Luftwaffe in 1936-41 improvements?

[The Basket]

A better gun on a bomber is not going to have the desired effect.
You not trying to shoot down the other aircraft but rather stop them shooting you down.

The Ju 87 did perform well on the Eastern Front and well into 1944 so you have to give it that.

But I would be perplexed about giving the Stuka more guns to increase its effectiveness. Against what?

More guns equal more weight and less performance and the Stuka is starting from a low ball already.

According to new history, the Bf 110 came out of the Battle of Britain with the most favourable kill ratio. Hardly awful.

 

[tomo pauk]

You are right about the need. The problem comes with the slow development pace of the german guns and the lack of alternatives. After Munich in 1938 the chances of the Germans getting anything but the Italian Breda-Safat are pretty dim. Unless the Germans can make significant changes to the Breda-Safat (and by the time they do that they might have fixed their own guns) they have a 29KG gun firing 33-35 gram bullets at about 12 per second. They might have been better off putting two MG 17s in each wing for a total of six gun.
For defence the British managed to double up the Vickers K guns and belt fed Brownings fairly quickly in defensive mounts (not counting turrets) so I don't know why the Germans stuck with single guns for so long, best bet was to simply (or not so simple?) speed up the MG 131 program.

Yes, 1938 is too late, they need to start in 1936 here. Doubling the number of defensive MGs is a certainly a good idea, and a low-hanging fruit, too. So is the another pair of MG 17s in the wing of the Bf 109E1.
The HMG can offer improved damage once bullets are past the aircraft skinning, like a real damage to the fuel tank. Or, they can defeat the pilot's back & head back armor, that a LMG might not. Two Bredas will obviously do 24 rounds/sec.

From Wiki
"By mid-1938, 262 Ju 87 As had been produced, 192 from the Junkers factory in Dessau, and a further 70 from Weser Flugzeugbau ("Weserflug" – WFG) in Lemwerder near Bremen. The new, more powerful, Ju 87B model started to replace the Ju 87A at this time "

apparently the JU 87 with Jumo 211 only overlapped the Hs 123 for a few months so there is no real gain in trying to stop Hs 123 production and replace it with Ju 87 production (unless you want more Ju 87As). I believe your numbers for the Hs 1209 are too high. only a dozen or so Hs 129s with Argus engines were built and the the B model with the Gnome=Rhones only started production in Nov-Dec of 1941. Yes 935 hs 126s were hundreds too many but sticking the Bramo 323 engine on the JU-87B airframe might not give very good results. Better than a Ju 87A is not saying much.

Indeed, I've looked at Hs 129 production numbers, they probably didn't make more than a dozen of B models in 1941.
Bramo 232 on Ju 87 offers 1/3rd to 1/2 of engine power increase vs. Jumo 210 for no weight increase, and it is ballpark with Jumo 211A on Ju 87B and 87R1 while being ligther. So we'd have an actually useful military aircraft in production by Henschel in 1938-41.

 

[tomo pauk]

Some other musings on LW stuff, applicable for 1936-41.
Once Fw 190 starts taking shape, have one/two prototypes made with DB 601 in the nose, and then go on and make such 190s.
The DB 601N - don't increase the compression ratio that much. Instead of 8.2:1 (yikes!), retain the CR of the DB 601A (6.9:1). Should produce less stress on the engine and thus improve reliability, as well as allow for possible greater boost (= more power) at lower altitudes.
The 2- and 3-stage compressors from 1930 (Bristol, Junkers/Jumo, the French) merit a look.
Make 2-seat trainer versions of Bf 109 and any other 1-engined fighter ASAP.
The BMW 801 took long to mature - perhaps it is best the company sticks with V12s, eg. a 40L V12 engine?

Production needs to be increased once firing starts. There is no point in having more machine tools than UK, France and Italy combined if the factories work in single shifts. Any surplus of engines/airfrmes/whole aircraft can be exported (to Sweden, Italy, Netherlands, Hungary, Yu, Romania, Turkey, Switzerland, later to Finland; plus token amounts to Soviet Union and Japan). Women workforce is a must.
Make some actual use of the Avia factory from mid-1939 on.
Ship the production lines of G&R and Hispano from France to somewhere in Germany/Austria/Bohemia.

