If the US is neutral, how does the air war in Europe play out?

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Well one didn't just on one day get the idea to put V-1 under wing of He 111 and try to it on next day and began operations a week later. Of course D-Day and the possibility of loosing the main V-1 launch areas put more haste to the project but it was also a mean to try to force British to spread their AA guns to larger area.
 
wiking85 said:
According to wikipedia there were only 10 escort missions before they were dropped.

How about we get back on track and talk about the European theater?
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They began to make fighter sweeps after that, the last sweep was made on 14 Aug 45, it was four FGs (three Mustangs groups and one recently arrived P-47N group) mission, the last escort mission was flown on 10 Aug 45, so they were also flown time to time to the end.
 
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wiking85 said:
BTW is there any chance Midway could play out differently due to the circumstances of 1942 being different without Germany fighting the US?
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Of course, but unlikley, and in any event a Japanese victory at Midway is really a strategic blind alley , except if they inflict a massively one sided victory over the USN. Whilst aircraft was not a significant issue for the USN, neither the supply of well trained pilots, the blue water fleet was pretty much set to pre-war acquisitions until the beginning of 1944, and didnt become a decisive impact in capital ships (carriers, heavy cruisers and Battleships) until 1945. Smaller warships were significantly reinforced from the latter part of 1942 onward, Light cruisers were similalrly well supplied from an early date. Escort Carriers began to have a significant effect from the middle of 1943, but were really a product of british experience and practice, so might be somewhat delayed as the Americans might have been slower on the uptake in appreciateing their value. Pre-war, Roosevelt was keen about the concept of mercantile conversions similar to the Junyo conversions of the IJN or naval conversions of the Shoho type, but true escort carrier conbversions were delayed until well into 1942. this might be delayed further if the USN did not receive as much advice and inclination from the RN.

If the Japanese had succeeded in achieving an uverwhelming, one sided victory in the Pacific, they might have gained breathing space in which to restore their air crew shortages, secure access to the resourcews they had won in the initial campaigns and fortified their defensive postions better. They may have been able to achieve some better resolution in China and/or Burma, and this may well have given them less fronts to worry about. Less fronts greatly eases the strains on their ;pgisitics, frees up some seaoned ground troops and releases experienced aircrew either for trainng of simply to beef up the available forces in the shop front in the pacific.
But the difficulty of all this is in achieving that victory, If there was any other result, say losing 100 aircrew to sink all four of the US carriers, the victory becomes a pyrhic one for them, and not worth the losses.
 

The USA spent far more than they had to because they developed 3 different methods to develop atomic weapons simultaneously, and in fact developed uranium and plutonium bombs in tandem . The UK doesn't have to replicate the USA program to get a usable bomb, and a single track development rather than a triple track program will be far cheaper.
 

In hindsight sure. The problem is no one knew which was the viable path at that point, so the US went for all potential ones to get a viable option by 1945.
 
Juha said:
Well one didn't just on one day get the idea to put V-1 under wing of He 111 and try to it on next day and began operations a week later.
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The first V-1s were dropped from aircraft as part of the initial testing programme. In June 1943 unpowered 'dummies' of the Fi 103 were dropped from a Fw 200 at Peenemunde. These tests were followed by tests on the control surfaces of the missile and two unpowered drops were made from an He 111 H-6. Between 22nd and 28th August 1943 several powered V-1s were launched from an He 111 H-6. These were tests of the V-1 systems and NOT tests to establish the viability of an offensive air launched campaign against Britain.

The first tests to establish whether an air launched campaign was viable and which might be the best carrier aircraft were started on 6th April 1944 at Karlshagen. Milch favoured the operational use of an air launched system 'for the purposes of deception' and that is why the initial tests started. It had nothing to do with the allied invasion of Europe.

It was determined that the venerable, and crucially available, He 111 was the best aircraft for the job. Most of the aircraft were converted from H-16 or H-20 variants and were not referred to as H-22s. Only those converted on the production line from H-21s were designated H-22s.

