SaparotRob
Unter Gemeine Geschwader Murmeltier XIII
The things one learns here.
What if America built De Havilland Mosquitoes instead of the B-17 Flying Fortress?
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Greetings ThomasP,
I see drgondog replied to your comment in an earlier post. My takeaway from the bombing survey summary is that oil/gas industries were attacked as early as was practical and could be aligned with strategic planning. The effort to gain mastery of the air took precedence over all other plans and initially focused on destroying German aircraft production. The timing of this effort and the need to focus on the success of the Normandy invasion affected when and how to attack oil/gasoline industry.
Based on what is in the bombing survey summary, I think there are really three possible targets that would or did affect the outcome of the war. Oil/Gas, Transportation, and Electricity. Oil/Gas and Transportation have been covered in quite a few of these posts and you can decide which one you think had a greater impact on the outcome of the war. My thinking is that you needed to knock out both, which the Allies did. The argument on the Oil/Gas side is that if you destroy that industry, then the Army can't fight, you can't make bombs, and further down the road other industries like rubber fail. The argument on the Transportation side is that if you destroy transportation then goods can't move to support manufacturing and importantly you destroy the coal supply. Germany and German industry was coal based and the campaign against transportation destroyed the nations coal reserves by January/February 1945. Which had more impact? Its hard to say as these industries were destroyed concurrently and both contributed to the end.
In postwar analysis, it turns out that the industry not attacked was most likely the one that could have ended the war soonest: electrical production. From the Bombing Survey:
The German power system, except for isolated raids, was never a target during the air war. An attack was extensively debated during the course of the war. It was not undertaken partly because it was believed that the German power grid was highly developed and that losses in one area could be compensated by switching power from another. This assumption, detailed investigation by the Survey has established, was incorrect.
The German electric power situation was in fact in a precarious condition from the beginning of the war and became more precarious as the war progressed; this fact is confirmed by statements of a large number of German officials, by confidential memoranda of the National Load Dispatcher, and secret minutes of the Central Planning Committee. Fears that their extreme vulnerability would be discovered were fully discussed in these minutes.
The destruction of five large generating stations in Germany would have caused a capacity loss of 1.8 million kw. or 8 percent of the total capacity, both public and private. The destruction of 45 plants of 100,000 kw. or larger would have caused a loss of about 8,000,000 kw. or almost 40 percent, and the destruction of a total of 95 plants of 50,000 kw. or larger would have eliminated over one-half of the entire generating capacity of the country. The shortage was sufficiently critical so that any considerable loss of output would have directly affected essential war production, and the destruction of any substantial amount would have had serious results.
Generating and distributing facilities were relatively vulnerable and their recuperation was difficult and time consuming. Had electric generating plants and substations been made primary targets as soon as they could have been brought within range of Allied attacks, the evidence indicates that their destruction would have had serious effects on Germany's war production.
Thumpalumpacus
Captain
That's why I was asking about cluster bombs, which scatter bomblets. I was thinking that tracking down the leaks and pressure losses might be useful, but apparently not. Thanks for clearing it up.
Hi
Of course 'oil' was attacked 'earlier', is 1940 early enough? However, its probably not a 'war winning' method at the time, the Germans had taken over a number of countries with their own fuel stocks and were importing oil from other European countries as well as the USSR, the latter continued to supply up to the day they were attacked by the Germans. 'The Strategic Air War Against Germany 1939-1945 - Report of British Bombing Survey Unit' (Cass reprint 1998), page 4 mentions the target systems attacked during 1940:
Bomber Command received 'Directives' from the Air Ministry throughout the war, many are contained in the OH 'The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939-1945' Volume IV, below is one of the 1940 ones:
Priorities in targeting were changing as the war situation changed so there could be no 'one' solution.
Mike
Incredibly, by capturing oil reserves Adolf ended up with more reserves at the end of the invasions of France and the low countries than he had at the start, no wonder he liked this invasion malarkey.
