How good was the soviet air force?

There are also phases to both R&D and production, with one only gradually taking over from another and considerable overlap. Prototype leads to flight testing, which often reveals problems so they go back to design and sometimes research (wind tunnel etc.). For example, how many aircraft with close cowl or experimental / new cooling systems had to have that part redesigned or ditched after initial flight testing? How many aircraft turned out to need longer fuselages or a change in wing size?

This is often a critical phase because quite often, prototypes crash. The test pilots that flew these early prototypes must have been a uniquely brave and / or reckless type of men. If one or more of the early prototypes crash, this can set back a program by months or even years, or can lead to it's cancellation even if it was a promising design.

Then there is the early phase of limited series production (a half dozen to a couple of score aircraft) and combat testing. This usually (always?) reveals more problems that need correcting. Whether these problems are minor, moderate, or severe, and simple, routine, or easy to fix (you could have moderate problems which are very hard to fix, and serious problems which are easy to fix) then determines how long before the aircraft goes into large scale production. Often a host of minor or moderate problems persist into the production phase (and then there are also often issues with transitioning to production). I think this third phase is one of the most important ones and could (and still can) make or break many aircraft programs, especially if they take too long or are rushed.

And in WW2, you needed to get that point pretty quickly if the aircraft was going to matter in the war. New designs that went into production in 1944 are already getting close to too late, especially for the Axis powers.

But sometimes aircraft industry / military decision-makers either bypassed or rushed this 'limited production with ongoing testing' third phase, and ordered a new aircraft either strait into full scale production based on the prototype(s), or while still in the middle of testing and before major problems were resolved. This often had dire consequences. A good example of that is the SB2C, but there are many others. He 177 seems to be one of these types for the Germans. This typically means that they build hundreds or even thousands of aircraft that either aren't operationally viable, or which require extensive modifications before they can be made viable. Quite often it means you just made a fleet of hangar queens, target tugs, or dodgy trainers.

I would generally agree with z42 that there seemed to have been a serious lag for the Germans in producing a second or third generation of viable military aircraft, other than the Fw 190.

The first generation had so many good designs, that many of them remained in use through the war, but that also meant that the strategic limitations built in to 1930s design theory were never really surpassed, at least not to the point of true full scale production (again with the exception of the Fw 190).

It was already clear in 1940-41 that they really needed to replace the Stuka and the Bf 110, and they needed something entirely new in the medium-heavy bomber role to replace He 111 / Do 17 / Do 217 etc.

The Bf 109 and Ju 88 proved to be capable designs adaptable to continued improvement, and the Fw 190 lent itself to this quite well too, but they all had their limitations. A high altitude 190 (like the D) should have come much earlier, and / or a longer ranged replacement for the 109 was also badly needed. It seems to me that the 109 was a little bit too small for the later i.e. 605 series DB engines and suffered a bit as a result.

The Jets could have replaced the 110 but in practice it took too long and it may simply not have been possible to make a truly reliable jet engine in 1942-45. The Me 210 was one of those semi-disasters where they went into production while there were still serious design issues, and by the time the 410 came along it was too late to matter.

This has come up before in other threads. The lack of next generation power plants significantly affected the Axis powers development of new aircraft. The failure of the Jumo 222 led to the failure of the Bomber B program (Ju 288), lack of performance for the He-219, and the He-277 among others. Once Germany had begun to fall behind the pace in power plant development and was losing the war of attrition the emphasis was on developing new aircraft that were significant leaps forward in capability and technology. They simply didn't have the time and resources to make those kind of advances in time.

The Soviets made a lot of incremental improvements through the war, the Yak-9, Yak-1B, and Yak 3 all being much better in 1943 or 1944 than the earlier Yak-1 and Yak-7, and the LaGG-3 was also improved substantially during the same period (often forgotten because it didn't really get new model names), but both whole series were definitely limited by their Hispano derived inline engines, which were never improved that much.

The powerful Shvestov ASh-82 however (derived at the end of a long chain of development from the Wright R-1820) was a breakthrough, which allowed them to move into their new La 5 / 5FN / 7 / 9 / 11 series of fighters, and was also used for postwar helicopter design (the Mi 4) which was built ino the 1970s.

The ASh-82 was also the motor of the Tu-2 bomber, a quite good upgrade from the already pretty capable (and I think, underrated) Pe-2 dive bomber.

Some other wartime designs were more debatable, probably first and foremost the Il-2. Nobody seems to agree how good these actually were at killing German tanks, or more broadly, in the CAS role. The Soviet leadership certainly seemed to like them, as they built 35,000 of them, but they also lost an enormous number of them. Efficacy of the Il-2 has become one of those ideological fault lines between the German lovers and the Soviet defenders (the Operational history section in the Wiki entry for the Il-2 reads like you can hear Wagner in the background), which spills over, bringing this ideological taint with it, into discussions about CAS in general. There does seem to be some at least sporadic evidence that Pe-2 dive bombers were considerably more effective at destroying certain types of targets like bridges and AA guns.