 

[Kevin J]

Some other musings on LW stuff, applicable for 1936-41.
Once Fw 190 starts taking shape, have one/two prototypes made with DB 601 in the nose, and then go on and make such 190s.
The DB 601N - don't increase the compression ratio that much. Instead of 8.2:1 (yikes!), retain the CR of the DB 601A (6.9:1). Should produce less stress on the engine and thus improve reliability, as well as allow for possible greater boost (= more power) at lower altitudes.
The 2- and 3-stage compressors from 1930 (Bristol, Junkers/Jumo, the French) merit a look.
Make 2-seat trainer versions of Bf 109 and any other 1-engined fighter ASAP.
The BMW 801 took long to mature - perhaps it is best the company sticks with V12s, eg. a 40L V12 engine?

Production needs to be increased once firing starts. There is no point in having more machine tools than UK, France and Italy combined if the factories work in single shifts. Any surplus of engines/airfrmes/whole aircraft can be exported (to Sweden, Italy, Netherlands, Hungary, Yu, Romania, Turkey, Switzerland, later to Finland; plus token amounts to Soviet Union and Japan). Women workforce is a must.
Make some actual use of the Avia factory from mid-1939 on.
Ship the production lines of G&R and Hispano from France to somewhere in Germany/Austria/Bohemia.

No. Women are here to make babies for us men. You can't have them in the factories.

 

[The Basket]

Woman workforce is not happening.

It was against Nazi ideology.

Unless they were non German.

 

[NevadaK]

1. Develop a philosophy around the need for a strategic air campaign.
2. Develop a single engine fighter with an effective range at least twice that of the Bf109. My suggestion would be to support the development of the He 100 along those lines. Would need to be a bigger aircraft than what was developed, but not by much.
3. Develop effective countermeasures for ground based radar.
4. Ramp up war time production sooner

 

[swampyankee]

Since improving the Luftwaffe would result in even more murdered civilians in Europe, any "improvement" to the Luftwaffe would be a bad thing. The easiest would be better signals security, but that would require the German military to think its technology and methods weren't perfect.

 

[Shortround6]

Develop a philosophy around the need for a strategic air campaign.

Germans had a strategic air campaign.
Trouble is that everyone compares the German strategic air campaign of 1940-41 to the British/American campaign of 1943-44.
The Allies did learn a few things from the Germans as a result of the 1940-41 campaign, they also learned a bit from the British dismal failure at a strategic bombing campaign in 1940-41.
Everybody vastly underestimated the numbers of aircraft needed, the size of the bombs needed, the tonnage of the bombs needed (not the same thing), the need for post raid independent damage assessment, and probably a bunch of other things. The Germans did manage to hit a number of strategic targets. Just not hard enough or often enough.

Please note the initial German beam bombing systems were strategic in nature, or at least rather useless for tactical bombing.

Develop a single engine fighter with an effective range at least twice that of the Bf109. My suggestion would be to support the development of the He 100 along those lines. Would need to be a bigger aircraft than what was developed, but not by much.

By the time you convert the He 100 to a plane that has a decent chance of survival as a long range escort you might as well design a new plane.
Much is made of vulnerability of various liquid cooled fighters due to the radiator systems. The He 100 was practically a flying cooling system. An attacking pilot could not miss both the engine coolant and the oil cooling system even if he tried
And no, that tiny radiator under the cockpit of the later He 100s was not a substitute for the original cooling system, it was an admission that the original cooling system was not doing the job. Leaving increases in engine power a really dubious possibility without significant redesign.

 

[GrauGeist]

2. Develop a single engine fighter with an effective range at least twice that of the Bf109. My suggestion would be to support the development of the He 100 along those lines. Would need to be a bigger aircraft than what was developed, but not by much

The Luftwaffe had a fighter that had nearly twice the range of the Bf109 at the start of the war: the He112.
While it wasn't a "hotrod" compared to the 109, it was a well armed and capable aircraft.
As with many other promising aircraft available to the Germans, the He112 was never allowed to reach it's full potential before the type was abandoned.

