What if lots of B-29-like bombers with glide bombs had attacked very well protected convoys?

[Snautzer01]

The RN was working on guided "robot bomb" in the 1920s and it worked reasonably well. The USN/USAAF did develop a guided TDS drone with TV guidance during WW2 and was beginning to deploy it when the war ended. Joseph Patrick Kennedy Jr (JFK's older brother) was killed in July 1944 whilst crewing a robot bomb B24 for TO (the crew would bail out as they crossed the UK coast), when the bomb detonated prematurely over the UK. The B24 robot bomb had TV guidance and was slated to attack a target in Nazi occupied France.

I know but landing a big 4 engined bomber or a small powerfull war headed fast un manned glider are very different. I do not do much what ifs but i have been wondering about this. Allies had a few examples of the german thing. Put a few Brits in a shed with a usa factory guy and booms your uncle. More or less pin point disstruction for the time.

 

[pbehn]

Only a few of those 85 carriers would be obviously carriers from 30,000ft and 30 miles if at all. They are obvious in pictures but battleships and carriers were sometimes mistaken for each other so it obviously isn't that simple. Escort Carriers were made by converting merchant vessels so they are obviously the same size and not hugely different. To my mind just making smoke would be enough to stop the whole thing.

 

[MIflyer]

The Bat bomb, actually launched from USN PB4Y-2 aircraft in combat was a fire and forget weapon. Its main drawbacks were that its range was dependent on the altitude of the aircraft and the search radar of the aircraft was not linked to the Bat radar which means the crew did not know what they were shooting at.

Of course, the Bat did not care if it was day or night, either. Imagine B-29's at 25,000 ft over IJN fleets , dropping one Bat after another, day and night. The Bat used microwave radar and so the Axis powers lacked the ability to jam it.

Picture taken by me at the China Lake Naval Weapons Center Museum.

 

[swampyankee]

Don't forget the pigeon-directed missile.

Or the bat bomb?

 

[Shortround6]

It always makes me wonder about the German wonder weapons that were mere months away from production in 1945 that took the French, British, Russians/and Americans years after the war to turn into even somewhat viable weapons. It took into the 1950s to even get wire guided anti-tank missiles to work somewhat reliably, with wires just a couple thousand meters long and a stationary launch position. trying to unspool several miles of wire with both the projectile and the launch platform moving and maneuvering without snapping a very high percentage of the wired would take some doing.
As what could be done in a few experimental launches shows possibilities, not that you can produce such equipment by the hundreds with the same reliability.

 

[Admiral Beez]

So, what would you say? Thank you for answers!

Regards, RT

I'm afraid you're only going to trigger our resident contrarians into telling you why this shouldn't, wouldn't or couldn't have occurred. But toss those wet blankets aside, let's have some fun.

In my mind, the B-29 bombers are armed with an earlier introduction of the VB-3 Razon. The original VB-1 used the USAF's standard AN-M65 1,000-pound general-purpose bomb. The bombs need to be guided by their aircrew, so line of sight is important, so this will be a medium altitude strike. The B-29 can carry 12,000 lbs of bombs at medium altitude. For argument's sake, I'd say each bomber can fit ten Razon guided bombs. The bombardier can only guide one bomb at a time, and it's technologically infeasible to hand off radio guidance to a local or LA control aircraft, so this will be each bomber, each making making ten runs with ten different bombs. Also, how many frequencies are possible? If we had, for example twenty bombers each dropping ten guided bombs, are there at least twenty different frequencies to choose from?

 

[GrauGeist]

I'm afraid you're only going to trigger our resident contrarians into telling you why this shouldn't, wouldn't or couldn't have occurred.

Find your safe-place, then.

Massed level bombers attacks on carriers didn't work, wunder-waffe weapons or conventional.
Refer to the early stages of the Battle of Midway - if B-17s and B-26s could not sink 4 enemy fleet carriers with conventional weapons in 1942, how was Germany going to do better?