The Il-2 was improved substantially through the war, the biggest change being the badly needed addition of a rear gunner, but they made a lot of other smaller improvements too. They did finally replace the IL-2 with the much faster and seemingly much more capable IL-10 in 1944, but it's debatable whether the overall strategic niche (still relatively slow, heavily armored attack aircraft for CAS) was a good one. It was still being debated about the modern A-10 and Su 25 etc.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

Watch that David Glantz lecture I linked up thread, it is eye opening and he presents it very well

Click to expand...

Wish the visual quality were better . . . had a hard time reading most of his slides. Even so, it is a good presentation and covers the conventional view of WWII and the gross disparity of scale between the Eastern and Western fronts from a ground officer's perspective. But just as the ground war was uneven, with 70-80% of the fighting and losses on the Eastern front, the air war was uneven in the opposite direction. And when it comes to the Luftwaffe fighter arm, the proportions are practically flipped. From Phillips Payson O'Brien's How the War Was Won:

This shift of German air power away from the land battlefield began in 1943. During the first half of the year, the Germans built up three large air forces, one in each of the theaters fighting three quite distinct battles. On the Eastern Front, after the fall of Stalingrad, a large force made up of one-quarter fighters and three-quarters ground attack or transport aircraft was assembled to support the Kursk attacks; in the Mediterranean, a force that was about equally split between fighters and bombers was deployed to try to halt the invasion of Sicily; and in the Reich/on the Western Front, a force that was about three-quarters fighters was deployed primarily to fight against the Combined Bomber Offensive. In overall percentage terms, 45 percent of the Luftwaffe was on the Eastern Front, 33 percent was in the Reich/on the Western Front and 21 percent was in the Mediterranean.
However, that was the last moment when the Luftwaffe dispersed itself so fully. With Russian successes on the Eastern Front, an invasion of Sicily and Italy, and a Combined Bomber Offensive against German cities and industry, a decision was made that the last was the greatest threat to German power, and thus began a decisive shift in deployment. By December 30, 1943, 54 percent of all aircraft were in Germany/on the Western Front, and by December 30, 1944 this figure had jumped to 67 percent. In terms of fighters, by far the largest portion of German aircraft production in 1944, the shift away from the Eastern Front and Mediterranean was even more pronounced. In the second half of 1944, 80 percent of German fighters were deployed facing Anglo-American bombers or Anglo-American armies on the Western Front.

Click to expand...

The loss rates were discussed upthread, and there the disparity is even more pronounced: 85+% of German (single engine day) fighter losses destroyed on the Western front. And while it's usual to view the air war from a theater perspective, the assets were largely fungible. And in fact the assets were moved, to the West, where the vast majority of the air superiority battle took place and was decided. Which provided direct benefits to the Eastern front ground battle in the form of hamstrung Luftwaffe air support (O'Brien covers the disparity in German casualty rates from the early and late war and attributes much of it to feckless air support).

Moreover, war production battle was also uneven and slanted toward the war in the West. Also from O'Brien:

In the end it is clear that fighting the air–sea war, particularly the former, was the dominant preoccupation of Germany's war economy.
At least two-thirds of German weapons production, even excluding the V-2, went to air, sea and anti-air weapons. Moreover, the development costs of these weapons in money, raw materials and scientific expertise were exponentially higher than for land weapons and the time involved in the design process was years longer. Although the average German fighting man may have been in the army, the average German was far more involved in the war in the air and on the sea.

Click to expand...

The impact of Western strategic bombing on war production is significant, but difficult to assess. Certainly the devout followers of Douhet, et al, were disappointed to note that production actually increased after most raids (which is not actually fair, because production increased generally and the difference is in what it would have been, but still). The strategic bombing survey noted this but pointed out the overall effect was nonetheless significant, and credits the fighter (and fighter pilot) losses inflicted:

The seeming paradox of the attack on the aircraft plants in that, although production recovered quickly, the German air force after the attacks was not again a serious threat to Allied air superiority.

Click to expand...

Although noting the scale of the war in the East is valid, and certainly the impact of the ferocity of fighting and millions of casualties had on the overall outcome, it is not appropriate to generalize to the air war. To approximately the same degree as the ground war was fought in the East, the air war was fought in the West.

NevadaK said:

This has come up before in other threads. The lack of next generation power plants significantly affected the Axis powers development of new aircraft. The failure of the Jumo 222 led to the failure of the Bomber B program (Ju 288), lack of performance for the He-219, and the He-277 among others. Once Germany had begun to fall behind the pace in power plant development and was losing the war of attrition the emphasis was on developing new aircraft that were significant leaps forward in capability and technology. They simply didn't have the time and resources to make those kind of advances in time.