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During the campaign, the Oil Commandos were deployed to seize the French oil wells at Pechelbronn, in Alsace. On 21 June, with the help of French collaborators, they succeeded in doing so without firing a shot. The French demolition squads charged with destroying the machinery were entirely unsuccessful. Not only did the Oil Commandos get the 1.5 million gallons of petroleum in storage there, they returned production to full capacity in a few months.
Geoffrey Sinclair
Staff Sergeant
- 779
- Sep 30, 2021
The entire reply avoids actually backing up the claim.
Good to know there is agreement after claiming the Ploesti marshalling yard strikes were just that.
Speer wrote a book where he was usually able to put himself reacting to each change in allied bombing, things like the 6 more Hamburgs quote etc. This makes him a favourite for air war people, as you can find support for most to all conclusions. This quote apparently means the technological radar was ended for a start. Like the 1943 attacks on ball bearings the oil raids caused Speer to worry, of course as the USSBS pointed out raids had to be continued becoming a campaign. This time the quote includes the way the raids started a campaign, not some raids then a switch to other targets. Please read for context, not imagine a single quote is the answer.
You see the discussion was about what the raids did to Avgas production, motor fuel etc. was not covered, so pointing out most June 1944 USAAF raids could not have affected avgas production is met with time to change the subject to all oil production and announce a suitable figure. USSBS German Petroleum Products Production, 1940 to 1944 Hydrogenation supplied 5,540,000 metric tons of avgas, 1940 to 1945, Benzol 165,000 tons, crude oil 43,000 tons. Interesting definition for synthetic refineries to be doing the augmenting.
Now comes shove someone else in front and say look at them. Meantime Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth by Gitta Sereny, The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze. The German economy was more mobilised early than the USSBS and Speer made out.
It goes like this, according to the USAAF Statistical Digest the average US Heavy Bomber load was 2.6 tons (effective sorties divided by bombs dropped). Using Richard Davis it is 2.61 tons per bomber credited with attacking and 2.66 tons per heavy bomber attacking a target in France, meantime the 9th Air Force notes the average B-26 bomb load for the war was 1.8 tons. I thought the B-17 could only carry around 4,000 pounds had been consigned to the anti US lobby. So please tell us all what is "nearly the same?"
One can note for example 3 September 1943, 196 B-17 dropped bombs on raids to France, 575.5 tons of bombs dropped according to Roger Freeman, 2.94 tons per attacking bomber or 9 March 1944, Berlin 339 B-17 attacking, 795.5 tons of bombs, 2.35 tons of bombs. The USSBS notes the medium bombers were the more accurate. I prefer to use the air force aircraft designations, after all the Lancaster average bomb load for the war was 10,065 pounds, 5 short tons, should that be used to define heavy?
"The bomber force for several months had been adequate for the task", no definition of several, versus my "about as soon as it could defined as it would have a sustained effect". The US knew it could not easily find targets in the Ruhr given the haze, Bomber Command was being locked out of Germany due to the losses and shortening nights, the invasion support would reduce available bombing resources.
The Spaatz oil plan on 5 March 1944 wanted 15 days of visual bombing for the 8th Air Force and 10 for the 15th, it had the flaw the Germans had more refinery capacity than crude oil, even given crude oil currently being shipped from Romania, knocking out the Romanian oil refineries could be partially countered by more exports, mining the Danube was the answer to that one. I assume you know when the half way point in the campaign in terms of bombs dropped on Germany was for both Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force?
The idea is even when agreeing to imply the writer knows more, sees further and therefore can ignore RAF Fighter Command had lots of aircraft on defensive operations, that in the period 27 May to 5 June 1944 of the 40,595.58 short tons of bombs dropped by Bomber Command and the 8th Air force, 28,625.272 was on France, 2,210.712 on Belgium, 109.516 on the Netherlands. So 76% of bombs dropped is "dedicated entire". Even adding all 3,545.7 tons on German marshalling yards does not equal entire and requires places like Frankfurt, Ludwigshafen, Mannheim and Osnabruck to be D-Day transport plan targets. And of course note I was talking about the transport plan in Germany, not the one in France. "That is why the transport plan attack on Germany was so effective".
