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Was RAF night bombing campaign unnecessary and misguided?


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Id be careful of accepting that at face value though. The author of those videos brings out some genuinely interesting stuff, but he has an alarming habit of doing it without any real references for his conclusions. He did one on the 'Canberra Incident', concluded it was completely real, despite over 25 years of historians looking they found no evidence it ever happened.  And there is no reason for keeping such things secret anymore.

Do I think it probable we did a study to ensure we could carry the Atomic bomb? Probably, i cant see a reason why we wouldnt. But it would be surprising if a unit had been stood up to discover delivery tactics, nobody in the past 70 years ever owned up to being a member, or any official documents turned up. I struggle to understand why they would not, there would surely be some reference to earlier studies in V bomber documentation I would have thought.

A curious story at any rate.

 

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2 minutes ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Id be careful of accepting that at face value though. The author of those videos brings out some genuinely interesting stuff, but he has an alarming habit of doing it without any real references for his conclusions. He did one on the 'Canberra Incident', concluded it was completely real, despite over 25 years of historians looking they found no evidence it ever happened.  And there is no reason for keeping such things secret anymore.

Do I think it probable we did a study to ensure we could carry the Atomic bomb? Probably, i cant see a reason why we wouldnt. But it would be surprising if a unit had been stood up to discover delivery tactics, nobody in the past 70 years ever owned up to being a member, or any official documents turned up. I struggle to understand why they would not, there would surely be some reference to earlier studies in V bomber documentation I would have thought.

A curious story at any rate.

 

Well it was a little late to try to build Barnes Wallace's Victory Bomber, even though that aircraft would have been ideal for the mission.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Bomber

General characteristics

Length: 96 ft (29 m)

Wingspan: 172 ft (52 m)

Height: 11 ft (3.4 m)

Wing area: 2,675 sq ft (248.5 m2)

Gross weight: 104,000 lb (47,174 kg)

Powerplant: 6 × Rolls Royce Merlin or Bristol Hercules V-12 / 14-cyl radial, 1,580–1,356 hp (1,178–1,011 kW) each supercharged piston engines

Performance

Maximum speed: 352 mph (566 km/h, 306 kn) at 32,000 ft (9,754 m)

Service ceiling: 45,000 ft (14,000 m)

Armament

Guns: 4× 0.303 in (7.7 mm) Browning machine guns

Bombs: single 22,000 lb (9,979 kg) bomb

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3 hours ago, DougRichards said:

Well at least someone disagrees with you about the B-29 being the only aircraft capable of delivering atomic weapons in 1945...

(...)

 

Is there a précis available? Because the need of a long, unobstructed bomb bay for carrying the gun-type plutonium bomb, name of Thin Man is the fact behind that video, I already know that.

Of course, when it was found that Thin Man was an engineering dead end because of plutonium physics, and then an implosion-type device was the solution to make a plutonium bomb, the need of the Lancaster, and its long bomb bay, fell by the side.

Finally, I do not understand why so many people use video instead of written documents to transmit knowledge. Reading is faster than watching a video.

Edited by sunday
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Vickers Windsor would probably have been viable too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_Windsor

 

The 'Lancaster can carry the bomb' narrative came up in the 1980  television film 'Enola_Gay:_The_Men,_the_Mission,_the_Atomic_Bomb' starring Patrick Duffy. There is a very odd exchange, ostensibly in the White House, where they are discussing delivery methods and someone brings up the Lancaster. Then they joke 'Well the relationship with our British friends are somewhat strained', and then Tibbetts (played by Duffy) says there is no need for the British Lancaster, the B29 can carry it.

Its the oddest exchange, its almost as if someone had access to the minutes of the meeting and created a narrative out of it without really giving much thought to it. Of course it might be a complete load of bullshit they made up to fill out a miniseries, I just cant quite see why they would have bothered unless it was referencing something they had dug up. Odd anyway.

In any case, I can see the Lancaster as a viable platform for Germany. Its the range that would be the problem for dropping it on Japan, though there was a variant with a saddle tank on the upper fuselage (almost like a 1940's answer to conformal tanks) that might have been viable.

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9 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

nock the effects of accurate targeting, even the RAF was doing it with a few specialist heavy squadrons, so it very clearly had utility on important point targets. I just sometimes idly wonder if city destruction probably was the faster way to end the war. 

One problem is that Germany was in occupation of Europe, so theoretically if the city bombing started to scale up to the level of being decisive, it might have been possible to transfer excess population to other cities such as Paris, where RAF city-carpet bombing missions of the variety used against Germany were not politically viable.

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Well one thing, think of the train loads of people to move that exodus population. That is all trains they are not using for other things, like moving troops, ammunition, tanks, Jews for the final solution. So even if they did that, and I dont think it was viable because the French would be jolly upset about it and would go around murdering all these civilians, its still having an effectont he war effort.

Secondly, who was going to work in all those factories in German when that population moved out?

