Luftwaffe in 1936-41 improvements?

Shortround6 said:

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The Do 17Z may not be the gold standard of 2000hp bombers but some better details might help the P.37B's case.

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This is taken from the booklet from the Muzeum Lotnictwa Polskiego w Krakowie
1st pic shows, among other, possible bomb load (section 'k'). Case III is 18x110 kg plus 2x300 kg = 2600 kg total. (the remarks in blue are mostly conversion into imperial measuring units)
2nd pic shows performance on different engines. Polish versions used the Pegasus engines (XII and XX, for the A and B versions respectively). Translation by yours truly.
The gold standard of 2000 HP bombers was probably the Wellington.

JAG88 said:

Insult?

I was pointing out that your argument was a strawman, understand? A mis-representation of an argument in order to attack it, and that is all you have done here for whatever reason, ignorance, lack of arguments, whatever...

Strawman

Somebody else blocked you already in this thread, there you go into the bin again.

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Oh dear me. I was blocked by someone who had no concept of the Me 110 so hardly my fault.

The absolute ignorance on show staggers me. This is supposed to be a discussion of possible German capability in say 1941 when its just another magic wand exercise.

I don't mind been blocked when I see what you cheer. Your boos mean nothing.

TheMadPenguin said:

The MOST EFFECTIVE thing the LW could do in 1936 is shoot Hitler.

Second most effective thing (assuming you don't do the 1st thing) would be to wait on Poland invasion until the Soviets go in first, then go in as Polish Friend and Soviet Opponent. This, however, would have required shooting Hitler.

Third is, upon winning the 1st Battle of France (1940), to skip BoB until you win the BotA. Again, shooting Hitler is essential to implement this notion. With Brittany as an unsinkable carrier, send planes (e.g. Condor or BF110 with wing tanks) to find convoys, then radios to tell the submarines where the feast is, then call in the Stukas to destroy the escorts vessels while the submarines gather.

YES, put wing/drop tanks on the 109/190 aircraft so they can protect the Stukas, and the Condor/BF110's acting as Torpedo Bombers.

(N.B. to BF 110 lovers and haters: I mean 2 engine multi-role capable aircraft, BF110 is merely an implementation of the idea. ONE MORE THING to do is cut down the number of types of planes to "just the best for each needed role". This is another point where shooting Hitler would have done the LW a world of good).

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Shooting Hitler could very well prevent WWII, but it would have to be before all the Wehrmacht swore personal oaths of fealty to that particular piece of filth.

All Officers and Enlisted personnel of the German Armed forces had to take the "Fuhrereid" starting in 1934.

Civil Servants were required to do it as well.

Shortround6 said:

Trouble is that winning the BotA without putting some sort of extreme pressure on the RAF/Britain might not happen. It didn't happen even with putting the pressure on.
Allowing the British to switch more of their production to anti sub efforts (and with less damage to British factories) The Germans chances for improvment seem small.

The Germans didn't have anywhere near the number of U-boats needed in 1940, nor will small changes to the production schedule provide the numbers.

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How about...

...making the nazis smart?

I know it is cheating and pretty much an oxymoron, but, what if the KM and LW cooperate? As in they share info and support each other like on radar for example.

When GEMA comes up with radar the KM shares the info with the LW and they immediately see the benefits and request models for themselves (Freya was almost ready for production when finally shown to them in 1938), including flak, ASV and AI. Plus they look into how to use them instead of the casual indifference they used at the start.

Hohentwiel btw, was an offshoot of a failed Lorenz flak radar, when the LW requested an ASV radar in 1940 Lorenz re-purposed it, so it is feasible they could have gotten it earlier if needed.

The LW of course keeps its commitments and trains its He 111 torpedo squadrons, Ju 87 stukas to dive bomb naval units (they go for range with these, with the extra wing tanks of the Ds and extra tanks instead of the guns) and Bf 110s are intended to be deployed over the North Sea to cripple Coastal Command and keep the RN blind.

The KM deigns to test and improve its torpedoes, all of them.

It is quite easy to put more pressure on the RAF, all you have to do its to erase Supermarine from the face of the earth on day 1 of the BoB, its all nicely close to Cherbourg, simply send a massed attack using ALL the dive bombers to ensure accuracy, instead of what they did IRL, misidentifying and missing the targets and not destroying it until late September, when it was already too late. Castle Bromwich was a mess at the time and produced few Spitfires, so few replacements will be available for a while and then CB is also in the target list.

