health reasons.

With regards to the C-47 and Ju-52: I know I am going against the trend here, but if those were not available, there would've been other designs to replace them. They are both great planes esp. the C-47, but I don't think they were game changers.

Its a case of being in the right place at the right time. The aircraft were certainly replaceable as designs, but it would have taken time to do that, then set up a production line, and get the numbers to make a difference. Without them, whole offensives crucial to the outcome of the war would have been either lost, or not fought at all. In the case of the germans, it was the limitations of the aircraft that probably cost them the war. Ju52s were too short ranged and too limited in numbers to be properly deployed and used at Stalingrad ( i am not saying there are many aircraft that could do better, but the Ju52 was an old and limited design by 1942) . Forced by their range limitations to be deployed too far forward to reach Stalingrad (and it also happened elsewhere, but less dramatically), it became ipossible to provide proper servicing, maintenance, crew resting facilities and traffic control to get anywhere near the tonnages needed by 6th Army. I would call that a game changer by any standard. And unfortunately for the germans, the expedients they adopted to try and circumvent these weaknesses in their main transport aircraft, like press ganging bombers into the trasnsport role proved inadequate, both in terms of the numbers available, and in terms of the individual lift capabilities of the aircraft so used.

In the case of the C-47, there was at least an alternative....the C-46, though this aircraft suffered certain limitations that made it less than ideal for certain roles. In any event, the workhorse of the allied transport efforts remained the C-47 throughout the war, and had a direct influence on the outcome of certain operations. Only because i know operations in the pacific better than Europe do i concentrate on that TO, however suffice it to say that without the C-47, the outcome would have been far longer to achieve and far more costly. The "biscuit bombers" enabled a sustained offensive to be maintained against the japanese at a time when the US Navy was still recovering and not yet quite up to the task of cutting loose on the Japanese. By maintaining the pressure on the japanese across multiple fronts, the Japanese were prevented from concentrating their forces and consolidating their early victories. Given the stubborn defences encountered later in the war, at Okinawa and Iwo, it was just as well that the Japanese were not given an extra year or 18 months to prepare their defences whilst they stilol had a navy and airforce to contest the control of the seas.

And finally, the destruction of the Japanese mainland armies was the product of a soviet offensive into manchuria, made possible by the operations of its c-47 equipped transport arm. It remains the most rapid and complete defeat of an enemy force and the conquest of the biggest land area, in history, all made possible by aggressive use of transport aircraft. Something like the combined land area of all of western europe was overrun in less than a week, from memory (or was it a month....i forget)

So I agree that the aircraft were replaceable, but not in the time frame of the war, And I dont agree that the role they fulfilled was not a game changer

I largely agree with your post, parsifal, but I have to say, I honestly don't think the C-47 itself was a game changer. It most certainly deserves to be in the list you posted above - and I agree with the list, but these were aircraft that played critical roles in the course of the war, historic because they were good at what they did. To this list you could add the likes of the de Havilland Tiger Moth, the Airspeed Oxford, the Stearman Kaydet etc for the same reason.

In my opinion, a 'game changer', as Kryten put it, changed the tactics of the enemy and forced new designs through to counter the new threat, i.e. changed the face of the war, technology etc. For example, the entire DC-3 family would be more appropriate, rather than just the C-47; the DC-3 was a game changer because after it entered airline service, airlines could be categorised in either one of two ways; those that operated DC-3s or those that didn't. Those without DC-3s would end up in one of two situations, they would either: go out of business, or buy DC-3s. To me that's a game changer.

Sure, the C-47 delivered vast numbers of Allied toops to the different battlefields, but that was its job and the enemy were expecting that; the 'game changer' with regards to a battlefield scenario that's discussed in the posts was the difference having those troops there to fight made to the outcome of the battle, not really how they were transported to the battlefield. If this was the case, then the humble bicycle, a random horse encountered along the way to ease walking if the drop zone was missed, the landing craft for seaborne invasions, even the humble boot then becomes a game changer.

All these things aided the troops to get to the fight, as you would expect them to do so in a warzone. That doesn't make them game changers in the strictest sense of the term. Their impact on the enemy's tactics was minimal as individual items (although it would be pretty rotten to go to war in flip flops instead of boots!), but the fact the troops were there fighting certainly tipped the balance in their favour.

An interesting thing about the Ju 52/3m; during the Spanish Civil War, without it, Franco's army would have been stranded at their training camp in North Africa and the war might not have gone the way the fascists wanted it to. What's more, the transports were Lufthansa examples!

