The Best Bomber of WWII: #4

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I used them as an example. It's not about the 2 planes but if my way of making an unbiased decision is doable.
 
I see. But I would suggest that you system is, as Glider suggested earlier, too simplistic. A simple point scoring system would surely make the Avro Manchester, for example a good bomber, as it would have all the plus point of the Lancaster with just one minus for the rubbish engines. This masks the fact that the problem was so severe that the Manchester was a bad aircraft full stop.

Likewise, the B-17 would be a good bomber on points, but this fails to explain why it was so abysmal in RAF day bomber service - this comes down to poor crew training and faulty operational tactics, which your system doesn't seem to take into account.
 
I suggest you read that again, in detail and understand what it says.. For instance where in that entire piece does it say that the RAF couldn't hit their targets in daylight and thats why they switched to night bombing. It doesn't, it does point out that losses were high and thats why they switched, but not that they couldn't hit the target.

You have an obvious contradiction here. You say you don't know how many sorties were tactical, but you know that most were to break the morale of Germany. How can you know one without the other? a reply to that question would be appreciated.
Navigation was the problem and the best way of hitting a target was to aim at the centre of the city. As navigation improved ot was possible to aim at the industrial areas of the city and more precise targets such as oil refinaries. A small matter which I supported with evidence ond one you have chosen to ignore.
I also suggested that you look into the Dresden raid which was a combined RAf/USAAF operation, something else that you have conveniently ignored. In fact if you do look into that you might be interested to see that nearly all the RAF bombers found their target at night, wheras a good chunk of the B17's managed to bomb the wrong city by day. Which begs the question, who couldn't hit the target? You are right when you say that you have the luxury about history. The tragedy is that you have wasted that priceless chance and stuck to stereotypes.

You might be interested to learn that during the war more B17/B24 sorties were launched against Hamberg, Munich, Leipzig and Dresden than were launched by the RAF. The difference was that RAF Lancasters and Halifax's carried on average at least 50% more payload, so the RAF dropped more tonnage.

So do not stereotype the Lancaster as a city buster and the b17 as a more focused bomber. Your wrong, all Heavy bombers could and did do both types of mission. The crews that flew the aircraft did what they were told.
 
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I object to the notion or suggestion that the bombing of Dresden was a war crime. I know its argued by many on the basis of its destructiveness. Its also wrong to suggest that the RAF were used mostly for area attacks. The facts are that the RAF had the specialist capability to do both. Their dambuster attacks, the attacks on the Tirpitz and the U-Boat pens are just examples of that capability.

The RAF also developed city busting techniques and technologies, and this happened earlier than the precision attacks that developed from 1942 onward. This was forced on the RAF because of the relative strength of the German daylight defences, the relative weakness of the RAF bombers, both in terms of numbers and in their defensive arrangements (a prime example being the Blenheims). In the short term the switch to night bombing reduced RAF loss rates to the point that skill and force levels could be expanded at a reasonable rate. At the beginning of 1941, Bomber Command numbered no more than 250 effective aircraft, by April 1942, they had about 750 front line aircraft and a further 350 or so in training units, hence the significance of the 1000 bomber raids. More importantly there had been a trasformation in techniques, and aircraft. the light bomber types like the Blenheim with inneffective defences and bombloads were being replaced with two main types, the heavy bombers centred around the Lancs and the halibags, and the Light bombers centred around the mosquito. At that stage the Mosquito was mostly employed in precision nuisance raids and recons, but as the need for pathfinders was realized, it increasingly fell to the Mosquito groups to undertake that function. The development of navaids is well understood and documented, to the point that with the adoption of OBOE the RAF in 1943 was probably better trained for accurate precision attacks than the US (US adopted similar technologies in 1944). Aids like OBOE enabled the drop point of the aircraft to be controlled remotely from the delivery system, which greatly increased the accuracy of the bomb run. OBOE equipped pathfinders enabled large formations of bombers to be guided onto a target with little difficulty.

But this was not the only area that the RAF had developed in that 1940-43 period. They had also developed very advanced techniques in ordinance, mixing heavy incendiary bombs with HE explosives, and organizing the raids in such a way as to cause maximum damage and casualties. In the Pre-nuclear age, the RAF became the most destructive city busting force on the planet....why restrict oneself to a developing field (precision pinpoint targets) when the technology and technique already existed to go out and level whole cities???? This was why the RAF continued with area based attacks. They had developed a weapon with high destructive capability in this field, and set out to use it. I disagree with the notion that as a technique area bombing was a failure. Proof of its effectiveness can be found in the raids over the Ruhr and Hamburg. There can be no greater endorsement of their effectiveness than from the comments of the people in the best position to know....the germans themselves. according to Speer, two or three more raids like Hamburg would have brought the German economy to its knees, and this sentiment was echoed in comments by Goring and other senior LW men, as well as some of the statements by Hitler himself. I fail to see how these raids, given their potency and effect on the enemy can now be dismissed as inneffective. They were undertaken at a time that preceded the daylight raids on Schweinfurt, which when they did come, proved to be a more of a failure than the RAF campaign. It was only when Harris decided he wanted the prize - Berlin- that the RAF started to run astray.