 

[JAG88]

Just to illustrate againstt what the LW was against during and after the BoB, a table from a book about German aircraft production. UK was outproducing Germany 2.5:1 in fighters in second half of 1940. Ratio between Bf 109 and 110 was about 1:1 (!!) - a good recipe to loose the BoB. So I still suggest that Germany does not make 2-engined fighters of any kind, but to focus on 1-engine fighters, predominantly on 109s.
Another table is production total of DB engines, including what was produced in Avia, Fiat and Mafred Weiss. By just not making the 'double engines', it 'frees' almost 17000 (17 thousand) of DB 601/605 'single engines' before 1945 (or ~1500 for our era of interest) - almost enough for each Fw 190.

The LW had 739 He 111Ps with DB601s, I think those should be the first to go... give them BMW 132s if needed, use the DBs on 109-110s.

 

[JAG88]

My favorite idea last moths is to cancel the Bf 110 before it leaves the drawing board. Leaves thousands of DB 601 engines to be used, for example, in a ramped-up Bf 109 production. Install a hundred or so of the DB 601s in the Do 17 airframe = Do 215 = covers long-recon tasks.
Drop tank on Bf 109E does not need to wait Autumn of 1940. It will be needed to increase ammo storage for the MG FF(M), again drums of greater capacity are a known thing for Oerlikons. Belt feed? A half-decent HMG might warrant a look, too, in the specified era.

I think I have to pick up this gauntlet...

I would go all in with the Bf 110 as a true multirole aircraft:

Bf 110A - Recce, 600l fuel tank behind the pilot, camera on the nose. Drop tank options.

Bf 110J - Long range fighter, 600l fuel tank behind the pilot, 8xMG17 (500rpg) on the nose, later replaced by 4xMG FF with 90 round drums (or belts, if possible). Drop tank options.

Bf 110K - Interdictor, ESAC-type racks behind the pilot for 12xSC50 or 96xSC10 (internal racks can be replaced by a 500l fuel tank with 2xSC500 or 4XSC250 external load if needed to support regular bombing missions, Lotfe), 4xMG17 (1000rpg) on the nose. Drop tank options.

Bf 110N - Night fighter, 600l tank behind the pilot, 4xMG FF with 90 round drums (or belts, if possible), additional navigational aids. Drop tank options.

Bf 110P - Anti-tank, 37mm flak 36 (they had the gun right there, no need to wait for the MK 101), at first.

Bf 110S - Stuka, Stuvi, landing gear modified and reinforced to act as dive brakes... not fully sure about this one yet. Drop tank options.

Bf 110T - Torpedo bomber with single Lt 5B, 600l fuel tank behind the pilot. Drop tank options.

MG 17 Zs for all defensive positions, until replaced by belt-fed MG FFMs. An actual dorsal turret for the He 111.

110 production begins on early 1938, so Do 17P-Z/Do 215/217 dont happen, resources go to the Bf 110 program.

Me 210 losses competition against a smaller and DB 601-equipped version of the historical Do 335, RLM wont rush production either.

The LW made a massive factory (FMO) for an in-existent engine (Jumo 222), how about making one in 1937 for a real one (DB601)? They control the bank after all...

Do 24 is the standard flying boat since 1936, no more He 59s, Do 18s, He 115, Bv 138s... all gone.

And the most important bit, they had good radar, lets develop GCI a bit... and the missing radar types.

Oh, and make the Ural bomber, only the "Ural" part is cover for Ulster, what they want is a bomber that can drop 8xSC500s anywhere on the islands and, if equipped with diesel engines and extra fuel tanks, serve as a MPA to cooperate with the Uboats...

 

[Kevin J]

I think I have to pick up this gauntlet...

I would go all in with the Bf 110 as a true multirole aircraft:

Bf 110A - Recce, 600l fuel tank behind the pilot, camera on the nose. Drop tank options.

Bf 110J - Long range fighter, 600l fuel tank behind the pilot, 8xMG17 (500rpg) on the nose, later replaced by 4xMG FF with 90 round drums (or belts, if possible). Drop tank options.

Bf 110K - Interdictor, ESAC-type racks behind the pilot for 12xSC50 or 96xSC10 (internal racks can be replaced by a 500l fuel tank with 2xSC500 or 4XSC250 external load if needed to support regular bombing missions, Lotfe), 4xMG17 (1000rpg) on the nose. Drop tank options.

