WW2 bombers. If Germany had the allies heavy bombers would they have won the war?

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Tkdog said:

That is hardly fair. The Russians didn't have defense at altitude because they didn't have a significant need for it. If the Germans get new planes then the allies do too.

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It takes a lot of time to develop a fighter and even more to develop a fighter for a task where you have little experience which would push the technology to the limit. Time is the one thing Russia wouldn't have had, neither did they have the technology.

Though with half as many bombers (they don't get more engines) it isn't clear how much need there would be. That's half as many planes with targets being spread out over an even larger spread than in original time line. So do they continue the blitz or try and find targets in Russia? You aren't hitting railways with 4 engine bombers at altitude in WW2. Rail yards, maybe. If you go during the day and get down lower. Whole cities were missed in WW2.

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Germany had from early in the war sophisticated blind bombing aids, which were very accurate. It's often known as the battle of the beams. It's a threat that Russia would have struggled to deal with. Goods yards and factories were prime targets also should Russia try to move its production base just disrupting the transport would have one significant damage.

Which does beg the question of how they find factories that are scattered far from the front so they can try to bomb them.

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Pre war Germany and Russia were very close and I have little doubt that Germany would have had sufficient intelligence to know where the target were.

It's worth remembering that will all the almost unlimited aid given to Russia, the one thing they asked for on a number of occasions and didn't get, were four engined bombers.

Glider said:

Breaking the post down

It takes a lot of time to develop a fighter and even more to develop a fighter for a task where you have little experience which would push the technology to the limit. Time is the one thing Russia wouldn't have had, neither did they have the technology.

Germany had from early in the war sophisticated blind bombing aids, which were very accurate. It's often known as the battle of the beams. It's a threat that Russia would have struggled to deal with. Goods yards and factories were prime targets also should Russia try to move its production base just disrupting the transport would have one significant damage.

Pre war Germany and Russia were very close and I have little doubt that Germany would have had sufficient intelligence to know where the target were.

It's worth remembering that will all the almost unlimited aid given to Russia, the one thing they asked for on a number of occasions and didn't get, were four engined bombers.

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German intelligence also had a way into the Soviet Union and of course having a 4 engine bomber means you need a high performance photo recon (Ju 86R, Fw 187?) but this is not beyond Luftwaffe/German capabilities.

The Soviets Union is not helpless by any means, they had the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-3 capable of 400mph at altitude at the outset of operation Barbarossa which was June 22 1941. There are no Me 109G or Spitfire IX with two stage Merlin 60's. The Luftwaffe has the Me 109F2 and RAF has the Spitfire V and maybe the VI (high altitude wings but still single stage supercharger, pressurised) The Russian fighter is 30mph faster than an allied fighter at high altitude. The VVS are technically ahead of the USAAF, Luftwaffe, RAF.

The MiG 3 weakness is unremarkable speed performance at low altitude and unpleasant spin/stall and departure characteristics. That can be fixed, you can lengthen the tail, enlarge tail surfaces, put in a stall strip, try slats, alter wing twist, supercharger settings can be altered. The reason the type was not developed seems to be more related to the fact that is massive Mikulin V12 engine was needed for the IL-2 Stormovik.

In 1941 the He 177 is not ready, it of course never really matured till the second half of 1943 at the earliest so the Luftwaffe would need to go in with a less ambitious aircraft well within the capabilities of the MiG 3. The Ju 89 and or Dornier Do 19 could be ready if developed and the engines quite reasonable. (Jumo 211A (1100hp, Jumo 211B, 1200hp, Jumo 211E (pressurised cooling circuit) and Jumo 211F (pressurised cooling circuit 1350hp) and Jumo 211J (1450hp) The Luftwaffe does not get two stage superchargers till late 1944 though its single stage superchargers are very good. The BMW 801 TJ (turbo supercharged BM801) has very good high altitude performance due to retaining its two speed mechanical supercharger and having very large intercoolers and is making an appearance in early 1944. There were plans to fit these to pressurised bomber versions of the Ju 290 (Ju 290B) and they were expected to operate at 11000m (36,000ft). This is the operational ceiling (climb rate at or below 500 feet per minute or so) not the service ceiling (climb rate below 100 fpm) which was higher still.