Click to expand...

I guess the BMW and Jumo jet engines were supposed to leap-frog that.

This conclusion you reach here is basically the same thing argued in the long essay on Soviet-German air war that somone posted early in the thread.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

It was already clear in 1940-41 that they really needed to replace the Stuka and the Bf 110, and they needed something entirely new in the medium-heavy bomber role to replace He 111 / Do 17 / Do 217 etc.

Click to expand...

Me 210 was to replace both Ju 87 and Bf 110. 1st prototype flew before UK and France declared on Germany.
Do 217, Ju 288 and He 177 were to replace the 2-engined bombers.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

It was already clear in 1940-41 that they really needed to replace the Stuka and the Bf 110, and they needed something entirely new in the medium-heavy bomber role to replace He 111 / Do 17 / Do217 etc.

Click to expand...

It was actually they way they did the replacements that got them into trouble. They tried to leap frog the state of the art into super gee-whiz technobabble wonder weapons that would WOW the opposition instead of actually working.

Who the heck let this thing get off of paper to even the model stage? Rotating tail in flight to improve the firing arc of the remote control rear gun/s???
Ok to improve the Ju-87, this ain't it.
Bf 110, still had a lot of life left in it. Insisting that that 210 needed that last 5mph of speed (?) that the short fuselage gave in place of stability/control?
If it won't fly it doesn't matter how fast it is.
He 111 had a bit of life left in it, sort of like the Whitley and Wellington. The Whitley got a 4 gun power turret, the He 111 got a fixed tail gun under the rudder fired by the pilot with a mirror.
The Do-17 was too small, unless you use DB 601 engine and use it for some of the Bf 110 jobs.
The Do-217 was what was needed, the only thing it shares with the Do-17 is the same general shape.
Again, speed was the god on which many things were sacrificed. Wing was too small for good medium bomber but then the dive bomber god demanded most of the rest of sacrifice
of good qualities.

Just the thing for a 30,000lb plane to use for a dive brake (after they burn off a lot of fuel) for 60 degree dives.
They had trouble getting a gun turret with a small gun to both traverse and elevate using power and this thing was going to work?

Way too many gimmicks instead of just decent engineering and obtainable goals.

Retattack said:

Wish the visual quality were better . . . had a hard time reading most of his slides. Even so, it is a good presentation and covers the conventional view of WWII and the gross disparity of scale between the Eastern and Western fronts from a ground officer's perspective. But just as the ground war was uneven, with 70-80% of the fighting and losses on the Eastern front, the air war was uneven in the opposite direction. And when it comes to the Luftwaffe fighter arm, the proportions are practically flipped. From Phillips Payson O'Brien's How the War Was Won:

The loss rates were discussed upthread, and there the disparity is even more pronounced: 85+% of German (single engine day) fighter losses destroyed on the Western front. And while it's usual to view the air war from a theater perspective, the assets were largely fungible. And in fact the assets were moved, to the West, where the vast majority of the air superiority battle took place and was decided. Which provided direct benefits to the Eastern front ground battle in the form of hamstrung Luftwaffe air support (O'Brien covers the disparity in German casualty rates from the early and late war and attributes much of it to feckless air support).

Moreover, war production battle was also uneven and slanted toward the war in the West. Also from O'Brien:


The impact of Western strategic bombing on war production is significant, but difficult to assess. Certainly the devout followers of Douhet, et al, were disappointed to note that production actually increased after most raids (which is not actually fair, because production increased generally and the difference is in what it would have been, but still). The strategic bombing survey noted this but pointed out the overall effect was nonetheless significant, and credits the fighter (and fighter pilot) losses inflicted:


Although noting the scale of the war in the East is valid, and certainly the impact of the ferocity of fighting and millions of casualties had on the overall outcome, it is not appropriate to generalize to the air war. To approximately the same degree as the ground war was fought in the East, the air war was fought in the West.

Click to expand...

I agree with all that, but I think this-too is a bit misleading in terms of conclusions.

Let me explain.

First, IMO the real success of the strategic bombing campaign was really to force the Luftwaffe, and the Germans more broadly, into an attrition war in the sky. It's debatable if this could have been done in another more efficient way, without losing so many Allied aircrew and without destroying so many centuries old cities in Europe, but there is no denying that it forced the Germans to orient a very large number of resources to defend against it, and the resulting attrition war in the sky, albeit at great cost, did essentially destroy the Luftwaffe.

They also lost a fairly high amount in the Mediterranean which tends to be overlooked.

