What if.....

This isn't about "I'm an American, therefore America should win", this is about cold-hard facts.

The Soviet Union had a formidable army on the ground, this is a fact, the Soviet Union had proven aircraft, this is a fact. However, you need to factor in strategy and experience in order to make those options work.

The U.S. had a few things in it's favor that would put the Soviets at a disadvantage and that would be thier expeience from fighting two different wars at the same time. In fighting the Japanese, the U.S. gained valuable experience in fighting an enemy who didn't rely on armored units, but rather fought a covering ground war as well as a fighter/bomber exchange (we'll leave out the naval aspect from this discussion). In doing so, the U.S. gained the ability to use a blend of light, medium and heavy bombing while being able to overcome AA and fighter protection while at the same time, defending it's own assets from similiar attacks. In Europe, it gained the experience with an enemy who relied on Armor AA defended targets while deploying light, medium and heavy bomber operations against a wide variety of targets. American ground attack aircraft were extremely effective and unlike the IL-2, capable of fighting off enemy fighters. The closest the Russians had, would be the La-7. The U.S. had a wide variety of GA capable aircraft like the P-47, F6F, F4U, on up to the A-20, P-61, B-26 B-25 gunships.

On the other hand, the Soviet Union fought a war based mostly on the ground with armor and infantry while using fighters and light medium bombers against an enemy who used similiar equipment strategy and never developed a solid heavy bomber deployment or defense plan.

I think one of the things everyone is missing here, is that the U.S. wouldn't just rely on thier Eurpean assets to confront the Soviet Union, but would pull the Pacific theater/Far Eastern theater assets and the Med assets into action as well. This would make the U.S. a very serious contender in both men and material. The Soviets had all of thier men and equipment bunched up along a corridor that reached from Finland all the way to the Baltic with marginal assets to the east, leaving Russia's underbelly and eastern flanks terribly exposed.

The American Pacific units could easily reach into strategic areas from Russia's southern borders, like the Ukraine for example. And as stated earlier, where was Russia getting her fuel, rubber and other strategic materials from? You guessed it, the U.S.

I think if we take all this into consideration, a conventional war would not go well for the Soviets.

imalko said:

You have said it yourself... Hitler could believe that Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe were capable to do what he wanted only if he had poor opinion on his opponents, therefore he underestimated them. You can't overestimate your forces without underestimating capability of your enemy.

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I'm not sure if you have a point or not
Hitler didn't underestimate the Soviet fighting capability and nor did he overestimate Heer capability within the same context, his senior military staff actually felt that the USSR could be left for the time as, in its present state of equipment and competence, it posed little in the way of a threat.
He didn't overestimate the ability of the Heer to take on the Soviet Union, he overestimated their ability to do the same whilst still engaging the Allies in the west.
Grinding his own war machine to a halt in the streets and alleys of Stalingrad was the blow the Heer couldn't take and that's when things began to seriously unravel.

Interestiong thread guys! Would this have happened if Russia would have kept moving west, to lay more countries under her or?

GrauGeist said:

The Soviets had all of thier men and equipment bunched up along a corridor that reached from Finland all the way to the Baltic with marginal assets to the east, leaving Russia's underbelly and eastern flanks terribly exposed.

The American Pacific units could easily reach into strategic areas from Russia's southern borders, like the Ukraine for example.

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In August 1945 Soviet Union deployed masive forces in the Far East for war against Japan: soldiers - 1,577,725; artillery pieces - 27,086; multiple rocket launchers - 1,171; tanks and self propelled guns - 5,556; Aircraft - 3,721. These are only marginal assets?

For invading Ukraine you would have to enter Black sea. How would you do that with Turkey neutral?

GrauGeist said:

...where was Russia getting her fuel, rubber and other strategic materials from? You guessed it, the U.S.

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And Russia has no natural sources of her own? Caucasus oil fields, etc? You can't be serious.

GrauGeist said:

I think if we take all this into consideration, a conventional war would not go well for the Soviets.