It's hard to asses the performance of the putative Luftwaffe strategic bombers, the Ju 89/Do 19 as they are physically larger than the allied bombers with larger wing areas and need higher power levels to be as fast, on the other hand the low wing loading has its own advantages. If the right decisions are made in time there is the possibility of the so called He 177B which is just a He 177A with 4 engines (Jumo 211, DB601/605) evenly distributed over the wings. A BMW 801 version has to wait till 1942 as the engine is not yet fully reliable.

As I see it the main function of such an aircraft is maritime reconnaissance and bombing. It also become a ""force in being" by forcing the Soviet Union and allies to disperse defences widely. The Russians have access to British 5m and 2.5m radar to warn of raids.

Glider said:

It's worth remembering that will all the almost unlimited aid given to Russia, the one thing they asked for on a number of occasions and didn't get, were four engined bombers

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The Soviets were given a B-24 for trials and they aparently weren't impressed, although they did operate B-24s (and B-17s) salvaged from wrecks.
Their native 4-engine bomber, the TB-7 (Pe-8) was a fairly capable heavy bomber, but they were never able to provide a solid escort strategy and the TB-7s suffered terribly at the hands of the Luftwaffe.
My guess is that any Allied 4-engine bombers given to them would have suffered the same fate.

In terms of navigation and pathfinding for the Luftwaffe.

1 There is firstly celestial navigation. At night with 3 stars (or moon, Venus) a good navigator can find longitude and latitude within 2-3 nautical miles using an aeronautical sextant or periscopic sextant, probably takes 2 years to get that good. These generally have a bubble in them to help find the horizon. It can be done in a cassena or single engine fighter if you know what you are doing.

2 If over friendly German controlled territory and maybe 200km inland a direction find aerial can be used to locate the direction of beacons which can be used to triangulate position.

3 There were also the hyperbolic system 'sonnenstrahl" or sunshine which sent out a beam that spoke (in a human voice) ones direction from the antenna, no need to working angles. There was also the Bernhard/Berhnhardine system which was used for night fighter navigation that sent out a telemetry as to direction. These systems didn't need a direction finding aerial. In fact when the Germans started upgrading sonnenstrahl and making it unusable for the allies they sent a few bombing raids and the Germans decoded it again. It was usefull for both sides, especially for rescues.

4 Luftwaffe bombers had an "odograph" which is a device similar to an odometer but uses the TAS true air speed from pitot static and main compass to calculate the X and Y distance travelled between navigation fixes. Some of these even had a moving map display. In between navigation fixes the odograph could help keep track. Instruments such as the Lofte 7 bomb sight could be used to measure ground speed and therefore offset wind drift in the odograph.

5 Famously the Luftwaffe used radio beams to guide bombers, these consisted of a pair of overlapping antenna beams that gave signal in the pilots headphones if he was more left vs right from the centreline of the beam overlap. The Knickbein system used over Britain was related to blind landing system itself that came out of a night navigation system. Lufthansa was the first airline in the world to operate scheduled nigh time flights using these Lorentz beams from 1926 using Junker G24 trimotors. There was still a navigator in the cabin taking navigation fixes but the beam system was much easier than taking fixes or homing on to a becon that was probably too far away and did didn't need a skilled navigator.

The two systems used in the BoB was Knikcbein, really more a navigation system for ordinary crews and X-Geraet used by patfinders which was extremely accurate even taking into account headwinds for bomb release. Famously the British claimed to have jammed X-geraets successor Wotan before its first use. The Luftwaffe developed a portable beam riding system called Zyklops which simply required two small trailers and also a system called EGON (which used a transponder and a Freya radar) and EGON-II which used two Freya radars like Oboe.

