"The case for the P-47 Thunderbolt being the greatest fighter of the Second World War "

[pbehn]

Guernica influenced a lot of thinking but added to a lot of thinking based on what happened in WW1. Many theorised that populations would go crazy and demand peace. German bombing of Britain, 1914–1918 - Wikipedia There were 51 raids by airships and 52 by aircraft on UK in WW1.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Exactly the same thing happened in Britain in the RAF between the end of WW1 and about 1935. They were not a "mafia" there were simply people who didnt have a very good vision for what was around the corner in aviation development and how it would impact air combat. They just thought bombers would get through because briefly it looked like no fighter of the era would be able to engage the latest fast bombers coming in "at" altitude, and this was combined with a dramatic overestimation of the power of bomber defensive armament, power turrets etc etc, which is all directly tied in to why the most dreadful silliness like the Defiant was even built.

During this period the notion that bombers could get through and defend themselves was an almost universal error all over the world, there was no dark room full of people plotting to get airmen killed just to bloodymindedly hammer round "but my idea MUST be made to work !" pegs into the square holes of reality.

Hugh Dowding was one of the few purveyors of the square hole idea, and all manner of damn stupid things nearly happened even with his positive influence.

Right. Folks on both sides of the ocean bought into Baldwin's erroneous prophecy, and even before he uttered it, Mitchell had sacrificed his career arguing for bombers. Chennault retired being tired of fighting for fighters. Such a bomber-circle existed. The idea that not funding the development of DTs equals banning them is silly, though. The Bomber Barons didn't have that much swing.

I'm not arguing that bomber proponents did not have ascendency in the 30s. In America they did have power, but not to the extent that Greg and A at ease portray, to my readings.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

I agree in part, but heres a slightly contrarian view from me.

Guernica had a massive impact on global political thinking that merely confirmed a lot of the fears evolving in Europe during the 20s and 30s. Were the 'Bomber Mafia' and doomsayers like Stanley Baldwin, Lidell Hart etc. wrong only in as much that as poor as the aircraft proved as accurate delivery systems, it was the nature of the conventional the bombs they carried that was insufficient without total air superiority?

In that context, Stanley Baldwin's statement that 'the bomber would always get through' has a potentially different nuance. I think he *was* essentially right, wasn't he? There was no complete protection from a bomber attack at a strategic level. In fact, I'm unaware that any major attack on a civilian target by a bomber force was ever completely turned back by fighters and AA. The best any defence could do was nullify its effectiveness and make it a costly and uneconomic exercise in the long term. But bombers did indeed almost always 'get through'.

That retrospectroscope seems to be being used whilst forgetting that these guys had been through WW1 only two decades before. If biological and chemical weapons had been advanced as far as the aircraft that could carry them had since WW1 and had actually been widely used over densely populated areas, then perhaps we'd have a different take? What if Germans had chosen to make a maximum effort raids that included large amounts of the new nerve agents such as sarin, tabun or soman? Or even some other more deadly chemical agent, from a nation renowned for its world beating chemical and industrial capabilities? What if the Germans had been as unscrupulous as the Japanese in China in their use of biological weapons? These were known and feared potentialities. Look at any newsreels of British civilians in 1939 and 1940 carrying gas masks for the proof

I think we often forget the context of the times in our judgements. And of course, just six years after the outbreak of war, only one bomber had to get through to destroy an entire city, and two to end resistance from one of the most fanatical warrior nations of the 20th century. I'd say that made them correct, to be honest.

It's not that the bomber guys were wrong, it was that their toolbox was insufficient. Even throwing a thousand bombers at a city, while it may have damaged production a few months, did not break morale, which was the essential thesis of the bomber mafia a la Douhet.

That didn't happen until 1945 and atomics, and even that is arguable given the influence of the Soviet invasion of Manchukuo, and the submarine and mining stranglehold on the Japanese economy.