Even that single and obvious attack would put FAR more pressure on the RAF than everything the LW did IRL.

Then of course you can target the radar stations, and keep at it, it would certainly degrade the RAF capability to intercept the LW.

Setup GCI in Calais, use the Bf 110s as radar-guided interceptors over SE England, 2 can play the game. The Bf 110 would be quite capable in that role and the radio operator becomes an asset.

It is not well know, but the LW idiotically lost many KG100 crews in Norway, so it was a while before they built up numbers again to be able and use radio-guided precision bombing... so, like dont do that and use them as pathfinders to hit the Hurricane and Merlin factories at night?

Regarding subs:

Type VII
Program year (laid down the following year, mostly)
Actual Improved
1935 10 12
1936 6 16 (compensated by deleting 6 Type IX and 4 Type IIC)
1937 5 20 (deleting 2 Type IX, 4 Type IIC and increasing production)
1938 13 24 (deleting 3 Type IXB, 6 Type IID and increasing production)

This way you can get 48 oceanic Type VII Uboats by the start of the war and 24 more to come on line during 1940, almost double than IRL, with good torpedoes and with the LW doing spotting for them. They effect should be at least triple with these changes, and losses for the 1st 4 months were:

210.000t
200.000t
90.000t
180.000t

To get an idea.

Add to that KM carriers to further complicate matters.

There is plenty of space to create massive complications.

swampyankee said:

Shooting Hitler could very well prevent WWII, but it would have to be before all the Wehrmacht swore personal oaths of fealty to that particular piece of filth.

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Halder apparently went to see Hitler several times with a loaded gun in his pocket in Nov 1939... but his courage failed him. Or his conditioning kicked in.

The problem in 1930-1940 is that aviation design and technology was moving so quickly that the line between obsolete and excellent was only a few years.

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Reminds me of WW1.... we got these great new machines guns and magazine fed rifles we can win a war, then in 12 months your enemy also makes those same things in huge numbers.

Second most effective thing (assuming you don't do the 1st thing) would be to wait on Poland invasion until the Soviets go in first, then go in as Polish Friend and Soviet Opponent. This, however, would have required shooting Hitler.

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Of course that is an inversion of what actually happened, Stalin was smart enough to wait until Hitler had moved into Poland, and UK and France declared war on him. Hitler's rise and German armament buildups was certainly welcomed by Britain and France as a buffer to the Soviet Unions continual expansion into europe, but Hitler blew his chance with the non-aggression pact with Stalin pre-war, then he lost another chance not joining to help protect Finland in its winter war 1940 (as Britain France and USA tried to), certainly after France invasion Hitler and germany had no way back!

The Germans may go in as Poland's friend, but the nazis would immediately start their genocides and enslavement of the Poles: both were basic nazi doctrine. Of course, both Russia (and the USSR's treatment of the Baltics, Poland, Ukraine, etc. was not sharply different from the Empire's) and Germany had a long history of antipathy towards a sovereign Poland, and the Polish people knew this. (As an aside, I find it somewhat telling that many of the same people who excoriate the USSR for invading Poland consider it justifiable for Germany to do exactly the same thing. Excoriate both or neither; both had exactly the same motive and moral justification: conquest and oppression for the former, and no moral basis for the other).

The Wehrmacht, in general, and the Luftwaffe, in particular, would do absolutely nothing to change Hitler's policies and war aims as their leadership were the very people who enabled and encouraged the rise of the nazis, from the time the German Army's cowardly, lying leaders scampered away from accepting any responsibility for losing WWI.

Sans several decades of hindsight, the Luftwaffe would do nothing to change. By all evidence it had — or was willing to accept— until the Battle of Britain, it was the technological and tactical leader. Even after BoB, there was little evidence that their pre-war purchasing and tactical decisions were flawed: it was fighting the war it wanted and it was built for.

"Excoriate both " I do.
The thrust of my post was not "this is how they could have won", but "This is why they were for-ordained to lose".
"Nazi Wisdom" and "Imperial Japanese Compassion" ... two wonderful ideas that were never considered.

