Why was the Bf 110 obsolete as a night fighter

[parsifal]

Battle for Berlin was an admitted failure, and further was the principal focus of BC efforts in the first months of 1944. I think it had more to do with Harris's obstinacy than anything. He refused to accept the advice from the "boffins" about how hard a target the place was....how porr the results from H2S were, how being beyond the range of OBOE was going reduce accuracy to a fraction of what it could be, how the flak over Berlin was the worst in Germany, about how predictable Berlin was as a target, and how much longer the streams approaching Berlin were to German airborne defences. Harris would have none of that. After the fantastic success of Hamburg, he wanted to mete out the same pounsihment on the most important city in Germany. Unfortunately, the Germans were ready for that.

After Berlin, German strength began to wane, and some sense of sanity returned to BC.

One final observation. The BC offensive was expensive, but is dwarfed by the amount of money the Germans were spending on air defence. A big part of that defence was ground based, and 80% of flak units formed before the US daylight offensive got under way. German responses to defending their air space was in response to British attacks. And it cost them a bucket to do it. That in itself is a victory.

 

[davebender]

BC offensive was expensive, but is dwarfed by the amount of money the Germans were spending on air defence

I doubt that but am willing to change my mind if you can present a financial analysis of the German air defense effort which proves your claim.

 

[parsifal]

I recommend you have a look at professor Westermanns book on German Flak. German expenditures on the Luftwaffe generally, the night Fighter forces, and the flak arm, as well as investments into R&D in these fields are included in his analysis. Overy does a similar analysis IIRC. It comes as a bit of a shock that the germans were spending around 50% of their military budgets on air defence as early as 1941. Who else were the germans fighting in (early) 1941

 

[stona]

Overy does a similar analysis IIRC.

I think Overy covers this in "The Air War, 1939-1945" but mine's gone AWOL
Cheers
Steve

 

[mhuxt]

I think Overy covers this in "The Air War, 1939-1945" but mine's gone AWOL
Cheers
Steve

What source are you using for the RLM meeting minutes, stona?

 

[stona]

What source are you using for the RLM meeting minutes, stona?

Mostly Mankau and Petrick's Bf 110/Me210/Me410.
There are a couple quoted from other books by Stocker,Petrick (Me 210/410) and Schmoll (Messerschmitt production at Regensburg).
I highly recommend that first book if you can find it at a reasonable price.It goes for about £50 here in the UK at the moment.
Cheers
Steve

 

[stona]

It comes as a bit of a shock that the germans were spending around 50% of their military budgets on air defence as early as 1941. Who else were the germans fighting in (early) 1941

I just dug out Westermann. In the third quarter of 1941 24% of ALL spending on the armed forces went on Flak. The Flak also consumed 35% of ALL ammunition.

The overall figure for expenditure on Flak as a percentage of total spending remained remarkably constant throughout the war. In 1944 it was between 25% and 27% per quarter.

Ammunition expenditure was staggering.In the third quarter of 1944 the 2,655 heavy flak batteries were firing 3.5 million rounds per month.For the 1,612 light flak it was a mind boggling 12.5 million rounds per month

Cheers

Steve

 

[mhuxt]

Mostly Mankau and Petrick's Bf 110/Me210/Me410.
There are a couple quoted from other books by Stocker,Petrick (Me 210/410) and Schmoll (Messerschmitt production at Regensburg).
I highly recommend that first book if you can find it at a reasonable price.It goes for about £50 here in the UK at the moment.
Cheers
Steve

Thanks for that - should have picked the dang book up when I had the chance...

 

[parsifal]

I just dug out Westermann. In the third quarter of 1941 24% of ALL spending on the armed forces went on Flak. The Flak also consumed 35% of ALL ammunition.

The overall figure for expenditure on Flak as a percentage of total spending remained remarkably constant throughout the war. In 1944 it was between 25% and 27% per quarter.

