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

[Thumpalumpacus]

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.

Feed into Coastal and Training Commands?

Should be noted that even these outdated bombers did decent service in attacking the German barges trying to build up for Sea Lion, too. That was useful. And if the Germans had actually launched an invasion, having them handy to borrow from CC/TC could be of help. The LW could fly CAP for the invasion fleet, or escort the ground-support aircraft of the invasion, but could they do both?

Of course, used in this manner they'd probably pay a butcher's-bill, but the Hampdens could carry torps, right? Wellington as well?

Let's face it: anything's better than risking lives and planes to drop goddamned leaflets.

 

[The Basket]

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...

Use it on the French?
It was an innocent question sir.
You wound me deeply.
So....war starts against the French in 1942....

 

[Shortround6]

The Blenheims are better fit for coastal command. Using single engine planes for long over water patrols is not a good idea.
Not that the Blenheims were really equipped for it with those two pitch props.
Both planes could be used for army co-operation (ground attack) with some hope of success with minor modifications.
Without proper tactics, training they wouldn't be much better than Lysanders though.

Add it doesn't have to be all or nothing.
4 to 6 Squadrons of Blenheim IVs in Coastal Command in Sept of 1939 could have a made a big difference.
One squadron a bit west of Plymouth, one in Northern Ireland, One in In western Scotland (Fort William?) One in North east Scotland to cover to the Norwegian coast. One in either Norfolk or Suffolk and the 6th ?????
Blenheim IV can patrol for around 2 hours at 400 miles from base. They could extend air cover about one days steaming further from land than Ansons.
BC could keep the majority of Blenheim IVs for what ever reason.

 

[don4331]

Is air to air refueling an option? You might "lose" 1/2 to 1/3 of your bombing force to tankers, but it would get you the ability to bomb Berlin.

 

[Shortround6]

Is air to air refueling an option? You might "lose" 1/2 to 1/3 of your bombing force to tankers, but it would get you the ability to bomb Berlin.

What is the net gain?

And in What year.

One RAF Officer to another
" well, Nigel, we have bombed Berlin 5 times in the last two weeks but we have lost 60% of our bombers, we can't continue"
Nigel replies
" True enough Algernon, but at least we didn't have to support the bloody army !"

 

[The Basket]

One RAF Officer to another
" well, Nigel, we have bombed Berlin 5 times in the last two weeks but we have lost 60% of our bombers, we can't continue"
Nigel replies
" True enough Algernon, but at least we didn't have to support the bloody army !"

I approve.

 

[don4331]

What is the net gain?

And in What year.


One RAF Officer to another
" well, Nigel, we have bombed Berlin 5 times in the last two weeks but we have lost 60% of our bombers, we can't continue"
Nigel replies
" True enough Algernon, but at least we didn't have to support the bloody army !"

Initial gain - you can bomb Berlin with the aircraft you have. Maybe not safely or accurately, but it puts Luftwaffe on defensive.

Longer term, once you have the technology refined, your bombers can be much smaller as they aren't carrying thousands of gallons of fuel to get to target, so can be smaller - smaller = faster = reduced ability for enemy forces to engage = lower defensive requirement = smaller.

Given the thread gave a Sept '38 start point, I'm be giving the RAE engineers 1 calendar year to have the 1st tanker/bomber group functional. That date coinciding with the German invasion of Poland is a happy coincidence.

 

[Shortround6]

The advertisement showed what the British could do in the summer of 1939.

British barely got a few Wellington and Hamden Groups operational by Sept of 1939 as it was.

British had 10 squadrons equipped with Hampdens in Sept 1939 but only 5 were "operational" the other 5 (Nos, 7, 76, 106, 144 and 185) were tasked with crew training.

For the Wellingtons there were 8 squadrons declared "operational" but only by day, none were rated as operational for night.

Whitleys were listed earlier, about 2 squadrons suitable for operational use (Planes with Tiger engines were banned from over water flights)



This not something you want to be doing in enemy airspace or even near their border.