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Agree to disagree.

Colin1 said:

He didn't overestimate the ability of the Heer to take on the Soviet Union, he overestimated their ability to do the same whilst still engaging the Allies in the west.

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Yes, but in 1942 up until operation Torch Hitler had only two or three divisions fighting in North Africa, while up to 200 German and other Axis divisions were fighting in the East.

well Imalko, you press a hard argument...I suppose the U.S. was just a handfull of lucky bastards that managed to help the Russians win the war.

I guess the massive supplies of raw materials the U.S. provided the Soviets via Murmansk weren't neccesary, probably propaganda to make Americans feel important. My apologies.

And I guess that the only way into the Ukraine was by the black sea, I guess I need to look at a better map next time. And I guess that Russia's border hasn't thousands of miles of southern borders, but only a west and a east, again I apologize for not having better maps.

So I have to disagree to agree.

imalko said:

Yes, but in 1942 up until operation Torch Hitler had only two or three divisions fighting in North Africa, while up to 200 German and other Axis divisions were fighting in the East.

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The smarter of the Nazis
knew that the jig was up on December 8th 1941 but this was probably more tangible on June 6th 1944 or more certainly in the days thereafter; this was the all-fronts scenario that I was talking about, the one that the Heer simply couldn't sustain.

Only other way to the Ukraine is through Soviet held south-east Europe... Any US assembling of forces where ever on the USSR's thousand's of miles long southern border would take some time so Soviets would be able to assemble adequate force to counter it. (Presuming we are talking about ground operations.) You are forgetting the mentality of people and influance of public opinion - just one defeat with scale of Stalingrad or even half the scale would knock US out of the war. Anyway, with main theater of ground operations being in Central Europe and secondary in the Far East, I'm not sure US would have strength for a third front somewhere in the south.

Once they survived 1941 Russians would eventually win the war against the Nazis even without Allied help (such as it was). Provide the numbers and data for massive raw materials delivered to the USSR and I will stand corrected. Allied help to the USSR was valuable but not decisive.

US were "handfull of lucky bastards" (as you put it GrauGeist) for not having to fight on their own soil.

Edit: US contribution to the overall war effort was immeasurable, but lets face it - war in Europe was decided and won on the Eastern front. I don't know how could anyone claim otherwise.

From the 8th May to the 15th August. The Americans have still got a lot of assets tied up. Could not the Rusians push the allies out of Northern Europe.

imalko said:

just one defeat with scale of Stalingrad or even half the scale would knock US out of the war. Anyway, with main theater of ground operations being in Central Europe and secondary in the Far East, I'm not sure US would have strength for a third front somewhere in the south.

Once they survived 1941 Russians would eventually win the war against the Nazis even without Allied help (such as it was). Provide the numbers and data for massive raw materials delivered to the USSR and I will stand corrected. Allied help to the USSR was valuable but not decisive.

US were "handful of lucky bastards" for not having to fight on their own soil.

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Roughly 16 million US troops served in WWII (8.3 million Army), the Wehrmacht lost around 240 thousand troops to mortality and capture during Stalingrad; fearful losses but I doubt they would knock the US out of any war.
The US would be foolish to allow themselves to get sucked into a Stalingrad and they would know it, cities and/or anywhere capable of war production would likely be visited by strategic bombing, not ground troops; most senior commanders by that stage of the war knew the awful cost of fighting in built-up areas.

I thought we had discounted a second front in the Far East? I'm glad you're coming round to that because strategic bombing from the east would be a serious thorn in the side for the Soviets and if it got too hot, the US could quickly ship out back to the Japan mainland; the Soviets could then commit forces in the region to prevent them coming back, or not; the nuisance value alone is worth it.

Allied help 'such as it was'? You have got to be kidding, the Allied help, more commonly known as Overlord was the very thing Stalin was screaming for to save his miserable ass from the hiding he would have been given if we hadn't created a second front. The Soviet Union teetered on the brink and I'd call the intervention of the western Allies very decisive indeed.

