Sept 1938, Changes the RAF can make after admitting they can't bomb Germany.

[Shortround6]

It is Sept 1938, the Munich Crisis.
The RAF admits to the British government (Prime minister?) that they cannot bomb the Ruhr valley with any real hope of success to force the Austrian house painter to back down. The Hampden is being delivered to the 1st user squadron that month and the first production Wellingtons won't be delivered until October.
Whitley's have Tiger engines and neither the Battle or the Blenheim MK I have the range needed.

Which planes can be modified to get better use out of them and could they be successful if turned into tactical aircraft (assuming some sort of tactical doctrine could be worked out) or reinforce Coastal Command.

In Sept of 1938 Bomber Command doesn't want to play "whack a mole" but most of their planes can't reach the other end of the mole tunnels (Ruhr Valley), can't find a specific tunnel even if they could reach it, and armed with the equivalent of a dessert fork and a wet tea towel.

Until sufficient numbers of Hampdens, Wellingtons and Whitleys become available (not until sometime in 1940/41) the strategic knock out blows are a pipe dream.

Can better use be made of the aircraft already built or building with small modifications if turned to other duties.

 

[GrauGeist]

Would this need perhaps accelerate the development of the Short S.29 and Supermarine Type 317 (both were in response to AM Spec B.12/36)?

As it stands, Supermarine's project never made it and Short's S.29 (known as the Stirling) started to enter service in 1940.

I realize that going from paper to production entails cinsiderable effort and time, but the four engine bomber proposal didn't seem to express urgency, but rather focused on such things as being able to be taken apart and transported by rail (which imposed size limitations).

 

[Shortround6]

The RAF was not capable of performing it's self appointed job of providing either deterrence or knocking out enemy means of production. In just one year they would have almost 3000 bombers and yet only a fraction would be able to even try such missions. Several thousand more bombers were on order.
The British were lacking maritime recon aircraft and tactical support aircraft. The British army was totally lacking modern artillery. Coastal Command was less effective/ lower in strength than it ended WW I in.
Even if you speed up the Sterling by a year that is only a couple of squadrons of 4 engine bombers in 1940.
The British needed to make better use of what they were already producing.

 

[nuuumannn]

Essentially, none of the existing options are going to produce what you are proposing, Shortround. In fact, knowing what we know about the capabilities of bomber forces at the time, there was none from any country available in 1938 that could carry out sustained operations against the Ruhr Valley from their home bases without suffering the kinds of setbacks that Bomber Command suffered in the first years of the war. We know that by 1939/1940 the German Kampfgeshwader proved the most accurate bombing force with the use of radio navaids, but its bombers, certainly not the types it had in 1938, simply could not maintain a credible force across the distances required between Britain and Germany. Not least because they had so little in the way of defensive armament. We are talking Ju 52s, Ju 86s, early model He 111s and a handful of Do 17s.

The Whitley and the Wellington are the only British aircraft with the range and potential survivability to be able to reach the Ruhr Valley from the UK, but at the expense of bomb load. The USSR had a fleet of tin-shed like Tupolev multi-engined bombers that had range, but could manage only medium altitudes at very low speeds and the USAAC had only a handful of early model B-17s, which, as the British found out three years later from 1938 were simply not capable of withstanding the rigours of bombing operations without considerable modification.

Much of what we know about the kinds of raids that Bomber Command wanted to carry out, they were not able to until better aircraft types with better defensive armament, sophisticated nav equipment aboard, and lots of them were provided. To be frank, in peacetime, which, despite the Munich Crisis, the UK is still in, there's really no speeding up bomber development. Specifications B.12/36 and P.13/36, which produced the main British four-engined heavies, with the Manchester along the way, were issued in 1936 and were highly experimental and yes, there were conditions that perhaps could have been ignored, but without hindsight, in 1936, could the Air Ministry really have been able to predict what was required of this new generation of bomber aircraft made from new materials and new technologies, with performance and capability beyond anything that had been built before? Building modern four-engined bombers and anticipating future events in 1936 was not easy.