Even if you have the idea you are stuck with existing aircraft for several years. It took the British around 3 years (or more) to go from concept to flying hardware in squadron Strength.

 

[SaparotRob]

So that's how they did it.

 

[Shortround6]

This book on the Battle makes for some rather depressing reading.

It does go through most of the missions flown by Battles in France. It is also the book that brought to my attention the pre-war problem of trying to fly around Belgium and Holland and makes a lie of the intended use of the Battle (and Early Blenheim's) as strategic bombers capable of hitting Germany from British soil.
It also turned out that many of the French air fields the British were assigned to use were auxiliary French fields lacking in infrastructure (like barracks and Hangers) and sometimes with poor drainage (muddy) such that larger bombers were judged as not capable of operating from them.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Initial gain - you can bomb Berlin with the aircraft you have. Maybe not safely or accurately, but it puts Luftwaffe on defensive.

Longer term, once you have the technology refined, your bombers can be much smaller as they aren't carrying thousands of gallons of fuel to get to target, so can be smaller - smaller = faster = reduced ability for enemy forces to engage = lower defensive requirement = smaller.

Given the thread gave a Sept '38 start point, I'm be giving the RAE engineers 1 calendar year to have the 1st tanker/bomber group functional. That date coinciding with the German invasion of Poland is a happy coincidence.

I'm not sold. 1) You're pulling bombers out of the strike force to provide fueling platforms. 2) The bombers left, while able to heft a few tons of ordnance apiece, won't have the numbers or precision to make any difference. 3) Where's this refueling happening, and what is anyone doing to break up German attacks on this waypoint? They do, after all, have some radar. 4) Is this at day or at night? If at daytime, budget for a lot of condolence cards. If at night, let's hope you can hit within five miles of the target, which the Butt Report showed was rarely accomplished. Let's also hope the mid-air collisions are few in night-time ops for such a new procedure.

The problem was not range or load. The problem was fighting into and out of the combat space, and that gave both the RAF and USAAF fits until 1944. The bombers had the range and payload, but they sure as hell didn't have the survivability until they either shifted to night attack or got full escort through a daylight mission. And even then things could get dicey.

1940-41? All the air-refueling planes in the world aren't going to handle any fighters or flak. 8th AF was a dream, and Bomber Command was nascent but too weak to matter, no matter how much fuel their planes had.

 

[nuuumannn]

he 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.

The problem I have with this is that your picking on Britain is a bit disingenuous and obviously loaded with expectation when almost every armed force in every country in the Western world at the time was doing exactly the same thing and had been for years. Regarding the other countries operating jointly with the other branches of the services, that's an exaggeration and is wholly untrue. In peacetime between the wars, very few countries' services were working together, most were squabbling for funding for their own pet projects, the Japanese armed forces were the extreme example of this.

As it's been pointed out elsewhere, no one else could have attempted what Britain had to undergo in 1939 through 1941 with its bomber force without searching results that were less than inspiring, as Bomber Command's experiences were. We tend to forget that the USAAC promoted unescorted daylight bombing raids while the RAF had turned to night bombing as an expeditious means of continuing the bombing offensive because of operational experience, not to mention the sheer hopelessness of the first experiments using B-17s in combat in British hands in 1941.

The Luftwaffe won the bombing war in the first two years of WW2 with a sizeable fleet, good tactics and Douhet's strategic imperative of bombing populations into submission (which proved fallacious), as well as a good grasp of technological innovation, but failed due to the country's leaders' hubris, with help from the first and best integrated air defence network of the time in place in the UK. Its bombers, however, couldn't reach Britain from Germany; Germany had to invade France and Norway. Britain's, for all their faults, could reach Germany from Britain.

But going back to the pre-war era, the lie of Britain's defences was not building obsolete or irrelevant aircraft or perpetuating their unshakeable belief in their strategies - uh, every other military in the world was doing the same at the same time, look at Italy (glaring example here of pre-war hubris), Germany, France, the USA, the Soviet Union, etc.

