VVS Vs. RAF

[plan_D]

I'll start from the bottom of your post and work my way up.

The Soviet rocket-interceptor Bi-2 wasn't any advance in technology. It was a worthless design and didn't see any service in or out of World War 2. Britain didn't intend of having rocket interceptors as they already had a much better propulsion system, which is far more advanced than rockets, the jet engine. The Soviet Union didn't have a single non-prop driven aircraft in World War 2 that operated. The British had the Meteor.

No, I've never said that Albert Speer was the only reason that Germany's war economy kept rising. The RAF and USAAF could have crushed Germany's oil production had the bombing offensive been kept up. They had realised by 1944 where the key to Germany's war was.
This in no way implies that all bombing efforts before then had done nothing to the effort of Germany's war. Think logically, the destruction of a factory with several hundred aircraft airframes, engines, tank chassis, ball bearings or rifles has destroyed that production run which will have to be built again.
Of course, they did get built again but in the time it takes to re-build that same production run they would have built another production run if the bombing had never happened.

The destruction of oil installations, manganese plants and actual tank production facilities does more damage to the Wehrmacht than actually destroying them on the field. What good is German mobilisation without fuel?

The correct figures for the aerial bombardment of Germany was for every one soldier killed, three civilians were killed.

July 1944 was not the peak of Allied bombardment, on the contrary it was the first 4 months of 1945 that was, where the RAF alone dropped 181, 740 tonnes (The US dropping 188, 573 tonnes). Between July and September 1944 only 20 percent of Bomber Command's sorties were against cities, 11 percent being against oil installations. That's 69% of Bomber Command's sorties going directly against factories, ground forces, transport links or supply lines.

The effect of bombing Germany's oil: In March 1944 Germany had 927,000 tons of Petroleum. In May, 715,000 tons. 472,000 tons in June. Luftwaffe aviation spirit dropped from 180,000 tons in April to 50,000 tons in June, 10,000 tons in August!

Germany needed 300,000 tons of oil a month to effectively continue the war. By September 1944 they were receiving little over 150,000.

I have noticed how quickly this has become a thread about you trying to downplay the role of the Western Allied air offensive. I don't like having to repeat myself, let alone the words of someone else twice but you obviously did not read them.

In the words of Max Hastings "It would be ludicrous to imply that the German people found the experience acceptable, or to deny that Hitler's war production suffered not only from damage on plant, but also from absenteeism and chronic dislocation to the lives of the labour force."

It is unfortunate because I merely started out as showing that the RAF was more rounded, better equipped, better trained and elite force than the VVS which purely relied on numbers.

Let's compare the forces:

Night bombing: Lancaster/U-2 (RAF/VVS)
Night Fighting: Mosqutio/None (RAF/VVS)
High Altitude: Spitfire Mk.VI or Mk.XIV/MiG-3U (RAF/VVS)
Low Altitude: Spitfire Mk.XIV C.W/La-7 (RAF/VVS)
Ground Attack: Typhoon/Il-2 (RAF/VVS)
Strategic bombing: Lancaster/Pe-8 {Hardly in service} (RAF/VVS)
Jet/Rocket interceptors: Meteor/Bi-2 {Never saw service} (RAF/VVS)
Maritime Patrol: Sunderland/None (RAF/VVS)
Photo Reconaisance: Spitfire PR.IX/Po-2

Anyone can feel free to include other areas.

 

[Udet]

Plan D:

Hold your fire!

You do not have to go there (comparing aircraft for each role).

The La-7 was a very capable plane: rugged, manouverable and well armed.

The point here is as follows:

Delcyros and many others trying to credit the VVS with a quality and organization it simply never enjoyed fail to detect the core of the issue.

Go back to basics, do not go outside the nucleus analyzing specifications of planes, sorties, etc.

We know it, they know it: the losses of the VVS during 1941 were far beyond description: both on the ground and in the air they were skinned alive.

Take into consideration soviet pilots had gained combat experience during the Spanish civil war. Did it show in the skies of their country in 1941?

There was a "gap" however, the winter of 1941, during the red army´s counteroffensive around Moscow: miserable weather simply grounded a Luftwaffe that had sustained low casualties in the previous months of Barbarossa.

(Yes, even flying the ancient Ishaks and Chaikas and modern Mig-3s some remarkable soviet pilots scored kills against bombers and even against Bf 109s; cases were few though.)

Funnily, many historians credit the VVS with having achieved remarkable deeds during such winter. I´d ask them, did soviet pilots arriving east the USSR to join the offensive had any special capabilities and equipment for flying in such weather conditions in 1941? Is "NO" the most likely of the answers?