I suspect you're not going to get anything better than the way things went in history.

 

[GrauGeist]

To the USAAC's credit, they were looking at extra long range bombers in the 1930's, which is where the B-19 came from.

From what I've seen, however, the major powers did not seem to take the future Axis nations seriously and prepare accordingly.
As a result, France, Poland, Britain, the U.S., et al were caught with their arse dangling in the breeze.

 

[Shortround6]

I am not expressing it well.
The RAF lied about what it could do and was caught, somewhat, by the Munich Crisis.
Both Belgium and Holland were neutral and BC would have to fly around, not over them. Result of this was that neither the Battle or Blenheim I, BC's most numerous bombers in 1938 and 1939, could reach the Ruhr and return.
Other countries with short ranged aircraft used them in support of their army and navy, or used limited numbers of slow long range planes in support of the navy. The RAF simply doubled down and said "not our job/s" and continued the long range bombers plan while sucking up a large part of the defense budget.
What if somebody (prime minister ?) Told the top officers of the RAF that they better figure out something useful to do with those hundreds ( thousands? )of Battles, Blenheims and whatnot or their next duty station will be being the air attaché to Napal or Bolivia and they won't be coming home until they retire.
The effectiveness of 1000lb loads and 250lb bombs might have debatable by people that ignored the lessons of WW I. The simple lack of range and defensive firepower of the RAFs two main bombers of 1938/39 could not be debated, only ignored. There were jobs these planes could do, but not by following BC doctrine.

 

[Reluctant Poster]

In 1932 Stanley Baldwin made the famous statement that the bomber will always get through. A look at the bombers available at that time should have brought the response "who cares".
The amount of fearing mongering at that time was spectacular. At the beginning of WWII the British euthanized hundreds of thousands of pets to spare them a grisly death..

The little-told story of the massive WWII pet cull

At the beginning of World War II, a government pamphlet led to a massive cull of British pets. This little-discussed moment of panic is explored in a new book.

www.bbc.com

 

[tomo pauk]

War will not happen without France in it. Leaving Germany to attack just France is a recipe for a disaster, as it was almost the thing 24 years ago (luckily Germany also attacked Russia with another half of their army in the same time,) and it was a thing ~70 years ago. It is no secret that French aircraft are obsolete, and low in numbers. France needs UK from day one, in full force, and it is better & cheaper for UK to fight above France than above UK.
Ergo, the British government needs to start negotiations with France about basing of shorter-ranged bombers in France proper, post-haste, in the bases well protected with AA guns and own (not French) fighters and command & control system. Since anyone sane will reckon that Germans will not be happy with RAF bombers attacking, these bombers need to be escorted by fighters.
In the same time, get more emphasis to manufacturing of the 3 bigger & better bombers. Crews need to be taught in night flying. RN has a system of using the flares to light up the target area, copy that system. All-weather & night navigation need to be tackled.

Oh, in case French don't want the rosbifs, start making even more fighters.

 

[Shortround6]

From an old thread.

Aircraft available to the RAF at the outbreak of the war

Blenheims....................................................1089
Battles...........................................................1014
Anson..............................................................760
Hurricane.......................................................400
Spitfire............................................................270
Gladiator........................................................320
Hampden.......................................................212
Whitley...........................................................196
Wellington....................................................172
Gauntlet.........................................................145
Hudson............................................................78
Vildebeest......................................................101
Sunderland....................................................38

total..................................................................4,795

This was not what was available in Sept 1938 but what was on hand one year later. It is also a bit misleading as the while there may have been 196 Whitleys on the books there were only 7 squadrons equipped with them. Of those 7 squadrons 4 were still flying the Tiger powered MK III, On Squadron was flying the MK IV with single speed Merlin IVs and two squadrons were just starting to receive the Whitley MK V with the Merlin X engines. The first 80 Whitleys built were taking out of service (or given to OTU's) due to their unreliable Tiger engines. The 4 squadrons still flying the MK III Whitleys would soon swap them for Merlin powered aircraft. There were only about 36 Merlin powered Whitleys on hand when the war broke out.