Deep raids would likely not allow radio navigation but there was always celestial navigation.

In terms of pathfinding there could be an expert crew flying high in say a Ju 88S or Ju 86R (50,000ft) able to access radio guidance that could drop markers flare parachutes.

One of the most remarkable guidenace systems was the Schwann Radio markers dropped by German pathfinders for other aircraft to home on to. This is how the airborn launches of V1 were made.

There were three versions
Schwann See was a floating radio marker buoy that could be dropped by aircraft (or placed by U-boat)
Schwann Luft was a parachute dropped radio marker dropped by a pathfinder.
Schwann Land could be dropped on to land as a way point.

Having access to a few radar sets is still nothing like the Germans faced against the British in 1940. The Russian front could be 1000 miles or longer depending on the bends/bulges.
That is a lot of radar sets. Perhaps the Russians don't need continuous coverage but only a few sets at the most important cities? Of course if your interceptores don't have functioning radios then the Radar doesn't do much more than give a warning that a raid is coming. British had IFF so the ground controllers could figure out who was who and direct the fighters to the raiding formations. Where do the hundreds (or thousands) of IFF sets come from? Or the good radios?

The Mig 3 was not a real good bomber interceptor. It had performance but it had lousy armament. A single 12.7mm machine gun with 300 rounds and two 7.62mm guns with 375 round per gun. Some did have a 12.7mm gun under each wing but just like the Bf 109 gunboats, they cut into the performance.
The 12.7mm machine gun in the cowl of Mig did not fire through the prop hub. It had to be synchronized.
A few late production examples were supposed to have gotten a pair of 20mm cannon in the cowl with 100rpg. Some or all of these had the M-38 engine out of the IL-2 so performance at altitude was ????
The engines were rather short lived.

GrauGeist said:

Their native 4-engine bomber, the TB-7 (Pe-8) was a fairly capable heavy bombe

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That is a matter of some debate.
Basically the engines sucked. It was a concept in search of even semi decent hardware. One if not two different diesels were tried in the plane and these were so bad that the crews were said to have looked fondly on the versions powered by the AM-35 engines, which sometimes didn't last 50 hours in the Mig-3. using them on 6-10 hour missions seems a bit chancy.
The last ones built used radial M-82s but the exhaust situation forced the removal of the gunner/gun station in the rear of the inner nacelles
Full credit to the Soviet crews that used these aircraft.

GrauGeist said:

The Soviets were given a B-24 for trials and they aparently weren't impressed, although they did operate B-24s (and B-17s) salvaged from wrecks.
Their native 4-engine bomber, the TB-7 (Pe-8) was a fairly capable heavy bomber, but they were never able to provide a solid escort strategy and the TB-7s suffered terribly at the hands of the Luftwaffe.
My guess is that any Allied 4-engine bombers given to them would have suffered the same fate.

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I admit I see this differently. The fact that Russia went to the huge effort to make B24 and B17 operational in small numbers from wrecks implies that they certainly did see some benefit and were impressed at least to some degree.
With the vast expanse of the Russian front and the very limited numbers of Luftwaffe fighters to defend it. Raids of any size would be very difficult to defend against.

The USSR was not flush with equipment, so it would make sense that they would put the salvaged bombers into service when and where possible.

The B-17s and B-24s they cobbled together were not in any great numbers, though.

None of the American bombers impressed them enough to build on their own except the B-29, which was reverse-engineered to make the Tu-4.

The MiG-3 get in the last block 2 20mm Shvak in the nose, they are synchronized but it's no a trouble, all the soviet fighters, with the exception of the MiG-3 with 2 UB under the wings, had only synchronized weapons

Koopernic said:

It can be done in a cassena or single engine fighter if you know what you are doing.

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Now that's reading the tea, or yaupon leaves of navigation, but can you elaborate what you mean by cassena?