Bf 110N - Night fighter, 600l tank behind the pilot, 4xMG FF with 90 round drums (or belts, if possible), additional navigational aids. Drop tank options.

Bf 110P - Anti-tank, 37mm flak 36 (they had the gun right there, no need to wait for the MK 101), at first.

Bf 110S - Stuka, Stuvi, landing gear modified and reinforced to act as dive brakes... not fully sure about this one yet. Drop tank options.

Bf 110T - Torpedo bomber with single Lt 5B, 600l fuel tank behind the pilot. Drop tank options.

MG 17 Zs for all defensive positions, until replaced by belt-fed MG FFMs. An actual dorsal turret for the He 111.

110 production begins on early 1938, so Do 17P-Z/Do 215/217 dont happen, resources go to the Bf 110 program.

Me 210 losses competition against a smaller and DB 601-equipped version of the historical Do 335, RLM wont rush production either.

The LW made a massive factory (FMO) for an in-existent engine (Jumo 222), how about making one in 1937 for a real one (DB601)? They control the bank after all...

Do 24 is the standard flying boat since 1936, no more He 59s, Do 18s, He 115, Bv 138s... all gone.

And the most important bit, they had good radar, lets develop GCI a bit... and the missing radar types.

Oh, and make the Ural bomber, only the "Ural" part is cover for Ulster, what they want is a bomber that can drop 8xSC500s anywhere on the islands and, if equipped with diesel engines and extra fuel tanks, serve as a MPA to cooperate with the Uboats...

You need to keep those nutters in the North out of it, as otherwise they'll join forces and turn the whole World against you.

 

[The Basket]

One of the driving factors behind the 109 was the Spitfire. Either it's perceived or real performance.

So top speed and climb was a significant factor in the characteristics of a fighter. Range wasn't. The idea that a lower performance aircraft with a weaker top speed than the Spitfire was going to be chosen because it was longer ranged was not happening. The Fw 190 in 1941 had a higher top speed than the contemporary Spitfire.

Engines to power a large single engined fighter were not available in mid 1930s so twins had to be operated as heavy fighters

There was only theories in air combat. To say the Germans had to counter radar or build a long range fighter because of hindsight is not something in 1939. Is radar operational? Is it useful? Maybe we need to build more Defiants because they big and long range and got the turret so they be mega useful.

Most 1930s theories went up in smoke as well as the aircraft that came from them.

A rifle can either shoot or explode in your face but best way to find out is to pull the trigger. For every theory that works, there is an equal and opposite dumbass theory that doesn't.

We know the lottery numbers after but the real trick is to know them before the draw and that is the hard part. I doubt the RLM would have advised the Me 210 to be a dog and awful in the design specs.

 

[JAG88]

The Bf110 did serve well in several areas, so it shpuld remain in the Luftwaffe's stable, but as I mentioned, get the manufacturing into a wartime footing immediately.
This imcludes engine manufacturing - it's time to leave the 8 am to 5 pm cottage industry and clock-shop mentality behind and adopt Henry Ford's manufacturing example.
Work shifts around the clock 6 days a week if need be. And utilize Ford AG and Opel, both of which were set up by Ford and General Motors and already had the assembly line model in their factories.

Agree, Junkers had been working in its takt time system for years, it was simply a matter of making the other producers fall in line, an easy task since the LW was the one financing the whole aircraft industry. All that was needed was a political decision.

By the way, the Luftwaffe did have a fighter that was capable of escorting bombers into Britain, the He112, who's range was roughly 675 miles.
I know everyone's going to rush in and discount it, but let's keep in mind this fighter was very capable for early war needs and it had decent range, which was something the Luftwaffe sorely lacked and honestly never solved.

The KM needed carriers and the He 112 fits the bill better than the 109, so that would make it an option for the LW as well as a complement to the Me.

I disagree.

Air force strategy is based on a build strategy because it takes years to go from paper to metal. So the disasters that befell the Luftwaffe later in the war had to be fixed by 1941.

The Luftwaffe and the German Industrial military complex was simply too small to fight the war they found themselves in.

And that can't be fixed.