Had the Germans thrown chemicals during the Blitz, they may have broken the British will. Or perhaps not. But in America the Bomber Mafia had no illusions about doing such atrocities in the 1930s, and that is the context of this conversation, isn't it?

 

[SplitRz]

I don't find anything you wrote even slightly contrarian, indeed the inclusion of chemical weapons was a dimension I'd completely ignored...and yet it's entirely apposite to the thinking of the time. Fortunately, it's an area where deterrence actually worked during WW2 but that was more luck than judgment.

The key challenge for defenders was attritting the incoming bombers so that effects against the defended target were minimized. It is in this area where the over-estimation of the bomber's destructive capability seemed to haunt people. Yes, "the bomber" always got through but, for the most part (Hiroshima and Nagasaki being obvious exceptions), the amount of damage wrought was minimal. Having 500 bombers getting through is an entirely different proposition.

Again, in the context of the mid-1930s, I struggle to be too indignant at the thinking of the "bomber mafia." By 1940, it was clear to all that the bomber (singular) wouldn't always get through, and that massed quantities of aircraft were necessary to deliver the required effects. Yet it still took a further 3 years for the Allies to turn that concept into a reality.

I know its a subjective shot (and I have my emergency hair-splitting wig on!) , but I don't think the ordinary citizens of London, Bristol, Sheffield, Birmingham or Coventry thought the effects were 'minimal'. Or even their more cynical political or military leaders, tbh. These raid were conducted by those early war 1930s designs, remember - and in comparatively small numbers and bombloads . As a stone mason, I still see bomb splinter damaged buildings in Bath, fire damaged stone in Bristol and missing houses in terraced streets, even in the heart of sleepy Wessex. One grandmother in Croydon had glass imbedded in the plaster of her front room where the windows had been blown through,). One grandfather was an ARP who had to help clear away the remnants of some civilians who'd been blown through chain link fencing round Croydon airport after the infamous raid in 1940. The other grandmother was deaf in one ear where a V1 landed a few streets away in '45 (OK, that ones cheating a bit, but still part of the bombing of the UK! All anecdotal, but 1940 to 45, ordinary people the length and breadth of the country saw real widespread death and destruction. Widespread damage to industrial targets (wether intentional or not) was also the direct cause of the widespread dispersal of manufacturing that had an impact on production The Blitz Around Britain

I do think its fair to say that despite the damage, it obviously failed to cause the collapse of civilian morale as predicted by the likes of Douhet, which was one of the key aspects to the bomber mafia's doctrine. Its moral effects were vastly over estimated, and the strategic effects on manufacturing were fairly limited in the long run in the UK, but the destruction was very real.
But if Brits thought they'd had it bad, its was as nothing compared to the experience of the burghers of countless other towns and cities such as Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo. Again, it can't be claimed that the damage was anything like 'minimal'. Perhaps overall, the lack of civilian collapse on the home front was that because neither side felt that they were completely undefended, or that their nation couldn't hit back equally (at least to begin with), they managed to psychologically include themselves as being in 'the front line' and doing their bit too. Studies in both Britain and Germany showed ironically and counter to the received wisdom, that if anything, resolve and determination often actually strengthened after a city had been bombed. But I don;t think you can sit through those aerial low-level films of devastated city after city destroyed by bombing and really claim the damage was minimal. It was colossal. I think the difference in interpretation we might agree on is that it didn't meet its strategic objective outright and on its own. Though that impact can't be underestimated. There is of course that famous quote from Speer:

"It was quite a surprise to us when the first Hamburg raid took place because you used some new device [chaff] which was preventing the anti-aircraft guns to find your bombers, so you had a great success and you repeated these attacks on Hamburg several times and each time the new success was greater and the depression was larger, and I have said, in those days, in a meeting of the Air Ministry, that if you would repeat this success on four or five other German towns, then we would collapse. Albert Speer – The Secret War"

Speer may himself have been seeing the ghost haunting him too when he said that. But from '43 onwards, hundreds of bombers in formation or a stream 'getting through' to Axis targets was an increasingly common event.