But the strategic campaign against the home cities is going to force them to send up fighters, build and position AA guns and radar and night fighters and so on. Nobody knew what the ultimate effect of the Strategic bombing campaign would be (we still debate it's efficacy) and they could not just let bombers drop ordinance on their factories. There is also the emotional level of defending the women and children back home. It was destined to become trench warfare in the sky.

On the Tactical battlefield, the balance is very different. The Soviet-German war was mainly Tactical. The purpose of the aircraft in this kind of war is not to destroy or defend cities and factories, but to affect the outcome of the land battles. This is hard to quantify. It doesn't even hinge entirely on number of tanks (etc.) destroyed, because the real measure of success was did the air forces contribute significantly to winning the battle. The Soviet historians would argue that they did.

The scale of tactical aircraft is going to be different, and smaller. This is in part because there is a limited number of targets, especially when you are not in the middle of a big battle. The same was true in North Africa, for example at El Alamein tactical aircraft had a wealth of targets, but before and after not as much. Tanks and troops and artillery don't reveal themselves between battles nearly as much, and are much easier to hide than cities, or factories.

One notable limitation for both the Germans and the Soviets was that though they had bombers with decent range, they did not really have good quality long or even medium range fighters available in large numbers (the Soviets had a few long range Yak-9s at the end). So that limited the amount of what you might call Operational bombing. That means supply nodes, airfields, railheads, ports, ships out at sea, etc.. The Western Allies did a lot of this in North Africa and it really paid off - they used longer ranged fighter-bombers, light-medium twin engined bombers (escorted by medium ranged fighters) and heavy bombers both escorted by fighters and at night. This paid serious dividends, and I think expanded the amount of air combat in that Theater, contributing to further Axis (German and Italian) losses, to victory in the ground war, and a swift destruction of the Luftwaffe in North Africa.

The Soviets did this mainly at night, using LL B-25s and Il-4 type bombers, and during the day in maritime attacks at comparatively short range with Bostons, but at great cost. The Luftwaffe did do some operational and strategic bombing in Russia early on, basically using longer ranged bombers without escort, but once the Soviets got their PVO units up to speed, relying on LL Spitfires (and other types) and eventually special variants of the Yak, this became very costly and much less effective.


Whether the Soviet system worked is still debated, and clearly very difficult to quantify, but I lean on the side that it did in fact work, and it was an important factor in several key battles. It would have been more effective if the Soviets had more longer range fighters, and there would have been an associated increase in aircraft losses on both sides, but that is not the way it shook out.

Shortround6 said:

It was actually they way they did the replacements that got them into trouble. They tried to leap frog the state of the art into super gee-whiz technobabble wonder weapons that would WOW the opposition instead of actually working.
View attachment 766013
Who the heck let this thing get off of paper to even the model stage? Rotating tail in flight to improve the firing arc of the remote control rear gun/s???
Ok to improve the Ju-87, this ain't it.

Click to expand...

Wow that is legit nuts and I had not seen it. Amazing! And totally agree.

Shortround6 said:

Bf 110, still had a lot of life left in it.

Click to expand...

As a night fighter. For just about any other role it was already at least obsolescent by 1941. May have still had some use in Russia for another year or so during the day. By that time it was pretty much dead meat in North Africa.

Shortround6 said:

Insisting that that 210 needed that last 5mph of speed (?) that the short fuselage gave in place of stability/control?

Click to expand...

The main issue is that it was deemed unstable by the Luftwaffe, though the Hungarians liked it. And it was not fast enough (or capable enough in other ways) to survive encounters with Allied fighters of it's vintage during the day.

Shortround6 said:

If it won't fly it doesn't matter how fast it is.
He 111 had a bit of life left in it, sort of like the Whitley and Wellington. The Whitley got a 4 gun power turret, the He 111 got a fixed tail gun under the rudder fired by the pilot with a mirror.

Click to expand...

He 111 did not have anywhere near the range of the Wellington, and did not seem to be nearly as effective in the long run. It did have some merits as a long range maritime attack aircraft but the Ju-88 was more effective in that role. I don't see where the Whitley did much of any use.

Shortround6 said:

The Do-17 was too small, unless you use DB 601 engine and use it for some of the Bf 110 jobs.

Click to expand...

Agreed

Shortround6 said:

The Do-217 was what was needed, the only thing it shares with the Do-17 is the same general shape.

Click to expand...

Do 217 looks good on paper, and using missiles / guided bombs sunk some ships around Sicily and Italy, but it took losses at such unsustainable rates that the units were quickly disbanded or pulled out of action.

Maybe a long range escort fighter could have made a difference, I don't know.

