Great. Now you tell us. (from the German side)
I believe that in the Battle of Britain, HE-177’s suffered a loss rate of about 12.5%. Every mission for the Luftwaffe was like the Schweinfurt Raid.
Hitler was the one who insisted on that.
People often forget that he was ‘t just evil — he was stupid too.
Try to understand the frustration that the German high command was experiencing. Their cities and industrial base was being systematically destroyed by long range American and British strategic bombing. They had very limited means to retaliate against Britain and virtually no means to strike America. Frustration often leads to irrational behavior and policy. Always wondered why the Germans didn’t develop a small explosive rocket to be launched from fighters with a proximity fuse to be fired into the lumbering tight bomber formations
I always thought that if Hitler were able to build large, long range bombers he could have won the war.
Of course there are all sorts of would have, should have. And when written the ways I just wrote it, it makes it sound like we are sad that he didn’t do these things.
That is not the case.
But it makes you wonder what tools are being made today that are going to fall into that age old problem of planning to fight the last war.
Personally, I think building jet fighters is going to soon be a waste of time. For the price of one jet, you could probably build a slew of unmanned aircraft that could swarm the air, and overwhelm the enemy.
But what do I know....
This bomber operated on the Bf109 engines? Weren’t those fighters?
For various reasons the Germans never got into strategic bombing like the Allies. The German focus was more on tactical instead of strategic bombing, detonation instead of incendiary bombs, precision dive instead of carpet bombing, producing mostly light fighters instead of heavy bombers.
Germany had a jet prototype in the 30’s and Hitler thought it was a waste of resources.
Which appeared too late in the war, after the need for a strategic bomber had passed.
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.
Interesting post; thread. Thanks to all.
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.