correct. The B-17 had a conventional low-wing configuration that was in some respects outdated by the 1940's. It was thick and heavy which of course made it very strong but the spar attaching the wings to the fuselage constricted the area available for the bomb bay, inhibiting the bomb load. So the defensive armament had nothing to do with the Fortresses's limitations on bomb loads.
Strategic Bombing Campaign Impact on German Oil Production
- Thread starter Ratsel
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correct. The B-17 had a conventional low-wing configuration that was in some respects outdated by the 1940's. It was thick and heavy which of course made it very strong but the spar attaching the wings to the fuselage constricted the area available for the bomb bay, inhibiting the bomb load. So the defensive armament had nothing to do with the Fortresses's limitations on bomb loads.
Teething issues....and something I'd never really considered before reading Barrett Tillman's book on the B-29 campaign against Japan.......cost.
According to Tillman, the B-29 ushered in the era of the uber-expensive plane....so expensive that you could not look at B-29 losses in the same way as even other 4E designs. Basically like we do today when the loss of even one multi-million or billion dollar plane downed during a campaign makes major news.
Per the author, a B-29 in 1944 cost $605,000 to build....3x that of a B-17. This made even non-combat losses hurt when it came to the Military's wallet. General Arnold wrote "In my opinion, the B-29 cannot be treated in the same way we treat a fighter, medium bomber, or even a Flying Fortress. We must consider the B-29 more in terms of a naval vessel, and we do not lose naval vessels in threes and fours without a very thorough analysis of all the causes and what preventative measures may be taken to avoid losses in the future."
Arnold's quote is telling. Even if one discounts the threat of the Luftwaffe at the late stage of the game, there was still a serious issue of teething and mechanical problems that caused both a high abort rate and operational losses. While overall loss rates for the 29's operating out of Saipan around the time LeMay showed up only equalled 4% at that moment, which was acceptible for 17's and 24's....it was not acceptible for the far more expensive B-29. And this against the Japanese air defenses which are usually scoffed at.
B-29 was a formidable weapons platform, but one can argue the tried and true.....(and cheaper) 17's and 24's could do the same job, in the same amount of time with less fuss within the 1944-45 time frame as they were fully mature weapons systems.
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- Thread starter
- #103
around 16 victories for 10 losses. Still, it along with the Me 262, had enough punch to disable/destroy a B-29. also, what Allied fighter escort would be effective at that altitude? now this is assuming that the B-29 took off north first to get to altitude then circled back south towards Germany to hit oil/fuel plants/depots.
TheMustangRider
Senior Airman
I must admit I was not mindful of the Superfort's early teething problems with its Wright R-3350 radial engines (I read Tillman's book a couple of months ago and I still should have it in my memory
) when I wrote my challenging and somewhat fearless statement.It is my belief that the tendency of these engines to catch fire while operating at the high altitudes the B-29s flew over Japan was a factor for LeMay to switch to the nocturnal low-level carpet bombing of early 1945 along with intelligence suggestions that the Japanese were spreading the manufacture of small engine components to civilian households throughout urban areas and the fact that the wooden infrastructure of Japanese cities was vulnerable to fire bombing.
When it comes to the European Theater, I believe that once these engine problems were resolved, the B-29 wouldn't have much trouble operating effectively from England taking in consideration that the Allied air forces had already achieve air superiority over Germany and the remnants of the Luftwaffe were fading away towards the end of the war and its superior capacity of bombardment would have had a greater impact than the B-17 and B-24.
But just as it has been mentioned, a diversion of B-29s to European battlefields would have been too costly and would have weakened the Pacific effort; once the 8th AF and British BC were achieving favorable results with what they had, the use of Superforts in Europe would have been redundant.
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drgondog
Major
Wuzak the length of the bomb bay and the cg of the bombs within were designed to be close to the cg of the airplane where it would be located without bombs. In the timeframe the B-17 started design ~ 1933 that was one hell of a bomber, with a great bomb load.
Glider
Captain
The B29 would have been wasted in Europe. There were thousands of bombers Lancs, Halifax's, B17's and B24's you can argue which was the best but all were effective over europe. For the strategic planner the one thing the B29 had was a massive (by ww2 standards) range and payload far in excess of the others, and that was the prime advantage
- Thread starter
- #107
good question. 150 miles @ 900ft/min. not sure if thats loaded or not.
wuzak
Captain
Yes, it was impressive for that time.
I would say that if the need for larger bombs were foreseen, or a fortutious requirement to carry a large torpedo (as the case for the P13/36 bombers - Manchester and Halifax), the bomb bay may well have been bigger. But at that time large bombs were relatively rare.
Its RAF contemporaries were the Handley Page Hampden, Armstrong Whitworth Whitley and Vickers Wellington, each of which was a twin engined aircaft with similar bomb load capacity to the B-17. The B-17 was much more advanced aerodynamically and had a much higher top speed, and the use of 4 engines allowed it to operate better with one engine out. But, the Wellington could carry a 4000lb internally and the Hampden an 18in torpedo (the P13/36 bombers were required to carry two of these). Not sure on the Whitley, but I believe it had a number of small bomb bays which restriced the size of bombs it could carry.
It is more surprising, perhaps, that the B-24 bomb bay wasn't larger, given its later design time frame.
As an interesting aside, whil looking for bomb bay comparisons between a Lancaster and a B-17 I found B-17 vs Lancaster threads on other forums, where one of the opinions was that they were designed for different roles, and so not directly comparable. The idea was that the B-17 was designed for coastal defence and the Lanc for night time operations. I do believe the B-17 was designed as a strategic bomber, but the USAAC claimed it was for coastal defence in order to obtain the funds for its purchase. The Lancaster wasn't designed, as such, but adapted from the Manchester, which I do not believe was ever specifically designed for night operations.