 

[Just Schmidt]

This one is easy:

If Germany could produce enough B29 like aircraft, and train enough specialized crews...
If they could gather enough intelligence to locate all the convoys...
If, conversely, the allies were not able to read the German signals...
If each aircraft could carry ten missiles...
If production of missiles could keep up with expenditure...
If the allies failed to apply countrmeassures or Germany kept one step ahead and every prototype worked...
If they could loiter around for hours without being affected by fighters and aa with proximity fuses...
If the weather was generally fine….
If every missiles scored a direct hit or a near miss...
If the allies did not develop the atomic bomb...

Then Adolf's your uncle!

So if only, could have, would have,
should have? I guess I'll admit to being boring and and unimaginative and say no.

 

[pbehn]

It always makes me wonder about the German wonder weapons that were mere months away from production in 1945 that took the French, British, Russians/and Americans years after the war to turn into even somewhat viable weapons. It took into the 1950s to even get wire guided anti-tank missiles to work somewhat reliably, with wires just a couple thousand meters long and a stationary launch position. trying to unspool several miles of wire with both the projectile and the launch platform moving and maneuvering without snapping a very high percentage of the wired would take some doing.
As what could be done in a few experimental launches shows possibilities, not that you can produce such equipment by the hundreds with the same reliability.

It poses all sorts of problems that aren't immediately obvious until you try it. To get a wire that can pay out on a reel at several hundred MPH at a temperature of minus 30-40C requires a metal more like unobtanium than those used on turbine blades. A wire 30 or 40 miles long would probably break under its own weight. If a wire was being used in even a normal 30 MPH side wind the total force on the wire is huge. I worked on pipeline bundles (max length 7.5KM) which is a collection of pipes inside a carrier pipe, all assembled on bogies on land then towed into the sea. It has some electrical controls inside it. It took a team of technicians weeks to get it all working correctly there are all sorts of effects when you try to pass micro currents long distances down small diameter wires. Their talk of impedance and resistance and "TDR" (time delay reflectometry) was way above my pay grade. Also on even 7.5KM it becomes a living thing, on a morning when the sun started shining it would instantly start to get longer and then shrink when the sun went in. The max to min being about 6 meters. Then there is the problem of seeing and guiding something when you are on a plane and the target is moving on the sea.

 

[fastmongrel]

Nuclear powered flying torpedoes is what you need.

 

[pbehn]

Nuclear powered flying torpedoes is what you need.

I think photon torpedoes with a warp drive could have worked, if they had them in service by 1943.

 

[Just Schmidt]

I think photon torpedoes with a warp drive could have worked, if they had them in service by 1943.

I doubt they had those close to working, let's not leave reality behind.

I think hot air powered missiles is the thing, the Nazi leadership was producing ample amounts of that. For guidance I would suggest it could be mind controlled. Some sources seem to suggest they were close to a decisive break-through in esp. Sorry, no links, think them up.

 

[fastmongrel]

I think photon torpedoes with a warp drive could have worked, if they had them in service by 1943.

Photon torpedoes didnt come into service till 8th September 1966.

 

[Elmas]

This one is easy:

If Germany could produce enough B29 like aircraft, and train enough specialized crews...
If they could gather enough intelligence to locate all the convoys...
If, conversely, the allies were not able to read the German signals...
If each aircraft could carry ten missiles...
If production of missiles could keep up with expenditure...
If the allies failed to apply countrmeassures or Germany kept one step ahead and every prototype worked...
If they could loiter around for hours without being affected by fighters and aa with proximity fuses...
If the weather was generally fine….
If every missiles scored a direct hit or a near miss...
If the allies did not develop the atomic bomb...

Then Adolf's your uncle!

So if only, could have, would have,
should have? I guess I'll admit to being boring and and unimaginative and say no.

If my Uncle had had just one wheel
then He would have been a wheelbarrow.
Italian proverb translated into English.

 

[swampyankee]

Hi all,

please imagine the following: lots of very fast and resistable bombers, equipped with Henschel Hs 293 glide bombs, perform attacks on convoys which show themselves even resistable. At the date of Dec. 1, 1943, USA and Britain posessed a number of 85 aircraft carriers of all kind. On the expense of other operations, I mean they could have grouped an number of 30 and more to protect a convoy if needed. So, if Germany had an aircraft comparable to the B-29, and this in numbers, an interesting situation had been possible to arise.