The likes of Harris, Spaatz LeMay were wrong in their most didactic claims about air power and bombing. Neither area bombing nor strategic precision strikes alone won the war. But neither did any other single arm or service until Hiroshima. But they were massive contributors to it - and I think its become fashionable to down-play their massive role in contributing to the final victory and peace.

An interesting 'what if' exercise to conduct would be to ponder the strategic outcomes if the UK had entirely concentrated its combat aircraft production on coastal patrol, strike, fighters and fighter bombers from 1940 onwards. What would the strategic impact have been upon the overall war in Europe if there had been no strategic bombing from the UK for the three years before the 8th airforce started operations in number?

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

I know its a subjective shot (and I have my emergency hair-splitting wig on!) , but I don't think the ordinary citizens of London, Bristol, Sheffield, Birmingham or Coventry thought the effects were 'minimal'. Or even their more cynical political or military leaders, tbh. These raid were conducted by those early war 1930s designs, remember - and in comparatively small numbers and bombloads . As a stone mason, I still see bomb splinter damaged buildings in Bath, fire damaged stone in Bristol and missing houses in terraced streets, even in the heart of sleepy Wessex. One grandmother in Croydon had glass imbedded in the plaster of her front room where the windows had been blown through,). One grandfather was an ARP who had to help clear away the remnants of some civilians who'd been blown through chain link fencing round Croydon airport after the infamous raid in 1940. The other grandmother was deaf in one ear where a V1 landed a few streets away in '45 (OK, that ones cheating a bit, but still part of the bombing of the UK! All anecdotal, but 1940 to 45, ordinary people the length and breadth of the country saw real widespread death and destruction. Widespread damage to industrial targets (wether intentional or not) was also the direct cause of the widespread dispersal of manufacturing that had an impact on production The Blitz Around Britain

I do think its fair to say that despite the damage, it obviously failed to cause the collapse of civilian morale as predicted by the likes of Douhet, which was one of the key aspects to the bomber mafia's doctrine. Its moral effects were vastly over estimated, and the strategic effects on manufacturing were fairly limited in the long run in the UK, but the destruction was very real.
But if Brits thought they'd had it bad, its was as nothing compared to the experience of the burghers of countless other towns and cities such as Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo. Again, it can't be claimed that the damage was anything like 'minimal'. Perhaps overall, the lack of civilian collapse on the home front was that because neither side felt that they were completely undefended, or that their nation couldn't hit back equally (at least to begin with), they managed to psychologically include themselves as being in 'the front line' and doing their bit too. Studies in both Britain and Germany showed ironically and counter to the received wisdom, that if anything, resolve and determination often actually strengthened after a city had been bombed. But I don;t think you can sit through those aerial low-level films of devastated city after city destroyed by bombing and really claim the damage was minimal. It was colossal. I think the difference in interpretation we might agree on is that it didn't meet its strategic objective outright and on its own. Though that impact can't be underestimated. There is of course that famous quote from Speer:

"It was quite a surprise to us when the first Hamburg raid took place because you used some new device [chaff] which was preventing the anti-aircraft guns to find your bombers, so you had a great success and you repeated these attacks on Hamburg several times and each time the new success was greater and the depression was larger, and I have said, in those days, in a meeting of the Air Ministry, that if you would repeat this success on four or five other German towns, then we would collapse. Albert Speer – The Secret War"

Speer may himself have been seeing the ghost haunting him too when he said that. But from '43 onwards, hundreds of bombers in formation or a stream bombers 'getting through' across Axis targets was an increasingly common event.

The likes of Harris, Spaatz LeMay were wrong in their most didactic claims about air power and bombing. Neither area bombing nor strategic precision strikes alone won the war. But neither did any other single arm or service until Hiroshima. But they were massive contributors to it - and I think its become fashionable to down-play their massive role in contributing to the final victory and peace.