Sorry, no tables again as this was copied from an old message.
Pre war the Germans blended in Alcohol, in 1936 the country was using around 90,000 barrels of oil and 4,500 barrels of alcohol a day. (One of the contributions to the post war food shortage was the use of crops like potatoes to make alcohol for fuel in 1945).
Oil production in barrels per day in Greater Germany (average for the year in question)
Synth. Refined crude
1940 73834 29120
1941 90982 32372
1942 107396 34722
1943 129066 38819
1944 86786 33105
Germany (or rather the axis powers in Europe) had access to the following crude oil production during the war, country, peak production year in barrels per day, year of peak
Albania, 4386, 1943
Austria, 22454, 1944
Czechoslovakia 742, 1942
France 1268, 1942
Germany 20139, 1940
Hungary 17390, 1943
Italy 277, 1942
Netherlands 112, 1945
Poland 9589, 1944
Romania 117,945, 1940
Yugoslavia 601, 1944
Source Oil and War by Goralski and Freeburg. (which includes a lot more detail on world consumption, refining capacity, production and tanker fleets by year and country). The conversion factors they use are crude oil 7.33 barrels to the tonne, oil products 7.5 barrels to the tonne, bunker oil 6.7 barrels to the tonne. (Tonne = 2,204.6 pounds = metric ton) Note the USSBS oil report uses short tons (2,000 pounds) for bomb tonnage and metric tons for oil output.
Figure 22 of the USSBS report gives the German Avgas reserves for the entire war. The reserves started off at 500,000 tons, climbed with the capture of French stocks, had a persistent winter bounce effect throughout the war as operations declined, dropped precipitately in 1941 from over 600,000 to 250,000 tons by the end of the year, hovered around 200 to 300,000 tons in 1942, 300,000 tons in 1943 before climbing to around 580,000 tons in April 1944 (partially due to the capture of Italian stocks in 1943), they then steadily declined to around 200,000 tons in September and 150,000 tons in December. The reserves were down to 200,000 tons in August 1942 as the lowest point before bombing began. The reserves were written down in two ways, bombing of storage tanks and allied military activity like Overlord and Bagration that forced the Luftwaffe to operate beyond the limits of available fuel production.
Romanian Oil Production, Thousand Tons and Exports in tons, columns are year / Crude Oil production / Drilling (km) / Refinery Runs / Domestic Consumption / Exports to Czechoslovakia and Germany / Exports direct to the German Army
1938 / 6610 / 288 / 6228 / 1674 / 999,240 / nil
1939 / 6240 / 256 / 5837 / 1785 / 1,285,153 / nil
1940 / 5810 / 235 / 5472 / 1862 / 1,429,807 / nil
1941 / 5577 / 253 / 5255 / 1811 / 2,885,229 / 34,351
1942 / 5655 / 339 / 5237 / 2098 / 1,822,207 / 369,452
1943 / 5266 / 344 / 4903 / 2007 / 1,795,555 / 715,749
Exports to Italy and Albania were, in tons
1938 560,475
1939 629,350
1940 342,943
1941 761,667
1942 862,179
1943 391,354
You can see how the Germans were really not able to gain much control of Romanian oil, the growth of domestic consumption, in both absolute terms and percentage wise, when added to the reduction in crude production it meant potential exports dropped from around 5 million tons in 1938 to around 3 million in 1943.
Nice to see you have discovered Romania and that its oil production dwarfed all others combined, even if less than pre war levels. Your previous post didnt mention the loss of Romanian production at all.
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
Wondering why Bulgaria and Croatia weren't summarized in that oil report...
HiIncredibly, by capturing oil reserves Adolf ended up with more reserves at the end of the invasions of France and the low countries than he had at the start, no wonder he liked this invasion malarkey.
