The best 2-engined bomber in 1944-45?

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Starting in 1944, the light and medium two engine bomber was in transition. Except perhaps in the PTO, dive bombing was fading in popularity and high altitude bombing was not providing the needed accuracy for tactical support. Low altitude was the coming answer and a move toward the attack aircraft. The very fast but high altitude XB-28 upgrade to the B-25 was cancelled and low altitude high performance upgrade to the very successful A-20, the A-26, went ahead. After the war, nuclear weapons gave a bit of life to two engine bombers such as the B-45, AJ-2 and the A3D (B-66). Except for the B-57, which hung on in tactical role till Vietnam, and A5J, which transitioned to reconnaissance in the early sixties. The B-25 lasted quite a while as a trainer. The Mosquito was produced until the 50's.

Planes like the A-26 and A-1 were valuable for their endurance and stores capability over the battlefield and led to the development of the A-10, which is probably the closest thing to a two engine bomber today. The F-117 did give a short breath. Fighter bombers are now the way.

My selection. The Ar-234 was advanced but lacked range and certainly endurance, which wasn't its forte anyway, and I am not sure of its availability (reliability/maintainability) e.g. flight time verses ground time. I think the A-26 and Mosquito provide good performance and endurance. They would be my selection
 
In the medium bomber class, I'd go with the A/B-26 or Tu-2. Both were well-armed high performance multi-place types that served well after WW2. In the light bomber group, what else equals the Mosquito?

While it's easy to look at that 460+ mph maximum speed and go with the Ar-234, I refuse to include any late-war German jet in the "best ofs" because of poor engine reliability.
 

The problem with your blah blah attitude is that the Germans (and US) managed to get most of the systems operational. You haven't studied that matter at all.

I'll review allied and German blind fire radar capabilities fused together. Generally the Germans were 1 ahead until the end of 1943 when the SCR-584 was introduced.

1 Early 1940 Wurzburg-A radar is introduced. It used a 3m parabolic dish and 3 operators: one manually nodded the antenna vertically to locate the target, another nodded it horizontally while a 3rd tracked the range. Accuracy is about 2 degrees. Wurzburg was a mobile early warning radar that showed accuracy that promised blind fire.
2 Early 1941 Wurzburg C is introduced. It features the worlds first conical scan which means one operator can track both horizontally and vertically. Accuracy is 0.3 degrees.
3 Mid 1941 Wurzburg D is introduced. It improves range accuracy to 20m and synchro transmitters are added to directly transfer data into the Kommandogeraet 41 FLAK predictor. This is a tyachymetric predictor that uses the linear method to compute exact fuse setting time and aiming firing solution. About the same time Wurzburg Riesse is introduced which is simply a Wurzburg D with a larger antenna. Due to its 7m diameter dish has twice the range and an accuracy of 0.15 degrees. This is a true FLAK/AAA blind fire radar with angular accuracy comparable to optical system though many were 'misused' to guide night fighters.
4 Sometime in 1942 about 50 "mainz" radars are built which use a Wurzburg aerial but better electronics to achieve bearing accuracy of 0.2 degrees.

5 About 1941 the US Navies FC Mk 3 a 40cm AAA radar starts production latter named FD
6 The US Army's SCR-268 was in service around the same time as Wurzburg A but remained inferior with half the accuracy in angle and several times worse in range.

Note; Wurzburg elevation accuracy degrades about 60% in elevation when the beam is close to the ground, hence the two quotes for accuracy.

The US AAA radar is the SCR-268. It uses a separate vertical and horizontal lob switching antenna to achieve 0.5 degree accuracy. It is inferior to Wurzburg and the Germans jam it successfully during the Anzio landings etc. As a result the US finally rushes the SCR-584 centrimetric radar into service, this had been delayed by bureaucracy for almost ½ year. It featured high accuracy and auto-track.

The UK does not have an effective AAA radar up to this time. Lindemann's influence with Churchill has ensured that most radar efforts go into offensive efforts such as the Area bombardment/dehousing campaign though there was a good AI effort.

The result is that when the V1 campaign started in July 1944 Churchill had to directly beg Roosevelt for help. The US supplied SCR-584 radars which had been thoughtfully provided with Synchro transmitters for British predictors. The US also supplied radar proximity fuses for screwing into British 3.7 inch shells.