Having developed an effective technique with which to prosecute the strategic air war, the RAF proceeded to exploit that. The horrendous loss rates that you read about occurred, in part because of the choice of targets. But that is not relevant to the point here anyway. The RAF proceeded down the path of area attacks (whilst also developing significant precision bombing cability as well) from 1942 to the end of the war. They set their terms to the germans as to what was required to end such attacks. These terms followed Germanys insistence in 1939 to start a war of overt agression, and then proceed with their own policies of exploitation enslavement and murder against defenceless victims. That is a point often forgotten in debates about Dresden. Knowing the Allied terms for surrender, and with the germans refusing to acknowledge the one sided results that were occuring in the war, the Allies had no choice but to continue with their attacks, and that included the bombing campaign. Bombing the cr*p out of German cities in 1945 was an element in the path to victory. Dresden was a part of a country that continued to choose resistance over surrender, the AA guns over Dresden continued to fire at Allied bombers rather than disobey the illegal and murderous orders of the regime they served.

The German people were made to pay a horrendous cost for the war, not because of the actions of the Allies, but because of the decisions made by their leaders. They chose not to surrender, when the obvious thing was to do just that. So who was responsible for Dresden....Adolf Hitler in my opinion
 
looney, what do you really know about the bombing of Dresden?

Did you know the Americans were scheduled to be the first to drop bombs on Dresden on that February day. It was canceled because of bad weather but the second American did drop bombs.

I also suggest you do some research on American bomber formations and the weather conditions they flew in. It is hard to be precise when the targets is mostly covered by cloud.
 
Lets keep this on topic. This thread is not for a discussion on whether bombing of cities was correct or not. It is about the aircraft that flew the mission. Lets keep it that way.
 

I'm only going to comment on the quoted stated, cause like I said before all stuff about the city bombing is completely biased (usually based on Hollywood, comic books and of course victors history writing) by me.

I know that it's a simplification, that is it's greatest strong point and weakness. I've done this before and sometimes with strange results. Which showed to us they made very strange mistakes in the past. Usually based on politics and propaganda.

I do not know much about the Manchester (other than it was the bases of the Lancaster) but if it was only hampered by it's engines, it probably would have a lower speed, cruising altitude and other drawbacks. But it could be that the aircraft itself was a good one, only hindered by it's engines.

The table can be expanded as much as we like.

I'm an engineer and I'm thought to make my decision process as little based on emotion as possible and the table is the best way (I was thought). For example we could give extra weight to some key points (multiply it's score with the weight given). If we find pay load more important than max altitude we could multiply it's score by a factor of say 2 (or higher).

Problem with assigning weight on some key point is emotion, Germans where nuts about accuracy and as a result favoured dive bombing for even the biggest aircraft. As a result they never built a real heavy. Other pre-war bombers where designed about max top speed (... (can't find the example ATM) unkillable in Spanish war, but got slaughtered in WW2), so they got soon outrun by single engined fighters.
 

Go back and read my post #807 in this thread.

Can you answer some of those questions?

As far as the German "dive bombers" go they were so obsessed with dive bombing they did make it a requirement of their 4 engine heavy bomber and even some of their twin engined medium/heavy bombers (Do-217). British even tried putting it into requirements for a short period of time until sanity took over. What requiring dive bomber capability did on big planes was increase structural weight to the point that payload and range both suffered, and speed, and ceiling and.....

As an engineer you should know that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
 

I'd asign points equal to the number of aircraft. So if we get a table of 10 planes we can assign 0-9 points. so we compare each aircraft with another. That way the 1 man using 4 guns (like JU-88) will score less than a Lanc (having 3 gun positions (nose, top and tail), only example I could think of).
And use that system for all points. Perhaps give bonus points to 1 aircraft if it was exeptionaly good at 1 point.



P.s. yes I know about the stupidness of letting a heavie do dive bombing. Lucky the Germans didn't want to know.
 

I'd asign points equal to the number of aircraft. So if we get a table of 10 planes we can assign 0-9 points. so we compare each aircraft with another. That way the 1 man using 4 guns (like JU-88 ) will score less than a Lanc (having 3 gun positions (nose, top and tail), only example I could think of).
And use that system for all points. Perhaps give bonus points to 1 aircraft if it was exeptionaly good at 1 point.

P.s. yes I know about the stupidness of letting a heavie do dive bombing. Lucky the Germans didn't want to know.
 
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I will give it a try. I hope I got it ready tonight. I'm fairly busy

P.s. I'm thinking about accuracy, imho it all depends on the Bomb sight and bombs used. Where can I find info on accuracy achieved?

According to wiki the german used a copy of an early Norden, so I'm gonna rate it a bit below the Norden. I don't know how the british Mk XIVcompared to the Norden, and the Japanese is even harder to find.

Found me another problem, the sturdiness of each plane. I know the B24 was weaker than the B17, but I don't know how the He-177 and Lanc compare. I'd say B17, b24, Lanc, He177 and last G4m.