I'd call that a pretty ungracious comment, Pearl Harbour was on US soil and what do you think is the difference between fighting and dying on your own soil and fighting and dying thousands of miles away in a strange land?

imalko said:

Once they survived 1941 Russians would eventually win the war against the Nazis even without Allied help (such as it was). Provide the numbers and data for massive raw materials delivered to the USSR and I will stand corrected. Allied help to the USSR was valuable but not decisive.

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The Soviets had natural resources, but IIRC they lacked the ability to process it. Case in point is the help the other allies gave to her from 1941-45:

2.3 millions tons of steel
229,000 tons of aluminimum
2.6 millions tons of petrol
3.8 million tons of food

Almost 1 billion rounds of ammunition

full detail found at Lend Lease


During the 1st months of the German Invasion, Russia lost an incredible amount of hardware:

72% of all Tanks.
34% of all Combat Aircraft.
56% of all Small-arms and Machine guns.
69% of all Anti-Tank guns.
59% of all Field guns and Mortars

This on top of the manufacturing base having to be relocated east. I seriously doubt Russia would have made it through 1941 if it was not for allied help.

Marcel said:

Hmm, a few things to consider:
Russia is Big, not like small Germany with nice factories and houses crowded on a small piece of land with nice roads. Their oil supply was nicely grouped at a very reachable place in Romania.
What would the US bomb on Russia? Infrastructure? Factories far away, spread on a huge land? It would have needed a tremendous higher effort to "choke" Russia with strategic bombing.
In the end Germany was defeated because of lack of natural resources, mainly oil. Russia has loads of it.

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This is a good point but its the size of Russia that hinders and helps both sides. I think it is fair to say that the war in Russia is to a large degree a war of logistics. The distances involved place a great strain on the methods of transportation. The roads are poor or non existant and the rail network becomes of paramount importance. Railways are wide open to attack and marshalling yards are both important and vulnerable. Russian factories tended to be very large and didn't have have shadow factories or dispursed production. They were often in one place with their own power supplies and the the one complex would supply everything need to build a tank, plane, gun whatever. This made them vulnerable to damage, for instance if the power station was hit, you couldn't keep the factory going by diverting power from another generating station, nothing moved until it was repaired.
Where these factory complexes were in range they would be severely damaged by bombers. Often they were not in range but in these cases the transport links were open to attack. In europe there are places to hide but the Steppes are a bit like the desert with grass instead of sand, there is nowhere to hide.

Russian army was on steam in 1945, ground forces probably stronger that the Western allied force in Europe. There is a possibility that ground forces would have rolled over the Allied armies in a relatively short time. No need for strategic bombing. The Russian tactic capability in the air was at least as good as the US/UK capability.

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Totally agree, this was a significant risk and I did say that the Russia Army was a major threat, often as good as the western armies, particually in tanks. However whilst I agree that the Russian GA capability was significant the Russian forces are not facing a small Luftwaffe, the RAF and USAAF are of a different size and strength. The IL2 took heavy losses against the Germans but against the RAF and USAAF I don't think they would be sustainable. Its also worth remembering that the Western airforces had considerable tactical and medium bombing capabilities considerably larger than the Luftwaffe.
That said the Russian Army if they could strike quickly and hard would be a major threat. The longer it dragged on, the more they would rely of resupply, the greater the danger to Russia.

I think on a conventional level we cannot be too sure that the US with it's allies would have won a war against Russia in 1945. With the atomic bomb it's of course another question and we cannot predict what would have happened it they had been used against the USSR at that point, (had they been in abundant supply of course)

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For the purpose of this thread I believe we should leave Atomic weapons out of it. One dropped on Stalin and his supporters and its all over.

Hitler believed in his mighty Tiger too.

For the time and money spent on one B-29, Russians could build few dosens of high altitude fighters if nessesary.

Now, you have to fly your Superfortress from, let say, a base in the Middle East 3000km one way, hit a target in Southern Urals and come back unescorted. How many times you think the crew will be engaged with squadrons of even obsolete Mig-3s but equipped with cannons instead of machineguns on its way with what chances of survival?