Had not the US SCR-584 and proximity fuse effort been made Lindemann's folly would have been even more expensive.

The British Army did get a 9cm radar into service, the so called GLAXO series, however they lacked auto-track. They did have some good ideas, such as separate transmitter receive aerials to avoid disclosing the scanning pattern.

Back to the Germans:

In 1943 the Germans introduce the FuSE 64 Mannheim radar which features a 0.2 degree accuracy and 6m range accuracy from a 3m dish. Issue 2 of this radar, which came into operation at the same time as SCR-584 in early 1944 featured auto-track for range. Elevation and azimuth tracking is supplemented by gauges rather than displays for more accuracy. A version of this known as Mannheim K was to halve wavelength and increase accuracy.

In other words in Early 1944 the Germans had full blind fire with auto-track.

Reduce the wavelength from 54cm to 9cm and the 3m dish proportionatly to 50cm and full blind fire can be installed in a fighter (as in the FuG 244 installed on Ju 88G-7) or it can be installed on a small gun mount.

A variant of Mannheim K, known as FuMO 231 Euklid with full 3 dimensional auto-track and a half size 1.5m antenna was completed for the Germany Navy for use on destroyers though the destroyers were never launched.

Mannheim electronics transferred to the 7m dish of Wurzburg Riesse to make (Mannheim Riesse) produced a radar with the range (nearly 100km) and accuracy to pick out an individual bomber in formation for targeting by a Wasserfall missile.




I've already proven that the Nazis and the Germans as well had the radar tech to provide automatic blind fire track radars accurate enough to guide a SAM.

The V2 missile was achieving close to 100% reliabillity towards the end of its short history of use.

The Wasserfall missile was basically a small V2 with a 3 dimensional auto pilot added to replace the V2's 2d auto pilot, a storable lquid propellant that had been tested for many years, and a pair of mid wing cruciform fins to increase manoeuvrability. Tracking of a transponder aboard the missile provided guidance, alternatively beam riding could be used.

The reason the allies couldn't get SAM going was their complete lack of experience and experimentation, the Germans had started 6 years earlier in a well funded program. The control and guidance had already been "checkride" in a V2 (one of which accidently landed in Sweden and caused a huge pointless allied jamming effort)

When the USN tried to deploy the "Thumper" missile in 1945 they found that the radio command signals were blocked by the rocket exhaust. This is something the von Braun team discovered 5 years earlier from their experience with telemetry.
 
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In order:

1 The most impressive German FLAK radar was the 3m dish 54cm wavelength Mannheim FuSE 64 which had a 0.2 degree angular accuracy and a 6m range accuracy. The US SCR-584 radar due to its much shorter wavelength had much better angular accuracy.

Lets look at the range accuracy issue. Imagine trying to engage a crossing Spitfire Mk IX LF flying at its maximum sea level (WEP) speed of 330mph which is 150m/sec at 1000m distance. Shell flight time will be about 1.4 seconds with the shells slowed down to about 0.7m per millisecond.

With an accuracy of 6m meters the error will mean the shell might arrive 8.5 millisecond early or late. During this time the Spitfire could have moved over 1.3m, which is enough to cause a miss if combined with other errors. Optical range finding could get no where near this being 10-20 less accurate nor could it work fast enough to allow a real time adjustment or range or closure rates. Add in speed estimation errors and shell fall off errors and its easy to see why aircraft could surive FLAK.

Just providing radar ranging combined with optical tracking makes FLAK deadly accurate within the dispersion range of the gun. Major increases in speed, sustained penetration speeds are needed to reduce accuracy along with increases in stand-off range. The use of jamming and chaff to try and blur radar accuracy is also important but by the time one is within light FLAK range jamming is less succesfull.

2 The mosquito did not have a small radar signature, it was actually quite easy to detect. There was the metalic propellers, there was the steal framing of the engine mounts, undercarriage, the fuel tanks (which reinforced the wings), the control cables and myriad metal parts.

3 Indeed the idea of the "Wasserfall Missile" was to detonate in the middle of a formation in order to take out several aircraft, however it was decided to build systems that could target an individual target within a box formation at long range hence the large warhead.

4 It wasn't necessary to US a SAM to engage low flying aircraft. Waterfall was meant to opperate at around 45 miles and altitudes of 48000ft however below 10000ft radar guided guns could be fairly accurate especially with proximity fuse.