Then of course you can target the radar stations, and keep at it, it would certainly degrade the RAF capability to intercept the LW.

Or, discover Window. Its easier to mess up radar signals than destroy mobile radar units. That would have increased loss of squadron control which is one of the major advantages the RAF had.

JAG88 said:

The LW of course keeps its commitments and trains its He 111 torpedo squadrons, Ju 87 stukas to dive bomb naval units (they go for range with these, with the extra wing tanks of the Ds and extra tanks instead of the guns)

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Not sure why you want to pull the guns from the Ju 87s. A pair of MG 17s and 1000rpg is worth about 30 US gallons of gas. 1000rounds is worth about 10 US gallons. The Ju 87R already had the extra the fuel tanks and first saw service in the attacks on Denmark and Norway. Main problem is with the extra fuel the bomb load was restricted to a single 250kg bomb.
The Ju-87D got the Jumo 211J engine with 200 more hp for take-off and even a bigger difference in power higher up and had less drag.
pulling the guns doesn't equal the weight of the fuel.

JAG88 said:

Regarding subs:

Type VII
Program year (laid down the following year, mostly)
Actual Improved
1935 10 12
1936 6 16 (compensated by deleting 6 Type IX and 4 Type IIC)
1937 5 20 (deleting 2 Type IX, 4 Type IIC and increasing production)
1938 13 24 (deleting 3 Type IXB, 6 Type IID and increasing production)

This way you can get 48 oceanic Type VII Uboats by the start of the war and 24 more to come on line during 1940, almost double than IRL, with good torpedoes and with the LW doing spotting for them.

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The type IIs weren't intended to be fully operational subs. They were intended to be training subs with a possible role in coastal waters. Don't build any and you have to take some of your type VIIs and use them for training (not available for operations).

You also cannot trade 250-300ton boats for 700 ton boats on a one for one basis and the type IX at just over 1000ton for the early ones doesn't give enough surplus to bring the type IIs up to the mark. Not to mention the differences in engines. motors and batteries.

NevadaK said:

Then of course you can target the radar stations, and keep at it, it would certainly degrade the RAF capability to intercept the LW.

Or, discover Window. Its easier to mess up radar signals than destroy mobile radar units. That would have increased loss of squadron control which is one of the major advantages the RAF had.

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LW efforts to jam radar began when it captured British radar at Dunkirk, and that was roughly 2 years after being shown Freya by GEMA and thus learning about radar, since they developed window around two years later... it might be feasible time wise, of course that would demand some clairvoyance... while at the same time busy developing quite a bit of radar types.

I am a bit on the fence on its actual feasibility...

Shortround6 said:

Not sure why you want to pull the guns from the Ju 87s. A pair of MG 17s and 1000rpg is worth about 30 US gallons of gas. 1000rounds is worth about 10 US gallons. The Ju 87R already had the extra the fuel tanks and first saw service in the attacks on Denmark and Norway. Main problem is with the extra fuel the bomb load was restricted to a single 250kg bomb.
The Ju-87D got the Jumo 211J engine with 200 more hp for take-off and even a bigger difference in power higher up and had less drag.
pulling the guns doesn't equal the weight of the fuel.

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You are thinking weight, it is fuel, you need to think about volume:



As you can see, the compartment occupied by the guns is larger than the ones occupied by the 240l and 150l tanks and, honestly, there is little use for such weapons in a naval dive bomber, the range is far more useful.

The extra fuel tanks you speak of are 300l drop tanks and they add drag, reducing range. Better to have that fuel inside where they wont detract from the range.

As per the Ju 87B and C datapages, the stuka could lift a 1.000Kg bomb, the D an 1.800Kg one, all I am doing is the obvious, give the stuka the option to translate such capability into range by adding fuel tanks. The historical stuka had no such need as a CAS-oriented dive bomber, which is why they had a far larger bomb load than the D3a and SBD, but a far worse range.

I am not even counting the weight of the guns, mounts and ammo, I am simply using a larger part of the payload for fuel instead of bombs.



Btw, here is the data page of the Ju 87C with 2x300l drop tanks and a SC500, I know, there is a lot of crap about the Ju 87 on old sources, keep in mind this is for the heavier carrier version, not even the B, D or R:

The type IIs weren't intended to be fully operational subs. They were intended to be training subs with a possible role in coastal waters. Don't build any and you have to take some of your type VIIs and use them for training (not available for operations).