As for landing in Russia's Far East, I dont know, there is not much interesting there even today, no industry, no infrastructure, maybe those navy bases but they were built much later, during the Cold War. When you land your troops in, say, Vladivostok, it is not like Normandy: rough terrain, mountains and wild forest, -30 degree in winter and neares target (industrial center) is still 6000km away. Attacking from the East wouldnt help to defeat the soviets in any way it would only stretch US forces.

Soundbreaker Welch? said:

The US and Russia went to war against each other in 1945, 1946, who do you think would have won the Air War?

Yak-9's, La-7's, Mig 3's against P-51's, P-47's......

Frankly, glad it didn't happen.

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No offense intended, but I am afraid this discussion lost focus.

The original question was a specific "what if" on air war.

A discussion on who would win the overall war in the long term simply seems confusing. Too many variables too consider. And with the "what if" mentality it is simply too easy to counter arguments with "yes, but Russia has a big territory", "yes, but US had the atomic bomb", "yes, but Stalin didn't give a dang for having 30 million more casualties", "yes, but US had more oil", and so on.

Anyway, I stick just to the air war vector, and my opinion is that, even if the soviet air force was respectable, US had a huge, huge advantage in many, many critical points

Had US and the Soviet Union gone to war, no idea who had won the overall war, but I think that US had won the airwar hands down. Add Britan to the mixture as an US ally, and the contest becomes even more onesided.

I think one major advantage the US had over the Soviets were fighter-bombers. Looking at the Soviets fighters, it looks like the La-5 was the only one that could carry over 450 kg worth of ordnance (La-7 could as well but appears to have not been used in that roll allot), compared to the P-47 P-51 of 900kg and the P-38 of 1,400kg.

Look at the F4U as well, the F4U-4's max load was 4 000 lbs, but in Korea, land based F4Us were known to carry 6 000 lbs and not have any undue stress on the airframe!

Colin1 said:

Roughly 16 million US troops served in WWII (8.3 million Army), the Wehrmacht lost around 240 thousand troops to mortality and capture during Stalingrad; fearful losses but I doubt they would knock the US out of any war.

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I all phases of battle of Stalingrad (which lasted over 200 days) Germans and their Axis Allies lost around 1,5 million men (dead, wounded and captured), 3.500 tanks and other armored vehicles, approximatelly 3.500 airplanes, around 12.000 artillery pieces. Their loses only in period 19th November 1942 - 2nd February 1943 were over 800.000 men. (Source: "Battle of Stalingrad" by Branko Kitanović). Your figure reffers to the approximate number of German soldiers lost in Stalingrad pocket in final stages of the battle and doesn't take to the consideration loses in street fighting in period September-November 1942 before the actual encirclement. However, the German Sixth army was not the only one engaged in this battle but all Axis forces on Don and Volga rivers.

US casualties for entire war were 416.800 dead.

Colin1 said:

The US would be foolish to allow themselves to get sucked into a Stalingrad and they would know it, cities and/or anywhere capable of war production would likely be visited by strategic bombing, not ground troops; most senior commanders by that stage of the war knew the awful cost of fighting in built-up areas.

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I dind't litterary mean that there would be another battle fought at Stalingrad (doubt that Allies would get that far). I was making an example for the scale of the engagement.

Colin1 said:

Allied help 'such as it was'? You have got to be kidding, the Allied help, more commonly known as Overlord was the very thing Stalin was screaming for to save his miserable ass from the hiding he would have been given if we hadn't created a second front. The Soviet Union teetered on the brink and I'd call the intervention of the western Allies very decisive indeed.

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Again, you missunerstood Colin. When said Allied help I was refering to the Land Lease and not second front. I'm not underestimating the Allied war effort in Mediterranean and Western Europe. Far from it. But the fact is that Stalin was screaming for the second front in 1941 and 1942 but he recieved it only in June 1944 when Red Army was already advancing towards Polish and Romanian borders.