Shortround6 said:

Again, speed was the god on which many things were sacrificed. Wing was too small for good medium bomber but then the dive bomber god demanded most of the rest of sacrifice
of good qualities.
View attachment 766014
Just the thing for a 30,000lb plane to use for a dive brake (after they burn off a lot of fuel) for 60 degree dives.
They had trouble getting a gun turret with a small gun to both traverse and elevate using power and this thing was going to work?

Click to expand...

Another really interesting bit of engineering there.

But yes I agree, someone in the Luftwaffe or German High Command got a dumb idea in their head that you could make a big multi-engine dive bomber that also had long range and etc. That was a very hard needle to thread, the Soviet Pe-2 kind of pulled it off, but it is small and fairly short ranged. The considerably larger Ju 88 did for a while, until they realized the wings were taking a set.

There was a reason for a new dive bomber but they were clearly trying to ask too much of these designs, somebody (many people) were digging their heels in when they should have been thinking in other (smaller) directions.

Shortround6 said:

Way too many gimmicks instead of just decent engineering and obtainable goals.

Click to expand...

The US did that kind of thing too - turbos on fighters were a long shot, but they ultimately paid off. The German Jets definitely could have paid off, though it was indeed a very long shot.

Shortround6 said:

It was actually they way they did the replacements that got them into trouble. They tried to leap frog the state of the art into super gee-whiz technobabble wonder weapons that would WOW the opposition instead of actually working.
View attachment 766013
Who the heck let this thing get off of paper to even the model stage? Rotating tail in flight to improve the firing arc of the remote control rear gun/s???
Ok to improve the Ju-87, this ain't it.
Bf 110, still had a lot of life left in it. Insisting that that 210 needed that last 5mph of speed (?) that the short fuselage gave in place of stability/control?
If it won't fly it doesn't matter how fast it is.
He 111 had a bit of life left in it, sort of like the Whitley and Wellington. The Whitley got a 4 gun power turret, the He 111 got a fixed tail gun under the rudder fired by the pilot with a mirror.
The Do-17 was too small, unless you use DB 601 engine and use it for some of the Bf 110 jobs.
The Do-217 was what was needed, the only thing it shares with the Do-17 is the same general shape.
Again, speed was the god on which many things were sacrificed. Wing was too small for good medium bomber but then the dive bomber god demanded most of the rest of sacrifice
of good qualities.
View attachment 766014
Just the thing for a 30,000lb plane to use for a dive brake (after they burn off a lot of fuel) for 60 degree dives.
They had trouble getting a gun turret with a small gun to both traverse and elevate using power and this thing was going to work?

Way too many gimmicks instead of just decent engineering and obtainable goals.

Click to expand...

Just want to note, congrats on your amazing ability to find truly interesting WW2 engineering photos that I've never seen before.

You might argue that some of the grandiosity of Nazi "uber weapons" is due to their drinking too much their own superiority kool-aid...

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

As a night fighter. For just about any other role it was already at least obsolescent by 1941. May have still had some use in Russia for another year or so during the day. By that time it was pretty much dead meat in North Africa.

Click to expand...

It was decent at recon, The Soviets loved A-20s for recon. The 110 was also fast bomber. Hang a pair of 250-500kg bombs underneath.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

The main issue is that it was deemed unstable by the Luftwaffe, though the Hungarians liked it. And it was not fast enough (or capable enough in other ways) to survive encounters with Allied fighters of it's vintage during the day.

Click to expand...

The Hungarians cheated, they added about a meter to the fuselage and increased moment arm got them the better stability. It wasn't that the Hungarians accepted a bad handling aircraft. The Luftwaffe could have had the better handling in late 1942. (Prototype flew in March 1942)

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

He 111 did not have anywhere near the range of the Wellington, and did not seem to be nearly as effective in the long run. It did have some merits as a long range maritime attack aircraft but the Ju-88 was more effective in that role. I don't see where the Whitley did much of any use.

Click to expand...

well, I have been saying that they didn't really upgrade the 111. The 111 falls in-between the Pegasus powered Wellingtons and the Hercules powered Wellingtons. The Wellington gained about 8,000lbs from the IC to the X and gained 675hp per engine. Whitley's were still in use (to make up numbers) in the early 1000 bomber raids in 1942 and for maritime use well into 1943. Again, for the Germans, we are comparing slightly different engines for the Ju-88 and the 111. The 111 got the F engines in 1941(?) and the Ju-88A-4s got the J engines with intercoolers. about 80-100hp different. The 111s got better engines later but 1944 was little late
We simply don't know what the 111 could have been because they didn't try, the new wonder bombers were going to be so much better when they showed up, in few months, in a fe more months, ok next year, maybe the year after, maybe.................................

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

Do 217 looks good on paper, and using missiles / guided bombs sunk some ships around Sicily and Italy, but it took losses at such unsustainable rates that the units were quickly disbanded or pulled out of action.

Maybe a long range escort fighter could have made a difference, I don't know.

