If the allies had invested in fast, light bombers like the Mosquito or the A-20 or A-26 instead of 4 engine heavy bombers and bombed purely military targets, would they have had better results?
If the allies had invested in fast, light bombers like the Mosquito or the A-20 or A-26 instead of 4 engine heavy bombers and bombed purely military t...
no, nothing makes subhuman germano-israelites and japs seethe like anglos burning entire cities and getting away with it. this is the best result for which one could hope.
did the dilation not go well today?
>IT'S HECKING TRANI WHEN YOU DON'T LIKE GERMAN!!!!!
Huh, I wonder what country had the first sex change operation, lemme look that up...
Performed by a israeli doctor who fled the country after the nazis raided his clinic and burned all his books.
The same Nazis who got Germany into an unwinnable war, whose actions directly ruined Europe for half a century
Yeah they had some good ideas (eliminate the israelites) and some bad ideas (war)
Kek, this.
>I can bomb u, but you can't bomb me 🙁
No because precision bombing was a complete myth until the 1990's
They had their moments.
>precision bombing was a complete myth until the 1960's
ftfy
Sure, if you greatly expand the definition of precision. There's reason we were still carpet bombing in 'Nam
Anon they were putting laser guided bombs on individual bridges back in the 60s with a CEP of like 30 meters. That is precision bombing.
And modern JDAMs can reliably hit within 5 meters. You're talking about something 6x less precise than that - a great expansion of precision relative to what we can do today
Well yeah but they were doing 3m precision back then too. It was just less reliable as they didn't really have shit like targeting pods.
>without the existence of tracking pods, the Weapon Systems Officer (WSO) in the back seat of an F-4 Phantom II used a hand-held Airborne Laser Designator to guide the bombs, but half of the LGBs still hit their targets despite the difficulties inherent in keeping the laser on the target.
>In the combat evaluations the BOLT-117 achieved a circular error probability (CEP) of 75 feet (23 m) while the Paveway I achieved a CEP of 20 feet (6.1 m) with one in every four bombs scoring a direct hit.[6][7]
They also had stuff like pic related, which wasn't in great numbers but was still very useful. Of course by 1991 they had the JDAM and shit like LANTIRN which allowed a way larger volume of precision fire, but to pretend that it wasn't possible as far back as Vietnam is slightly dishonest.
The A-26 could get within 50kn of the Mosquito, and do it with a heavier bombload and an actual defensive armament.
That said, the bigger issue is one of doctrine. It's not enough to have "better" gear, you also have to have a plan for using it, and train your people in the doctrine. Doctrines were very primitive at the time; aircraft technology had improved by a staggering amount during the '30s, leaving air forces far behind on the development of adequate doctrines. This is what led to things like "the bomber will always get through" (which was almost true, for a brief window in the early '30s when bombers with big, heavy engines could literally outrun the fighters of the day... but was no longer the case by 1940). In order to target "purely military targets" with fast, low-flying light bombers, you have to redevelop your doctrines from the ground up. And frankly, given the visibility problems over Europe, there were a lot of missions that wouldn't have been any more successful if they had been done with Mosquitos.
SAR and computer-aided bombsights would help--in places where you could get a decent radar picture--but the problem wouldn't really be licked in the skies over Europe until the JDAM came out in '99, allowing fixed targets to be reliably hit through heavy cloud cover.
The story of bombing doctrines is long and sordid, but it does have a few interesting moments, like the use of pathfinders together with "master bombardiers" once the Luftwaffe had been largely destroyed, or the introduction of LGBs as discussed.
As a side note, while dive-bombing could be very accurate for the day, it was also nigh-suicidal against heavy AAA. The only two places where it really worked were against the Allies early in the war and against the IJN throughout the war.. Even the Stukas got largely pulled from dive-bombing once opposing AAA became dense enough to seriously attrit them.
>There's reason we were still carpet bombing in 'Nam
Because that's what the mission called for. B-52s were allowed to do bombing runs within 1km of friendly troops during that time. This is for high altitude high volume bombing. The accuracy of tactical aircraft like F-111 or A-7 from lower altitude was way better, even with basic unguided bombs.