However, when winter was over, the Luftwaffe retook the role it had played the previous year: Operation Blue in 1942 saw the German pilots continuing the slaughter of the VVS. By mid 1942 more than 85 percent of the VVS units located in the western area of the soviet union littered vast areas of land. A massive cementery of planes and pilots.

And no, i am not mocking soviet pilots nor diminishing their bravery and courage and hate. As I said before, bravery is not an issue in my comments for i am god damned sure they all had guts.

The ultra famous battle of Stalingrad had the same kind of outcome in the air. Extremely high losses for the stubborn and brave VVS bomber formations launched to attack German positions across the Don bend and over the city itself.

Another ultra famous battle, Kursk, the cauldron of July 1943, saw the VVS losing to German fighters only about 370 combat planes in the very first day of the battle, add those lost to Flak and accidents.

I will make the long story short. Conclusions. The core of the deal.

I have the soviet version of the airwarfare against the Luftwaffe. In russian so i do not have to rely on translations that might contain unaccuracies. They do not provide that much info that could help us readers in changing our view. Other than several furious remarks saying of the "burgeois" lies and distortions they amazingly failed to provide the evidence that would prove their case.

If they have the evidence, why not to immediately release it and shut the mouths of those they calle liars and distorters?

They claim that by 1943 the Luftwaffe "had been effectively destroyed". By mid 1943, they say, the Luftwaffe "had ceased to be an effective force due to enormous losses inflicted by the VVS".

Facts and statistics easily shatter such claim. The losses during the first day of action at Kursk and the inability of the VVS to gain air superiority in the Kuban area -where German numerical superiority was slight- both in 1943 are of help proving they do not have a case to defend.

It takes more than 1 and half year to raise a professional and highly skilled and organized army out of the ashes of your slaughtered air force.

Why 1 and a half year? From june 22, 1941 to, say, late 1942 -Stalingrad victory- they mildly admit "they learned bitter lessons".

By mid 1943 they claim the VVS was "an entirely different force".

The VVS never ceased to launch formation after formation of fighters and bombers to attack the Germans suffering breath taking losses.

They never really had the chance to cadre "battle seasoned" squadrons in significant numbers due to the enormous losses suffered.

A different thing happened in the German case: in previous campaigns they had suffered losses that always remained moderate (even during the Battle of Britain). The Luftwaffe had a growing number of battle experienced pilots after every campaign in the west, balkans, mediterranean and africa, because their losses never came nowhere near the insanity of VVS losses during 1941 and 1942 and, yes, 1943 at the hands of the Luftwaffe.

The soviet guys did not enjoy such luxury.

Now add the brutal nature of the soviet regime: a fearsome, powerful and professional army IN YOUR SOIL smashing all soviet armies, until Stalingrad. The absolutely unthinkable will be done to attempt stopping it.

Add that by 1943 the western allies had landed in North Africa and Italia: the soviet regime demanded the opening of new fronts that would relieve them from pressure WITHIN THEIR OWN COUNTRY.

D-day, the allies storm Normandy: Stalin, a skilled politician, had his own political agenda and he did not want his western allies -which he did not trust- to advance faster and further into Europe than his red army could. More pressure to both soviet aircraft producers and pilots. Proper training? Was not their concern.

If there were not Luftwaffe planes to fight, the Yaks did not stay in the air photographing migrating birds: they too were sent out in the ground attack mode as much as the IL-2s. Being slightly armored they were weak and took enormous losses from German ground fire.

So the elements, basics, are:

(1) 1941-late 1942/early 1943. The period when all that mattered was to stop or slow the advancing Wehrmacht: sent them out, all to the fight: enormous losses. Not enough time to train and to organize pilots and units properly.

Units involved suffered so terribly, no significant numbers of battle-experienced pilots to train the new arrivals were left. A Pokryshkin as teacher was the luxury of only a few pilots. Even his unit took important losses; they were not the "super-heros" of the air, as it would be in an American comic book of the Hall of Justice.

(2) Mid 1943-1944-1945. The period when the western allies begin landing in north africa, sicily, italia; then Normandy came to clear the atmosphere as to the unavoidable outcome of the war. Political agenda enters the scenario. To advance faster than the western guys, faster and further: not enough time to properly train and organize the military air force.

That they improved is true. That one or two of their fighters were totally capable by the last year of the war is totally true. That they broke the Luftwaffe all by themselves -date does not matter- is totally untrue.

 

[plan_D]

Good points concerning Luftwaffe Vs. VVS but don't go telling people to "Hold your fire". That annoyed me but luckily I calmed down while reading the valid points afterwards.

If I want to bait up a comparison between different aircraft types, I will. Also, I never said the La-7 was a poor aircraft. The La-7 was probably the best the VVS had, that's why I compared it to the H.F XIV Spitfire!

