Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
I think Dave's right, you've got it in your head, Schweik, that the Mosquito was invulnerable to interception and totally accurate, which simply was not the case.
The point is, the accuracy improves. Evading defenses is a separate issue, but it's one the Mosquito excelled at. Compare the loss rate for Mosquitos to Lancasters.
That would be yet another case of you inventing an argument that I haven't made, so that you can declare yourself the winner of the debate.
As an aside, I cam across this mission report:
View attachment 649697
12 x 1,000lb. Is that a mistake?
My understanding is the maximum was 8 x 1,000lb inside the bomb bay. Could they have been using the external racks to carry 2 x 1,000lb under each wing?
How can you guarantee that? Again, even during precision raids like Carthage Mosquitoes missed the targets.
School kids were killed during Carthage.
The wildcard is how would the Germans have adjusted, and we know they would have done. It would have changed the whole course of the Air War. And it could have gone badly, if the Anglo-Americans started shifting production to more Mosquitos (and similar planes), it could be a gamble that didn't pay off. But I suspect it would have gone better than what we had, on several different levels. The B-17, as Wuzak noted, is almost a one trick pony. It can do maritime recon etc., but as a Strategic bomber, it only has one option - high and slow. If you have thousands more fast strike aircraft, they can do a lot of different kinds of things.
This is all hypothetical, of course. Mosquitoes could be and were tracked by enemy radar. Let's remember that they weren't invulnerable to interception or flak. They can't attack any kind of target.
A Mosquito's bomb bay wasn't big enough to carry all types of bombs the Allies fielded.
The target was obscured for the following Mosquitoes and a few bombed in the wrong place
Nor were the B-17's or B-24's.
Treetop flying negated flak defenses.
Again, it depends, you still haven't acknowledged that during the low altitude raids that were carried out caused civilian casualties - over 100 during Carthage alone (how many civilian casualties are considered "acceptable" to you). These raids were flown by crew especially trained in low altitude ops. It is very difficult to compare the different operations between the different commands.
There is a difference between loss rate and total numbers. The rate doesn't necessarily change. If anything, you can see with a lot of the Mosquito raids they lost 1 or 2 aircraft, and the rate went down as the number of bombers in the strike went up. Lancasters or B-17s had no such luck.Again, loss rates are commensurate to the operational profile. Far more Lancasters were used in a given night bombing raid than Mosquitoes and again, you are advocating that Mosquitoes might have been able to do the same thing by comparing them to Lancasters? How do you know loss rates wouldn't be the same if there were as many Mosquitoes as there were Lancasters doing the Lancasters' jobs?
The role of heavy bombers is to put lots of bombers carrying lots of bombs over a given target and to saturate the target.
What height it's done at depends of course and as we all know accuracy diminishes with height, so that's why you need lots of bombers with lots of bombs, to compensate for predicted misses while providing defence against enemy anti-air assets.
What I'm stating is that there is no guarantee that if Mosquitoes were used in the same way as heavy bombers were that they'd be any more accurate and there'd need to be more of them to deliver an equivalent load to an equivalent number of bombers, and conversely that if they were used differently, i.e. doing the same mission profile at low altitude and high speed that they could achieve the same results, when that means you need to fly more operations, increasing the probability of greater loss rates to enemy air defences to guarantee a given number of bombs over the target area.
You keep bringing up the Korean War and try to make a comparison to what happened over Europe - Different War, different scenario, different targets. I don't know where you're getting this "scorched earth" assumption. This is a great account of how the B-29 was used in Korea and despite the opposition by MiGs, made a good account of itself.I've pointed out already a couple of times, 'scorched earth' in and of itself is not a guarantee of victory. See the Korean War. See many other wars going back to antiquity.
This would be a low-level problem for all large Mossie missions?
The photos (high altitude of course) are 5 minutes apart. Down below - conditions would have been horrendous.
View attachment 649709
That's you're assumption - so many variables throws that statement out the window.I think that means you don't strike that target after the place is burning, you hit a different target. You don't need 700 bombers on one raid when you are bombing at low level and during the day, the accuracy goes up a lot. If you have 700 bombers that means maybe hit 14 different targets.
That said, when Graugeist brought this up as a challenge, I went ahead and compared civilian casualties with all the Mosquito gestapo HQ raids and a few other small raids, with the big heavy bomber raids at Hamburg and Dresden. I guess you missed that post too?
That's you're assumption - so many variables throws that statement out the window.
You keep using the term "heavy bomber" when you should be using the term "strategic bomber".
I doubt the Mosquito would be more accurate bombing from the same heights as B-17s when the two are bombing individually.
It is not certain that more bombers would be required to get the same results. Results meaning the damage or destruction of the target.
f you double the accuracy and have an aircraft with half the bombs then you require the same number of bombers. If you improve the accuracy further, less bombers are required, or you can do more damage.
and hindsight is 20/20....It's in the historical record, including USAAF postwar analysis
I think that means you don't strike that target after the place is burning, you hit a different target. You don't need 700 bombers on one raid when you are bombing at low level and during the day, the accuracy goes up a lot. If you have 700 bombers that means maybe hit 14 different targets.