We also have the the difference between the "idea" and the actual "effect". The British were very big on dual purpose bomber/transport planes during the late 20s and 30s. Planes that could bomb or transport 1 to 2 squads of equipped troops to far reaches of the empire. More for policing the Empire and a quick reinforcement of a local garrison than a grand tactical or strategic move against a powerful opponent. Granted they needed a lot fuel stops (which the British had) and a lot of planes (which they did not) to move a really useful number of troops. But the idea was there and planes were built to meet the requirement. The Ju-52 was the first plane to show that the idea really could work. The C-47 allowed to to work over longer ranges or at higher tonnages per day/per plane. The C-47 did change the way game was played by more by degree. And with just a few years between the Spanish civil war and the start of WW II not all the lessons had been fully absorbed.

riacrato said:

With regards to the C-47 and Ju-52: I know I am going against the trend here, but if those were not available, there would've been other designs to replace them. They are both great planes esp. the C-47, but I don't think they were game changers.

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The Ju 52 was a good transport for short or shorter-medium missions but it was inadequate in a number of ways:

1 Range.
2 Fuel efficiency; it was good at transporting goods 600 km or so but after that it would need to refuel at its destination to return and that means either reduced load or ground transport carrying the fuel or other Ju 52 shuttling fuel.
3 Volume of the fuselage would bulk out.
4 Slow and easy to intercept.

Of course the Luftwaffe had a supreme transport in the Ju 252 which could carry 2.5 tons from Berlin to Stalingrad, evacuate a light load of wounded all without refueling.
It could carry 4 tons of fuel to Nth Africa from Germany and return without refueling. In needs be it could lift 7.5 tons, I think even 9 tons if overloaded on a hardened runway.

Unfortunately the aircraft was delayed by a development suspension and then re-engineering for the trapoklappe. Much better than the DC3/C47 and even better by a small margin than the C46 in terms of fuel burn. It even had armament.

The Ar 232 was another supreme transport: it could take-off and land in 200m and taxi over 2m ditches.

The problem was that the only aircraft the Luftwaffe had in quantity was the Ju 52 and for some of its supply missions in Nth Africa and the Soviet Union it was inadequate.

This information is from "Hitler's Pre-Emptive War" by Henrik Lunde.

Largest air transport operation in military history up to that time.
582 transport aircraft (mostly Ju-52s) flew 13,018 sorties.
29,280 troops delivered. 21% of total troops delivered.
2,376 tons of supplies delivered.

Norway sealift. For comparison purposes.
about 370 merchant ships. 21 of which were sunk.
107,581 troops delivered.
109,400 tons of supplies delivered.
20,339 vehicles delivered.
16,102 horses delivered.

Good points Siegfried; those German transports were awesome aircraft; especially the 'Klapotrappe' idea. Sorry shortround6, still not convinced; your post just tells me that the C-47 did what the Ju 52 had done, but just a bit better; not really a 'game changer' in the strictest sense of the term. My reference to the Ju 52 was specifically to the Lufthansa examples expressly sent from Germany for airlifting Franco's army into Spain from North Africa, not to their use as a bomber/transport. Lufthansa is Germany's national airline. The bomber/transport was not the best in an actual combat arena, because it did both jobs rather poorly compared to a dedicated type. Clearly not a game changer.

".... the destruction of the Japanese mainland armies was the product of a soviet offensive into manchuria, made possible by the operations of its c-47 equipped transport arm. It remains the most rapid and complete defeat of an enemy force and the conquest of the biggest land area, in history, all made possible by aggressive use of transport aircraft. Something like the combined land area of all of western europe was overrun in less than a week, from memory (or was it a month...




".... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Manchuria"

(August Storm)

Yeah Siegfried comes up with some good posts. Kudos mate.

soviet offensive into manchuria, made possible by the operations of its c-47 equipped transport arm

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I doubt that. By August 1945 the Soviet Army was well equipped with vehicles of all types and had plenty of artillery. You don't supply a large mechanized force by air transport. Not even today when we have C5 and C17 transport aircraft.

April 1940 Heer offensive operations in western and northern Norway were conducted almost entirely with light infantry. A heavy attack might be supported by a few mortars or 75mm mountain howitzers. That's the sort of operation which can be supplied by air.

@DB "... soviet offensive into manchuria, made possible by the operations of its c-47 equipped transport arm
I doubt that"

C-47's weren't the only reason for success - but the air support the Soviets had available allowed them to "run" the three prongs of their strike flat out and not worry about the armour outrunning supply - as well as air drops at key bridgeheads. The whole operation was masterfully planned = up there with Normandy IMHO.

MM