 

[Udet]

Nothing anyone might type here can get close to annoy me.

I am not to tell you what to do or not to do here. Do whatever the hell you want. I could not care less.

Quite actually i am in no way responsible for how you interpret my postings.

*YAWN*

 

[plan_D]

Apart from the fact that the last sentence made no sense, that was probably the most reasonable post you've ever made.

Well done.

 

[Udet]

Plan D:

*smoochie*

 

[plan_D]

Not in public, I'm ashamed of you.

 

[delcyros]

Does it seem to you that I sing a song for the all winning VVS? Did I ever told that they had no losses? Losses are one thing, but none of you is still factoring the combat sorties, which play a huge role.
Udet, I can agree with most what you said here.
I don´t care what some of the neocommunistic authors claim to have done. I just have the losses and records of both sides in front of me and I´m going to tell what happens. Most Luftwaffe losses in personal are on the eastern front, far more than any other single theatre of war. Are you going to dispute this? And what is this telling to you? Do you really think it´s all because the Lufwaffe rules the skies over Russia? Or because of the bad climatic circumstances (which would have even more impact on the bad prepared VVS)?
More Lufwaffe sorties have been flown on the eastern front, than in any other single theatre, also. (ok-if you count all together you closely match parity for the western powers with Africa, Balkan (well, should this go to the western?), Greek, Italy, France , Neatherlands, Norway, bob, Germany, Poland, Africa and so on)
Activity of the Luftwaffe was more focussed on the eastern front than on the western theatres. However, if you look closer to each year you see that this isn´t fact in 39,40 and 44.
I never denied any impact the strategic bombing campaign had (actaully they had well secondaries, like enforced defense), I stay to my statement that it was FAR LESS than expected (expected: crush the war economy=failed)and this is reasoned in the production numbers except for the oil bombing campaign (which effectively shortened the war).
And even here: Jule 44 was the month with the worsest production figures for high grade fuel. If this doesn´t match to the dropped bomb tonnage, than the later bombing was even less effective than the earlier one.
And the number still is 6 to one for the strategic bombing campaign (which is what we are discussing), 3 to one belongs, as you said, to the aerial bombardment, including tactical sorties. That´s something different.
And the Bi-2 is not that bad. It has some well contributions to pioneering technology. Why do you say it is worthless? The Gloster E-39/40, He-178 and DFS-194 are also a pioneering planes (none of them got into service) but I would never say they are a worthless design.
I may go so far with downgrading the role of RAF-impact on the war as I would say the following:
Fact is that the surviving of the SU was key factor for surviving of Britain and the help of the western allies was (in 1941/42) key factor for the surviving of the SU. The VVS binded effectively most of the Luftwaffe in the east, allowing the RAF and US forces to deploy forces in europe and carry the airwar to Germany.
Fact is that the strategic bombing campaign, compared to the tactical sorties of the VVS did reduced the Whermacht in a minor way, while the VVS not only destroyed tanks and equipment (which was also done by the RAF) but also the crews in them, the forces with experience and so on.
And look at the advances of the red army to Germany in 43/44, faster than the advance of the western forces or isn´t it?
I doubt that the Luftwaffe recognized the losses in the east correctly. And from mid 1944 on they could only achieve local air superiority against the VVS for a very short time (period 2.2.-16.2.45 for example). While it is true that they effectively flew against the VVS for a long timeframe and succeeded in repeated destruction of their units, they failed to ensure ruling the skies and they couldn´t prevent those desperate Il-2 to wreck havoc under the german ground forces.

 

[plan_D]

You've made a huge error in your judgement of the whole situation. The VVS destroyed mostly bombers on the Eastern front. Bombers do not stop other bombers from doing their mission. The VVS didn't tie up significant fighter formations, had those fighter formations been in the West, the West would still have bombed France and Germany.

The highest loss rate of the RAF and USAAF was in 1943 with an average of 5.5% loss per sortie.

You're trying to say that the Western Allied strategic bombing campaign had little or no effect on the German capability to wage war on the Eastern front. You couldn't be more wrong.

 

[delcyros]

The Luftwaffe moreso destroyed bombers in the west in ´43 than fighters.
And no, I´m not saying that the whole strategic bombing campaign was without effect. I will split it up for you:
primary target oil campaign: nearly reached
secondary: VERY WELL REACHED
primary target on production: failed
secondary: reached
primary target on enemy morale: failed
secondary: failed
The average loss rate of RAF and VVS (over the whole war) is about the same (see above).

 

[plan_D]

The primary task of bombing production plants was to hamper production. Think logically, every tank or shell destroyed in a bombing raid has to be re-built as well as rehousing the labourers and rebuilding any damage to the factory.