Wrong. Perfectly feasible to land a 500lbs bomb, in a dive, in a 100x100 yard box, if not better. Just because you can't wire-guide it through a window doesn't mean it "can't land inside a quarter-mile".
Dive bombing is incredibly dangerous to the plane and pilot. It is mainly used against high value targets and not general bombing.
>precision bombing was a complete myth until the 1990's
How much more precise do you want your bomb?
If you can't guarantee the bomb will hit an area smaller than the bombs diameter is it really all that accurate?
If you get a single bomb to hit exactly what you want, then it is accurate
>"He said, referring to a war in which the vast majority of capital ships sunk were by aircraft"
is this like the pre-jet era version Pierre Sprey?
A single pumped up mosquito required far more maintenance than 2 or 3 B-17/24s.
Citation needed
The most problematic part were the engines.
1944's Merlins lasted ~250 hours (TBO), during some periods even less. (By comparison the BMW 801 could last just 25 hours if because they're over-stressed)
The R1830/R1820 lasted ~6 times more (1500 hours TBO) because radials are somewhat more reliable and they didn't need the problematic 100/130 or 115/145 avgas.
Also, radials sound cooler.
Unironically lots of European cities would be shitholes if they had…. Bombing them flat let a lot of those places rebuild prime areas in ways that weren’t designed around what worked in the dark ages…
see goyim we did you a favor by killing your families
No, bombs were very inaccurate
>purely military targets
Cities are military targets in a total war
>and bombed purely military targets
by 1944, virtually all targets were military targets due to how much of the workforce was mobilized for the war effort
A lot of purely military targets did exist anon. Ammunition factories, tank/aircraft factories, etc. Other mixed purpose targets also existed such as synthetic oil plants, train yards, and power plants/substations/other electrical infrastructure.
This is a wehraboo bait thread though so we're not going to get much nuanced discussion as any statement less extreme than "GERMANY DINDU NUFFIN FRICKIN HARRIS" will get piled on by /misc/ tourists. But it was possible, especially prior to 1944, for a lot more military targets to be hit.
1. Precision bombing in WW2 was a meme. It wasn't effective at the time
2. Bombing strictly military targets is dumb. Bombing civilian and dual use infrastructure was inarguably some of the most effective missions of the war in both theatres.
3.While fast, light, bomber/fighters like Mosquito could sometimes carry similar bomb loads to heavy 4 engine bombers, the ranges are vastly different when loaded. 4 engines bombers will always be able to carry more and allow deeper strikes.
4. Some of the major bottlenecks on WW2 airplane production were engines/materials. Every Mosquito you build is two engines you take away from Spitfires. While the same holds true for bombers (every bomber is 4 wildcats you're not producing), when you compare the weight of bombing you can get on target for cost/engines, I doubt it is far apart. The people in charge of the military already did this math.
5. While Mosquito used things like nonstandard materials and labourers, at a certain point you would end up with the same bottlenecks to production. The Mosquito was best used as a supplement and role-player to production, in a mass produced role it would be less effective when forced into less ideal roles.
>Precision bombing in WW2 was a meme. It wasn't effective at the time
Wrong, it was. Dive bombing and bombing on flares/smokes dropped by Pathfinders, and later on radio guided bombing, was pretty accurate for the time. We're talking tens of meters for dive bombing and hundreds of meters (enough for a factory sized target) for directed bombing. By modern standards of course not but for the time it was plenty effective. See point 3 though
>2.
Agreed with the clarification that the Allies were moronic for not destroying the German power grid.
>3.
Agreed and this was why dive bombing wasn't really done deep into Europe. Getting radio guided bombing to work that deep was also very difficult.
>4/5
Agreed
Have you seen the claimed hit rates for Dive bombing versus actual Tanks and ground targets that get destroyed by planes? Same goes for post war analysis of Tactical bombing raids.
You aren't bombing tanks that way anon, you're dive bombing to hit specific infrastructure targets with a better CEP. With a large bomb, good training, and good timing it's devastatingly effective.
It wasn't done in Europe much for a multitude of reasons though.