Now please remember that wholesale cancelations of many types would leave the British without even poor aircraft and leave them with truly dismal aircraft for fighting a modern war.

Look at the list again, 145 Gloster Gauntlets on charge at the start of war. Anything that delays the Hurricane and Spitfire just means more Gauntlets or other old biplane fighters in use in 1939. Same for the bombers, cancel the Battles in late 1938 or 1939 and you have more crews going to war to Hawker Harts and the like.

Question is what could have been done to modify some of the planes, like the Battles, Blenheims, Gladiators and ??? to do other roles that needed doing and help out the army and navy while the bigger 4 engine bombers are developed and put into production.

For example, admit that the Battle cannot daylight bomb Germany from England (or even do much from French bases) and change their role to Army support. This was actually done in the battle for France but at such a late date that no (or darn few) modifications were done to the aircraft. No specialized bombs or weapons were fitted. little or no low altitude bomb training was done and perhaps most importantly, no doctrine or actual plan for army support was formulated. Neither was any plan to escort the Battles in their strikes.
All too often the Battles were sent on missions to interrupt the German supply lines well behind the front lines based on early morning recon photos (hours earlier) meaning that the intended targets were sometimes not there even if the Battles could find the right target area. And bombing scores of miles behind the front lines does nothing to reduce the moral of the German troops and nothing to improve the moral of the British/French troops who only see/hear German planes bombing and strafing them.
Losses, at least of aircrew, would have been less if the penetrations into enemy airspace were more like a dozen miles instead of scores of miles.
Fighter Escort missions needed to be true escort missions and not a "fighter sweep" in the general area of the target at the general time where the bombers and 'escorting' fighters never saw each other.
For modifications to the Battle one could start with leaving the 3rd crewman home. Fitting armor to protect the two crewmen from ground fire. Self sealing fuel tanks might be out of the question in 1939/early 40 but perhaps heavy dural sheeting across the bottom of the fuel tanks? Fit at least one additional (preferably 3 if supplies allow) forward firing .303 Brownings. Perhaps double up the rear gun mount? In 1939 start investigating under wing racks for 40lb bombs?

A big problem is the Merlin III engine with it's high altitude supercharger and the two pitch prop. Can existing engines be retro fitted with a different supercharger gear? Or new manufacture engines similar to the Merlin VIII fitted depending on manufacture date? An extra 120-200hp at low level might help the Battle evade attackers better? Or lift a heavier load out of forward airfields?
By late 1940 (North Africa against the Italians) a Ground Attack Battle could certainly have self sealing tanks (smaller than the original tanks) a bit more armor and a constant speed propeller. Perhaps sling a 20mm cannon under each wing for tank busting. Drum goes in one of the bomb cells, no need to cut holes in spars. Italian tanks of 1940 (and the small early German ones ) were vulnerable to 20mm Hispano fire. As were armoured cars, SP guns and the German Half tracks.

 

[The Basket]

A few pointers.

RAF was an independent force with independent goals. And supporting the army or navy was zero on that list. The only goal was a Douhet style strategic bombing campaign! What other possible goal was there!

The inter war years was certainly quiet but for an Englishman, the main enemy will always be the Frenchie. So a strategic bombing campaign against the French was always on the cards. Probably a baguette factory within the range of the Blenheim.

The Germans were simply not a threat for most of the interwar and rearmament didn't kick off until the mid 1930s. So we must decide when the Germans became a genuine threat to these isles and when did British aviation tech match the hopes and dreams of the bomber?

It would have been a very narrow window.