The German aircraft industry had LOTS of machines... what it lacked was optimization, they needed better guidance from the top, to streamline production and eliminate waste.

The Battle of Britain was not going to be changed by having a different twin engined fighter.

Both the Bf 109 and 110 came out about even which is about par for a peer v peer battle.

Better tactics and strategies could have helped but unless the Channel froze over then any invasion of the UK was pure fantasy.

Take GCI seriously, the 110 with its radio operator would be the obvious choice for it, put several Freyas on Pas de Calais (they can "see" as far as London) and you can direct them in to bounce the RAF fighters as required. That would certainly change the game...

This is an area that has interested me in the past - but over time I've personally come to the conclusion that Luftwaffe's issues were not in terms of equipment. This is an opinion rather than a fact I should stress.

The 109 E was as good as any other fighter in 1939-1941.
The 110 was possibly not a good fighter but certainly a good fighter-bomber and (later on) an excellent bomber destroyer.

The 110 was an EXCELENT 2E multirole aircraft and VERY maneuverable... for a 2E aircraft, but no 2E aircraft is going to be better than a good 1E fighter, that is asking too much.

From reading numerous accounts the issues were not in what planes they had - but how they used them.

Ju-87s shouldn't have been hurled into the BoB before total air superiority was assured.

That is propaganda talk, the only times the Ju 87s suffered heavy losses was when someone screwed up on the German side and sent them unprotected, witch escorts present losses were minimal.

The fighters should have been sent ahead of the bombers to sanitise the target areas before the bombers got anywhere near.

They always did that, the RAF learned to ignore fighter sweeps and focus on the bombers, give the LW GCI and they can turn the tables on the RAF.

More nuisance raids could have forced RAF Fighter Command to run themselves ragged trying to play whack-a-mole in dealing with small but frequent attacks across a broad defensive front. Note that Jabo raids of 1942/43 caused some significant headaches despite being fairly small groups of aircraft.

The LW often made secondary and diversionary raids.

The airfields should have come under sustained attack until they were completely out of action - then follow-up raids to disrupt repairs.

Agree.

The Germans should have taken the radar technology of the time more seriously - putting greater efforts into damaging the Chain Home system.

They did take it seriously, they simply gave up on it when it appeared they didnt succeed right away, a leadership problem.

Finally and most importantly - the conduct of the air campaign should have been run purely in military terms, not chopped and changed due to top-down political whims.

All of the above is 20-20 hindsight 80 years later! It may have changed things, it may have changed nothing....

I dont think they had a political problem, rather a military aims one, they didnt know what they wanted to do for certain.

The 'regular' Ju 87s should also receive some actual gun firepower. Be that having 4 instead of 2 MG 17s, and/or use of MG C/30L as a motor cannon, or two MG FF(M)s in the wings etc. Plus, a better firepower for the rear gunner ASAP.

I would have the KM take over the Ju 87 project and modify it for carrier use, in addition to the extra wing tanks of the D model, no frontal guns, replaced by additional fuel tanks for extra range. With full fuel of course the load would be reduced to a single 250Kg bomb... like most dive bombers of the time, with heavier loads available for shorter trips.

 

[swampyankee]

Some other musings on LW stuff, applicable for 1936-41.
Once Fw 190 starts taking shape, have one/two prototypes made with DB 601 in the nose, and then go on and make such 190s.
The DB 601N - don't increase the compression ratio that much. Instead of 8.2:1 (yikes!), retain the CR of the DB 601A (6.9:1). Should produce less stress on the engine and thus improve reliability, as well as allow for possible greater boost (= more power) at lower altitudes.
The 2- and 3-stage compressors from 1930 (Bristol, Junkers/Jumo, the French) merit a look.

I don't believe there were any three-stage supercharged engines used in service. Three speed, maybe, but not three stage.

Ship the production lines of G&R and Hispano from France to somewhere in Germany/Austria/Bohemia.

And the slave labor to run them?

 

[tomo pauk]

I don't believe there were any three-stage supercharged engines used in service. Three speed, maybe, but not three stage.

I've written: The 2- and 3-stage compressors from 1930 (Bristol, Junkers/Jumo, the French) merit a look.
Junkers (before there was Jumo) was experimenting with both 2- and 3-stage superchargers in 1930s, so did the French.