Hit rates for tactical bombing were greatly exaggerated in WW2. All sides Everyone thought they were destroying hundreds of parked planes, tanks, ships, factories, etc.. because they saw their bombs detonate/splash. In reality, academics have compared reported successes versus reported losses and showed huge discrepancies. Same thing happened with fighter kill counts. That was the point of my post. Recent analysis has showed them to be even less effective than advertised and even in 1944 they had figured out precision bombing wasn't working which was why they switched tactics and made Japan "extra crispy. " If you have a source that says otherwise, please post it.
>You have limited range, Germany would move their factories.
>Against Japan, you likely couldn't even get your bombers close enough to conduct the same campaign as Operation Meetinghouse
>Your bomb loads are smaller so even with greater accuracy you might be doing less damage overall. Germany can adapt by hardening their infrastructure against your smaller bomb loads.
>You lose collateral damage which can be strategically relevant
>Losing altitude by going with twin engine fighters means more flak and gives the German/Japanese fighters more time to get altitude and intercept
It won't make any difference. WW2 technology doesn't really allow a more focused tactical bombing campaign to achieve the same results as a strategic bombing campaign using the same technology.
>If you have a source that says otherwise, please post it
Adam Tooze has done fine work showing the effectiveness of the RAF bombing campaign in the Ruhr
Niall Barr shows how the Afrika Korps was not only starved of supplies by RAF (and RN) attacks in the Mediterranean, interdiction bombing just prior to Second El Alamein severely disrupted the DAK in preparation for the attack
The Transport Plan is an undisputed success
There were also other attacks directly on German units, such as Mailly-le-Camp which destroyed at least a battalion of panzers plus support units and crews
>WW2 technology doesn't really allow a more focused tactical bombing campaign to achieve the same results as a strategic bombing campaign
Except it explicitly did - the RAF found that a flight of Mosquitos placing 4000lb bombs precisely on a target was lots better results than a squadron of four-engine heavies high-level bombing it
The RAF switched over to Mosquito bombing as much as possible, but there just weren't enough Mosquitos to go around
>Germany was never going to accomplish much in the Battle of Britain
that's on them
>The Allies bombing Germany constantly targeted the wrong stuff and spread out their effectiveness
yes, but what they did pull off, did shorten the war considerably
>Strategic bombing became successful once Germany had lost the ability to defend themselves and Allied planners had figured out how to properly support the bombers with pathfinders. escorts, tactics, and so on. Then again, by then, it was like kicking a toddler
That's highly unfair
Equally it can be said,
>The Allied ground offensive became successful once the Wehrmacht lost the ability to defend itself and generals figured out how to properly conduct combined arms assaults with infantry, tanks, artillery, engineers, bombers and so on. Then again, by then, it was like kicking a toddler
You're only looking at the moment of victory and not at all the efforts that had to be done to reach it
>Same goes for post war analysis of Tactical bombing raids
Which itself is now being called into question as more data comes to light, that strategic bombing was more effective than given credit for
Yes
Every poster here saying precision bombing was a meme has not a single fricking clue
The Mosquito was so useful that there just weren't enough of them to go around. They were invaluable night fighters and photoreconnaissance aircraft in addition to precision bombers. Had there been more of them, there would have been far fewer Lancaster and Flying Fort squadrons, but them's the breaks, you can't wish that you had Tempests in 1939 either
Pathfinders were ungodly powerful, god himself had to limit their numbers to make it a fair fight. The ability, by itself, to focus an entire raid on mostly one singular target, was too powerful to be left unchecked.
Mosquitos bombing on their own were a far more efficient method. One 4000lb blockbuster dropped in the right place could inflict the kind of damage it would take a squadron of Lancasters to. The only reason as said why Mosquitoes basically didn't take over all of Bomber Command was availability of Lancs and lack of Mosses. You can't just switch wholesale to a new platform in the middle of the war. That carries it's own inefficiency
Yes, but lancasters and B-17s had numbers and mutual defense.