Ammunition expenditure was staggering.In the third quarter of 1944 the 2,655 heavy flak batteries were firing 3.5 million rounds per month.For the 1,612 light flak it was a mind boggling 12.5 million rounds per month

Cheers

Steve

Yep, exactly, and then from another source 9which i photocopied 20 years agao, and then forgot to record the book) which is simply entitled "Appendix - Further Statisitcs, the Germans were spending approximately 6500 RM of their 12000 RM R&D budget on radars and night fighter development in 1942. That kinda tells you just how big an investment the Germans were making on their air defence arrangements, and just how much was being diverted to combatting the night bomber offensive

 

[davebender]

12,000 RM wasn't much money even during WWII. How can that be the entire Wehrmacht R&D budget?

 

[parsifal]

sorry, the table is in millions, so 12000 is 12 billion reichmarks. The Table is from 1938-44

 

[Tante Ju]

Yep, exactly, and then from another source 9which i photocopied 20 years agao, and then forgot to record the book) which is simply entitled "Appendix - Further Statisitcs, the Germans were spending approximately 6500 RM of their 12000 RM R&D budget on radars and night fighter development in 1942. That kinda tells you just how big an investment the Germans were making on their air defence arrangements, and just how much was being diverted to combatting the night bomber offensive

The number sound bullocks, sorry... 6 500 000 000,- RM on night fighters and radar?! A Me 110 cost about 150 000 RM, including of course everything, cost of development, manufacturing, industry expansion and profit etc.

Thus 65 billion Reichmarks would alone buy you about 40.000 Bf 110s alone in 1942...

The numbers need to come down to reality. In 1942 for example the Germans produced about 3052 of their classic 8,8 cm FlaK guns, each came at 33 600,- RM, or about 102 million RM for the whole lot.

A considerable sum, but hardly breathtaking, for example the Bismarck class ships came at 196 million RM - for each of them!

The costs of bombing and anti-bomber hardware can be also fathomed by the amount of money the Germans were spending on their own bombers - the unit cost of a Ju 88 for example was for example somwhere between 167 192 Reichmarks in 1942, and they have built some 3094 of them in that year, for a total sum of 517 million RM. The 1337 He 111s built, for about 265 000 RM for each cost about 354 million RM in total.

Even neglecting that the price tag for the FlaK 8,8 is for an unknown date, and that it likely went down considerably through the war with mass production techniques use, the fact that we have compared the cost of relatively cheap medium bombers (and not the about twice or three times as expensive heavy bombers) its difficult to escape the fact that the Germans were spending about 8 times as much capital on their two main bomber types procurement than they have spent on FlaK guns (ca. 100 million RM for the main FlaK guns vs. 870 million on Ju88s and He 111). This puts the whole idea of that anti-aircraft weapons being anywhere near as costly as bombers in la-la-la realm..

Of course ammunition expenditure can be added to that, but I'd wager that the cost of ammunition for bombers (bombs tends to hold a LOT of explosive compared to AA shells) far exceeded AA expenditure. Cast iron shell bodies were a non issue, and assuming that each 8.8 cm AA shell held about 1 kg of explosives while a commonplace SC 250 bomb held 160 kg of TNT and was, you start to appreciate that we are talking about entirely different scales for the cost of bombing and defense against bombing. Even the 3.5 million heavy rounds of flak expanditure/month in 1944 that stone mentioned works out as an equivalent of about 3500 tons of explosives - the equivalent of explosives needed for about 22000 common SC 250 bombs. So if all explosives production used for the monthly expenditure of 3.5 million FlaK shells would be diverted for producing SC 250 bombs, it would be only enough for only about 2750 fully loaded He 111 sorties with eight bombs, or half or third that number if we are talking about heavy bombers.

To look at the issue at a cost vs cost basis for explosives, a Lancaster would carry, for example 14 000 lbs of bombs in the form of 14 x 1000 lbs MC bombs, each filled with 218 kg of explosives (each equivalent of 218 8.8cm shells filling). The total explosive cost was thus 3053 kg per bomber. This means that about 1146 such fully loaded Lancaster sorties would require as much ammunition as those 3.5 million heavy flak rounds fired at them per month in 1944 - and they actully flew, on avarage, about 9500 a month... and roughly double, triple that number with the USAAF and VVS considered, at whom those Flak guns were also shooting at.

I got bored with digging down further, but at this point, for me, the numbers pretty convincingly show that dropping bombs would be roughly nine times as costly than shooting at aircraft with AA guns.