For lighter FLAK the Germans (there were Allied equivalents) had adapted a FuG 246 night fighter radar to a FLAK 38 Vierling 2.0cm gun known in this form as the AEG FMG 45 RETTIN for naval and ground use. I don't have my books with me so I don't know if this was a range only radar but given it was part of a second generation night fighter radar (the first being the FuG 244 installed on some Ju 88G7) it might have had conical scan which would give it full blind fire capabillity.
 
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tyrodtom said:
That "primitive" was a reaction to a post from Siegfried.

I fought the NVA, I never considered them primitive.
Click to expand...

The Soviets never supplied there most advanced systems, always holding something back, something they had a reputaiton for and that cost them sales. I agree the Comminist Nth Vietmanese eventually received fairly modern system. The US had to US aircraft a lot better than A-26 to do anything more than go a few kilometers into enemy terrirotory, this despite overwhelming US air power. A few radar directed 20mm guns would have made life impossibly dangerous for the A-26. In many ways 1945 German technical abillities were ahead of Iraqi abillities in Gulf War II.
 
There was radar directed AA on the Ho Chi Minh trail during the time the A-26 was used over it. It was mostly used to protect the daytime truck parks, and various vantage points, not as mobile AA on the truck convoys. The A-26 was used against the convoys.
I don't think the Russians released the ZSU-23-4 to clients until the Vietnam war was almost over, though there were rumors.
 
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In no particular order:


I did say smaller. It had a smaller radar signature than all metal aircraft of the same size, I'm sure, and certainly smaller than larer bombers such as the A-26 and B-29. It was also less likely to be travelling in tight formations, so not as obvious. They are also able to attack at low levels, which you have stated makes the radar less accurate.


Siegfried said:
1 The most impressive German FLAK radar was the 3m dish 54cm wavelength Mannheim FuSE 64 which had a 0.2 degree angular accuracy and a 6m range accuracy. The US SCR-584 radar due to its much shorter wavelength had much better angular accuracy.
Click to expand...

6m range accuracy at what range? I doubt it has the same ±6m accuracy at 1000m as it has at 10000m.

0.2° equates 3.5m at 1,000m, 21.3m at 6,096m (20,000ft), 31.9m at 9144m (30,000ft) and 34.9m at 10,000m.

Does 0.2° hold for both azimuth and altitude? Is that ±0.2° also?

This is all just the accuracy of the radar, not taking into account the gun.



Still not very efficient for small groups/individual aircraft.

I also understand that the Wasserfall missile didn't really work by the end of the war. Maybe if they spent time on that instead of the V2 it could have made it into battle.



Makes you wonder, with all these accurate radar directed guns why the loss rates of allied aircraft went down in the last half of 1944/1945.
 
I hope you guys get to actually see and use the radars from that era , I have its called a Quad because it had 4 functions PAR ,Search etc / It was updated with MTI and SSR . I'm curios as to how effective the MTI was on LW radar as well what kind of PRF did have if it did have it. Seigfried I know you have a lot of stats but have you ever looked at or twiddled with a radar . There are so many factors you haven't even mentioned or I'm not sure if it was even known about at the time such as inversion .. Radar in WW2 was in its infancy and not very good even the German radar.
 
I've got the book, The German Air Force,33-45, Anatomy of a Failure, by Matthew Cooper. According to it in 1944 flak brought down about half the allied aircraft lost over the Reich, that's day and night combined. Daytime flak brought down one third of the total, but night flak only 11% of the total.
So going by those figures it's evident that however good the Luftwaffe's targeting radar might have been, there must have been very few, intergrated in with the actual flak batteries. Or those figures wouldn't be so different between day and night.
 
although I don't know why this thread covers AAA SA missiles...