The German army and air force had learned enough from the Polish campaign to build up significant reserves for the war in the West. When that blitz was over, the Wehrmacht had captured more than 20 million barrels of oil from the French, Belgians and Dutch. Since the invaders had used only 12 million barrels through the campaign, the conquests represented a net gain of 8 million barrels. (For reference, though, and to show how precarious the Germans' situation remained, the United States in 1940 produced an average of 4 million barrels per day.)Welcome eiaonline.com - Justhost.com
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During the campaign, the Oil Commandos were deployed to seize the French oil wells at Pechelbronn, in Alsace. On 21 June, with the help of French collaborators, they succeeded in doing so without firing a shot. The French demolition squads charged with destroying the machinery were entirely unsuccessful. Not only did the Oil Commandos get the 1.5 million gallons of petroleum in storage there, they returned production to full capacity in a few months.
Germany's Oil Industry pre-war as shown in 'Germany Vol. III' from NID:
Germany had imports plus own oil wells and its Synthetic Oil manufacture.
Mike
My point was that in terms of fuel Hitlers adventures in mainland Europe showed a profit and may have led him to believe he could repeat the trick in Russia. I worked in the oil industry for thirty years, the only place I ever saw a "nodding donkey" pumpjack working was in what your posts calls the North German Plain around Uelzen in Lower Saxony. Also, for many years I visited places around Milan, Piacenza and Lake Como in Italy. On one visit I asked a manager why so many companies supplying oil/gas fittings flanges valves pipes etc were in the area, he said it was a throwback to when that region had a gas industry. Its a great place to measure flanges and valves lol.
Yes. They should have. They should make Mosquitos and then when they could, A-26s, and other fast bombers and fighter bombers.
B-17s and B-24s had a role, particularly in maritime patrol, and there was sometimes a need for heavy bombers. But it should have been a much smaller one. Ultimately mosquitoes and similar aircraft would have been much more effective, would have killed far fewer civilians (particularly in Japan), and would have cost far fewer lives in aircrew. The same is doubly true for the British heavy bomber force. Bomber command's appalling 60% casualty rate and near 50% death rate would have been far less with high speed precision bombers, and far fewer civilians would have died on the Continent since they would not have engaged in the night time fire bombings.
This is arguable, but ultimately, in my opinion, the Strategic bombing campaign was mostly a failure militarily. The vulnerable part of the German economy was really their oil infrastructure, which was unfortunately quite distant and therefore difficult as a target, but I think Mosquitoes would have done a much better job taking it out than B-24s and P-38s.
We have had many debates about this in other threads, and as with all "what if" type scenarios, it's impossible to reach a definite conclusion, sometimes people just get angrier and angrier, though I would say it is worth examining as a thought experiment. Some will claim there wasn't enough of the right kind of wood available, or that somehow the US couldn't source balsa wood from South America (a ludicrous claim).
A more credible claim is that the Allies took a while to realize the true value of the Mosquito and they would have had to move very quickly to get large numbers of them into production particularly in North America. It's worth noting that a few hundred Mossies were actually built in Canada during the war, and I think it's a certainty that they could have built thousands in the US prior to 1945. But it would have required an unusual perspicacity. And I think that is what was lacking - to the contrary we had the infamous 'Bomber Mafia' and guys like Curtiss LeMay who influenced bombing policy during and after the war.
Even to this day, and among those who should know better the "bomb truck" and "tonnage over precision" mindset prevails. And we make excuses for bad decisions made by the winning side and our own home nations during the war. This "bomb truck" philosophy lasted for a really long time after WW2. The US attempted to bomb North Korea "into the stone age" and succeeded mainly in forcing them underground and making them even crazier. The development of precision bombing, mostly with fighter-bombers, proceeded alongside the continued use of B-29s through B-52s in the Vietnam era (and even a little bit in the Gulf War) but gradually precision bombing by fighters and now drones have become the preferred method of the application of air power.
Heavy bombers have become basically nuclear or cruise missile delivery vehicles, and specialized bombers with stealth capability have been used to take out C3I infrastructure.
Fast and agile and precise > big slow and lots of tonnage. Today fast and agile and precise + automated is the new trend, which may have some unforseen drawbacks, I guess we will find that out going forward.