And the slave labor to run them?

German women running them.

 

[NevadaK]

Germans had a strategic air campaign.
Trouble is that everyone compares the German strategic air campaign of 1940-41 to the British/American campaign of 1943-44.
The Allies did learn a few things from the Germans as a result of the 1940-41 campaign, they also learned a bit from the British dismal failure at a strategic bombing campaign in 1940-41.
Everybody vastly underestimated the numbers of aircraft needed, the size of the bombs needed, the tonnage of the bombs needed (not the same thing), the need for post raid independent damage assessment, and probably a bunch of other things. The Germans did manage to hit a number of strategic targets. Just not hard enough or often enough.

Please note the initial German beam bombing systems were strategic in nature, or at least rather useless for tactical bombing.




By the time you convert the He 100 to a plane that has a decent chance of survival as a long range escort you might as well design a new plane.
Much is made of vulnerability of various liquid cooled fighters due to the radiator systems. The He 100 was practically a flying cooling system. An attacking pilot could not miss both the engine coolant and the oil cooling system even if he tried
And no, that tiny radiator under the cockpit of the later He 100s was not a substitute for the original cooling system, it was an admission that the original cooling system was not doing the job. Leaving increases in engine power a really dubious possibility without significant redesign.

I don't disagree with you that the German's had an air campaign strategy. I do think it was built around sudden or quickly won victories rather than being structured around an extended air campaign. To me, that is the critical weakness. I agree on all other points.

As for the He 100, well its a bit of a unicorn isn't it. I referenced it as the airframe in existence before 1941 that seems to have the capacity to be developed into a longer range fighter. Yes, the cooling system would need a major overhaul as well as redeveloping the design, but the foundational ideas are there.

 

[JAG88]

There was only theories in air combat. To say the Germans had to counter radar or build a long range fighter because of hindsight is not something in 1939. Is radar operational? Is it useful? Maybe we need to build more Defiants because they big and long range and got the turret so they be mega useful.

By January 1939 the LW already had 6 Freyas, it could have had 50 operational by the beginning of the war, but they were slow to setup training, which is fixable, as is the KM/LW feud that delayed LW access to radar in the first place. Range was 120Km, and by early 1940 the first prototypes with double the range were in trials.

 

[GrauGeist]

So top speed and climb was a significant factor in the characteristics of a fighter. Range wasn't. The idea that a lower performance aircraft with a weaker top speed than the Spitfire was going to be chosen because it was longer ranged was not happening. The Fw 190 in 1941 had a higher top speed than the contemporary Spitfire.

Typically speaking, when one starts a war, it usually entails going over to the enemy's territory (wherever that might be) therefore range is something to be considered.

As far as "weaker aircraft", the He112 was developed at the same time as the Bf109 and Spitfire. The He112B had comparable performance to the Bf109B but development/production never went forward as engines were earmarked for other types.

 

[Shortround6]

As for the He 100, well its a bit of a unicorn isn't it. I referenced it as the airframe in existence before 1941 that seems to have the capacity to be developed into a longer range fighter. Yes, the cooling system would need a major overhaul as well as redeveloping the design, but the foundational ideas are there.

Several reasons that it got such good range are either problems in a service fighter, or if fixed, cut into the range. It was a very low drag design, being smaller than the 109, good for speed/range but not so good for sticking guns in. There was talk of extending the wing root slightly just to fit four 7.9mm MGs instead of two. Fuselage was too small (or type if cowl construction) prohibited cow mounted machine guns. However even without the cowl machine guns the view over the nose may have been worse than a 109s, making deflection shooting difficult.
The surface cooling allowed for the conventional radiator to be done away with, great for drag and speed/range. Not so great considering it didn't seem to work that well, several modifications? If you fit a conventional radiator of the time (not a 1942/43 Mustang radiator) you loose both speed and range.
Fitting self sealing material to those large flat tanks adds weight and/or cuts volume for fuel, neither of which are good for range. Large flat tanks have more surface area (are heavier) than short, chunky tanks for the same fuel capacity.

There is no doubt the 109E had some pretty horrible aerodynamics and it wouldn't be hard to build a longer ranged fighter that could perform as well or better, In fact the 109F was just such a plane