Ideal night bomber for RAF: how would've you done it?

[stona]

Seems high speed bomber is in favor here.

My proposal would be Merlinized Mixmaster (XB-42). Or, later, Griffonized

Mmmm,only a maximum load of 8000lbs but cruising at 300+mph is good. I do love a 'pusher' too. The main problem is that it is out of our time frame. The first was delivered in 1944 in a month (May)when we banged out 262 Lancasters!
Cheers
Steve

 

[tomo pauk]

I was thinking about Mixmaster (hi, David ) as a general idea: a plane of such a general layout could've been made prior the WW2. A scaled-up version ( with 2 Griffons, or maybe 4 Merlin 60s?), and the Tallboy is airborne? Grand Slam?

Fielding 2 'MixMerlins' for each Lanc/Hallibag/Stirling sounds neat.

 

[stona]

I was thinking about Mixmaster (hi, David ) as a general idea: a plane of such a general layout could've been made prior the WW2. A scaled-up version ( with 2 Griffons, or maybe 4 Merlin 60s?), and the Tallboy is airborne? Grand Slam?

Fielding 2 'MixMerlins' for each Lanc/Hallibag/Stirling sounds neat.

It is a neat idea,something similar may have been done had that opportunity not been missed years earlier. A 12,000 lb 'Tallboy' maybe but a 22,000 lb 'Grand Slam'? I doubt it.That's up there with the B-29.
Cheers
Steve

 

[Hop]

Indeed,as I said all sorts of figures get thrown into the melting pot! 7% of the total war effort would be as low as I have seen but I'm not able to argue the statistics as I simply don't have enough information.

I've only ever seen 2 breakdowns of the cost of Bomber Command.

The first is the report of the British Bombing Survey Unit (BBSU). That goes in to some detail about the number of workers in different industries, the number of men (and women) in various branches of the armed forces, etc. The 7% figure comes from them (and their calculations seem accurate)

The second is a phd thesis working out every aspect of the cost on a modern accounting basis. That claims that the cost of BC was 10% of total government spending during the war, or 12.2% of military spending.

However, that thesis takes in to account things like lost agricultural production potential on airfields etc, so overstates actual spending somewhat.

Given that bomber production accounted for less than half of aircraft production, and aircraft production a lot less than half of total military spending, BC clearly can't have used up anything like half of British military production.

In terms of military personnel, the RN amounted to 3.24 million man years during the war, the army 12.74 million and the RAF 4.87 million. Bomber Command was of course a fraction of total RAF manpower.

In other words, the claim that BC accounted for 50% of British military effort can't possibly be true.

 

[tomo pauk]

So, along with 'medium' bomber, we need to build a plane with 2 - 2,5 times as much of a wing area (1110-1390 sq ft; Lanc had 1300). Next, a pair of Merlins in front of the wing (driving one shaft), and another pair driving another. Empty weight is some 32,000-35,000 lbs (Mixmaster - 21klb, Lanc - 37klb up).

A Grand Slam carrier?

 

[Readie]

John the reason those losses pan out like that is because in January 1944 the Battle of Berlin was lost. Most of the attacks in February were against less dangerous targets in southern and western Germany. Another major raid on Berlin did not occurr until March 24th and bomber command lost 73 bombers or 9.1% of aircraft dispatched. By early March the commitment to the invasion had started to divert Bomber Command to targets in France. The Luftwaffe night fighters had made the skies over the Reich too dangerous for Bomber Command to risk frequent deep penetration raids but the Luftwaffe was unable to tranpose that success to the skies over the occupied western countries,principally France. There are many reasons for this but overall the night fighter defence system was designed for defence of the Reich,German cities,not French marshalling yards.




We all look at these figures,73 bombers lost,9.1% of aircraft dispatched and sometimes lose sight of the men that this represents. Whatever I may feel,with the benefit of 70 years of hindsight,about the strategic bombing campaign my admiration for these men knows no bounds.They were a special breed and we owe them an immense debt.

Cheers
Steve

Steve, my admiration of Bomber Command crews is the same as you. We owe them all so much and it grieves me deeply when history is rewritten to infer that it was wrong to bomb our enemies.
Regards
John

 

[Readie]

So, along with 'medium' bomber, we need to build a plane with 2 - 2,5 times as much of a wing area (1110-1390 sq ft; Lanc had 1300). Next, a pair of Merlins in front of the wing (driving one shaft), and another pair driving another. Empty weight is some 32,000-35,000 lbs (Mixmaster - 21klb, Lanc - 37klb up).