An interesting 'what if' exercise to conduct would be to ponder the strategic outcomes if the UK had entirely concentrated its combat aircraft production on coastal patrol, strike, fighters and fighter bombers from 1940 onwards. What would the strategic impact have been upon the overall war in Europe if there had been no strategic bombing from the UK for the three years before the 8th airforce started operations in number?

I really appreciate the nuance you put up in this post. There's a lot to chew on.

 

[SplitRz]

I really appreciate the nuance you put up in this post. There's a lot to chew on.

Thank you. Its very flattering to feel like I can have an occasional valid input with a bunch of folk who clearly know their subject matter.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Thank you. Its very flattering to feel like I can have an occasional valid input with a bunch of folk who clearly know their subject matter.

You clearly do as well.

 

[buffnut453]

I know its a subjective shot (and I have my emergency hair-splitting wig on!) , but I don't think the ordinary citizens of London, Bristol, Sheffield, Birmingham or Coventry thought the effects were 'minimal'. Or even their more cynical political or military leaders, tbh. These raid were conducted by those early war 1930s designs, remember - and in comparatively small numbers and bombloads . As a stone mason, I still see bomb splinter damaged buildings in Bath, fire damaged stone in Bristol and missing houses in terraced streets, even in the heart of sleepy Wessex. One grandmother in Croydon had glass imbedded in the plaster of her front room where the windows had been blown through,). One grandfather was an ARP who had to help clear away the remnants of some civilians who'd been blown through chain link fencing round Croydon airport after the infamous raid in 1940. The other grandmother was deaf in one ear where a V1 landed a few streets away in '45 (OK, that ones cheating a bit, but still part of the bombing of the UK! All anecdotal, but 1940 to 45, ordinary people the length and breadth of the country saw real widespread death and destruction. Widespread damage to industrial targets (wether intentional or not) was also the direct cause of the widespread dispersal of manufacturing that had an impact on production The Blitz Around Britain

I do think its fair to say that despite the damage, it obviously failed to cause the collapse of civilian morale as predicted by the likes of Douhet, which was one of the key aspects to the bomber mafia's doctrine. Its moral effects were vastly over estimated, and the strategic effects on manufacturing were fairly limited in the long run in the UK, but the destruction was very real.
But if Brits thought they'd had it bad, its was as nothing compared to the experience of the burghers of countless other towns and cities such as Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo. Again, it can't be claimed that the damage was anything like 'minimal'. Perhaps overall, the lack of civilian collapse on the home front was that because neither side felt that they were completely undefended, or that their nation couldn't hit back equally (at least to begin with), they managed to psychologically include themselves as being in 'the front line' and doing their bit too. Studies in both Britain and Germany showed ironically and counter to the received wisdom, that if anything, resolve and determination often actually strengthened after a city had been bombed. But I don;t think you can sit through those aerial low-level films of devastated city after city destroyed by bombing and really claim the damage was minimal. It was colossal. I think the difference in interpretation we might agree on is that it didn't meet its strategic objective outright and on its own. Though that impact can't be underestimated. There is of course that famous quote from Speer:

"It was quite a surprise to us when the first Hamburg raid took place because you used some new device [chaff] which was preventing the anti-aircraft guns to find your bombers, so you had a great success and you repeated these attacks on Hamburg several times and each time the new success was greater and the depression was larger, and I have said, in those days, in a meeting of the Air Ministry, that if you would repeat this success on four or five other German towns, then we would collapse. Albert Speer – The Secret War"

Speer may himself have been seeing the ghost haunting him too when he said that. But from '43 onwards, hundreds of bombers in formation or a stream 'getting through' to Axis targets was an increasingly common event.

The likes of Harris, Spaatz LeMay were wrong in their most didactic claims about air power and bombing. Neither area bombing nor strategic precision strikes alone won the war. But neither did any other single arm or service until Hiroshima. But they were massive contributors to it - and I think its become fashionable to down-play their massive role in contributing to the final victory and peace.