II/KG 3 was selected for air launch training around May 1944 and moved to Karlshagen for this purpose. They were trained by a cadre of personnel who had been involved in the testing who were formed into an experimental unit designated 'Erprobungskommando Karlshagen'. It was a short ten day course and only three one hour flights were included.
The first crews finished the course on 10th June 1944 and were posted to air fields in Northern France, Beauvais/Tille, Parmain/ L'Isle Adam and Roye/Amy.

The first air launched attacks were carried out on 9/10 July and the target was London. Subsequently, over four nights in the second week of July, II/KG 3 targeted Southampton. Most (73%) of the V-1s landed in an area covering a narrow ellipse measuring 8 x 33 miles with its centre about 8 miles north east of Southampton. The British were unsure of the exact target and contemporary documents refer to attacks on the 'Portsmouth/Southampton area'.

Cheers

Steve
 
How would Britain react here with the V-1s being in service over a wider area from June 1944 on? I imagine as the technology is refined it will be used against a wide swath of targets all over Southern Britain from Northern France.


The extension of the launch sites into the Netherlands and Belgium would also add to the British headaches. How much could they handle?
 
wiking85 said:
How would Britain react here with the V-1s being in service over a wider area from June 1944 on?
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The problem for the V-1 is that it was hopelessly inaccurate. As a tactical weapon in a military sense it was not terribly useful. It was a poor substitute for the strategic bomber that the Germans had failed so spectacularly to produce.

The problem for the British was that the government had a responsibility to protect its population from these attacks. More than 6,000 people perished under these attacks. Compared to the numbers killed in the 1940/41 in the 'Blitz' on various British cities this number is relatively low but the British devoted considerable resources to countering the threat.
They would have done the same in your scenario. The problem for the Germans is that the British and their allies had the resources to devote to opposing the V-1 threat. I can't see the V-1 being significantly developed in the historical period. It was an unreliable weapon, particularly when air launched.

Of the 227 V-1s launched by KG 3 against London between July and September 1944 only 56 reached London. Only 114 were recorded as reaching the coast. Precisely 5 were shot down, 3 by AA and 2 by fighters.
Of the 90 launched at Southampton none hit any strategically valuable target. Given the density of such targets along the coast in the Portsmouth and Southampton area in 1944 this demonstrates the shortcomings of the V-1 as a military rather than terror weapon.

The V-1 tended to kill civilians which forced the British to devote large resources to countering it. The British had these resources in 1944. What the V-1 couldn't be was a war winning, or even war changing, weapon.

Cheers

Steve
 
stona said:
The problem for the V-1 is that it was hopelessly inaccurate. As a tactical weapon in a military sense it was not terribly useful. It was a poor substitute for the strategic bomber that the Germans had failed so spectacularly to produce.
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Not terribly if they had been properly directed; the radio telemetry data was ignored in favor of a double agent's reports and the lack of aerial recon to confirm; here the introduction of the Me262 could be for recon work instead of as a fighter, which would provide the aerial recon to confirm the fall of the missiles and correct accordingly. Plus further development would help make them more accurate once they understood what the actual dispersion was; historically the Germans lacked an accurate picture of what was happening so couldn't figure out what to do in the several months when in range. With the introduction of the Ar234B in September they won't lose aerial recon again for some time if ever. Of course the CEP is large initially, but with corrects it can be improved enough to reliably hit London and expand operations beyond just that city.

As it it being a war winning weapon, no not by itself, but without it being stopped coupled with war weariness it might be enough to help cause an armistice in 1945. In the meantime it will require a lot of resources to defend against, which won't be used against Germany and will be more than what Germany spends on building and deploying the weapon, with the added benefit of drawing bomber missions off of Germany and on to FLAK traps.
 