Click to expand...

Long range escort it wasn't. We are also comparing planes 2 1/2 years apart. Do 217s showed up in small numbers at the end of 1940(mostly recon). The Missile planes used longer wings (maybe they could have bee used earlier) but the BMW 801 powered planes did not gain that much power. The DB603 powered versions were faster.
However as a medium bomber in 1941 with a 5500lb internal load it might have made a difference while waiting for the He 177 to show up.
Get rid of the diving gear, lighten up the structure a bit. Design a manned turret that will hold two 13mm guns (what a shocker!), a plane that can deliver 5500lbs at 550 mile radius?

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

On the Tactical battlefield, the balance is very different. The Soviet-German war was mainly Tactical. The purpose of the aircraft in this kind of war is not to destroy or defend cities and factories, but to affect the outcome of the land battles. This is hard to quantify. It doesn't even hinge entirely on number of tanks (etc.) destroyed, because the real measure of success was did the air forces contribute significantly to winning the battle. The Soviet historians would argue that they did.

Click to expand...

Generally concur with all of this. The Soviet air did well on the tactical scale, especially in the latter period (and as a former CAS guy myself, it's definitely where my sympathies lie). The only thing I'd add is that it didn't occur in a vacuum and was materially aided by the air war in the West. Again from O'Brien:

As mentioned previously, German casualties before 1944 were actually manageable and running at a pace below that of World War I. In 1944, however, casualties became catastrophic. In just two months of 1944, July and August, the Germans reported 563,973 deaths in their armed services.192 This was equal to the number of deaths in all of 1942 and 70 percent as many deaths as suffered by the Germans in all of 1943.193 German ground equipment losses followed suit and, for the first time in the war, progressed at a rate far higher than replacement production. In Chapter 2 Figures 10 and 11 showed how the two most numerous panzer classes (the Panzer IV and Panzer V) first saw destruction pass production in the summer of 1944. The same situation occurred for all other German AFV including the Panzer VI (Tiger), the most famous heavy tank of the war. (See Figure 69.)
The reasons for these losses on land were intimately connected to the evolving air war. One of the ways the strategic air campaign achieved this was through the success of the campaign against German oil production which became a major factor by July 1944. In a September memorandum to Hitler, Speer described how these attacks on Germany's fuel reserves were making the German army immobile – even if he couched the warning in faux-optimistic language about offensives. "The basis for army movements at the Front is getting so slight that planned operations can no longer take place in October. In the present fuel situation, it is no longer possible to gain offensive successes, as the fuel quantities required for the supplies necessary for an offensive are no longer available."194 Speer's solution was to devote the entire Luftwaffe to protecting the German economy. Yet, by this time there were hardly any German fighters left over the battlefields.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately everyone agrees the effects are impossible to quantify. The bomber mafia takes credit for the fuel shortage and rail disruption, the tactical air forces take credit for the mobility issues, and the contributions of the ground forces are obvious. The destruction of the fighter force greatly enhanced the rest.

Shortround6 said:

It was decent at recon, The Soviets loved A-20s for recon.

Click to expand...

A-20 was very fast, but had (depending on the specific variant) either short, very short, or very, very short range.

Shortround6 said:

The 110 was also fast bomber. Hang a pair of 250-500kg bombs underneath.

Click to expand...

Fast, maybe? I'm not sure how fast it was carrying bombs. It wasn't as fast as a lot of bombers and other fighter-bombers. More importantly though it was much less accurate as a bomber than a Stuka or a Ju-88.

Shortround6 said:

The Hungarians cheated, they added about a meter to the fuselage and increased moment arm got them the better stability. It wasn't that the Hungarians accepted a bad handling aircraft. The Luftwaffe could have had the better handling in late 1942. (Prototype flew in March 1942)

Click to expand...

True, it's a bit baffling why the Germans didn't also make that change, since it's a pretty easy one. But I'm not sure it was enough all by itself. The Germans decided to redesign the wing (from a 12.6 degree taper to a much more conventional 5.5 degree taper on the Me 410.


Top is the 410 wing, bottom is the Me 210 wing.

Neither one of them seemed to be able to survive without a (single engined) fighter escort when the Spitfires, Mustangs, or Thunderbolts were around.

Shortround6 said:

well, I have been saying that they didn't really upgrade the 111. The 111 falls in-between the Pegasus powered Wellingtons and the Hercules powered Wellingtons. The Wellington gained about 8,000lbs from the IC to the X and gained 675hp per engine. Whitley's were still in use (to make up numbers) in the early 1000 bomber raids in 1942 and for maritime use well into 1943. Again, for the Germans, we are comparing slightly different engines for the Ju-88 and the 111. The 111 got the F engines in 1941(?) and the Ju-88A-4s got the J engines with intercoolers. about 80-100hp different. The 111s got better engines later but 1944 was little late
We simply don't know what the 111 could have been because they didn't try, the new wonder bombers were going to be so much better when they showed up, in few months, in a fe more months, ok next year, maybe the year after, maybe.................................