Glider said:

Looking at this question from a different angle. If Germany had a four engine bomber and had attacked Russia instead of France, then that could have ultimately been a winning strategy.

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There's a small Strategic problem called Poland. You need to march through that to reach the Soviet border, the detour through Balkan or overseas invasion of the Baltic will be logistic nightmares. France and Great Britain had guaranteed Polands borders, of course you could make a temporary deal with Stalin and attack Poland, gambling that the French and the British don't declare war on you...

If the Germans had come up with the B-17 there would have been several variations designed and produced as prototypes before production began, with a myriad of equipment and armament configurations.

And it probably would have been a dive bomber, at least at some point.

Later in the war it would become a bomber destroyer with a 75mm recoil-less rifle strapped to its belly. There would be, of course, the long range maritime patrol aircraft version and the torpedo bomber. Maybe even a night-fighter version.

One version may even be a dedicated bomber.

wuzak said:

If the Germans had come up with the B-17 there would have been several variations designed and produced as prototypes before production began, with a myriad of equipment and armament configurations.

And it probably would have been a dive bomber, at least at some point.

Later in the war it would become a bomber destroyer with a 75mm recoil-less rifle strapped to its belly. There would be, of course, the long range maritime patrol aircraft version and the torpedo bomber. Maybe even a night-fighter version.

One version may even be a dedicated bomber.

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Interesting. I like how you haven't focused on a long range variant. With all of Germany's intended opponents within a short distance, I'd think they'd want a heavier bombload rather than longer range.

Simple, eight 500kg bombs inside and 2 bombs (your choice up to 1800kg each) outside. Maybe the Germans would have hung four smaller bombs outside?

Just Schmidt said:

There's a small Strategic problem called Poland. You need to march through that to reach the Soviet border, the detour through Balkan or overseas invasion of the Baltic will be logistic nightmares. France and Great Britain had guaranteed Polands borders, of course you could make a temporary deal with Stalin and attack Poland, gambling that the French and the British don't declare war on you...

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If Germany had marched into Poland (without Stalin's participation) and then straight into Russia both France and Chamberlain's Britain would do nothing but protest. Did either do anything when the USSR invaded Poland, violating those same security guarantees made to Poland? No.

If Germany marches straight through Poland (provoking GB and France DoW) and then continues into Russia, Germany needn't worry about its western borders, GB and France will wait to see how the Russian invasion turns out. But Germany had better worry about its eastern border as they are very ill equipped in 1939 to advance much further than Warsaw. There's a good chance Britian and France will be facing a USSR tidal wave first overcoming the Germans and then marching to the English Channel.

Admiral Beez said:

If Germany had marched into Poland (without Stalin's participation) and then straight into Russia both France and Chamberlain's Britain would do nothing but protest. Did either do anything when the USSR invaded Poland, violating those same security guarantees made to Poland? No.

If Germany marches straight through Poland (provoking GB and France DoW) and then continues into Russia, Germany needn't worry about its western borders, GB and France will wait to see how the Russian invasion turns out. But Germany had better worry about its eastern border as they are very ill equipped in 1939 to advance much further than Warsaw. There's a good chance Britian and France will be facing a USSR tidal wave first overcoming the Germans and then marching to the English Channel.

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Oh they would declare war on Germany alright, hedging bets. But you're right they'd just sit at the Western border of France for a while to see what happened. They're in a win win. Germany might start to defeat the Soviet Union. But it's backdoor and industrial heartland would be virtually undefended and under the nose of a continually building Franco-English force with untouched war economies spooling up behind them. If the USSR starts winning they nip into Germany and deliver the coup de gras as the Germans desperately fend of a wrathful Soviet advance. It's a dream-scenario for the French and English.