These incapable aircraft and the policies that surrounded them were not created in a vacuum, they were overtaken by events their conceptualisers couldn't foresee without loads of hindsight they didn't have. Let's also not forget the large number of bomber specifications that emerged in that period immediately before the war when the Air Ministry was throwing lots of specs out into the world in the hope that something stuck, so dwelling on the past was not what was happening. The British policy was to write a replacement specification for a new type the moment that type had been approved.

The lie was things like the He 177, the US torpedo debacle, the German torpedo debacle, the Blackburn Firebrand and other continuations of technical overreach, ignorant of the fact that the weapon or policy being perpetuated was a big mistake and continuing to pour vast resources into it. You could argue that continuing the production of obsolete types is the same thing, but under the circumstances, what would you have them do? Was Britain the only country that kept obsolescent types in production and service? Aircraft like the Handley Page Halifax and its myriad problems made good despite themselves, and could only have done so in wartime, but other examples like the P-39 were found out to be less than what was expected and couldn't redeem themselves in the crucible of war, again because figures were tweaked and expectations raised beyond reality beforehand.

The other thing that negates the premise of your argument is that the British armed forces evolved once the shooting started, their experiences changed them. Pre-war policy and technology was bared for the world to see, but the realisation of their inadequacies led to changes in policy and equipment. Had things stayed the same, then it would be easier to accept your argument, Shortround. Where the silliness belongs is in that those who had not experienced what the British forces had then refused to take the hard-won advice and apply it to themselves, like Ernie King not heeding the British Admiralty's advice and allowing US ships sunk off America's coast by German U boats.

The only goal was a Douhet style strategic bombing campaign! What other possible goal was there!

Correct. Virtually all European air forces followed in Douhet's wake. His influence was enormous and the Germans, in particular subscribed to his idea of bombers wreaking havoc on civilian populations to bring them to the negotiating table and it almost appeared that it worked for them in 1939 and early 1940, but Douhet also missed the point of combined operations between forces and tactical innovation, which was the secret to German success in those periods and both of which Douhet studiously ignores.

Pricy but if you really want to know the full story of how RAF requirements were set this book is it.

It's a good book. I have a copy and have used it for research.

 

[Reluctant Poster]

One take away is that you dont want to be in any armed forces when a major war starts. Acting as a trip wire is not conducive to longevity .

 

[nuuumannn]

Of course, used in this manner they'd probably pay a butcher's-bill, but the Hampdens could carry torps, right? Wellington as well?

Only specially converted ones. Not every Wellington nor every Hampden.

The problem I have with SR's perspective is that he assumes that British early war bombers are obsolete because of the experiences they went through and because of what came later. As has been said elsewhere, the Whitley and Wellington were among the best bombers in the world on their unveiling before the war. They had larger total bombloads than most bombers at the time, could carry them across greater distances than most other bombers at the time and evolved to have better defensive armament than all other bombers at the time. When the Wellingtons and Whitleys had power turrets in their noses and sterns, which other country had bombers with power turrets? None! The first US bombers with power-operated turrets had British ones.

OK, supplying the Germans with months of toilet paper for the first year of the war was costly, but it proved the British could in fact reach Germany, their idea that sending bombers over the country distributing propaganda leaflets should be warning enough to the Germans not to enter a war certainly looks crazy, but Britain didn't want to go to war, remember, it felt it had to. And let's not forget, Britain, with all its flawed strategies was on the winning team.

German bombers set a standard in their operational use and their success in the first year of the war, but they got it wrong in strategic use; medium-range twin-engined bombers were just not the way forward for a massed strategic bombing campaign. Four years before Germany invaded Europe the British foresaw this with specifications for big four-engined bombers. That they proved a little less adequate than either the RAF or their manufacturers were able to predict was a consequence of the fact that it wasn't easy building a fleet of big modern aeroplanes in the 1930s.