Deleted member 68059
Staff Sergeant
- 1,058
- Dec 28, 2015
Virtually none of the oil that Germany got from Romania was of high enough quality to refine into aviation spirit economically, so while it is very important as a source
from a military perspective, from an aviation perspective, Romania was almost an irrelevance to the Luftwaffe. They of course hoped that would not be the case,
but thats actually how it turned out with what they were actually able to get from them.
By June 1944, the quantities from Romania also fell to the level of irrelevance.
Last edited:
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
I think you miss the point that the leaders of the day did not care about civilian causalities (and sometimes our own aircrews), especially over Japan. WW2 was "Total WAR." In the book "Flyboys" it was documented that General Arnold was not enthused about bombing civilian targets but his boss Roosevelt and subordinate LeMay felt otherwise. LeMay basically burnt Japan to the ground and had little remorse (same for Bomber Harris). Keep in mid the mind set of the day was to haul large bombloads over cities and destroy them and you were not going to do that with more Mosquitoes, especially over Japan unless you had some pixie dust to triple their range and bombload so they can reach mainland Japan!
By today's standards YES, by the technology of that day, no. Read the book "The Forgotten Fifteenth" by our own Barrett who drops in once in a while. I think the only thing the Mosquito could have done better was burn after being hit by flak!
The US possessed aircraft that were able to fulfill the same role as the Mosquito (taking nothing away for the Mossie). Wood sucks to maintain, I say that through experience but then again if you really think about it the Mosquito essentially became a disposable asset as operational longevity was never in the picture. Lastly if this was a serious thought by leaders of the time, US manufacturers would have been offered a production license and contract to build Mosquitoes.
The precision bombing of North Korea was arguably a tactical mistake but did attain some results and lessened the load on tactical forces when industrial targets were eventually eliminated. It was quickly discovered that B-29s could not operate over Korea during the day, so they went by night, tying up resources that could have been used to combat UN forces during the day. Also remember that the B-29 was used in a vital recon role as there was no other aircraft that could remain airborne for hours and haul all types of electronic monitoring gear and eavesdropping equipment. As far as you're "bomb truck" assessment, I suggest you study this more because depending who you talk to you'll find different opinions on how effective using B-52s over Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan really was. My brother spent a good portion of his Vietnam tour in the A Shau valley between 68 and 69 and he has told me on many occasions the B-52 strikes he witnessed were very effective.
Agree
Agree
One point that no one has mentioned would've been a complete failure if the Mosquito replaced the B-17 and the B-24. Attrition. The bombers were responsible not only for shooting down fighters, a big one in itself, but they were responsible for drawing the fighters up to get shot down by our fighters. Bombing in general wasn't as successful as our commanders would've liked. They wore down the Luftwaffe, and drew fighters away from the Eastern front. In leaving more aircraft for defense in the East, what would've that done? They broke the back of the Luftwaffe by shooting the planes down. It wasn't the bombing. Research would've been spent on tackling the Mosquito. Emphasis would've been spent on jet engines? Instead of bombers, the 262 would've been all fighters and sent in earlier? If they came up with a solution to tackle the Mosquito, what would we have had then?
I don't agree with that. I belive most of the attrition achieved by the 8th AF was due to the fighter escorts. The fighter escorts would have been used anyway. The Germans certainly would have made a big effort to catch and shoot down mosquitoes if they had been used more (and especially more during the day), and that would have started a different kind of arms race than what we already had. Instead of Ju-88s and Me 110s and 410s with all kinds of extra guns, and upgunned Fw 190s etc, you would probably have seen stripped down and faster Bf 109s and Fw 190s. Maybe we might have even got something like a Fw 190D a bit earlier. Casualties and losses of Mossies would have gone up (even if it never reached the awful levels of the heavy bomber campaign), and therefore the need for escorts would still be there, and therefore (most of) the attrition would still have happened.
Now there is no doubt that the heavy bombers, especially the heavy daytime bombers, did take out a lot of Axis aircraft themselves. And I don't know the exact figures - sometimes it's hard to be sure whether the escort got a given German fighter or the defensive gunners got them. But ultimately I believe the escorts, particularly the P-51s, are what really did the damage.