I say, even if Wildcats and Hellcats would prove insufficient against such attackers, the Allies easily could have switched their equipment to Corsairs and Seafires, whoch would have coped with the situation. A friend of mine says no. In his opinion, this combination of bombers and weapons would wear down the Allied carrier force, even for the expense of own losses. He says the loss of carriers and crews for the Allies would weigh much more than the loss of aircraft and crews for Germany.

So, what would you say? Thank you for answers!

Regards, RT

Tell your friend to read this thread, then try to come up with serious refutations of everything posted. It's unlikely he'll succeed.

To be considered a serious refutation it must:

1. Account for the real technological and manufacturing constraints in nazi Germany
2. Account for Allied reactions.
3. Account for the fact that even if Hitler and Stalin weren't at war, neither could trust the other. Hitler would need to maintain troops to defend against the possibility of a Soviet invasion.
4. Account for human limitations in sighting and navigation.
5. Account for the fact that the Luftwaffe has a history of horrible signals security which impaired Germany's execution of war plans on land, sea, and in the air.

 

[GrauGeist]

I think photon torpedoes with a warp drive could have worked, if they had them in service by 1943.

They could easily be delivered by the Do-STRA flying out of the secret air base in Antarctica

 

[pbehn]

Photon torpedoes didnt come into service till 8th September 1966.

Exactly, and just like the Apollo programme using stolen tech. The Star Fleet relied heavily on German technology.

 

[Dinger]

In a sense, you'd be providing just the type of target the Royal Navy was expecting before the war started. They had built a whole range of anti-aircraft cruisers with formidable fire-power that could easily reach the height even a B-29 could operate at. They were not as good as expected against Ju88 and Stuka dive-bombers but these B-29 clone "Wunderbombers" would be just what they had waited for! Escort a convoy with 6 "Dido" class cruisers and its hard to see even a B-29 flying a straight and level course for long enough to guide a wire-controlled glide-bomb onto target through the flak from their 5.5 and 4 inch guns. The Dido class cruisers would not be easily put out of action by the relatively small warhead of a Hs293. Deliberately route the convoys through the overcast that covers the North Atlantic for much of the year. Then, when the convoy is attacked radio the UK and arrange for every available Mosquito and P-38 to hit these "Wunderbombers" on their way back to base. - Can't see the scenario playing out well for the master race.

 

[Tkdog]

A friend of mine worked on low light vision systems for the Korean War. His project was to get the success rate for getting a functional part out of the manufacturing process above 10%. It took a long time and a lot of innovation to do so. For one part of the system.

I think that is the the sort of thing that gets overlooked for these sorts of wonder weapons. As mentioned above it's one thing to hand make a few devices and test them. Even operational tests. It is something else to make enough to have them functional and on the shelf when the tactical opportunity comes to use them.

 

[swampyankee]

In a sense, you'd be providing just the type of target the Royal Navy was expecting before the war started. They had built a whole range of anti-aircraft cruisers with formidable fire-power that could easily reach the height even a B-29 could operate at. They were not as good as expected against Ju88 and Stuka dive-bombers but these B-29 clone "Wunderbombers" would be just what they had waited for! Escort a convoy with 6 "Dido" class cruisers and its hard to see even a B-29 flying a straight and level course for long enough to guide a wire-controlled glide-bomb onto target through the flak from their 5.5 and 4 inch guns. The Dido class cruisers would not be easily put out of action by the relatively small warhead of a Hs293. Deliberately route the convoys through the overcast that covers the North Atlantic for much of the year. Then, when the convoy is attacked radio the UK and arrange for every available Mosquito and P-38 to hit these "Wunderbombers" on their way back to base. - Can't see the scenario playing out well for the master race.

Many of massed bomber waves would have to overfly the UK. The RAF, USAAF, and others would get lots of aces.

The Luftwaffe tried and repeatedly failed to get bombers as capable as the B-24 or B-17. Does anyone really think they have a chance to match the B-29?