Reluctant Poster
Staff Sergeant
- 1,486
- Dec 6, 2006
As much as I love airplanes war usually boils down to boots on the ground. Even today in the nuclear age.
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As much as I love airplanes war usually boils down to boots on the ground. Even today in the nuclear age.Resp:
I was thinking the same thing; many, many aircraft played a vital role. Many were discussed at length.
Resp:
Duly noted.
Tell that to the French people/the Germans on June 5/6 1944 when paratroopers landed at Normandy, and in Burma 1944 when the Chindits needed supplies. l believe we were speaking of significant aircraft contributions.
Research into the problems of the liberty ship gave birth to the UK Welding Institute and a massive leap forward in understanding of the weldability of steels and SAW welding.In terms of logistics the Liberty Ship was by far more important cargo carrier of WWII. For that matter the GMC 2 1/2 ton truck dwarfed the contributions of the C-47.
How did the P-51 change the tide? Were the Germans winning when it was introduced?
In Europe, I think one can argue for the P-51, not just because it was a world-beater (it was very good, but not that good), but because the Luftwaffe knew that a dangerous, high-performance fighter, as good as anything they had with pistons, would be guarding insane numbers of bombers on every raid into Germany. Handwriting, meet wall.
This is mostly true, however the bit about massive bombing campaigns using Lancasters before the USAF turned up in force with the B-17's needs a little clarification. The British only built 693 Lancasters in 1942. They used Lancasters in large number of raids in 1942 but the large numbers of aircraft per raid were made up of other bombers than the Lancaster.
The Americans don't show up to bomb Germany until Jan of 1943 (they did bomb targets in france and low countries in late 1942) so the British do beat them on that score no matter how many or how few Lancasters were used.
I don't have the production of B-17s by month but they built 512 B-17Es from late 1941 to the end of May 1942 at which point they started building B-17Fs. 3,405 Of the "F"s were built starting at the end of May/beginning of June 1942 and running to July of 1943 at which point production changed to the G. (each of the 3 factories was bit different) It usually took the US several months to get planes form the US factories to combat zones/missions. However even with the diversion of several hundred B-17s to the Pacific (a guess) the US handley out produced the Lancaster with B-17s in 1942/43. Lancasters only became available in truly large numbers in 1944 (1847 built in 1943 and 2933 in 1944) so I guess it depends on what one means buy large numbers and when.
The British built 5428 medium and heavy bombers in 1942 (that includes Albemarles, Hampdens and Warwicks) of which almost exactly half ( 2702) were Wellingtons.
The British did stage a number of large raids or campaigns before the Americans showed up, But the majority of the crews that flew those dangerous missions were flying planes other than Lancasters.
Please note I am not saying anything about how good the Lancaster was, just remarking on the timing.
The Lancaster had become Bomber Commands most numerous bomber by the beginning of 1943. On Jan 16/17 190 of them went to Berlin, on the following night 170 went there. It was certainly out numbering the Wellington by the beginning of the Battle of the Ruhr. On March 11/12 314 of them went to Stuttgart. The B-17 didn't exceed 300 until the beginning of Blitz week when 309 bombed Norway, a pace they were unable to maintain. At the same time as Blitz Week the RAF was destroying a large part of Hamburg sending about 350 Lancasters on each of the 4 raids.
There is a misconception that the 8th Air Force was conducting a significant bombing campaign against Germany in 1943. They weren't. In 1943 the 8th AF dropped 27,598 tons of bombs on Germany in 1944 they dropped 296,839 tons, an order of magnitude greater.
Furthermore the Americans were only nibbling at the edges. The number of deep penetrations into German airspace before Big Week can almost be counted on the fingers of one hand. The attached graph from "A History of the VIII USAAF Fighter Command" illustrates this. I have taken the liberty of annotating the raids on Germany and France in different colors as well as adding the start dates for the P-38 and P-51.. It can be clearly seen that the USAAF did not start a serious bombing campaign against Germany until February 1944.
On Jan 16/17 190 of them went to Berlin, on the following night 170 went there. It was certainly out numbering the Wellington by the beginning of the Battle of the Ruhr
There were design issues but massive metallurgy issues too. The quality of steels as regards crack propagation, ductile brittle fracture, heat affected zone cracking, through thickness tensile values, temperature transition curves and a huge leap in testing, the Charpy test went from being a little known university research tool to a routine means or testing of welds and parent material while the "Battelle" DWTT test for steel was developed in USA for steel plate. It would be churlish to suggest that the advances in metallurgy were on par with those in jet engines, but they involve the production of hundreds of thousands of tons of steel.As far as we are wandering off topic with Liberty Ships, part of the issue was solved in the Victory Ships by increasing the frame spacing, making for a more flexible structure and reducing localized stresses. Welding is a very specialized skill and welding of ships and submarines particularly in need of skilled tradesman and excellent QC. Additionally thins was a fairly new technology at the time, still maturing, and with the rush of a "War ON" it's amazing that it worked as well as it did!
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Resp:I think the Spitfire and especially the Hurricane are great pics here. I almost couldn't decide between them and the Dauntless. I decided on the SBD but must admit to a little personal bias as my Grandfather worked at Douglas durring the war and helped build SDBs.