I have read a great deal about this, even wrote a couple of papers on it in University, and I think you are kind of papering over the issue here. Mass bombing of civilians was controversial during the war. Yes guys like LeMay and Harris were super gung ho for it, but in the beginning of WW2 "civilian terror bombing" was a major point of propaganda used against the Axis powers, who were arguably the first to use it (Guernica, Rotterdam, Nanking etc.) and many people both in the UK and in the US were strongly opposed to it. There was a big debate.
Ultimately for the British the issue was settled by the extreme difficulty and hazard of flying bombing missions over the Continent in daylight, and with the switch to night bombing the bombing accuracy (which was already quite low for heavy bombers) and the 'solution' of bombing whole cities to get those elusive factories was basically a pragmatic one, and one which not everybody agreed with. But they really didn't have any other choice, at least not until later in the war and by then they were more or less stuck in their groove.
The US originally thought they could get away with daylight 'precision' bombing thanks to their heavily armed bombers and their supposedly miraculous (and incredibly expensive) gyroscopic Norden bombsight. Neither the gun turrets nor the bombsight proved capable of overcoming the difficulties but they persisted with daylight bombing and pushed the design limitations of their escort fighters until they were able to gradually increase the range.
For bombing in Europe many in the USAAF were opposed to the positions of LeMay and his gang, but ultimately the latter prevailed at least partly, as the US collaborated with the British in incinerating Hamburg and Dresden, and firebombed Berlin. In Japan as you say there was less consideration for civilian casualties partly due to Japanese military policies we all know about which effectively discouraged surrender etc.
I don't agree. Very high speed and agility, and especially high altitude, high cruise speed helped avoid flak.
Which aircraft was that? I do think they could have possibly made a metal Mosquito, but as far as I know the Mossie was an order of magnitude superior to all other fast bombers in the war. A-26 was also an impressive bomber but it was almost 100 mph slower than an equivalent mark Mossie and could compare in range or high speed cruise IMO.
They had some problems with the Mosquito operating in the Pacific I'll grant you that.
I think you meant the STRATEGIC bombing of North Korea, which was not so precise so much as comprehensive. They basically burned down every single building down to the last chicken coop and the last outhouse. But it didn't win us the war. Same in Vietnam. The big four engined bombers did have a role, but they were overused. They did not manage to shut down the Ho Chi Minh trail nor the supplies going South in general. As in Korea, the NVA and Viet Kong learned to go underground. And we lost the war. Seeing all those bombs fall is impressive but moving mud doesn't necessarily lead to victory. B-52s were also quite vulnerable to SA-2s and MiGs and we lost quite a few of them.
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
Although we know that a good portion of the Luftwaffe fighter arm was destroyed by allied fighters, especially when their airfields were targeted, the bombers did put a big dent in Luftwaffe fighter attrition. It took a lot more effort to bring down a Lancaster or B-17 than it would a Mosquito (especially if that Mosquito was loaded), let alone dealing with flack. Again you miss the point that the Mosquito did not have the range with certain bombload configurations to make this an effective consideration.
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
And it was settled when the Luftwaffe started bombing civilian targets over England - the gloves came off. No, there was no debate about bombing civilian targets over Japan and the American public backed this.
ok
You proved my point - this was the technology of the day and if you were to discuss this in 1946, it would be considered an astounding success. Hindsight = 20/20
Agree
And you're missing something - "High speed," "agility" "high altitude" "high cruise speed" was NOT going to make you immune to fighters and flack, and the biggest point you miss - for the technology of the day, whether you're lobbing a bomb from a B-17 or Mosquito, you were not doing it at top speed and the higher you are the less accurate you're going to be. Come in low and fast, you're opened up to flack and fighters, let alone targeting challenges because of these issues.
P-38 for sure, A-20 and later the A-26 IMO
And I'm sure others at the start of the war thought the same thing so aske yourself, "why didn't they"? A metal Mosquito would have helped longevity but I'm certain there would have been performance issues sacrificed elsewhere.