 

[parsifal]

I was surprised to find that the cost of producing the very first ring pull can of coke, exclusive of the the actual materials and labour etc....ie just the development costs, was about US $600 million dollars. those are 1960s dollars incidentally. If the first AI radar fitted into an Me 110 was RM6500 million, and the airframe cost RM150000, then the cost of that very first airframe was not $150000, it was RM6500150000. Hardware that uses specifially designed and developed technology must include the development cost of that hardware in the unit cost, something frequently overlooked. Germany tended to use specially designed, or cutting edge technologies in its hardware ad this shows in its rather expensive unit costs. its why a tiger II costs about 20 times the price of a Sherman tank.

But in any case all this talk about the cost of scrap iron, and the cost of this aircraft and that piece of ordinance, is really just a smokescreen, designed to protect a sacred cow. From Dave, we are told that 12% of of the British military budget was spent on its bombing offensive. One has to assume that is an all up cost.....the cost of training the pilot, fuelling and arming the aircraft, producing the aircraft, and providing the all up cost of aircraft used. We dont have a dollar figure to hang off that 12%, we are just told that its 12%

Westermann gives a whole bunch of figures, which collectively add up to about 50% of the total German military expenditures. But for now, we know that the Germans were spending about 35% of their military budgets on on AA expenditures, and we also know that massive amounts were spent on R&D alone. We know from other places, that the Night fighter Groups were suffering huge losses mostly in non-combat realted accidents.

Accept or reject the percentage of military spending spent on air defence as you will, but it seems pretty clear to me that German expenditure on Air Defence was massive, and at the very least at least matches British expendituresd (as a percentage of their military spending). Either that, or a whole lot of people a whole lot smartyer than both of us, are telling a LOT of porkies.

 

[stona]

What ever way you spin the figures you can't escape the fact that Germany spent roughly one quarter of ALL military expenditure,year on year,throughout the war,on anti-aircraft defences. That figure does not include fighters/nightfighters.
That is a huge amount of expenditure which could have been applied in other areas of production.

It doesn't really matter whether the bombing cost more than the defences or not. The Anglo/American alliance could afford to produce the bombers and their bombs along with the fuel to fly them. I read an estimate that one typical Lancaster sortie cost about £100,000, about 50% of which is the cost of the bomber which would hopefully be spread across more than one mission in reality! Germany had much more limited resources and the fact that a quarter of those resources were spent on anti aircraft defences must have had a relatively higher impact on other areas of German wartime production than the bombing effort did on the UK/USA's economies.

Way back in the fiscal year 1935 the planned funding for air defence production (excluding aircraft again) was 152.6 million RM. The actual amount spent was just over 261 million RM. This was a substantial sum then and predates the 1937 development plan. It represents about 2% of total government income.
The procurement goals of the 1937 plan were largely exceeded.
For example on 1 May 1938 the Luftwaffe had 2,284 x 20mm guns (goal was 1950),668 x 37mm (550) and 1984 x 88mm (1400). They had also exceeded targets in fire directors,sound detectors and 150 cm searchlights.
Again this shows both how seriously air defence was taken and the effort and resources which Germany put into them.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Tante Ju]

Germany tended to use specially designed, or cutting edge technologies in its hardware ad this shows in its rather expensive unit costs. its why a tiger II costs about 20 times the price of a Sherman tank.

Yes, specialised, high quality hardware was used since that made the best use of resources. You seem to mistaken on Tiger II costs though - 321 500 RM per unit, with armament radio - compared to 115 962 RM for a Pz IV with armament radio and 33 500 § for a Sherman built by Chrisler. The conversion rate between the USD and RM was about 3 to 4, meaning that a Sherman costs roughly 1/3 that of the Tiger II, and, unsurprisingly, about as much as the roughly comparable Panzer IV.

Which is all nice but heavy Tiger battalions tended to have a 15 to 20 : 1 kill ratio vs. enemy armor, which made them infinitely more cost effective than anything else out there. It was easier to build, maintain and supply a single Tiger than about 15 Shermans or T-34, which made them the best use of resources for specific tasks. Obviously though an all-Tiger force would make little sense, since you need numbers the fill the ranks too, which of course fell upon the cheap, readily available but still effective Panzervier and Panther.