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Just some General comments:
The V1 was evolving in range and speed, variants with minor refinements reached 515mph at low altitude by Jan 1945. Guidance was coming in, its code code name Ewald II. Range was being extended, up to 400 miles, equal to the range of a 1000 mile range bomber. Cost of the V1 was so low that I suspect the two dozen or so 32 pounder proximity fused FLAK shells fired to bring down the V1 in its closing stages cost more than the V1. Had the Normandy Landings not occurred the more dispersed V1 Launch sites would have greatly diluted British AAA gun defences as well.

Air launched V1's were fired over a radio buoy dropped by a German pathfinder or laid by a U-boat, the buoys having been developed to track convoys. The V1 then preceded along its path to target using magnetic compass heading and an anemometer/odograph in the form of the nose propeller. There was the possibility of better radio guidance for the launch aircraft and even for midcourse guidance of the V1. The best German blind bombing system at the time was probably EGON-II which was similar to British Oboe in using two 'radar' transponder to triangulate the pathfinder. However I suspect the far less accurate EGON-I which used only one radar not two radars was used to provide guidance.

One would have to consider the very likely possibility of an German atomic bomb as well. Early historical literature on German atomic research tended to be disparaging and dismissive eg Goudsmit/Bernstein/Rose/Groves More recent work by Professor Mark Walker and others Including David Irving has cleared this up. In essence the Germans knew how to configure a reactor and how to control and moderate it. In 1942 they weren't behind at all. They did make the mistake of going down the path of using heavy water as a moderator, in part because they had the worlds only source and it was 'free' (a residual by-product of Norwegian electrolysis of water for hydrogen production for use in ammonia production, the heavier water tended to be left in the electrolyte).

Just to summarise, if you read Walker or the Earlier Irving you can see that the reactor experiment they conducted in Hairgerloch in 1944/45 (I've actually visited the Atom Keller Museum in Bavaira where a reproduction of their subcritical reactors exists) would have lead to criticality baring lack of materials within a short time. However if it were not for the effects of Allied Bombing which destroyed the scientists labs several times and forced moves of equipment especially from Berlin, serious disruption in timely supply of reactor rods that they would almost certainly achieved criticality by late 1943 and before mid 1944. This is assuming they don't accelerate their program or spend more money. The Germans also produced gram quantities of enriched uranium from the two devices they had developed: the ultracentrifuge and the uranium sluice. The ultra centrifuges were destroyed by bombing no less than 2 times (3 times counting the ones destroyed before they were complete) and the uranium sluice once.

One can say that if it had not have been for heavy allied bombardment the Germans would have had gram quantities of highly enriched uranium 1943/1944 as well as a functioning lab scale reactor. Certainly before 1945.
At this point it would be impossible to not have the facts clearly plain of the feasibility of an atomic weapon. (they really only had an atomic reactor research program till then). This would lead to a fieldable weapon within 2 years: say late 46 or early 1947.

It would probably be affordable as well, the Germans having less resources having had to focus on efficient methods.

Heisenberg was right, a weapon couldn't be ready before the war was over but had he had the attitude and managerial ability of Werner von Braun he would have taken Alber Speer's 500 million Reichs Marks and progressed much further along. The scale of the effort would have eliminate several oversights or miscommunications) such as the effectiveness of graphite as a moderator, something that had been worked out but not communicated to Heisenberg.

German Army Ordinance (probably Kurt Diebner) had in 1942 produced an estimate for super criticality of 10-100kg (actually better than Maude committee) and around the same time Heisenberg estimated the size (when describing it to Speer) as that of a pineapple (about 25kg of U235) though he latter said 500kg (about the size of a soccer ball) when interned at Farmhall but he then recorrected himself.
 
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RCAFson said:
The Lancaster VI had a service ceiling of 28500ft @ 65000lb which equals full fuel and a 10,000lb bomb load and full armament (3 turrets and the dorsal turret). With half fuel, (@57000lb) the service ceiling is well over 30,000 ft.
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I don't think you would have seen much more than 30K, if you even reached there, even with half fuel. The production Lincoln I had a service ceiling of just over 30,000 feet according to Wiki. To really determine this one would have to look at performance charts for the aircraft and factor in density altitude.
 