Click to expand...

Well you know me, I'm looking mostly at operational history, and I don't see He 111 doing much against Allied targets, except for a couple of the convoy fights, after 1941.

I will grant you that Buck Rogers nose does look cool.

Shortround6 said:

Long range escort it wasn't. We are also comparing planes 2 1/2 years apart. Do 217s showed up in small numbers at the end of 1940(mostly recon). The Missile planes used longer wings (maybe they could have bee used earlier) but the BMW 801 powered planes did not gain that much power. The DB603 powered versions were faster.

Click to expand...

I don't mean that it was a long range escort, I mean that it needed a long range escort. If you read the history from around the time of Husky they did sink some ships but they were taking 25-50% losses per raid. Maybe if the Germans or Italians had a long or even medium range fighter available in some numbers it might have made a difference.

Shortround6 said:

However as a medium bomber in 1941 with a 5500lb internal load it might have made a difference while waiting for the He 177 to show up.
Get rid of the diving gear, lighten up the structure a bit. Design a manned turret that will hold two 13mm guns (what a shocker!), a plane that can deliver 5500lbs at 550 mile radius?

Click to expand...

On paper it looks good, I agree. Faster with a heavier load than I suspect Me 110 with bombs under the wings. But they didn't seem to last long if Allied fighters were around.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

A-20 was very fast, but had (depending on the specific variant) either short, very short, or very, very short range.

Click to expand...

There was a Russian pilot they claimed photo graphed 20 major European cities using an A-20. The Russians got a batch of the early ones that the US didn't want because they had no self sealing tanks or armor. Pretty zippy though. They could put fuel/tanks in the bomb bay area for range.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

Fast, maybe? I'm not sure how fast it was carrying bombs. It wasn't as fast as a lot of bombers and other fighter-bombers. More importantly though it was much less accurate as a bomber than a Stuka or a Ju-88.

Click to expand...

Most of the German bombers have a rather exaggerated reputation for speed as most of them carried bombs on the outside. Going home things were better
The 110F without racks was good for 310mph at sea level and 352mph at 17,700 ft using the same engines as the 210. This was the version in production in late 1941 when they stopped to make the 210. Performance was not bad for 1941 or for most of 1942. also beat the heck out of vaporware 210s.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

The Germans decided to redesign the wing (from a 12.6 degree taper to a much more conventional 5.5 degree taper on the Me 410.

Click to expand...

Part of the reason for the wing redesign was to handle the CG shift for the DB603 engines. Using 160kg heaver engines each (+cooling + props) tends to screw things up on twins with no nose.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

On paper it looks good, I agree. Faster with a heavier load than I suspect Me 110 with bombs under the wings. But they didn't seem to last long if Allied fighters were around.

Click to expand...

The Luftwaffe needed to do more than wait around for the Western Allies to offer up an occasional convoy. For some reason they spent a lot of talk and money on "Ural" bombers and didn't bomb a lot the soviet industry that was still within reach? Or Bridges or?
Lots of guns don't help a lot, but few better gun set ups might have shifted the loss rate a bit (Think Soviet IL/2s). Germans were stuck in 1940-41 waiting for the uber-ural bombers while The US and British improving things.

Germans spent way too long to even get to this level. I don't know if they ever did on a large production number aircraft.
At least that turret had a bit better firepower than a C.200 Saetta while the German turret had under 1/2 the firepower

The Americans believed the firepower of large formations.
With all of the German set ups for fixed guns sticking out the tail (or nacelles) the Germans believed in every bomber for it self as it broke formation (or few very loosely) bobbing and weaving trying to get the fixed rear armament to point in the general direction of the attacking fighters.
There was a package for the Do 217 ( I don't know how often it was fitted, at least it traded places with that god awful dive brake) of four 7.9mm mgs in the tail cone.

I rate the Baltimore as an excellent light bomber, but they didn't do well with them until they managed to provide escort. Nice photo. That's the later run Baltimore, the early ones just had a free standing .30 cal. I think (?) the British requested the power turret.

Wild_Bill_Kelso said:

I rate the Baltimore as an excellent light bomber, but they didn't do well with them until they managed to provide escort. Nice photo. That's the later run Baltimore, the early ones just had a free standing .30 cal. I think (?) the British requested the power turret.

Click to expand...