A Grand Slam carrier?

Hello Tomo. Quite possibly.But, the question is what would the advantage been over the Lancaster? Maybe ( I can hear FLYBOYJ waiting for this ... ) the B29 would have been the next step had the war continued for another few years. Another maybe...would we have delivered the A bomb on Berlin?
I'm convinced that Hitler would had A bombed Britain with the V1 given the chance....
Cheers
John

 

[stona]

I'm convinced that Hitler would had A bombed Britain with the V1 given the chance....
Cheers
John

Maybe,but we can put this one to bed. The Germans were years from a workable atomic bomb. Heisenberg had made some serious mistakes in his calculations. He and his colleagues were stunned when they heard that the allies had not only manufactured and used an atomic bomb but had also made it small and light enough to deliver by air.We know because they were our 'guests' at the time and we were bugging them! Knowing that a bomb will work in theory and making one work in practice are two entirely different things as those who worked for years on the 'Manhattan Project' would testify. My science background gives me a passable understanding of the basic issues involved.
Cheers
Steve

 

[wuzak]

The problem of survivability affected bombers both by night and by day and was,as you rightly say,a problem rooted in pre war thinking. It was too late to start from scratch when the realisation that bombers couldn't defend themselves sank in. I realise that we are talking hypothetically and would agree that a fast heavy bomber would have been a better solution. It wouldn't need defensive armament and would require a smaller crew. Unfortunately,even discounting pre war doctrine, I don't believe that anyone could have built a bomber capable of cruising at around 300 mph and carrying 12,000lbs of bombs which could have been in service in 1941.
The RAF tried to protect its bombers with technological and operational methods. 'Window' famously worked for a while and later elaborate planning and spoofs as well as attempts to jam the German controllers' commentaries or even imitate them sometimes worked.'Monica' would warn a bomber that enemy radar was illuminating it but it didn't take long for the Germans to develop a system (Flensburg) to home in on this. Intruders had limited success too. Harris actually wanted 'provision of nightfighter support on a substantial scale' which makes me wonder just how much of a grasp he had of the operational problems faced by his crews. It was Bennett,who did such a tremendous job with his Pathfinders,who observed that one of the great failings in Bomber Commands leadership was that no other senior officer besides himself (he had flown an operational tour) had any grasp of the operational conditions under which their crews fought,because they had not flown combat missions in this war.
They never attempted to develop a high speed,heavy,strategic bomber because they had taken the wrong fork in the road years earlier.
Cheers
Steve

I don't think that the primary bomber would need to hold 12,000-14,000lbs. It was only on rare occasions that the load had to be carried by single bombs. A fast bomber with smaller crew carrying 1/2-2/3 the load could do 90%+ of what was required historically during the war. You could even argue that the Mosquito carrying 1/3 the load could, and did, do 90% of what was required.

A bomber carrying 6-8,000lbs of bombs could, quite conceivably, use only two engines, given engines of sufficient power. Preferably something in the 2000-2500hp class, though the Mixmaster showed it could be done on less.

The problem arises when Bomber Command wants to drop Tallboys and Grand Slams. History tells us that when Barnes Wallis first suggested the single large bomb and proposed an aircraft to carry it he was rejected. The RAF did not foresee the requirement for such a large bomb, and so would not have anything ready to go to carry them, or Upkeep.

As the Manchester originated in 1937, and the Lancaster was prototyped in 1940, there may have been enough made before the decision to swap over to our "ideal night bomber" as the primary bomber for the RAF to be used for Chastise and the big bomb operations.

 

[RCAFson]

I would suggest that the ideal bomber would have been a Lancaster with Merlin 60 series engines, with the front and top turrets removed. This would have provided cruising speeds in the 280 to 290 mph range at ~24000ft and a maximum speed of well over 300mph at combat weights:

http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/fl...mance-figures-lancaster-13211.html#post745556

 

[stona]

I don't think that the primary bomber would need to hold 12,000-14,000lbs. It was only on rare occasions that the load had to be carried by single bombs. A fast bomber with smaller crew carrying 1/2-2/3 the load could do 90%+ of what was required historically during the war. You could even argue that the Mosquito carrying 1/3 the load could, and did, do 90% of what was required.