A German atomic bomb is a red herring. You can also forget about the Walker/Irving nonsense. (Irving is the man who published Dresden death tolls to which essentially zeros had been added, based on a forged/altered German report, when he must have known it was incorrect. I have no time for that sort of 'research')

I've looked into this in the last few years and as a chemist I have a better understanding than many. I studied Physics in higher education before switching to Chemistry.
I'm not going to enter into that debate here anyway. If someone choose to believe that the Germans could have developed a viable weapon by the 1950s, even IF they had the political will and funding, that's their right. I know they are wrong

I will say that having a working reactor and producing viable amounts of weapons grade material are two VERY different things. Knowing something is possible in theory and achieving it are also two different things. Every High School physicist should be able to draw diagrams to illustrate how several different types of these weapons work, but without something like the Manhattan Project he won't be building one any time soon. Also, without going into all the detail, there is Heisenberg's fundamental errors in understanding the reaction in a weapon. He only realised his mistakes after the war. It's why all the German physicists were absolutely astounded that the Americans had delivered a bomb by air. They thought it would weigh many, many tons.

The Farm Hall transcripts make it quite clear that the German scientists did not fully understand just how the Americans had done it and that they didn't believe they were close to something similar. They justified this to themselves by suggesting that they never really wanted to build a bomb in the first place. Make of that what you will.

This was the discussion just after the interned men had heard on the BBC that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Japan

KORSCHING: "That shows at any rate that the Americans are capable of real cooperation on a tremendous scale. That would have been impossible in Germany. Each one said that the other was unimportant.

GERLACH: You can't say that as far as the uranium group is concerned.

KORSCHING: Not officially of course.

GERLACH (shouting): Not unofficially either! Don't contradict me! There are far too many other people here who know.

HAHN: Of course we were unable to work on that scale.

HEISENBERG: One can say that the first time large funds were made available in Germany was in the spring of 1942, after our meeting with Rust [the education minister] when we convinced him that we had absolutely definite proof that it could be done.

BAGGE: It wasn't much earlier here either....

HEISENBERG: On the other hand the whole heavy-water business, which I did everything I could to further, cannot produce an explosive."


Making the V-1 go faster would certainly make it harder to intercept or shoot down. It doesn't address the fundamental problem of accuracy. We are not talking a few hundred yards as in conventional bombing we are talking miles. V-1s often missed a target the size of Greater London which even conventional bombers at the beginning of the war could usually hit once they'd found it.

Cheers

Steve
 
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Koopernic my information about the navigation of the air launched V-1s from He 111s makes no mention of buoys.

Initially the short over sea flights were more or less parallel to the Dutch and Belgian coats. Flashing two letter coded marker beacons were placed at the coastal crossing points at Walcheren or near Blankenberge, visible for the short periods of these operations. Some crew also recall fixed search light beams and pre-arranged flak bursts being used to aid navigation.
An agent confirmed seeing a V-1 launched by an aircraft over Knocke Bains (near Blankenberge) as evidenced in a report by the British Assistant Director of Intelligence (Science) on 22nd July.

When KG 3 was forced to bases further away a different system was needed to overcome the navigational problem. This system, code named 'Zyklops' involved three transmitters on the Dutch coast at Den Helder, Zandvoort and Alkmaar. The one at Den Helder acted as both a coastal crossing marker on which to trace dead reckoning navigation to the designated launching zone and a start point for a preset air log in the aircraft.
As the aircraft passed over the beacon the radio operator would start a count down on the air log called 'Zahlwerk' which just means 'Counter'. On approaching the launch zone, indicated by the figure 1,000 appearing on the dial of the 'Zahlwerk' panel the pilot would begin to climb from 100m to his launch height. He also turned onto the course setting for the target and the bomb aimer would start the launch procedure by starting up the missile's motor. When the figure 0 appeared on the 'Zahlwerk' panel the missile was released.
'Zahlwerk', as the name suggests, was a simple mechanical system. The mechanism was driven by a small two blade propeller situated on a tube sticking out from the leading edge of the starboard wing out board of the engine. The number of revolutions of the propeller, counted by a tachometer, measured the distance flown since the system was started over the radio beacon, fixing the release point.