An interesting 'what if' exercise to conduct would be to ponder the strategic outcomes if the UK had entirely concentrated its combat aircraft production on coastal patrol, strike, fighters and fighter bombers from 1940 onwards. What would the strategic impact have been upon the overall war in Europe if there had been no strategic bombing from the UK for the three years before the 8th airforce started operations in number?

When I said the damage was minimal, it was using the extreme example of one bomber getting through, simply to illustrate how the phrase "the bomber will always get through" may have been misconstrued over time. Much of the perceived "terror from the skies" came from memories of the first aerial attacks against civilian targets during the Great War. Such thinking continued for quite some time, in no small respect aided by reporting on Guernica. One bomber getting through wouldn't cause much damage. Dozens of bombers getting through did cause quite extensive damage. Hundreds or even thousands of bombers was an entirely different proposition...and yet, even then, the will of the people on the receiving end wasn't broken.

My comments in no way diminish the impact of bombing raids on civilian populaces from London to Berlin and Tokyo.

 

[pbehn]

I do think its fair to say that despite the damage, it obviously failed to cause the collapse of civilian morale as predicted by the likes of Douhet, which was one of the key aspects to the bomber mafia's doctrine. Its moral effects were vastly over estimated, and the strategic effects on manufacturing were fairly limited in the long run in the UK, but the destruction was very real.

The likes of Harris, Spaatz LeMay were wrong in their most didactic claims about air power and bombing. Neither area bombing nor strategic precision strikes alone won the war. But neither did any other single arm or service until Hiroshima. But they were massive contributors to it - and I think its become fashionable to down-play their massive role in contributing to the final victory and peace.

There is an assumption made in the doctrine that was seen as logical but wasnt. They assumed that when a nation was in a completely hopeless situation the leader would sue for peace or be deposed one way or another and his replacement would sue for peace. This didnt happen at all in Germany it happened after two A bombs in Japan. Its quite possible that if the leadership structures in Japan and Germany were swapped, Germany would have surrendered and Japan fought for every square inch. Hitler couldnt be killed and wouldnt give up, he had no intention of living on himself and incredibly as long as he lived Germany kept on fighting. No one foresaw that.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Its quite possible that if the leadership structures in Japan and Germany were swapped, Germany would have surrendered and Japan fought for every square inch.

Hitler couldnt be killed and wouldnt give up, he had no intention of living on himself and incredibly as long as he lived Germany kept on fighting. No one foresaw that.

What does this mean? If Germany had an Imperial structure like the Japanese, they would have surrendered? Or if the Japanese had Fuhrerdiktat they would have kept on despite two atomic bombs? Every square inch of what, Germany, or Japan? This is vague to the point of uselessness.

So far as I see, Germany did in fact surrender even as Hitler refused to do so, and Japan did in fact fight for every square inch, until the Emperor intervened and ... wait for it ... they surrendered.

 

[33k in the air]

"It was quite a surprise to us when the first Hamburg raid took place because you used some new device [chaff] which was preventing the anti-aircraft guns to find your bombers, so you had a great success and you repeated these attacks on Hamburg several times and each time the new success was greater and the depression was larger, and I have said, in those days, in a meeting of the Air Ministry, that if you would repeat this success on four or five other German towns, then we would collapse. Albert Speer – The Secret War"

Speer may himself have been seeing the ghost haunting him too when he said that. But from '43 onwards, hundreds of bombers in formation or a stream 'getting through' to Axis targets was an increasingly common event.

The key to Speer's quote was Bomber Command repeating the destruction seen at Hamburg on another half-dozen German cities in close succession. But the scale of destruction at Hamburg was caused by a firestorm, a rare, unpredictable event, and Bomber Command could not create those at will. Had it been able to, then it is quite possible Speer would have been proved correct. (The destruction caused at Hamburg in July 1943 was, effectively, similar to that of the atomic bomb, but achieved with conventional munitions.)