What ever way you spin the figures you can't escape the fact that Germany spent roughly one quarter of ALL military expenditure,year on year,throughout the war,on anti-aircraft defences.

Cheers

Steve

It's not a fact I am afraid. It's a random number that is being repeated without any serious source, spouted by Bomber Command's apoligists. Provide accurate and sourced figures, and then we shall something to discuss..

 

[stona]

It's not a fact I am afraid. It's a random number that is being repeated without any serious source, spouted by Bomber Command's apoligists. Provide accurate and sourced figures, and then we shall something to discuss..

The figures for expenditure come from various sources,German archives,the USSBS and interviews with Germans post war. The figures for Flak ammunition expenditure come directly from German documents. I'm not trawling through all the foot notes of every chapter of every reference I've quoted from. If you choose not to believe the figures I'd be interested to see some alternatives.

Steve

 

[Tante Ju]

Again what is the source of this "various sources"? You claimed you have a source for that 25 % of all German military expenditure was spent on anti aircraft defenses. I wish to learn the precise source for this statement. If there is any.

Westermann, for example, clearly notes that the Flak consumed about 25% of the total ammunition production, that was the greatest source of Flak's appetite for war material. However, Westermann also notes that the Army still very much preferred did not have ammunition shortage until 1945 because of that. Obviously Flak did not come free, but overall it's requirements were rather minuscule compared to the other branches of the German armed forces. Flak, quite simply, was something the Germans could afford easily.

 

[parsifal]

Westermann, for example, clearly notes that the Flak consumed about 25% of the total ammunition production, that was the greatest source of Flak's appetite for war material. However, Westermann also notes that the Army still very much preferred did not have ammunition shortage until 1945 because of that. Obviously Flak did not come free, but overall it's requirements were minuscule compared to the other branches of the German armed forces. Flak, quite simply, was something the Germans could afford easily.

I think you have made an error with westermann here. i dont recall seeing him say anything about the army not being short of ammunitions. Other good sources do talk about the shortages of ammunition. In Normandy for example, German guns were down to about 14% of artillery ammunition allocations very early in the campaign and this remained the case more or less for the remainder of the campaign. In front of Moscow during the final offensives there were acute shortages of artilerry, even at the distribution points (Nagorski) . At Stalingrad, well before the encirclement of 6th Army (Hayward) . The Heer QM General submitted regular reports on this very issue, and there were significant shortages at some very critical points in the war. More importantly however, is the potential artillery shell supply that would have been available except for the flak expenditures. Saying Germany was never short of materiel is just manifestly unsupportable.

As for the figure of RM321000, unfortaunately that is the sale price of the unit, not the actual price, moreover it is the price for a Tiger I not a Tiger II. The cost of each Tiger II, after factoring the development costs, is far closer to RM 750000. Now, I do have a source for that information, but it will take some digging.

The cost of a Sherman in 1945 was down to about $22000 per unit, It had cost about $37000 in 19043, but unit costs fell as the production run grew. a T-34 has been estimated to cost $10-15000 in 1945.

It is highly innaccurate and very poor analysis to make any comaprison here, but just the same, if the exhange rate is 4, then the Sherman in 1945 costs RM 88000. Not 20 times, I will grant you, but significantly more I think you would have to agree.

 

[Tante Ju]

Are you saying Henschel lost no less than 400 000 RM on every Tiger B it sold to the Heer...? Exceptional claim, as are the rest...

 

[stona]

Percentage of total expenditure spent on flak,the 1941 figures quoted come from the USSBS. As you know it's sources were varied. A lot of post war interviews and a lot of surviving documentation.
You'll need to look at Volume 3 "Effects of Strategic Bombing on the German War Economy". The relevant parts are near the end of the volume. My note has a page reference 280 for the second (1947) edition which I haven't checked.

The economists who analysed the figures clearly don't agree with you that "flak,quite simply, was something the Germans could easily afford".

Maybe the Americans,who were trying to make serious assessments of the effects of their bombing,bearing in mind the then ongoing war in the Pacific,were also "apologists" for Bomber Command?

Steve