Or Germany could proceed as historically to attack France, then put a holding force to pin the British down (occasional air raids and such) and gear up to attack Russia without the full scale BoB and Night Blitz (or the gathering of thousands of barges, disrupting German river traffic) and the resulting losses.
Britain was in no shape to invade any part of France and low countries after Dunkirk and would not be for quite some time to come (like 1 to 2 years. the longer time the much more likely). Let the British try to mount an offensive air campaign sooner and defend against with numbers more in the Germans favor.

RW Mk. III said:

If the USSR starts winning they nip into Germany and deliver the coup de gras as the Germans desperately fend of a wrathful Soviet advance. It's a dream-scenario for the French and English.

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A united Wally German offensive against Russia was Patton's dream scenario. But without the USA involvement I can't see the remnants of Germany and the armies of Britain and France preventing a Soviet onslaught.

Circling back on topic, I don't see a role for German long range, high altitude bombers here, but definitely for heavy strike aircraft.

Shortround6 said:

Actually the Boeing 314 "Clipper" used a very similar wing to the B-15, a trick Boeing did a number of times. The flying boat wing was 3 feet longer (152ft vs 149) and about 3% bigger in area. Boeing also used the wing of the B-17 on the Boeing 307 Strato-clipper/Stratoliner. And then used the B-29 wing on the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser. And actually the B-29 wing was based off the wing used on the Boeing 344 ( XPBB-1 Sea Ranger ) or at least showed Boeing moving away from large wing areas for large/heavy aircraft.

Well, the Stirling got delayed because the Germans managed to bomb both production lines. Otherwise there may have been a squadron or two in service in the fall of 1940.
British seem to have taken a long time with most everything.
BTW the Halifax went into service with the Merlin X engine.
Had the Germans started in the last 1/2 of 1937 they may have had service bombers in 1940.

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Manchester I: first flight July 39, entry into service Nov 40, power Vulture 1750hp, first missions Feb 41. Time between first flight and first mission 15 months.
Lancaster I : first flight Jan 41, entry into service Feb 42, power Merlin XX 1280hp, first missions Mar 42. Time between first flight and first mission 14 months.
Sterling I : first flight May 39, entry into service Aug 40, power Hercules 1500hp, first mission Feb 41. Time between first flight and first mission 20 months.
Halifax I : first flight Oct 39, entry into service Nov 40, power Merlin XX 1280hp, first mission Mar 41. Time between first flight and first mission 17 months.

The Ju 89 V1 (with Jumo 210) flew April/May 1937. The Ju 89 V2 (with DB600) flew July 37.
The Dornier Do 19 first flew in 28th October 1936 on Bramo (Siemens) 323H-2 of 715hp (the V2 and V3 with more powerful engines never flew.)

If we give the Luftwaffe 6 more months than the British needed under wartime conditions, ie 24 months the Ju 89 (or Do 19) could be in service March 1939 and Ready for Missions in July 1939 (2 months before war broke out).

Im under no illusions as to the performance of the aircraft. Their relatively large wings preclude hid speed in 1939/40 but they've be at a par with mist 1939/1940 bombers and perhaps faster than a Taurus Wellington or Whitley, I'm thinking maybe 250-260mph. They're most profound effect would be a sea and in night raids. A signicantly boost to Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine capabilities and would become a good maritime reconnaissance aircraft. They shouldnt be built in large numbers.

On the other hand if the Luftwaffe had looked at the prototypes and said nice try, but................lets start over.

Design starts March/April of 1937
First flight Sept/Oct 1938,
Into service Feb/March 1940
First Combat mission ?????Summer of 1940?

And again, the reason for the 20 month gap for the Stirling between first flight and first mission are the facts that the Luftwaffe hit the Shorts factory in the late supper or fall of 1940 and wrecked up to a dozen Sterling's either on the production line or parked outside the factory. Sometime in the fall/winter they also managed to hit other Shorts factory which was building the Stirling.

The FW 200 first flew at the end of July 1937 and shows that the huge wing was going out of fashion at about this time, even if you don't want to use the fW 200 as a bomber the way it existed.