GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
Nope...wrong.
FDR bent some rules in order to assist the British and several types of aircraft I listed (and some I didn't) were sold to Britain prior to the BoB.
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Nope...wrong.Most of which happened after the Battle of Britain. FDR refused to help when it looked like the British might lose.
Surely the faster, and much more accurate Mosquito bomber would have been ideal for taking down the German war machine, but for some reason it didn't seem to get used nearly as much as I think it could have been, especially considering that its payload was not much worse than that of the B-17 but it had a huge advantage in terms of speed.
Are my impressions wrong, is there a reason why the Mosquito could not have been used as a strategic bomber to take out very specific targets?
Also, a Mossie carrying a 4,000 pound bomb made it vulnerable to attack, negating it's sole defense - speed.
No offence but that is just American revisionism. Germany would have been defeated either way since Operation Barbarossa was not going to succeed, with or without American war materials. Sure American war materials certainly helped both the Soviets and British, but it was not the deciding factor.
Let's get to the major issue. Could WWII be won without the US?
NO!
End of story.
Debate all the particulars you wish, but without the US's industrial might and logistical train it would be all over.
Nope...wrong.
FDR bent some rules in order to assist the British and several types of aircraft I listed (and some I didn't) were sold to Britain prior to the BoB.
Basicly the Mosquito was too late in timing, by the time it "proved" itself (some point in 1943?) you already had major industrial programs going to build BOTH British and American 4 engine bombers. Trying to change course, close factories (or retool from metal to wood construction) would have delayed things by many months, perhaps over a year, perhaps more.
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Another factor is the wood used. The Balsa core to the sandwich construction came from South America, there were no Balsa plantations, all trees had to be cut in the 'wild" and Balsa trees don't grow in groves, they tend to be spread out with only a few per hectare. More Mosquitoes could probably have been built but not 10's of thousands more.
An interesting question seems to have come up mainly, could the allies have won the war without the US or Russia?
After giving it some thought I'd say that depends on the scenario one constructs and what one means by" winning"
For example, if you take the US out of the war does that mean Imperial Japan confines its aggression to China( the only way to not involve the US is to not attack us) or do they carefully attack only British interests and avoid US ones?
If Japan doesn't attack the US or British interests and confines its aggression to China then I think the allies still win total victory over Germany and Italy no question even without the US, although it's more costly.
If, on the other hand, Japan attacks British interests but not the US( seems unlikely but posible) things become a bit more dodgy.
Now alot more variables come onto play.
For instance, in this scenario is the US still supplying the allies even though they are not actively fighting( it's hard to imagine we wouldn't) if so then I think the allies win for sure.
Also what do we mean by winning in this scenario? Even with no help of any kind from the US it's hard to imagine Germany, Japan, and Italy taking and occupying Australia, Russia, Canada, and Britain.
Even in the far fetched scenario that Japan attacks British interests and avoids US ones and the US does not even supply arms for some reason my money is still on the allies to at least hold the lines where they were in early 42 and most likely role most or all of that back eventually although it's going to be one tuff slog, that's for sure.
We have a lot of threads on this too.
My own opinion is that the truth lies somewhere between the two camps. One "story" about P & W is that the French (often under appreciated in this scenario) financed an expansion of the P & W Hartford factory that doubled it's size, the British orders doubled it's size again. which is obviously a substantial contribution. However FDR called for an American Air force of 50,000 planes in May (?) of 1940. There were a number of spending bills passed in 1940. Ford was given 14.3 million dollars just to build a new engine factory to make P & W R-2800s in Sept of 1940, that sum did not include a single engine, The Ford factory duplicated in size the P & W Hartford factory (the one that had quadrupled in size over it's 1937-38 size) The Ford factory would be tripled in size by some point in 1944. The P & W plant in Harford only expanded in size a limited amount after the two initial expansions. Instead 4 or 5 satellite plants were built at various locations in Connecticut. The plan to have other companies build P & W engines was in place well before Pearl harbor. Buick delivered 440 engines in March of 1942 so obviously plant construction/conversion had started well before Dec 7th. Chevrolet delivered their first engines in April of 1942. Studebaker delivered their first R-1820 Cyclones in Feb of 1942.
The US built the Detroit tank arsenal with American money. Baldwin locomotive, Alco, Pacific Car and Foundry and other railroad shops (and even others (FMC (?) were given contracts and tooled up to build tanks well before Pearl Harbor, I don't believe that any of that tank production capacity was paid for the British. The British did get early versions of American tanks including the General Grant M3 with a British designed turret (no MG cupola and the radio in the turret instead of the hull). Some idea of the scale of things is one claim (I don't know how true it is) that the British order for M3 medium tanks (over 1200 initially) exceeded the total amount of "cash" the British had in the US at the time. Please note that much of the initial M3 medium tank production was supplied by the above mentioned railroad locomotive shops and not the special built tank arsenal/factories.
M3 Half track production was well underway in 1941 even if not in full swing, While the British certainly wound up with half tracks (and the Russians got thousands) I don't believe they paid for any with cash, they might have been trying to set up bren/universal carrier production? They did build carriers in Canada.
Indirectly the increase in Canadian production benefited the US production as the vast majority of any machine tools used to equipe Canadian factories came from US tool makers (Britain could not supply their own machine tool needs) and I am sure the US machine tool industry benefited from such expansion and orders. Machine tools were always a big bottleneck in production. large buildings with empty floor space don't produce much of anything.
Verry interesting. I think the Russians would dominate more of Europe but not all.I think this is a topic for an entirely new thread. It seems highly probable (to me, at least) that without the US, we would likely be looking at a Soviet-dominated Europe today because the odds of a D-Day landing occurring without the US are slim to non-existent. So Germany would absolutely be defeated but the "liberation" of Europe would be in name only. Situation in the Far East is also intriguing if Japan only attacks British/Dutch/French interests and leaves the US alone. It's entirely probably that US/Japan war would be delayed for a few years, and the entire make-up of the Allied side would likely be very different....so hard to discern how it might play out.
1. The first "Operational" use of the Mosquito in 1941 was as a photo recon plane. It was Sept 19 of 1941 (W4055) over Bordeaux and Brest.1. Mosquito was operational (and "proved) in 1941, Lancaster only next year
2. For other factories, reverse engineering all-metal Mosquito would not have been so time consuming. Same fuel/electric/engine/landing gear/instrument/weapons/cockpit -systems. Same aerodynamic shape.
Only replacing the structural components with 2024 or 7075 alloys.
Russians did this on the fly.
No offence but that is just American revisionism. Germany would have been defeated either way since Operation Barbarossa was not going to succeed, with or without American war materials. Sure American war materials certainly helped both the Soviets and British, but it was not the deciding factor.