It didn't work very well!
British Intelligence reports show that in the first wave of attacks from the French air fields most of the air launched V-1s fell in an area north of the Thames with a radius of about 25 miles. Not accurate but compared with the longer range launches not bad. The missiles launched in the second, long range phase, after 15th September, fell in an area stretching from 40 miles south of London to 50 miles north!

Cheers

Steve
 

B-17G:
at 67,850lb (max TO) the service ceiling is 28,250ft
at 64,975lb the service ceiling is 29,900ft
B-29:
at 140,000lb (full fuel and a 10,000lb bomb load or 20,000lb bomb load and reduced fuel)the service ceiling of a B-29 is 23,950ft.
at 120,000lb the service ceiling is 35650ft. (B-17, B-29 = USAF data)

Lincoln 1 (merlin 85)
at 82000lb service ceiling = 25000ft (84% fuel 10,000lb bomb)
at 69500lb service ceiling = 30,500ft (10000lb bombs 46% fuel)
at 63500lb service ceiling = 33000ft = (10,000 bomb 33% fuel)
at 51000lb Service ceiling = 38000ft = (8% fuel or increased fuel and reduced gun armament) (data from Flight Archive)

My service ceiling guesstimate for a Lanc VI at 57000lb would be about 32-33,000ft. The service ceiling of the Lanc VI was achieved at 2850rpm rather than at the 3000rpm combat rating (same for the Lincoln).

In response to another earlier post, the Lincoln was not in squadron service before VE day, but about 50 production Lincolns had been built by VE day, with production starting in Feb 1945.
 
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RCAFson said:
(data from Flight Archive)
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Is this from performance charts? How can these numbers include density altitude? An 8% fuel load? You better hope you have the airfield in site....

Calculate fuel burn at takeoff, climb, then cruise - compare that to what an 8% fuel load is on a Lincoln (or a Lanc VI)

And when operating at Service ceiling you're no longer flying at a performance optimum, more than likely under Va and not able to climb more than 100' per minute as a norm.
 
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ah, so some of this discussion is suggesting Germans with hoards of V1s/v2s carrying nuclear weappons. The ultimate german wet dream i see. My opinion, not a chance, at least for the likley duration of the war. The Germans were not anywhere close to developing nuclear weapons, and would have basically needed a truckload more money, and start again with their research. Who knows what might have happened with hitler out of the picture, but in the context of what we do know, and what was foreseeable, they had not the slightest chance of being nuclear armed before or immedaitely after 1945
 
FLYBOYJ said:
Is this from performance charts? How can these numbers include density altitude? 8% fuel load? You better hope you have the airfield in site....
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8 % fuel = about 285 gallons and about 1.5 hours endurance, but in any event I just included that info to show the effect of weight on service ceiling.

All data, including the USAF data, is corrected to a standard day. The Flight Archive data is from actual aircraft testing.
 
RCAFson said:
8 % fuel = about 285 gallons and about 1.5 hours endurance, but in any event I just included that info to show the effect of weight on service ceiling.
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factor in takeoff and climb - that 8% number will be relevant at cruise, 20,000 feet, 20 miles within site of a runway. Your weight calculations are close, maybe a tad optimistic but more consideration is needed.
RCAFson said:
All data, including the USAF data, is corrected to a standard day. The Flight Archive data is from actual aircraft testing.
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Again, that data is not finite and varies with density altitude. I think you'll also find that a "standard day" is not very common....
 

Who said V-weapon nukes? I'm curious about the effects of a sustained V-1 campaign's effects on Britain over a year or more from all over Northern France and the Lowlands and jet recon checking shot falls.
 
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