Only the first 50 Baltimore I & 100 Baltimore II had hand held dorsal guns. The 250 Baltimore III received Boulton Paul Type A powered turret with 4x0.303". These all came from French / British direct purchase contracts. IIRC the Mk.III started to become available around the time of El Alamein. The remaining 1,175 starting with the IIIA were built under Lend Lease contracts and received the Martin turret with 2x0.5"

EwenS said:

Only the first 50 Baltimore I & 100 Baltimore II had hand held dorsal guns. The 250 Baltimore III received Boulton Paul Type A powered turret with 4x0.303". These all came from French / British direct purchase contracts. IIRC the Mk.III started to become available around the time of El Alamein. The remaining 1,175 starting with the IIIA were built under Lend Lease contracts and received the Martin turret with 2x0.5"

Click to expand...

So the IIIA etc. were mainly arriving in 1943 eh?

Baltimore was a fast bomber which seems to have handled pretty well. But it's big vice was it was tricky to takeoff. If the throttles were not perfectly coordinated, it would nose over or ground loop and crash. This is one area where it helped to have the very well-trained bomber pilots in the RAF.



The other vice which it shared with all the other early war US 'fast bombers' like the Maryland and the Boston, was that it was so narrow it was impossible to move around from position to position within the aircraft, and there was no co-pilot. So if the pilot passed out or got badly injured or killed, everyone else is pretty well SOL. If the intercom fails for some reason, no coordination between pilot and gunner etc.

One of the mysterious advantages of the Baltimore, I've learned, is that aside from being fast in level flight (~300 mph) it had a very high maximum, as in dive, speed. So high, in fact, that it was used for some kind of "sound barrier" testing postwar. They got it up to mach .74.

What this translated to in North Africa was that the Baltimore's would come to their target under escort, usually P-40s or sometimes P-38s or Spitfires, and then drop the bombs usually at medium altitude and in a pattern. Escorts would often get engaged with the Axis fighters over or near the target. Then the Baltimore's would pour on the coal and go into a shallow, very high speed dive for egress, over 400 mph. Axis fighters had a hard time intercepting them on the way home.

They suffered heavy losses on 2 or 3 missions when they were sent in low and unescorted, but after they worked out the above tactics, they ended up with the lowest loss rate for bomber types in the Middle East.

Baltimore is a good example of a type the Soviets would not want for Lend Lease, because it was tricky to take off and required a fairly long runway. A lot of their crews, especially in 1942-43, were not so well-trained, and their fields were not necessarily super long. They were somewhat ideal for British service in North Africa.

The Soviets loved the B-25 because they considered it so easy to fly that a half-trained pilot could manage it, and it had a shorter takeoff run than some of their Soviet bomber types, and had a long range. But they considered it too vulnerable for daytime operations, partly because they lacked long range escort fighters.

The Boston, despite it's much higher speed, was also considered to have very good handling and to be pretty easy to fly. Tricycle landing gear was appreciated compared to some Soviet tail draggers like the Pe-2 and Il-4, and it was considered suitable for crews with "minimal training".

Incidentally S Shortround6 , the US used the same early type Bostons (A-20A) in the Solomons / New Guinea area, which had only partial self sealing tanks. I was not aware of US versions being used with extra internal tanks in the bomb bay though it seems plausible enough.

Later A-20 types got more and more fuel though.

All of the early Boston variants had very short range, so for anything other than a tactical recon role, they would need more fuel. The Soviets made a lot of modifications to theirs including new guns and most significantly, they were the only people (I believe) who ever put torpedoes under them. So it's possible they worked out more gas tanks.

Boston I - from June 1940 - range "less than Boston II" (order of 20 for France, went to England) no SS tanks. 30 cal machine gun for defense. No armor.
Boston II - from June 1940 - range 500 miles with 1,000 lbs bombs, top speed 308 mph (from French order, taken over by British. Many turned into night fighters) limited SS tanks, .30 cal defensive gun. No armor.
A-20A range 625 miles with 1,000 lb bombs, top speed 347 mph slightly improved SS tanks. One or two .30 cal defensive guns on dorsal. Light armor.
A-20B range 825 miles with 1,000 lbs bombs, top speed 350 mph additional unprotected fuel tank. One or two .30 cal defensive guns on dorsal. light armor. 665 sent to Soviets.
A-20C / Boston III - 745 miles with 1,000 lbs bombs, 525 miles with 2,000 lbs, top speed 338 mph Improved SS fuel tanks and armor. Some soviet A-20Cs had a turret with two 7.62mm guns. Others had twin pintle mounted .30 or .303 guns in the usual open position. Better armor.
A-20G - from Feb 1943 - range 1,025 miles with 2,000 lbs bombs, top speed 339 mph (lager SS fuel tanks. Martin turret with two .50 guns for defense. Some had four 20mm cannon in nose, these with the cannon mostly went to Russia, and the Soviets replaced the cannons with their own better 20mm ShVAK guns)