 

[Reluctant Poster]

A few pointers.

RAF was an independent force with independent goals. And supporting the army or navy was zero on that list. The only goal was a Douhet style strategic bombing campaign! What other possible goal was there!

The inter war years was certainly quiet but for an Englishman, the main enemy will always be the Frenchie. So a strategic bombing campaign against the French was always on the cards. Probably a baguette factory within the range of the Blenheim.

The Germans were simply not a threat for most of the interwar and rearmament didn't kick off until the mid 1930s. So we must decide when the Germans became a genuine threat to these isles and when did British aviation tech match the hopes and dreams of the bomber?

It would have been a very narrow window.

Pricy but if you really want to know the full story of how RAF requirements were set this book is it.
Amazon product ASIN 0415761301
He wrote a paper in his university days that formed the basis for this book. It might still be available on line.
One of the chapters in the book is titled Bombers to Attack France. B.9/32 set range at 600 miles, " ….will put Paris within range of our most distant Home Defense day bomber areodromes."
The success of the Hawker Hart colored RAF thinking towards single engine bombers. Dowding thought the new Griffon under development would make a single engine "High Speed 1000 lb. Bomber" feasible.
The other interesting bit of information is that the Geneva Disarmament Confernce proposed to limit the empty weight of bombers to 3 metric tonnes. B.9/32 was therefore limited to 6,500 lbs. A lot of time was wastead when the weight limit was lifted in 1934 as the Wellington and Hampton designs had to be revised.
Britain didn't consider Germany to be the potential enemy until 1934 and didn't issue specifications to reflect the new reality until 1936. At that point they knew the single engine bomber wasn't viable, but there was nothing else to produce until the new designs were ready.

 

[Shortround6]

Opening posts.
The "ah ha" moment is Sept 1938 When the British Prime Minister is confronted with the fact that, despite all of the pounds Stirling spent on the RAF up until then, He cannot threaten Hitler with any sort of bombing campaign.
Even one of 1936-38 standards and he won't be able to for several years.
What could have been done to get better value for the money already spent/ allocated?

 

[The Basket]

Is bombing the French an option?

 

[Shortround6]

Is bombing the French an option?

After Sept 1938??
Perhaps

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Prioritizing the development of better bombers is the obvious answer, but just as obviously, modern fighters had to carry even more priority.

Being unable to bomb Germany effectively was not just a matter of mediocre planes, though. The technology to navigate and bomb accurately simply didn't exist, as the Butt Report amply demonstrated.

 

[Reluctant Poster]

The key to speeding things up is for Royce to live a few more years. Rolls Royce doesn't waste two years trying to get the stupid ramp head design to work. The two block Merlin is available from the start, merlin production starts earlier. The engineering team can concentrate on other projects. Maybe even get a prewar Griffon.

 

[Shortround6]

Prioritizing the development of better bombers is the obvious answer, but just as obviously, modern fighters had to carry even more priority.

While those are both worth while priorities, it doesn't answer the question of what do you do with with planes that are pouring of the production lines at the rate of several hundred per month that are not suitable for a strategic bombing campaign.
Stopping production of Merlin IIIs and Xs while waiting for the Merlin XX series to show up isn't really an option either.

So what can you use these planes for that could hurt the Germans (and/or hold down British losses, including Army and Navy) while the better bombers and modern fighters are developed and put into production.
Lets face it, you can only use so many target tugs.

 

[buffnut453]

Is bombing the French an option?

Always...and twice on Sundays!

 

[The Basket]

Always...and twice on Sundays!

Excellent. So bombing the French is on.

On an unrelated topic, has napalm been invented yet? No reason.

 

[GrauGeist]

...On an unrelated topic, has napalm been invented yet? No reason.

Well, yes and no.

The Imperial Romans had "Greek Fire" which was handy for naval warfare.

Otherwise, actual Napalm wasn't developed until 1942, so can't use it on the French any earlier...