But all the standard bomb loads for area bombing ( code words Arson,Abnormal,Plumduff, Plumduff Plus,Usual) were in the 12,000lb to 14,000lb range. Upkeep,Tallboy and special loads like air-sea mines (Gardening) we will ignore.
A bomber carrying 1/3 the load could not do 90% of the damage caused by the heavier load.There is a direct correlation between the weight of bombs dropped and damage caused for the same concentration. There is no reason to believe that your lighter bomber would achieve a better concentration using the same navigation systems. Infact as you would need three times as many bombers to drop the same weight of bombs the concentration would most likely be much worse. Creep back would certainly be worse and your aiming point would have to be off set even further to compensate. It is human nature for successive waves to push the bomb release a fraction of a second earlier on their bomb runs,no amount of training ever overcame this.
To drop an equivalent weight of bombs your bomber stream would need to spend much longer over the target,one of the things Bomber Command went to great lengths to minimise in its planning.
The enemy would certainly develop faster night fighters as a reaction and you would also be offering him three times as many targets.
To achieve results similar to those achieved by the Lancaster you are going to have to produce a bomber,in service by 1941,which can carry at least 12.000lbs of bombs and cruise at around 300mph. Given the accepted doctrine of bomber theory,and the decisions taken as a result,during the interwar years this was not possible.Someone would have had to have started developing an aircraft in the mid 1930s which they knew to have no chance of acceptance by the Air Ministry . They would have been throwing their money away. The economy was not exactly buoyant in the mid '30s.

We are really looking for, as RCAFson suggests above,an improved,fast,Lancaster.

Cheers
Steve

 

[wuzak]

I would suggest that the number of aircraft the Luftwaffe could shoot down was not reliant on the numbers of targets in the air, but the numbers of fighter aircraft they could deploy and their chance of making asuccessful interception.

RAF area bombing attacks used a few aircraft to mark the target and, IIRC, around the target. Those marker aircraft used technologies such as Oboe to locate and mark the target. The marker would be the aiming point for the attack. This would periodically be remarked throughout the attack so that there is no creep back.

The RAF did employ tactic to minimise the time over the target by the attacking bomber stream. If multiple aircraft were needed to drop the same tonnage of bombs on target then it isn't necessary that they do it all at once. They could attack two or three times during a night (not the same aircraft, obviously).

A fast bomber that could carry 6-8000lbs of bombs would be preferable to one that could carry 2-4000lb.

If we move away from area targets (cities) to more precision targets (factories, transport, oil) then accuracy takes on as much importance as tonnage. In that the Mosquito proved to be at least as good as the Lancaster.

In 1943 a report was written that showed that the Mosquito was 4-5 times more efficient in damaging/destroying targets than the Lancaster. Obviously a lot of factors went into that determination, but it shows that carrying truck loads of bombs on a mission is not necessarily the best answer. Remembering that in 1943 the only bomber Mosquito in service was the BIV and that it was only cleared to carry 2000lbs of bombs.

I would suggest that this fast night bomber be a result on George Volkert's 1937 paper on bombing policy and the aircraft that it dictates. His solution was an unarmed bomber using optimised aerodynamics to carry a smaller load (6000lbs vs 8000lbs proposed for P.13/36) faster and higher. In which case the Manchester would be under development when the fast night bomber goes to tender, and the Lancaster is in service when the resultant bomber is entering production. By 1943 the fast night bomber is taking over the primary bombing role, with the Lancaster in reserve for special duties (think Dams raid, tallboys and Grand Slams).

As the Luftwaffe develops and deploys faster night fighters to cope with the new threat, which would take some time, the RAF is improving the performance of the bombers.

 

[post76]

Steve, my admiration of Bomber Command crews is the same as you. We owe them all so much and it grieves me deeply when history is rewritten to infer that it was wrong to bomb our enemies.
Regards
John

History winces at the reality imposed on either country when bombing civilian targets.
The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945 By Jörg Friedrich is a good read if you want to know more about the fire bombings over Germany.
It reads more like a text book, and before my treck i got threw a few chapters. He has some first hand accounts in there, and he's very descriptive when describing night bombing tactics, from types of bombs to radar as well as defensive measures, and the effects those campaigns had on civilians.
I got a better perspective of what those campaigns did to the cities they targeted and how they turned to ash and although done
conventionally would look no different than if an A-bomb struck.
The title doesn't suggest anymore than what its written about. Fire being destructive in many ways, not just burning debri, but also trapping those stuck in shelters where such fire would deprive them of air.
You'd think that bombing a school yard or residential area would be accidental but this was done with the intent of making one side surrender.
In between the heroic stories and sacrifice, that is the blunt reality of war.