All takes time and resources. It was far from a failure. Look at the percentages of Bomber Command strikes too, 20% were against cities! A mere 20%!

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Also think about the tooling used to build tanks and planes, etc. Tooling takes a lot of time to build and inspect. Destroy the tooling, destroy the product!

 

[delcyros]

Well, This is what I am agreeing in.
And if you take the strategic war for this goal it worked. However, if you look into the memos of leading UK/US airforce generals you will see that the purpose was:
(1) engage the enemy civil morale in a way that the germans are forced to lay down the arms (impossible with conventional weapons)
(2) crush the enemys production (not just delay its increase in output)
(3) destroy communication ways and transportation systems
and later:
(4) crush the enemys oil production

I have read many books (german as well as english) stating that the strategic bombing campaign has achieved all these goals. And I am going to disagree in this.
And while it is completely true that tooling devices are needed you are still not factoring that the Luftwaffe was never short on planes in 44/45 or engines. It was (a) experienced pilots
-and we have seen that more personall losses of crewman are on the east than on the west
and (b) fuel shortage
-which only played a role at the Luftwaffe for the grounding of the He-177 and most bomber units. Later (turn 44/45) it played a role for the training capabilities of fighter pilots and not until early 45 for piston engined fighter (jet driven planes suffered not that much since they could take lower grade fuel also).
The general shortage of fuel moreso hampered all ground activties, esspeccially the tanks. However in this timeframe the end was very, very close.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Agreed, but by this time 44/45 wasn't German arms production (example aircraft manufacturing) dispersed at many locations? I think German war production planners were smart enough not only to spread out their prodcution facilities, but to build several sets of production tooling and disperse them as well.

 

[Glider]

I think it should be remembered that its quite hard to destroy the tooling itself. The ball bearing raids on Germany proved that as did the German raids on Russian factories. The buildings can be knocked down but the tooling is far more difficult to destroy.
The campaign against the towns certainly hurt the Germans and made them realise that they were unlikely to win the war but that isn't the same as destroying their will to resist. In that we failed completely. The bombing of the oil production facilities did a lot of damage and its a shame that the British didn't join in what was largely US assult. By 1944 we had the ability to hit quite small targets and a combined approach could well have succeded in significantly reducing the fighting ability of all german forces.

 

[Glider]

Udet, I forgot to say that I thought your posting of 4,36 was excellent. There is one thing that you may want to add. The Pre war Russian airforce was a well trained and (for its time) reasionably equipped airforce. They learnt a lot of lessons in Spain and beat the Japenese airforce in Manchuria, which was no small achievement. However in the Stalin purges just before the war almost every officer of any quality was killed, jailed or removed from command. This must have had an effect on the performance of their airforce in the first 12-18 months of the conflict against the Germans.
How much we will never know, as its one of those great unknowns. However it meant they didn't start with a well led force and as you rightly said didn't get the chance to recover unitl much later.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

I think it should be remembered that its quite hard to destroy the tooling itself.

NO - Have you ever seen aircraft production tooling? Its big, bulky, usually made from hardened steel with a lot of details that bolt on. If you could find it, its a sitting duck! The bigger tooling is usually sitting in the middle of a production factory. You need well made tools to make aligned fuselages, wings, etc. This is the Achilles heel of war production. Destroy the tooling, you destroy the product!

 

[Glider]

FJ, Yes i have seen tooling of this nature also the tooling for APC's. It is big, bulky, and pretty solid lumps of meal. What I am saying is the to destroy the tooling, you need to hit it. Knocking the building down around it won't do the job.

 

[plan_D]

Still, logic evades you. By destroying a factory you destroy the what is being built there, that has to be built again. It takes time and resources to relocate, rebuild and in some cases, retool a factory.

Had the bombing never occured then the production levels would have risen far beyond the amount that we read of today.

The only thing I see in your argument that I agree with is that the strategic bombing did not collapse the Germans will to resist. They reduced the capability of the German war machine with each raid. The lack of oil and aviation spirits affected the Luftwaffe much greater than you seem to believe.



A nice little fact for you, Glider, Bomber Command did get involved with the bombing of oil installations. In fact, in November 1944, Bomber Command dropped more tonnage on oil installations than the US 8th AF.
With hindsight we can see that in 1944 the end was nigh but how much longer could it have dragged on if the Germans would have kept the oil to keep their Panzer formations mobile? Many a tank left behind because they lacked the fuel. Many the plane grounded because they lacked the fuel...

 

[lesofprimus]

Heres some shots of the effects of a large scale bombing campaign... Not much left..... Think u could find tooling machinery in there????