And a right queer bird it was:
Posted on 12/21/2016 6:59:45 AM PST by C19fan
Put yourself in the shoes of a German pilot during World War II. It’d be more than just a bit concerning if your assignment was to fly the “Flaming Coffin,” a.k.a. the “One Way Bomber” or “Volcano.” But the hot, flammable He 177 Greif, or Griffin, was Nazi Germany’s only long-range heavy bomber produced in appreciable numbers. The 35-ton machine — when fully loaded — was a mistake, and more importantly, contributed to the German defeat by sucking up valuable resources into an ineffective and compromised aircraft.
(Excerpt) Read more at warisboring.com ...
“BF109 or ME109 (same thing) was a single engine fighter and a good one. Using four of the engines to make a bomber makes sense.”
Engines are engines, they don’t care. The Rolls Royce Merlin engine, used in the Spitfire and P-51 Mustang, was also used in the four-engine Lancaster bomber.
I believe if the Germans had the means to bomb the huge soviet factories in the Ural mountains in 1942 it might have made Stalin sue for peace. There were gigantic metallurgical works around the closed city of Magnitogorsk (magnetic mountain) that the Germans were obsessed with destroying but were unable to reach with their bombers.
The HE 177 really was not flight worthy until the end of 1943, and production was halted sometime in 1944 after May when the Germans realized they were in full defensive mode. But once they solved the early engine fire issues, it was supposedly a fairly functional aircraft by the spring of 1944.
In comparison the B29 had similar problems with engines burning and taking down aircraft, all the large plane designs in that period had issues.
Strategic bombing was something the Allies could indulge in, as they had the resources of the entire world to draw on. The central powers had much more limited population and resources, there was no way the Germans could ever affords to compete in bombers. Heck by October of 1944 the Germans were unable to make enough explosives to fill the basic artillery shells, and started to use salt for up to 30 % of the shell filling.
Germany lost the war on December 7th 1941, it was just a matter of time after that, to indulge a megalomaniac who was willing to sacrifice millions to extend his life another few years.
That is my point. My Dad the factory manager said you need to standardize production so you use the same parts on as many products as possible. So you use common engines, wheels, struts etc.
But, of course the Ju-287 was a bird of a different design.
I think it was ME110s that flew head on into the B-17 formations, firing rockets in an attempt to break them up. (Hence the B17G with a chin turret) The best airmen were put in the lead planes**, so if they got shot down, the mission was somewhat compromised. I understand that everybody watched the lead bomber and when he unloaded, everyone else did.
[Sidebar] During an interview with fighter ace and General, Adolf Galland, he was told our airmen flew 50 missions and then were rotated out of the area, so what was the German limit? Galland said "We flew until we died."
**That was one reason the "Lady Be Good" ghost bomber ended up in the desert. Navigators were in such short supply, the Army would put one good one in a formation and the rest followed him. In the Lady's case, the bomber with the best navigator turned back, leaving the rest of them with rookie navigators.
The USSR strategy of the 80s, when I did Officer Basic. Everything they ever made that would fire a round or drop a bomb was still in use. We were told the new M1 battle tank would have to face over 10:1 superiority in numbers. The guys training in them felt it would not be a problem. During the Battle of Messina Ridge we discovered 10:1 was way pessimistic.
The Allies did have the means to bomb German factories - and yet German armaments production continued to soar, peaking some time in late-1944, if I recall correctly.
Massive Allied (= U.S. and British) bombing (merely) forced the Germans to relocate and camoflage their production facilities and/or go underground.
In the case of the Soviets, the distances the German bombers would have had to fly would have been even greater.
My point is that, even if the Germans had had an equal number of bombers and bombs as the U.S. Army Air Corps and the R.A.F. together, they wouldn't have been able to put as much of a dent into Soviet arms production, which (after comoflaging, going underground, etc.) would probably have continued to soar until Germany was defeated.
Regards,
The Krauts lost WWII because Hitler stupidly invaded Russia and wasted precious resources exterminating people he didn’t like. The Germans could have defended Fortress Europe indefinitely with a competent, sane leader.
Hitler was nothing more than a poorly educated gangster who managed to succeed in politics. The most advanced culture and military force in the world at the time was destroyed by a stupid politician.
With Angela Merkel it seems the German people still haven’t learned anything.
People get the government they deserve.
Do you suppose that Germany is plagued with voter fraud and hard-leftist education institutions like the US? Might be part of the reason that an idiot like Merkel has risen to a position of authority.
All of Europe is a Socialist failure-in-waiting. The jury is still out on whether the United States will survive the eight disastrous years of Barack Hussein Obama.
That’s not totally true
There is a big shift the other way now towards national cultures
Only Germany and the feminized Vikings hold out
Poland and the baltics and Hungary are pretty solid
Problem is Germany is so big
But you could end up with nationalists in Germany France and Britain
That would be game over for unieurope
He was infected by the Nazi version of ‘victory disease’ no doubt fueled by quick victories early.
Strategic planner, he was not
Interesting post; thread. Thanks to all.
The Genie as such a beast, Unguided, nuclear-tipped to be used against a swarm of bombers.
Excellent points-you are probably right. One thing I never brought up was soviet anti-aircraft defenses which were horrific. The Germans were so shocked by by the massive Russian defenses after their first raids on Moscow that they switched over to night attacks.
just a point of interest-our fliers ran into much the same thing over N Vietnam-which had thousands of Russians manning the air defensive network over Hanoi and Haiphong.
after the war almost any German that mattered was subject to so-called de-nazification hearings something that completely stamped out any degree of nationalism- if liberals had been in power in the US much longer-many conservatives and or libertarians may have been headed for something similar.
You are absolutely correct, and I was responding to the wrong person. Serves me right for not finishing my caffeine first.
And a right queer bird it was:
With Hitler and Goring in charge of a mediocre German air force staff, the result was a lack of strategic realism, poor decisions, frequent stops and starts in aircraft design, top down management and bureaucratic centralization, and much corruption in the award of aircraft research and production contracts. Foolishly, the Germans engaged in a wasteful profusion of aircraft designs instead of concentrating on and improving the most promising and needed ones.
Worst of all, the Germans frittered away the potential for a decisive advantage in aviation that could have been obtained by rapid and intense development of their superior jet fighter and bomber designs. As it was, the opportunity was not seized and the V-2 consumed much of the engineering talent and scarce high temperature alloys needed for such an effort.
In contrast, US military aviation in WW II generated a large number of prototypes but, instead of trying to develop too many of them, the Army Air Force ruthlessly culled the failures and mediocrities, with the better designs then revised or tweaked to improve performance. And when a troubled new aircraft model had to be mastered, the US military often showed exceptional energy and determination.
The best counter-example to illustrate this against the He-177 is probably the B-29 bomber. Featuring major innovations such as four massive, high performance engines, a pressurized cabin, and remote controlled gun turrets, the B-29 was said to amount to an engineering and production effort equivalent in cost and complexity to the Manhattan Project.
Production of the B-29 was troubled though, with numerous flaws in the earliest models. Like the He-177 double engine arrangement, the B-29s Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone engines also had a tendency to catch fire, and the aircraft itself was heavy and hard to handle.
To save the B-29 program and make sure that it could be used to bomb Japan, the Army Air Force put a capable and tough bomber pilot commander with combat experience -- Paul Tibbets -- in charge of figuring out how to tame the beast and make it reliable enough to use in combat. Tibbets succeeded. Even though the B-29 always remained a tough aircraft to fly, it performed well in combat.
Might a similar personality backed by capable management have done the same for the He-177? Perhaps. Germany's system of leadership in WW II though made that impossible.
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