Colin1 said:

I'd call that a pretty ungracious comment, Pearl Harbour was on US soil and what do you think is the difference between fighting and dying on your own soil and fighting and dying thousands of miles away in a strange land?

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I'm not ungracious about Perl Harbor at all, but this is an island thousand of miles away of continental USA. Casualties are horrible no matter where they occure... Difference is in this - how many American soldiers from continental USA witnessed the destructions of their home towns and had their loved ones taken away to concentration camps or for forced labour? This also means that US infrastructure and industrial capability remained intact.

vikingBerserker said:

I seriously doubt Russia would have made it through 1941 if it was not for allied help.

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Need I remind you that Soviet counteroffensive at Moscow started on 5th December 1941 while Pearl Harbor occurred on 7th December and Hitler's declaration of war on US came on 11th December? Soviets prepared and conducted their counteroffensive in December 1941 with their own resources. American aide didn't played any part in this battle for it started to came some time later. British did send help to the USSR in materials in 1941 with northern convoys via Murmansk, but this was according to their own abilities at that time, had certain moral boosting effect but it was too little to make difference on the front.

Viking, you have presented interesting numbers and data for Land Lease in your post. I will double check my data on Soviet industrial capability during the war and give you a reply. One point though, if Soviets lacked the the ability to process their natural resources, then what good is for them the million of tons steel and aluminium they received?

Airbone Bunny said:

No offense intended, but I am afraid this discussion lost focus.

The original question was a specific "what if" on air war.

... I stick just to the air war vector, and my opinion is that, even if the soviet air force was respectable, US had a huge, huge advantage in many, many critical points

...Add Britan to the mixture as an US ally, and the contest becomes even more onesided.

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stasoid said:

For the time and money spent on one B-29, Russians could build few dosens of high altitude fighters if nessesary.

Now, you have to fly your Superfortress from, let say, a base in the Middle East 3000km one way, hit a target in Southern Urals and come back unescorted. How many times you think the crew will be engaged with squadrons of even obsolete Mig-3s but equipped with cannons instead of machineguns on its way with what chances of survival?

As for landing in Russia's Far East, I dont know, there is not much interesting there even today, no industry, no infrastructure, maybe those navy bases but they were built much later, during the Cold War. When you land your troops in, say, Vladivostok, it is not like Normandy: rough terrain, mountains and wild forest, -30 degree in winter and neares target (industrial center) is still 6000km away. Attacking from the East wouldnt help to defeat the soviets in any way it would only stretch US forces.

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Good points, guys.

Regarding the air war, I believe I wrote this already but if I didn't I will do so now... Tactical air forces of Allies and Soviets were approximatelly equal, or, if western Allies had certain advantage in this field the Soviets would still give them hell of a fight. Allied Strategic Air power and B-29 in particular were superior to anything Russians could presented in 1945 but not almighty. And, now we return to the issue of using of atomic weapons. In my opinion only strategic air offensive with atomic weapons would quickly bring bombing campaign to the successfull end. In case of conventional warfare... Question remains how reachable for the Allies would be Ural industrial areas? Possible bases for this type of operations would be in the Middle East as Stasoid suggested, or maybe in Norway. If Ural was unreachable then lines of communications were indeed vulnerable. However, in my opinion the conventional air warfare wouldn't bring quick end to the war giving the Russians enough time to design and deploy new types of interceptors thus prolonging the war even further. Maybe contest would be somewhat one sided in the very beginning but not for long...

Far East theater of operations (both on the ground and in the air) wouldn't decide anything. It would have only nuisance value.

After all what happened in WW2, this is indeed a grim "what if" scenario and considering the state of minds in 1945 very unrealistic.

I'd think that the Skyraider would have seen more action than the Corsair in this case, since she could almost carry twice her own weight in ordnance...including a nuclear bomb.

Empty weight: 11,968 lb (5,429 kg)
Max takeoff weight: 25,000 lb (11,340 kg)