Again, the lesson from this is that it was very difficult to predict exactly what was needed. No one got it exactly right, no one. Building an effective bombing force was hard and lessons from the Spanish Civil War and German invasion of Europe certainly looked to be pointing in the right direction, but in terms of strategic policy, Britain, not Germany was the country that had the right idea that saw realistic objectives that came to pass by the end of the war in its big four-engined bombers in large numbers with sophisticated navaids, which of course Germany beat them to it in that respect, but German aircraft and strategy were proven wholly inadequate during the Battle of Britain.

I'm always gonna come out swinging in debates like this because they are loaded with the hindsight of knowing how the war turned out. Yes, the Brits made lots of mistakes in strategy before the war, but who didn't? I mean, whose stupid idea was it to invade the USSR and not have a bomber that can reach the Urals? If peacetime strategists could always predict exactly how things were going to turn out in wartime, half the military mistakes that have ever been made in history would not have been made.

One take away is that you dont want to be in any armed forces when a major war starts. Acting as a trip wire is not conducive to longevity .

Pretty much.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Only specially converted ones. Not every Wellington nor every Hampden.

The problem I have with SR's perspective is that he assumes that British early war bombers are obsolete because of the experiences they went through and because of what came later. As has been said elsewhere, the Whitley and Wellington were among the best bombers in the world on their unveiling before the war. They had larger total bombloads than most bombers at the time, could carry them across greater distances than most other bombers at the time and evolved to have better defensive armament than all other bombers at the time. When the Wellingtons and Whitleys had power turrets in their noses and sterns, which other country had bombers with power turrets? None! The first US bombers with power-operated turrets had British ones.

For all that, they got shot down in droves and the Brits had to resort to night bombing to maintain any offensive at all. That's not a slur on them: they learnt the same lesson they had themselves taught the Germans.

But if I'm President, I'm throwing any general suggesting leaflet-raids in jail -- or I'll make him lead every one himself. If you're sending our bombers over enemy territory, they goddamned well better have live munitions. Our men are worth more than paper. I simply cannot agree with that leaflet policy.

That rant aside, the RAF's own history concludes that they could not achieve the stated mission of Bomber Command with the equipment at hand in 1941, and indeed did not approach that standard until 1944, after not only equipment but doctrine was improved.

 

[GrauGeist]

The first US bombers with power-operated turrets had British ones.

Grant, just a quick note, here.
Martin developed a native power turret for their B-10, their YB-10 first flying in 1932, a year before Boulton-Paul's Overstrand.

Martin went on to produce native power turrets for their designs and other aircraft manufacturers (like NAA's B-25) and still manufactures them today as Lockheed-Martin.

 

[Shortround6]

The problem I have with this is that your picking on Britain is a bit disingenuous and obviously loaded with expectation when almost every armed force in every country in the Western world at the time was doing exactly the same thing and had been for years. Regarding the other countries operating jointly with the other branches of the services, that's an exaggeration and is wholly untrue. In peacetime between the wars, very few countries' services were working together, most were squabbling for funding for their own pet projects, the Japanese armed forces were the extreme example of this.

As it's been pointed out elsewhere, no one else could have attempted what Britain had to undergo in 1939 through 1941 with its bomber force without searching results that were less than inspiring, as Bomber Command's experiences were. We tend to forget that the USAAC promoted unescorted daylight bombing raids while the RAF had turned to night bombing as an expeditious means of continuing the bombing offensive because of operational experience, not to mention the sheer hopelessness of the first experiments using B-17s in combat in British hands in 1941.

Perhaps the British situation is different because the RAF was independent.
The United States ARMY Air Corp may have wanted (badly) to be independent but it was not. They were required to provide more than a few vague promises about tactical aircraft to support the Army. The aircraft may have been deficient in some ways, or in a lot of ways, see Curtiss O-52 for one example. However the USAAC did see their mission as anti ship, at least partially. From a practical standpoint no potential enemy was close enough to the US for the US to bomb their homeland means of production, so the Army had to plan to use their aircraft as part of an anti-invasion force. They may have dreamed/schemed ultra long range aircraft (XB-15 and XB-19) but production aircraft were more suited to the work that needed to be done.