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They would still have 24 Type IIA and Bs for training.

You also cannot trade 250-300ton boats for 700 ton boats on a one for one basis and the type IX at just over 1000ton for the early ones doesn't give enough surplus to bring the type IIs up to the mark. Not to mention the differences in engines. motors and batteries.

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Sure, it is not an exact equivalence but I am doing away with 5x14.000t CAs... plenty of resources to make up for it.

For Naval Stukas, take out the read gunner & gun, put fuel there.
It is understood that these have fighter cover. Less cover is needed over the Atlantic than over London.

TheMadPenguin said:

For Naval Stukas, take out the read gunner & gun, put fuel there.
It is understood that these have fighter cover. Less cover is needed over the Atlantic than over London.

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That would screw up the center of gravity and stability of the aircraft, over water a navigator and radio operator is a nice thing to have, specially if you have space in the wings.

JAG88 said:

That would screw up the center of gravity and stability of the aircraft, over water a navigator and radio operator is a nice thing to have, specially if you have space in the wings.

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And that's the best you can think of? Or do you step on ideas when you can?
Maintaining center of mass and lift with the 'fixed' weight of gunner and seat/gun/etc can be done with ballast (like a radio or pilot armor).

TheMadPenguin said:

And that's the best you can think of? Or do you step on ideas when you can?
Maintaining center of mass and lift with the 'fixed' weight of gunner and seat/gun/etc can be done with ballast (like a radio or pilot armor).

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Uh, if you put fuel where the gunner was (behind the center of gravity) the only way you can maintain the center of gravity as the fuel is used (weight in that location is used/removed) is if the radio/seat armor is on sliding mounts that move aft as fuel is used to maintain the balance.
That or don't use the fuel in the tank which rather defeats the whole purpose of putting it in the airplane in the first place.

The Ju 87 was hardly volume limited in the first place, you had 343 sq ft of wing area. SInce the landing gear didn't retract you don't need wheel wells or space for struts.
It doesn't really matter if the Rs had extra internal wing tanks or not in addition to the under wing tanks. The space/volume was there. The Problem with getting a lot of extra range with the B/R series Ju 87s was the 1100-1200hp engines. You are trading fuel load for bomb load no matter where the fuel goes and the machine guns simply don't weigh enough to make a whole lot of difference.

TheMadPenguin said:

And that's the best you can think of? Or do you step on ideas when you can?
Maintaining center of mass and lift with the 'fixed' weight of gunner and seat/gun/etc can be done with ballast (like a radio or pilot armor).

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They tried that with the Bf 110, it caused several stability problems and was promptly dropped. Fuel gets used and changes the CoG...

Reality is a B...

Shortround6 said:

Not sure why you want to pull the guns from the Ju 87s. A pair of MG 17s and 1000rpg is worth about 30 US gallons of gas. 1000rounds is worth about 10 US gallons. The Ju 87R already had the extra the fuel tanks and first saw service in the attacks on Denmark and Norway. Main problem is with the extra fuel the bomb load was restricted to a single 250kg bomb.
...

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The Ju-87R1 (Jumo 211A-1 engine, 1000 HP for take off) was carrying, max, 1000 kg bomb + 2 drop tanks:

JAG88 said:

Yes, and that was both a problem and an opportunity. They could have built everything from the ground up for mass production, they controlled the money so they could have forced producers to adopt more modern production methods, that could have certainly improved their position significantly regarding both output and labor demands.

You need long ranged bombers first and foremost... for the Atlantic, to provide reece for the U boats and even attack merchants until armed. IIRC Kesselring spoke of 2 heavies costing as much as 3 mediums, not a bad trade.

Now, if the UK surrenders, uncle Joe is more likely to launch a preventive strike on May 1941...

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Well, I don't think they did that badly IRL, looking at 109E vs Spitfire production for example. I suppose with hindsight they could have done even better but what level of knowledge are we assuming here? Sending back engineers with laptops full of data?

You need a working heavy design first, this is 1940 remember. And the Condor was easy pickings for fighters as soon as the escort carriers got going.

A preventive strike by the USSR in 1941 (IIRC Zukhov actually wanted to do this but Stalin didn't) would probably favour the Germans. Interesting butterfly effect.