 

[WARSPITER]

The likes of Harris, Spaatz LeMay were wrong in their most didactic claims about air power and bombing. Neither area bombing nor strategic precision strikes alone won the war. But neither did any other single arm or service until Hiroshima. But they were massive contributors to it - and I think its become fashionable to down-play their massive role in contributing to the final victory and peace.

That is a good summation and as far as strategic objectives go it did have a massive impact.I'm sure there are threads here that go into this
thoroughly.

The use of new weapons and the misuse of them is a common theme. Resistance from different quarters also does come into play.

Misuse of an unknown quantity for example - the French Maxim gun was inspiration for the Franco Prussian war in 1870 and would
have decimated the Prussian advances (as was found out from 1914 on). Problem was the French knew the capabilities of the Maxim gun
so it was considered a secret weapon. To keep it away from opposition spies it was allocated and used to protect artillery so it was not
where it could have been a devastating surprise.

Resistance - All arms suffered this - the Battleship is what we need. Aircraft carriers are there to help a bit - Battleship mafia.
Tanks are a flash in the pan - too unreliable - not as able to cover large areas or run behind lines as cavalry - Cavalry mafia.

The twenties and thirties was a time of military equipment flux. The internal combustion engine changed so much but not without
ruffling a lot of feathers.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Fisher summited the XP-75 in Sept 1942 in answer to a Feb 1942 request and got funding for two XP-75s.

Good lord, boys, the committee has run out of bourbon and escaped the meeting room.

 

[SaparotRob]

Was the XP-75 really a dodge for GM to avoid building B-29s, as stated in the book "World's Worst Aircraft"? I do but don't I get at least one conspiracy theory?

 

[Greg Boeser]

Was the XP-75 really a dodge for GM to avoid building B-29s, as stated in the book "World's Worst Aircraft"? I do but don't I get at least one conspiracy theory?

No, the real conspiracy was when the government forced Martin to stop building B-26Cs at Omaha, and made them build those overpriced, underperforming B-29s.

 

[SaparotRob]

You're right. I didn't realize that. There's still so much for me to learn.

 

[WARSPITER]

Was the XP-75 really a dodge for GM to avoid building B-29s, as stated in the book "World's Worst Aircraft"? I do but don't I get at least one conspiracy theory?

No, the real conspiracy was when the government forced Martin to stop building B-26Cs at Omaha, and made them build those overpriced, underperforming B-29s.

Neither of those will get any real traction because you haven't linked them to a mafia source and you haven't shown a citation giving at least
10,000 subscribers. At least mention the testimony of a friend of a family friend who used to deliver the mail or some irrefutable/inconclusive
source.

4/10. Must do better.

 

[Greg Boeser]

Neither of those will get any real traction because you haven's linked them to a mafia source and you haven't shown a citation giving at least
10,000 subscribers. At least mention the testimony of a friend of a family friend who used to deliver the mail or some irrefutable/inconclusive
source.

4/10. Must do better.

It's all spelled out in Wolf's B-26 Marauder, the Ultimate Look. It was Truman. Then he had Roosavelt killed. After making an alliance with the Reptilians. I heard it from a friend of my Dad, who was connected to the Mob. He was Italian. I tried to post a video on Youtube, but they took it down for violating their misinformation policy. That's how I know it's true.

 

[SaparotRob]

Neither of those will get any real traction because you haven't linked them to a mafia source and you haven't shown a citation giving at least
10,000 subscribers. At least mention the testimony of a friend of a family friend who used to deliver the mail or some irrefutable/inconclusive
source.

4/10. Must do better.

My bad.

 

[33k in the air]

View attachment 715994

Good lord, boys, the committee has run out of bourbon and escaped the meeting room.

Well, it did, at least, come with a heavy armament: TEN .50-cal machine guns. Two more than the P-47.

Although, four were in the nose, synchronized to fire through the contra-rotating propellers. I would think the firing rate must have been slow as a result for those nose guns.