The Mosquito was one of the fastest piston engine fighters of the war, speed is vital but sometimes the ability to carry bombs over long distances is the requirement
And in the post war, in the middle east and several other places
Strategic bombing but in a tactical playing field.
You're somewhat wrong - at the end of the campaign, yes, at the beginning there were industrial centers and railyards in Pyongyang that were among the first B-29 targets hit.
Actually I'm going to say you are 100% wrong!!! Why? Well I don't know how old you are or if you remember details of the Vietnam war in late 1972, but Nixon bombed North Vietnam to the negotiating table and by early 1973 the MILITARY war for the US was over. North Vietnam was not able to defend itself and actually ran out of SAMs to counter the B-52 threat. This was a military victory no matter how you look at it, the end result was a political failure!
Four engine bombers WERE NOT used in Vietnam unless you want to consider an AC-130 one
See my response above.
It didn't lead to a POLITICAL victory. Yes, B-52s were also quite vulnerable to SA-2s, especially when politicians announced when and where we were going to bomb. As far as B-52 losses to MiGs? Tell us how many B-52s you believe were shot down by MiGs????
It would be really interesting to look at how much. P-51 pilots claimed 4239 enemy aircraft over Europe and 1,000 in the MTO. P-47s claimed 2685 in Europe. We know some of that is overclaiming but even if you figure half are wrong, that's a large number (4000+) of fighters. Do the numbers for the defensive gunners on the big bombers match that? I know the bombers got a good number of enemy aircraft but I don't think it compares to what the fighters did.
Attacking a four-engined heavy is very challenging, but the Luftwaffe were very cunning and they figured out ways to do it - attacking from the front, using heavy fighters, using rockets etc.. They got 60 at Schweinfurt the first time and 77 the second time, and lost 20-30 fighter aircraft each time. That's a lot, but it's definitely a bad swap for the allies considering 10 crew per bomber, which is why they pulled back until they had the escorts.
More effort,? I don't think so. More bullets, probably yes. But shooting down a Mosquito takes a lot more horsepower and probably a bit more planning.
Public backed it but not everybody in the military and the government were for it.
Clearly it isn't because there were many who disagreed. We know what decisions they did make, and the British in 1940 or 41 faced a different situation than the Western Allies did collectively in 1942 or 43.
I never said immune, but we know that high flying B-29s were less vulnerable to flak than lower flying B-17s, and very fast flying Mosquitoes less still. Also,
Flying to the target can be done at different altitudes than striking the target. Flak and fighters were always a risk regardless, but flying at 370 mph is much more effective for defense than lumbering along at 170
Wasn't there already a whole thread or two about this? Suffice to say I don't agree P-38 was better as a bomber than a Mosquito. Mosquito had an internal bomb bay, P-38 had to carry bombs on the outside which meant no (or fewer) external tanks and therefore shorter range, plus slower and lower. Later war mosquitoes were a full 50-60 mph faster than any A-20 or A-26. Mosquito also had much, much better range than an A-20. A-20s were not flying a lot of unescorted bombing missions over Europe. A-26 is a closer comparison but IMO the Mosquito is still markedly superior as a bomber, (and in a few other roles) and A-26 doesn't arrive until quite late in the war. Too late for strategic planning in the early or middle part for sure. Mosquito also carried a heavier bomb load in actual operations.
Not necessarily
It's really the sweet spot between both, plus accuracy, that matter. Not 'moving mud'.
Totally disagree but that is definitely another thread and probably not something we would ever settle. I have very strong opinions on this one too. We definitely LOST Vietnam militarily and in every other way. Killing the whole population wouldn't have been a victory even if we could have done that without triggering WW III. Let's just say I think claiming that the US "Won" in Vietnam in any way is an outlier position these days.
I know how many engines a B-52 has, you know what I meant.
Ok I'll give you that one, looks like they lost between 17-31 B-52s over Vietnam looks like mostly to SA-2s or Flak, and B-52 tail gunner may have shot down between 1 and 3 Migs.
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