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For the maybe 20th time, I didn't say get rid of, but I would say 'build far fewer' B-17s, B-24s, Lancasters, and Hallifaxes.I do understand what you are trying to get across, Schweik, it's just that I don't agree that building Mosquitoes instead of B-17s is the best way of doing it. There is no guarantee that the reasons you state the Mosquito was better than the B-17 actually could produce equal results. If that isn't the case, then why get rid of the B-17?
Not every mission profile can be flown at high speed and low altitude. Sure, build more Mosquitoes, but don't replace your heavy bombers with them. Give those Mosquitoes to Commands that need them. If you want better heavy bombers that are more accurate and to avoid collateral damage, change the design of heavy bomber. Get rid of gun turrets, give them more powerful engines to carry greater loads across greater distances at greater speeds, and have some really big bombers to carry those really big bombs that you often might need for difficult to destroy targets like bunkers and viaducts and give them accurate navigation and bombing aids etc.
Wait...
Again, as mentioned, different mission profiles called for different responses. The B-17 didn't operate in a vacuum and replacing it with Mosquitoes removes the total number of bombers that can carry out particular mission profiles.
The strategic bombing campaign wasn't just US four-engined bombers by day from high altitude and RAF four-engined night bombers bombing civilians, there were different operations against different targets at different altitudes and for different reasons.
As I asked earlier, what if you can't carry out your bombing raid at low altitude? What if your mission parameters require a different response to what the Mosquito can provide?
The Lancasters that sank the Tirpitz were still Bomber Command heavy bombers carrying out a strategic mission profile, for example.
Yes to building more Mosquitoes, no to building them in place of building B-17s.
I didn't say get rid of, but I would say 'build far fewer' B-17s, B-24s, Lancasters, and Hallifaxes.
You keep bringing up things I didn't say, and then slapping them dusty straw men down, over and over. But you aren't actually refuting what I said.
Not every mission profile can be flown at high speed and low altitude.
Not every mission profile can be flown at high speed and low altitude. Sure, build more Mosquitoes, but don't replace your heavy bombers with them. Give those Mosquitoes to Commands that need them.
If you want better heavy bombers that are more accurate and to avoid collateral damage, change the design of heavy bomber. Get rid of gun turrets, give them more powerful engines to carry greater loads across greater distances at greater speeds, and have some really big bombers to carry those really big bombs that you often might need for difficult to destroy targets like bunkers and viaducts and give them accurate navigation and bombing aids etc.
Other than high altitude bombing in formation, what mission profiles did the B-17 perform?
I know they did a few low level tactical missions in support of ground forces in Normandy, bombing German positions, and US positions as it turned out (the USAAF warned to army about creep back).
The discussion about whether the Mosquito could do the job of the B-17 is about the day side of the strategic bombing campaign.
You could use the Mosquito for low, medium and high altitude missions. Obviously the higher you go the worse the accuracy becomes.
Wouldn't the attack on the Tirpitz be defined as tactical?
I thought it was agreed that the Mosquito could not totally replace the B-17. Not because of bomb loads, but because of range.
The thread asks what if America built Mosquitos instead of B-17s. For whatever reason, there's Mossies instead of Fortresses. What would be different? Since there aren't B-17s, would Mosquitos have succeeded? Since the 299 went nowhere, does the US need a heavy bomber? Did the US continue with heavy bomber development if the Mosquito succeeded brilliantly/failed miserably? That's how I read the thread. It didn't ask, good idea/bad idea?
(Bad idea)
Exactly.Apart from missions using deep penetration bombs, what missions could not be flown at lower altitudes?
And I think those missions would typically be rare. But like dam buster kind of stuff.The only ones I can think of involve the deep penetration bombs. And only the Lancaster in the ETO could carry them.
Meanwhile Mosquito can fly in low or high, bomb low (as in the mission report posted earlier, dive bomb from 7,000 to 1,000 feet, then fly out at high speed.The main reason for the USAAF bombing from high altitude was defensive. Make it harder to intercept by fighters and harder to hit with flak. Not that either of those worked out too well.
That is basically what I was thinking. Both B-17 and B-24 made good coastal patrol planes. And there were occasionally missions like flattening Axis airbases in Tunisia. And some super hardened targets that needed the heavy bombs.Wouldn't more B-17s and B-24s be handy to close the mid-Atlantic gap in the fight against U-Boats?
I don't think a bigger Mosquito would have been more capable, because it wouldn't have been as fast or versatile and would have been a bigger target.In other words, a bigger, more capable Mosquito?
The main reason for the USAAF bombing from high altitude was defensive. Make it harder to intercept by fighters and harder to hit with flak. Not that either of those worked out too well.
Wouldn't more B-17s and B-24s be handy to close the mid-Atlantic gap in the fight against U-Boats?
In other words, a bigger, more capable Mosquito?
The Mosquito is much more versatile than four-engined heavies.
They come in a less predictable route, which means it's harder to concentrate flak guns and interceptors along those routes.
They can attack almost any target or any kind of target. They can fly the whole way low or fly in high and drop down low for their strike and fly out again (either low or high). They can fly day time or at night (and night time mosquito bomber or intruder raids could be escorted by mosquito night fighters)
All this flexibility means to me that it's harder for the Germans to adapt.
And if strikes are more accurate, there can be fewer of them.
They definitely would be more accurate.
But it seems very likely there would be fewer than what we actually had with the heavy bombers.
They didn't have to go back, unlike a whole lot of those heavy bomber raids that went back over and over and over again.How can you guarantee that? Again, even during precision raids like Carthage Mosquitoes missed the targets. School kids were killed during Carthage.
Agreed!At low altitude accuracy improves,
As much as it may disappoint some, the Germans weren't all that stupid (except for letting an idiotic Austrian take charge AND starting a big-ass war, but I digress) and would have quickly adapted to the "low level, precision" tactics.
To counter the A-36 in Italy, they strung cables across valleys.
Their AA system evolved into killing zones in response to the day/night bombing and it's a bit naive to assume they wouldn't adapt to this new Mosquito tactic.
Later in the war, they used Me262s as interceptors to Mosquitos - that is a direct adaptation.
The Mosquito was an amazing machine, but it is not infallible and would not be able to deliver the crippling blows that the Allied heavy bombers managed.
WWII was the last "total war" in human history, we cannot try and claim "this or that" would have saved civilians or changed one or more aspects. It was total war, and the objective was to incapacitate the enemy by any means possible as quickly as possible.
The Allied heavy bombers achieved that in a modern version of General Sherman's "scorched earth policy".
But you don't figure these things from looking at a handful of raids. If you examine the overall wartime record of strikes by Mosquitos (and any other low altitude bomber or fighter-bomber) and strikes by the heavy bombers, the low altitude strikes are more accurate.
Lets ask an expert:
I would consider the Eindoven raid a Strategic raid.But not as strategic bombing raids! These were fighter bombers flown by Fighter Command squadrons! Not even the same command! They can't be compared to bomber Mosquitoes! As I mentioed earlier, you are getting your Mosquito variants mixed up.
Why thank you, but at the very least, if you are going to quote me, do the decent thing and use the full quote, rather than selectively quote to prove your point, which changes the context of what's being stated.
"At low altitude accuracy improves, but so does the accuracy of enemy anti-air defences; even Mosquitoes are not immune to interception and flak at low altitude."