>The Mosquito was so useful that there just weren't enough of them to go around. They were invaluable night fighters and photoreconnaissance aircraft in addition to precision bombers. Had there been more of them, there would have been far fewer Lancaster and Flying Fort squadrons, but them's the breaks, you can't wish that you had Tempests in 1939 either
bunch of shit that had no impact anyway. ww2 air is such a meme
german industry was increasing year on year because they were building giant factories in 1939 and they finished in 1942
but the bombing did slow down the growth of those industries resulting in slower increase compared to a universe where they didnt spend so much on replacements and repairs
theres also the fact that a reason plane production increased was because they switched production away from twin engined bombers to single engined fighters solely to keep bombers from hitting them, doubling production but halving total weight, and re focusing production away from offensive weapons
they also kept tank production rising by simply not producing spare parts, which reduced 40% to compensate for steady hull production, resulting in german tank commanders cannibalizing old tanks to fix new ones
>theres also the fact that a reason plane production increased was because they switched production away from twin engined bombers to single engined fighters solely to keep bombers from hitting them, doubling production but halving total weight, and re focusing production away from offensive weapons
yes this was a misallocation of resources as well. autistic focus on keeping up morale and defending the homefront lost the east. the entire production history produces headscratchers like this alongside stuff like u boats holding priority over tanks for a time.
>Airpower was decisive in just about every single major battle in WW2
tired of this fuddlore. what did total air supremacy do for germany in the east, exactly? they even had it at kursk lol
>they even had it at kursk lol
Soviets able to create air parity for one of the first times in the war was a big reason they were able to win the battle
>had no impact
Moron
>ww2 air is such a meme
Double moron
Airpower was decisive in just about every single major battle in WW2
With their high speed and much higher manoeuvreability, Mosquitoes could evade flak and defending fighters, bomb more precisely, and were therefore much more efficient in terms of manpower and resources used than big four engine bombers
The most devastating single attack made by the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain was actually carried out by Bf110s in much the same way. Thankfully they never realised what they'd done and never developed that doctrine or tech
Did, in fact
Mosquito bombers generally didn't even need escorting, but had they been used more, they could have been escorted by Mosquito nightfighters which as it is scored about 900 kills by the end of the war
This
The only things I've seen recently about the bombing campaigns are as follows, let me know if you've seen differently:
>Germany was never going to accomplish much in the Battle of Britain based on the data we have.. They were always going to slowly lose
>Germany was at least doing better bombing actual airfields and infrastructure. Terror bombing made them less effective, but German thought it was effective.
>Terror bombing didn't have the expected effects on morale everyone assumed. It made people angry at Germany and happy they survived, but didn't make them want it surrender.
>Britain's initial raids were a waste but there was no way to know that at the time.
>Night bombing versus day bombing is still debatable
>Bombing (especially targeted bombing on bridges, tanks, airfields, ships, and so forth) has the same problem as fighter kill counts (serious over reported successes)
>The Allies bombing Germany constantly targeted the wrong stuff and spread out their effectiveness. A more focused and sustained approach against Oil and Electrical infrastructure could have dramatically shortened the war.
>Strategic bombing became successful once German and had lost the ability to defend themselves and Allied planners had figured out how to properly support the bombers with pathfinders. escorts, tactics, and so on. Then again, by then, it was like kicking a toddler.
Regardless of if precision bombing was a meme mosquitos had a ton of value for target marking, pathfinder units flew the mosquito dropping flares or incendiary bombs as markers for heavy bomber flights of Lancasters, greatly increasing accuracy.
Doubtful. Big four engines heavies were useful for all sorts of things besides strategic bombing, even if they weren’t optimized for those roles. A mosquito can’t carry a stick of paratroops or do ASW patrols over the Atlantic for instance.
Who cares? WE WON!
Take a good look at the Germans because that's what they did. Germany didn't really invest in 4-engined bombers. Instead they build a fleet of 2-engined ones - all of which had to be dive-bombing capable.
Plus: Get educated, Anon. The Allies built all the light bombers you've mentioned by the thousands. They DID invest very heavily in fast, light bombers.