For Germany geography changed the equation some. Berlin is around 260 miles plus from the Dutch border so the much trotted out "bomb the enemies capitol" theory doesn't work well for either Britain or France. It is about 340 miles to Berlin from the closest area of France. On the other hand Paris is only about 210-225 miles from the German border. It is about 340-350 miles from the area of Germany just east of Luxembourg to London. It is also just about 350 miles from the Emden area to London even if you do not fly over Holland. Yes the Ruhr valley was just over the border from Belgium and Holland so the means of German production was much more easily reached than Berlin.

It is also not Bomber commands trials and tribulations in trying to strategic bomb 1939-1941 that I am trying to address here. It is the FACT that somewhere between 1000-1500 of Bomber commands aircraft could NOT reach the Ruhr and return with any degree of certainty in 1939/early 1940 simply due to fuel capacity/range. This is regardless of German defenses. The Blenheim IV was much better than the Blenheim I in this regard, but Blenheim Is equipped 16 home squadrons (at least in part) at the time of the Munich crisis. The Blenheim IV reaching a service squadron in Jan 1939 and 15 home squadrons were equipped with the MK IV by the end of 1939. Many of the Blenheim Is being replaced and shipped off to the mid east or far east.


By the way, the Germans did plan for and execute at least some semblance of a strategic bombing plan in 1940-41. They at least had bombs more suitable for destroying industrial buildings and they did have working electronic navigation systems, even if primitive. These navigation systems were not built in the time between the fall of France and the start of the BoB.

British use of the B-17s was a somewhat self inflicted wound. Few bombers of any type would show good results when used in groups of 3-4 planes. Yes the operational equipment failed to work at the advertised altitudes. But the British were not really ready for prime time in 1939 either. First use of the Blenheim was Sept 4th 1939 when 10 aircraft (5 each from two squadrons) set out to attack German warships in the Heligoland Bight. Each group of 5 traveled independently. 3-4 hits were claimed on Scheer but the none of the bombs detonated due to fuse problems. 5 of the ten planes failed to return. Not saying American B-18s would have done any better.

In the 1920s and 30s France. Germany, Italy and the minor nations could get away with single engine short range bombers or small twins because they had common borders and flight distances were not very long. How many major German cities were within 150 -175 miles of the French border? Forget Berlin, look at Essen, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich.

I have not said much about the Hampden, Wellington and Whitley except to point out the numbers available. They at least had the range and bomb load to mount a credible attack (at least as understood at the time).

The Battle and Blenheim could not make credible attacks and yet Bomber command (and the RAF) did not allow them to be used on missions where they would be of some use to war effort even if not the effort to make the RAF the supreme service which seems to have been a higher priority of some RAF officers than defeating the Germans.

 

[Shortround6]

I'm always gonna come out swinging in debates like this because they are loaded with the hindsight of knowing how the war turned out. Yes, the Brits made lots of mistakes in strategy before the war, but who didn't?

A lot of people who ignored the lessons of WW I. That didn't require hindsight.

I mean, whose stupid idea was it to invade the USSR and not have a bomber that can reach the Urals?

Well, that means no invasion of Russia. It is about 1500 miles from Brest (the one just over the border from Poland ) to Chelyabinsk.
You would be hard pressed to do that mission with B-29s and it requires taking over Poland and a bit more which is not the best planning for making bombers before Sept of 1939.
Basically the Ural bomber was a pipe dream and there had better be be some pretty strong stuff in that pipe.

It is just under 1500 miles from Norfolk to Moscow just for comparison.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

It is about 1500 miles from Brest (the one just over the border from Poland ) to Chelyabinsk.

Right. And assaulting that front without a bomber able to strike the rear areas ...

I'm guilty of hindsightium here, admittedly.

 

[buffnut453]

A lot of people who ignored the lessons of WW I. That didn't require hindsight.

But which lessons of WW1 do you recognize and which ones do you ignore? The whole reason Germany succeeded against France in 1940 is because the Allies were expecting a repeat of 1914 on the ground which didn't happen. You're applying hindsight in expecting someone in the late-1930s to selectively apply the RIGHT lessons from the First World War.