 

[tomo pauk]

Hello Tomo. Quite possibly.But, the question is what would the advantage been over the Lancaster? Maybe ( I can hear FLYBOYJ waiting for this ... ) the B29 would have been the next step had the war continued for another few years. Another maybe...would we have delivered the A bomb on Berlin?
I'm convinced that Hitler would had A bombed Britain with the V1 given the chance....
Cheers
John

Crew of 3-4 vs. 7 for Lanc - less fatalities less weight to cope with; no turrets engine nacelles - less drag weight. Essentially, a faster higher flying bomber for same power, fuel payload. With cruising @ 25,000 ft, 80% of german AAA are non-issue, and NFs also have tougher job. Both bomber sortie cost less the BC.

 

[wuzak]

Something like the Hawker P.1005

Hawker p1005 image by paul1 on Photobucket

 

[tomo pauk]

Related to this thread, what were the performance figures for LW NFs? I've found the figure for Bf-110G-4 (max 317 mph at 18700 ft) Ju-88G-6 (343 mph @ ??) - perhaps somebody could provide a more comprehensive data?

 

[gjs238]

Hello Tomo. Quite possibly.But, the question is what would the advantage been over the Lancaster? Maybe ( I can hear FLYBOYJ waiting for this ... ) the B29 would have been the next step had the war continued for another few years. Another maybe...would we have delivered the A bomb on Berlin?
I'm convinced that Hitler would had A bombed Britain with the V1 given the chance....
Cheers
John

With a V1?

 

[stona]

Hi Wuzak,
Fighters are always more successful in a target rich environment. At night,simply,once in the stream they are more likely to find someone to shoot at.

There was always creep back. The target markers were always dropped to give an aiming point past the area to be saturated. The resultant creep back would then be over the area targeted. It was a problem Bomber Command never solved.Bennett referred disparigingly to crews who tended to drop early and get out as 'fringe merchants'. These crews diluted the bombing concentration and encouraged others to bomb the fires they may have caused so that the concentration diluted exponentially. Later a master bomber was used to encourage the bombers to bomb on the correct markers and ignore incorrectly placed markers or bombs (fires).

Oboe had a limited range.It was effective to 250-300 miles. It had to be used by the Pathfinders as it could only control one aircraft at a time. Targets beyond its range were still marked by Pathfinders using conventional navigational methods with variable results. Contrary to popular myth these were not all elite crews.

The reason for minimising the time over target (along with other counter measures) was to try and prevent the Luftwaffe's night fighters concentrating in the area attacked. Spoof raids concentrated night fighters over Berlin on the night of the Peenemunde raid but once the true target was identified they got into the bombers of the last wave and slaughtered them,often as they started their homeward journey having bombed. Your idea would have the fighters waiting for the secondary waves to come in,knowing exactly where they were going.

The heavier the load of the hypothetical fast bomber the better,agreed.

Precision bombing is another thing altogether and the Mosquito proved a very good aircraft for this. Precision bombing is about accuracy,not tonnage.

I'm aware of Volkert's document (it is referred to in Tony Butler's 'British Secret Projects, Fighters and Bombers 1935-1950') but I've never seen it. Handley Page obviously weren't encouraged by the Air Ministries response to it or they wouldn't have built the Halifax. I've never seen a copy of his report,if anyone knows of one I'd love to see it.
Faster bombers resulting in faster fighters is a typical 'arms race'. You can bet the advantage would have swung from side to side throughout the conflict.

As far as area bombing goes this was the only option open to Bomber Command. The navigation of the day meant that even this often did not achieve results. Add to this the innate innacuracy of iron bombs dropped from altitude (large circular error probability) and it becomes evident that to hit anything like a factory or production facility you have to drop literally thousands of bombs. The Lancasters were very good at this.