- Thread starter
- #109
wuzak
Captain
I believe that is a myth, and the USAAC used the coastal defence argument to justify the purchase of the B-17 in isolationist/neutral USA in the mid 1930s.
- Thread starter
- #111
That I can agree with. There was no need for the 29 in Europe, but I doubt that it would have been less successful.
Air Commanders in the US War Dept in the 1930's viewed bombers on the whole as "Defensive" weapons that would protect American airspace 'and' American coastal shores. However the "Bomber Mafia", a cliche within the Air Corps Tactical School, always envisioned the bomber as an offensive weapon. The B-17 and the Norden Bombsight gave substance to their vision of high speed, high altitude precision daylight bombing.
As others have said the 17 was a 1930's design and thus incorporated some limitations. It was not 'designed' for coastal defense....CD was simply a role the WD envisioned for its bombers in general. The 17 was designed to be fast and high flying with a big payload. With later marks it was envisioned as the optimal self defending bomber, which turned out to be the real myth. No such thing.
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drgondog
Major
No, the B-17 was Designed as a long range daylight strategic bomber. It was Sold as a Coastal Defense bomber
- Thread starter
- #115
Some scans from the HMSO "Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany".
The memoranda from Speer to Hitler to which Ratsel refers are reproduced in their entirety, along with supporting figures. I can scan them in, along with the chapter on the later-war oil campaign from the RAF point of view, if the board has interest.
Will also try to scan in some of the tables and appendices relating to oil, though most of those are actually from the USSBS.
Have a couple of other graphs which I've put together from Davis' "Bombing the European Axis Powers", will post next.
The memoranda from Speer to Hitler to which Ratsel refers are reproduced in their entirety, along with supporting figures. I can scan them in, along with the chapter on the later-war oil campaign from the RAF point of view, if the board has interest.
Will also try to scan in some of the tables and appendices relating to oil, though most of those are actually from the USSBS.
Have a couple of other graphs which I've put together from Davis' "Bombing the European Axis Powers", will post next.
- Thread starter
- #117
Wilco, give me a wee while to get them scanned in while wife and daughter are out of the house. Will likely post links instead of images so as not to slow the board down too much.
Below is the weight of bombs on oil-related targets by air force by month from Davis:
BC seems to have been less "late to the party" than I thought, according to those figures.
I like Davis' spreadsheets as one is able to drill-down to individual raids, however another Mosquito tragic tells me Davis excludes a lot of the the Light Night Striking Force efforts. I've also not yet cross-checked against the tonnages given in the BBSU table, might make an interesting contrast.
Davis' data looks like this:
May try to post a filtered table of all the oil-raids he lists, however I have my doubts about whether it includes enough of the early BC stuff - by October 1940 at the latest, Harris' successor Pierce was being instructed that oil was to be his primary target system. One of the criticisms made of Harris is that although he was perfectly correct that BC had neither the bomb lift to do significant damage nor the navigational aids to find precision targets when he took command, he continued area attacks when those two conditions were no longer valid.
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- Thread starter
- #119
No worries, all credit to Davis really. His book is available (I think the pdf download is still free...) here:
Air University Press Book Store - Book Information
However, I believe the links to the spreadsheets no longer work:
http://www.maxwell.af.mil/au/aul/aupress/books/Davis_B99/Davis_B99.pdf
http://www.maxwell.af.mil/au/aul/aupress/Davis CD/Pages/i.htm
http://www.maxwell.af.mil/au/aul/aupress/Davis CD/Pages/IIb.htm
http://www.maxwell.af.mil/au/aul/aupress/Indexes/author_ndx_bks.htm
http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/aupress/Books/Davis_B99/Davis_B99.pdf
http://aupress.maxwell.af.mil/Books/Davis_B99/Davis_B99.pdf
http://aupress.maxwell.af.mil/Davis CD/Pages/i.htm
However, I did download the sheets when they were available, anybody wants them email me
markhuxAThotmailDOTcom, replace the AT and DOT with the @ and .
Also I have the pdf of the Davis book, if it's not available at the links above, same offer applies.
Have to re-scan the tables from the British Official History, resolution was too low. However, I believe all the tables they use in the appendices are actually in the document I posted waaaaay back in the first link I posted in this thread, the one I said I hadn't read. Be aware the latter consists of four files.
http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p4013coll8/id/2085/rec/3
Air University Press Book Store - Book Information
However, I believe the links to the spreadsheets no longer work:
http://www.maxwell.af.mil/au/aul/aupress/books/Davis_B99/Davis_B99.pdf
http://www.maxwell.af.mil/au/aul/aupress/Davis CD/Pages/i.htm
http://www.maxwell.af.mil/au/aul/aupress/Davis CD/Pages/IIb.htm
http://www.maxwell.af.mil/au/aul/aupress/Indexes/author_ndx_bks.htm
http://www.au.af.mil/au/aul/aupress/Books/Davis_B99/Davis_B99.pdf
http://aupress.maxwell.af.mil/Books/Davis_B99/Davis_B99.pdf
http://aupress.maxwell.af.mil/Davis CD/Pages/i.htm
However, I did download the sheets when they were available, anybody wants them email me
markhuxAThotmailDOTcom, replace the AT and DOT with the @ and .
Also I have the pdf of the Davis book, if it's not available at the links above, same offer applies.
Have to re-scan the tables from the British Official History, resolution was too low. However, I believe all the tables they use in the appendices are actually in the document I posted waaaaay back in the first link I posted in this thread, the one I said I hadn't read. Be aware the latter consists of four files.
http://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p4013coll8/id/2085/rec/3
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