We need to make a distinction of Flak - light or heavy.
The heavy flak could and did used radars far better than light flak - heavy flak operating vs. BC and US bombers had enough time to 'consume' the informations provided by radars to assume the correct azimuth elevation in order to engage fighters heavy bombers flying at 15000-30000 ft. There is enough time to adjust shells' 'clockwork' detonators, to explode at desired point in the air. Of course, for Flak arm (as for all other arms of a militarily) to operate efficiently, it need to have good/great crews and decent weapons. Not the case for LW Flak arm of 1944: the crews comprised from mix of trained men, under-age boys, people unfit for regular military service, (even prisoners of war?), while the bulk of the AA guns had their barrels worn off due to plenty shells fired. Then we toss some jamming, and there is no wonder that it took 4000 heavy shells to bring down the plane.
The number of radars was decent, I'd say, and the Wurzburg radars (4000 pcs produced) were of fire control type, providing the data for the guns.
Light Flak fires mostly against low-flying attack medium bombers, flying at low level. The state of the art of German radars in ww2 was ill able to provide 'blind fire' mode vs. such targets, and the 20-37mm cannons were not able to be automatically cued to track the incoming targets. So the best feasible solution was the radar (typically Freya) providing* early warning, while Wurzburg was feeding* speed, altitude and course data for the unit's commanders, then the commanders distributing that info for the gun aimers so they can adjust/choose right target lead. If the communication was not established from the gun posts to command posts/radar sites, the gunners were firing upon the assumed values - not contributing to the accuracy. Germans have had thousands of the light Flak, thus negating the disadvantage in good deal. Granted, The gunners were able to build the experience during 1940-44, so that was a factor, too.

*provided it can track the low-flying Typhoon, P-47, B-26 etc
 

It is actually a worse condemnation on german radar directed AAA as Brit bombers were generally 7-12K Lower which should give AAA a better probability of a hit.
 
Siegfried said:
..snip..
Click to expand...

You carry on with your fantasy world, what you internet nazi wonder weapon warriors never understand is that figures written down on a piece of paper have about as much relation to reality as does my relationship with Beyonce.

You are quoting performance figures that werent equalled till the mid 1960s and even then many systems only became solidly reliable after several major rejigs of the design. I reckon the figures you are quoting would not be beaten in service till much later maybe even as late as the 70s. I can believe many fantasies I can even believe in the Tooth fairy I dont believe any of the figures you quote.
 
 
[
Due to a poor decision in late 1942 the Germans abandoned their 25cm program (despite succesfull tests) and also the 5cm magnetron. Without short wavelengths the beam width increased proportionatly and jamming by windows and nose went up with the square. This effected the Germans from 1944. This Germans overcame several jamming issues, quite succesfull, however never kept up.
 

German radar developed independantly from allied radar as they invented their own. The Germans tended to use 'grid modulation' while the allies used anode modulation whereby something equivalent to an automative ignition coild is discharged into the tube (triode) or magnetron. This produces a powerfull short pulse of a somewhat uncorntrolled time. It is the only way to modulate a magentron as it lacks a grid, being a diode.

The Germans grid modulated their triodes to not only stop and start the pulse but control its phase and frequency. In the case a Wurzburg-D a series of frequency multipliers forced the LC tank (resonance circuit) that is forced to resonate in phase with the frequency multiplied signal. (created by distorting a crystal locked frequency and amolifying its 3rd harmonic in a chain). This also gave jam resistance (for Seetakt and Freya) in the form of FM modulation and allowed a longer pulse with range accuracy achieved not by a short pulse but by recovery of phase information.

There were 3 'pulse doppler circuits
1 Wurzlaus, which showed moving targets as jittery while windows was stationary.
2 Tastlaus, which was a refined version of the above not susceptible to the crystal reference being knocked out of alignment by gunfire.
3 k-laus which had very good resitance to windowns (25:1 signal ratio) and worked in conjunction with windalus (to offeste high altitude winds) as well as frequyency changing methods.
This tech was very hard to get working. This was used in small numbers with Wurzburg-Riesse and Mannheim radars. It could get through allied jamming; a fe were used over Hamburg.

High grade coherant pulse doppler needs soome kind of memmory to compare phase changes between range bins to detect moving targets.

There seem to have been attempts at producing high speed memmory to facilitate this,
 
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I mean for attacking aircraft in small formations, or alone, or where the formations are looser than the 8th AF formations. Ie, RAF heavy bomber formations tended to be looser (because of flying at night), and Mosquito formations tended to be smaller and looser.
 
 

I can only lead you to water, I can;t make you drink the facts. The SCR-584 had outstanding accuracy of about 1m at 1km and a fraction of a degree, it was only a matter of time that it was reduced to fit medium and light FLAK. The Germans simply adapted their FuG 246 night figher radar onto their quad FLAK. No 60s tech requiried. They had computers to do a calucalted a firing solutuon instanteaneously as well.
 
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