We live in a world in which we can watch videos of guided munitions being used in pin point,surgical strikes against small targets. This was not the world of the 1940s. Bombing was so hit and miss that even in the mid to late war period it was sometimes so scattered that the Germans were not sure what the intended target was!

Cheers
Steve

 

[gjs238]

Infact as you would need three times as many bombers to drop the same weight of bombs the concentration would most likely be much worse. Creep back would certainly be worse and your aiming point would have to be off set even further to compensate. It is human nature for successive waves to push the bomb release a fraction of a second earlier on their bomb runs,no amount of training ever overcame this.
To drop an equivalent weight of bombs your bomber stream would need to spend much longer over the target,one of the things Bomber Command went to great lengths to minimise in its planning.

This seems to assume that the larger quantity of smaller bombers would all be bombing the same target as the smaller quantity of larger bombers. Instead, the larger quantity of smaller bombers could be dispersed over multiple targets. This would cause enemy fighters to disperse as well.

 

[Siegfried]

"SNIP 'Avro Lancaster' by Francis Mason lists the various bomb loads carried by Lancaster bombers,including the rather special 'Tallboy' and 'Grand Slam' bombs though not the famous 'Upkeep' bouncing mine. The typical weight for a load is around 12,000lbs.
The Mosquito could carry a maximum load of 4000lbs. You are attempting to triple the bomb load,enlarge the airframe,add two engines and still maintain the performance (at least speed) of the original aircraft. The Lancaster's bomb bay is 33' long. I don't believe that is possible.
SNIP
Regarding Flak,a post war study estimated that a German Flak gun fired,on average,16,000 shells for every aircraft destroyed.
Not a particularly good return. Cheers Steve

Consider the bomb-load issue. Consider a round trip raid from London to Berlin, total 1200 miles. A Lancaster would require 6 hours to do the mission, a Mosquito could do it in 4. Mosquitos frequently came home, refueled and rearmed, swapped crews and did a second mission. This is affordable because of the small crew. Mosquitos carried up to 4000lbs.

A Mosquito scaled up to twice the mass (assuming 4 x Merlin engines) would have about 26% greater length using a cube root scaling law. It would be be about 53ft long instead of 41ft though still only 72% of the Lancaster 68ft. The bomb-bay would be 24ft instead of 33ft. However scaling works in favor of scaling up and in the example given the 'new' aircraft has proportionately less whetted area which means considerably less drag. In addition weight advantages accrue in minimum material gauge sizes, radio equipment, instruments, batteries, crew armour, etc so our scaled up 4 engine Mosquito could be even bigger than a simple doubling.

Tallboy and Grandslam were unimportant weapons; late 1944 and 1945 respectively. Tallboy could possibly fit in an upscale Mosquito, it might protrude from the bomb bay.
It didn't require a Tallboy to damage or destroy Tirpitz: 8000, 4000 even 2000lb bombs could have done the job. The Upkeep bouncing bomb was 5 feet wide and didn't fit into the fuselage of the Lancaster; it was wider than the fuselage in fact. A Mosquito has a wide bomb bay; about 3 ft hatch. A scaled up mosquito would also be about 5 feet wide and could probably carry the upkeep bomb protruding from the sides.

Overall German heavy FLAK effectiveness was 4900 throughout the war. The 16000 shots you quote is at the worst time for the Luftwaffe FLAK regiments, in the same period however the more powerful 12,8cm FLAK 40 achieved 1 kill per 3000 as much due to its professional (as opposed to reserve) crews and its full equipment with modern FLAK predictors (Lamda predictor Kommandogeraet 40) and radar. The Germans also introduced 3 increasingly effective coherent pulse Doppler add on to overcome Windows: Wurtzlaus, Tastlaus and finally a small number of the extremely effective k-laus circuit that also helped against jamming and worked with frequency changing methods to further avoid Carpet Jamming. The Wurzburg-Riessen "Gigant" with 160kW instead of 8kW impulse power also helped. (Small numbers only in Berlin on the FLAK tower). There was also a few "Rotterheim" microwave radars and the advanced Egerland was in test. Once the Luftwaffe recovers its radars working at full capacity again the Lancaster slowness becomes a death trap and a source of neurosis (around 1000 Lancaster crew went insane with shell shock)

A 420 mph 'heavy Mosquito' becomes almost impossible to intercept; it can race through FLAK corridors, few aircraft can catch it and then only rarely.