1st draft list done:


We need to assign weight to different fields. Cause an He-177 can't be better than a B17

Oh please check for errors also, I took the data from wiki.
 
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looney said:
Why? the Brits knew they couldn't hit their target in daylight so they resorted in carpet bombing at night.
Click to expand...

It wasn't about hitting the target. It was about the risk to the bombers. Early BC experiences flying unescorted daylight raids against dedicated fighter opposition led to heavy casualties which resulted in the switch to night bombing. Precision targeting was not possible at night of course but by that time the UK had begun loosening it's restrictions on bombing non-military targets. I would not equate Area Bombing with "Carpet Bombing."
 
As I said before, this discussion about "best bomber" is utterly useless. It's like voting for a lorry being the best engine driven vehicle, because it can carry more stuff than a car.
Any way, the idea about points for having for instance guns is also useless, since it doesn't say about the effectiveness of the guns. Having guns, but placed ineffectively probably does more harm then good, but it will get the points for that. This means the Fokker T.V will get points for carrying a 20mm, even though it was a single-shot weapon and virtually useless in battle, only adding drag to the a/c's other bad points.

Anyway, so if you want the point system to work, you'll have to dig much deeper than that, taking everything into account and how everything effects each other. This would assure a good simulation (yes, I'm an engineer, too), but on something so complex as an a/c, I would deem this about impossible.

Last point, the way an aircraft was used is not a way to measure how good an aircraft is. Saying the Lanc was bad because it was used for area bombing doesn't say that it wasn't capable to do something else better. A knife is terrible if you use it as scissors, still it can be a perfectly good knife.
 
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But we need to get training and strategy out of the equation, cause they don't say a thing about the aircraft.

I do think we should find some way to differentiate the most important qualities for a bomber.
 
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looney said:
But we need to get training and strategy out of the equation, cause they don't say a thing about the aircraft.

I do think we should find some way to differentiate the most important qualities for a bomber.
Click to expand...

Which qualities are you talking about?

A bomber is basically a bomb truck. It is supposed to haul XXX amount of bombs YYY distance.

After that comes survivability (guns or speed or altitude or a combination).

It should have good stability for accuracy.

Trying to rate an airplane on it's bomb sight (which may change several times over it's service life) or it's navigation aids which can be mounted in any bomber of a particular air force (within reason) doesn't help us decide which airframe/engine combination was better. Trying to add those to a chart would turn from comparing a few dozen bombers to hundreds.

Even trying to chart defensive armament would lead to hundreds of variations.

For an idea of the difficulties try charting 4 British bombers. The Blenheim, the Hampden , the Whitley and the Wellington. Then try to add 3 German bombers, the DO-17, The He 111 (which version?) and the Ju 88.
any good chart or system should allow the easy addition of new types.
Pick the summer of 1940.
 
Consider the bomber as being a "system" in which the best combination of all offensive and defensive systems combine to make a superior bomber, or a flop. Assigning points for each bomber considering the following:

Payload per range
Radial engines vs inline
Offensive electronics
Defensive electronics
MG vs cannon (for the enviornment it was used)
Turrets vs hand held
Centralized fire control
Bomb bay volume (determines types of bombs)
Airframe room for growth
Engine room for growth
Time to manufacture
Number of support personel needed
Potential sortie rates
Ability to absorb damage
Ability to avoid damage (ceiling and speed)
One pilot or two (and three for the b29 as the flight engineer being critical)
Flying characteristics in a formation

I'm sure you can find others to list.
 
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along with the more traditional aspects of aircraft performance...speed, manouverability rate of climb. If a type has performance characteristics, its forward firing armement is relatively more important than if the type is slower or less in its performance. If the mosquito had a lesser performance arc, its lack of rearward firing guns would have been important, but because it could outfly most of its opponents, this was relatively insigificant as a drawback. By comparison, a B-17, with relatively weak forward firing armement was less handicapped by this, because it flew well in formation, and could rely more on the types generally good all round defences. So a single rating system is not going to work in every case. The performance of the type determines the importance of other design aspects.
 

so multiply the values for range and pay load by 3; survivability (defence, speed etc etc) by 2; and the rest by 1.


Cause we compare airframes to eachother we can simply state that the defensive guns on a B29 where better than the turrets on a B17 which where better than the handaimed HE177. (I would put the ECM and stuf in this catagory also)
Same with flying characteristics (alt, speed stability) bunch it together.


The Mossies ( I mean the bomber variant) only defence was it's speed and end war it got overtaken by He-219 (rubbish overall but could kill the Mossie or it claimed it could) and Me-262 (which flew 1st in april 1941!) And as such was cannonfodder, if the Germans where in a better situation. The Mossie was a great airplane which found a gap in German defence.

My point being: Speed is not a substitude for defence. It can only hope to be so for a relative short time. After that the plane get obsolete very fast. All Japanese bombers where designed around high speed and long range. They got slaughtered when fighter speed caught up. And due to the speed being important design aspect they couldn't upgrade the aircraft with self sealing tanks and more armor etc.


P.s. I like the last few post much more than all the other ones. This is the way how one chooses then best.
1st Find key features
2nd assign values to each choice
3th find the best.
 
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