kitplane01
Airman 1st Class
- 132
- Apr 23, 2020
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This perhaps belongs more in the What-if sub forum?In a different history ...
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Me 262 has a problem if the Allies have a good foothold in France.The D-Day ports are probably the most defended spot in the entire world. And the Me-262 is the best single seat aircraft in the entire world.
How does it go?
The Me262 is too fast for dive bombing.
In other words, it'll build up too much speed to be effective as well as putting the aircraft and pilot at risk.
Historically, the Me262A-2a was not very accurate as a bomber.
Even the Ar234 had difficulty in accurately bombing the bridge at Remagen.
Anyway, for a bit of napkin calculations, if about 4000 ships participated in the landing, and assuming a 20% casualty rate (sunk or crippled ships) would be required to cause the Allies to abort and turn back, that means the Germans need to cripple or sink 800 ships. If we further assume a success rate of 25% for a strike mission, it means the Germans would need to launch 3200 BT-equipped Me262 missions. Even if we assume every Me262 has time to do two missions (the time window is relatively short, presumably once the Allies start to unload men and equipment on the beachheads truly catastrophical casualties would be required to abort), that still means 1600 operational aircraft.
Easy solution: bomb their airfields. They'll be too busy defending them to attack the beachheads. I don't think there were ever more than 200 262s in operation at any one time -- probably less than that -- so between bombing them on the ground, attriting them in the air, non-combat losses, and overrunning their bases, I don't see many of the jets surviving.
As for Allied casualties, hard to say without getting a better picture of the 262's bombing accuracy.
We had a pretty similar thread slightly less than two months ago at What if the Luftwaffe gained air superiority during d-day?
For your points:
1-2) Probably the initial success rate will be poor, but crews will quickly learn to apply more lead. Still, it's going to be very hard to hit a fast moving target like a 262. However, we can look at the historical campaign to counter V-1's for guidance. Once they deployed radar gun laying and VT fuzes the success rate shot up quite dramatically.
3) Dive bombing like a Stuka probably doesn't work for a fast aircraft, as the bomb has to be dropped at a quite considerable height in order to have sufficient room to pull up, thus reducing accuracy. However, Germany (and others) had in this time frame developed shallow angle dive bombing along with computing bomb sights suited for this. The German version was apparently called "Stuvi 5B".
4) Copy-pasting my answer to a similar topic in that thread I linked to above:
"BT" here is Bomben Torpedo, a kind of bomb the Germans designed, the idea was to hit the hull of a ship underwater, thus doing much more damage than an similarly sized bomb blast above the water.
Anyway, for a bit of napkin calculations, if about 4000 ships participated in the landing, and assuming a 20% casualty rate (sunk or crippled ships) would be required to cause the Allies to abort and turn back, that means the Germans need to cripple or sink 800 ships. If we further assume a success rate of 25% for a strike mission, it means the Germans would need to launch 3200 BT-equipped Me262 missions. Even if we assume every Me262 has time to do two missions (the time window is relatively short, presumably once the Allies start to unload men and equipment on the beachheads truly catastrophical casualties would be required to abort), that still means 1600 operational aircraft.
From the original post .... "They're launching from a set of bases that are reasonably safe."
Did they use B-17s to attack airfields? And it would be many airfields .. the Germans do know how to distribute airplanes. And airfields are hard targets for high altitude bombers ... the individual airplanes are a small target and the runway is easy-ish to repair.Yabut I'm pretty sure B-17s and Lancasters can range well beyond the Me-262's roughly 300-mile combat radius. They're hitting Berlin and Nuremberg already. And they're already under SHAEF's control. Defend the fields or attack the coast.
Did they use B-17s to attack airfields?
And it would be many airfields .. the Germans do know how to distribute airplanes. And airfields are hard targets for high altitude bombers ... the individual airplanes are a small target and the runway is easy-ish to repair.
Type | AF | total | operational | with crew |
Hvy Bomb | 8th | 2,578 | 2,243 | 1,947 |
Ftr | 8th | 1,144 | 961 | 961 |
Med B | 9th | 624 | 513 | 467 |
Lt Bomb | 9th | 228 | 165 | 156 |
Ftr | 9th | 1,487 | 1,132 | 1,123 |
Total | US | 6,061 | 5,014 | 4,654 |
Hvy Bomb | BC | 1,380 | 1,212 | 1,183 |
Lt Bomb | BC | 134 | 98 | 97 |
Med B | 2nd TAF | 88 | 67 | 67 |
Lt Bomb | 2nd TAF | 160 | 146 | 146 |
Ftr | 2nd TAF | 1,006 | 856 | 831 |
Ftr | ADGB | 1,072 | 875 | 796 |
Total | RAF | 3,840 | 3,254 | 3,120 |
Total | Allied | 9,901 | 8,268 | 7,774 |
Attack | Bombs | Bombs | Strafe | Strafe |
Month | Dest. | Dam. | Dest. | Dam. |
Jan-44 | 17 | 26 | 1 | |
Feb-44 | 25 | 27 | 4 | 6 |
Mar-44 | 89 | 59 | 21 | 21 |
Apr-44 | 83 | 38 | 39 | 41 |
May-44 | 105 | 44 | 19 | 17 |
Jun-44 | 101 | 84 | 50 | 29 |
Total | 420 | 278 | 134 | 114 |
Unit | Aircraft | MIA | E/A | E/A | Bombs | Bombs | Strafe | Strafe | Ops Not En. | Ops Not En. | Non ops | Non ops | Total | Total |
Unit | Aircraft | MIA | Dest. | Dam. | Dest. | Dam. | Dest. | Dam. | Dest. | Dam. | Dest. | Dam. | Dest. | Dam. |
LR Recon | Ju88 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | |||||||||
SE Fighter | Bf109 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 4 | |||||
SE Fighter | Fw190 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 11 | 7 | |||
TE Fighter | Ju88 | 3 | 3 | 0 | ||||||||||
Night Fighter | He219 | 1 | 1 | 0 | ||||||||||
Night Fighter | Bf110 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | |||||||
Gd Atk | Fw190 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 2 | |||||||||
Bomber | Do217 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |||||||||
Bomber | Fw190 | 1 | 1 | 0 | ||||||||||
Bomber | Ju88 | 5 | 1 | 6 | 0 | |||||||||
Bomber | Ju188 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||||||
Bomber | Me410 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | ||||||||
All | Total | 14 | 14 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 5 | 11 | 3 | 3 | 39 | 21 |