No, for a different reason than the rest of the thread has pointed out. A major reason for the strategic bombing raids was to attrit the Luftwaffe, something the heavily armed and (partially) escorted 4-engine bombers did quite well. A bunch of Mossies dashing in, dumping a bomb and hightailing it out wouldn't have had the same effect.
They did both. Seeth cope and dilate Hans.
Germany never managed to build something as good as the Mossie.
OP here, what I mean is that if the Allies had diverted more resources both industrial and human into the production of light bombers but difficult to intercept, bombing factories, control centers, bridges, etc. Whether the results would have been more cost-effective than area bombing with costly heavy bombers carring big aircrews
>Whether the results would have been more cost-effective
in a nutshell, yes
In theory yes. In practice no. Fewer bombers means fewer bombs means more missions because you're going to have more misses, dive bombing was incredibly dangerous if more accurate and these bombers would suffer arguably worse casualty rates as being smaller, hits a larger four engine aircraft could take with a few casualties would instead kill everyone in the smaller bomber as the plane itself is killed.
>t. VVS
>fuddlore
you mean NATO has been utterly wrong for the past 75 years? STOP THE PRESSES WE GOT A NEW MILITARY GENIUS HERE BOYS
>what did total air supremacy do for germany in the east, exactly? they even had it at kursk
actually, they didn't - the bulk of the Luftwaffe fighter force was dying over Italy at that time
>you mean NATO has been utterly wrong for the past 75 years?
clearly we are talking about WORLD WAR TWO here where air is constantly overstated by everyone too weak to hold their own opinions.
>actually, they didn't
actually, they did hold air superiority* during the first week. and it did nothing. and even if you were right, what about 41 & 42? red air force literally died until uranus and it meant literally nothing
>we are talking about WORLD WAR TWO here where air is constantly overstated by everyone
not at all, it was in WW2 that airpower proved itself, in all theatres, from 1940 to 1945
if anything, it is UNDERstated by people who misunderstand "blitzkrieg", Rommel, and the Sherman vs Tiger debate, to name just 3 areas where airpower contributed significantly but is virtually ignored
>red air force literally died until uranus and it meant literally nothing
it meant massive territorial gains by the Axis forces and massive losses that only the Soviets could have withstood
the only thing that stopped airpower from being more decisive was weather, night, and precision targeting
furthermore, no, the Red Air Force did not "die". most of its losses up to then had only been in machines destroyed on the ground, but their pilots were still alive; also, these were only the forces currently in-theatre. they reconstituted extremely quickly by lend-leasing and transferring everything from the Far East to the West. the Luftwaffe was also too small for the scope of the task ahead of them, and operations were massively curtailed by winter. the Red Air Force on the other hand had all kinds of weird tricks for getting around winter, from soaking aircraft engines in gasoline to DEgreasing guns so they would shoot in spite of the cold. these factors added up.
the West's reliance on airpower beginning in the late 40s was born out of reviews of WW2, not hypotheses of the future.
You say that, but Mosquitoes posted the lowest casualty rates in Bomber Command by far. They were just too damn quick for the Jerrys to catch.
Unrelated but I recognise that mosquito, RAF Cosford, their collection has some real gems like this recon spitfire they around the country.
No, because that would mean less dead germgroids
range mostly - secondly availability of pilots.
The Mosquito was really a league above the others.
In any case, you fight a war with the weapons and doctrine you have. If the Allies had, in 1942 or 43, recognized that speed was the key to avoiding casualties and not defensive armament, what were they to do with that information? Factories would have to be retooled, new supply lines for critical materials established, aircrews retrained and doctrine wholly rethought. While that is happening, the aircraft fleet that already existed would suffer from compounding maintenance issues as replacement parts became scarce. All this leads to a delay where the old fleet is having no effect while the new fleet isn't ready yet, extending the war. They weren't gonna choose to fight longer to finish a war they 100% knew they were going to win just so their equipment could be better at the end of it.
they won the war, not sure what better results you're expecting
No.
The wiki stats of these planes are useless without context. 4 engine heavy bombers could fly at altitudes and at ranges with bomb loads that none of these small light bombers could come close to.
Back then altitude was the best defense.