Thirdly, what is that saying to the German people that they have to export their entire population because they cant keep a roof on the Reich?

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So we went from a war winning strategy to a logistics problem involving rail  schedules? 

The problem with city busting and A-bombs is that they're not needed if the Allies are winning on the ground in Russia and France.   In fact, judging from the occasional successes the Allies had using heavy bombers in the tactical role, (say, Cobra), it can be argued that the heavy bombers should have  been employed in ground support all during the war, and not bombing cities.

Edited by glenn239
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1 hour ago, glenn239 said:

it can be argued that the heavy bombers should have  been employed in ground support all during the war

And it killed MANY USA GIs as well as a General.

Maybe it was Speer who said after the war that the strategic bombing campaign cost the Germans around 30% war production.

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1 hour ago, MiloMorai said:

And it killed MANY USA GIs as well as a General.

Maybe it was Speer who said after the war that the strategic bombing campaign cost the Germans around 30% war production.

So if the RAF did half that amount and I am remember things correctly, the RAF cost Germany 15% of her strategic production on something more like 30% the UK's strategic production?

How many GI's did Panzer Lehr kill during Cobra?  The answer is, one hell of alot less than they would have had the preparation carpet bombings hadn't just taken Panzer Lehr to pieces.

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And PZ Lehr would have not been under strength and undermanned because of lost production.

Despite efforts by U.S. units to identify their positions, inaccurate bombing by the Eighth Air Force killed 111 men and wounded 490. The dead included Bradley's friend and fellow West Pointer Lieutenant General Lesley McNair—the highest-ranking U.S. soldier to be killed in action in the European Theater of Operations.

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14 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

1 Yes. Mosquito proved it was viable. The Pathfinder Force was using them to mark targets in a dive. The subsequent main force attack was often highly concentrated, despite coming in at higher altitude where it was less vulnerable to attack.There is no reason to suppose the same couldnt have worked in Japan (assuming they used something like a B25 or P38) They clearly knew enough about British tactics to realize accurate targeting was possible, because we had been doing it since 1943 (Peenemunde is a really good example of a fairly accurate night main force attack using HE).

2 Undoubtedly. But lets say he was in charge instead of Doolittle, and had backed up the RAF targeting also with firebombing, but more concentrated. Its possible that might just have been enough to start more firestorms. Remember what Speer said about only needing another 6 Hamburgs and the war was over? Judging by the results of bombing Japan, is it not more likely the RAF was onto something when they went for city destruction, and the USAAF insistence on accurate targeting only slowing that process down?

Again, I really did not ought to knock the effects of accurate targeting, even the RAF was doing it with a few specialist heavy squadrons, so it very clearly had utility on important point targets. I just sometimes idly wonder if city destruction probably was the faster way to end the war. After all, it was a lot easier to rebuild a plant, particularly by dispersal, than it was a city and all the associated transport links. Where we went wrong I think was getting obsessed by the morale question which as far as Germany, clearly didn't work.

3 Well, there were some Jewish expat scientists, not least Niels Bohr. Its clearly more complicated than that. The reason to build the bomb was the understanding Germany was ahead in the race, and would probably get one at some point. The expectation was that the bomb would be used on Germany. As it turned out the war ended before that was the case, and Japan got it by default. But yes, its clearly  problematic for the Americans having so many German immigrants. Having not been directly attacked in the same way as Pearl Harbor by Japan, would they political have had the balls to do it? Or would they just hand the damn thing over to Harris and blame him for how it was used? I dont know, but I do now that the expectation they would use a weapon of mass destruction on Germany is completely at variance with the stated aim to only hit relevant military targets with maximum accuracy over Germany, something they again tried to justify postwar with the US strategic bombing survey. Its a very strange schism, and I dont know that historians have every really examined why two branchs of the same force were thinking so completely differently. Security is the most likely explanation I suppose.

Granted on 1 and 2. Ref 3, there’s just so many factors that were unique to Japan rather than Germany re dropping the bomb — Invading Japan would be a pretty apocalyptic campaign, US was getting pretty tired of the war by that point, etc. I guess there might be an a-bomb drop on Berlin if (yeah slim chance) the Bulge had resulted in a massive defeat or something. 
A Cold War with Berlin as a radioactive wasteland would have been.... weird...

Edited by Angrybk
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9 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Vickers Windsor would probably have been viable too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vickers_Windsor

In any case, I can see the Lancaster as a viable platform for Germany. Its the range that would be the problem for dropping it on Japan, though there was a variant with a saddle tank on the upper fuselage (almost like a 1940's answer to conformal tanks) that might have been viable.

The range issue would have been handled by in flight refueling.

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22 hours ago, Angrybk said:

3) I've really been interested lately in whether The Bomb would have been used against Germany.  From what I've read, the idea that it was designed by Jewish expat scientists in a quest for vengeance is very overrated (my German professor in grad school was pretty big on this, and positive about it!), but yeah, I think racism actually had something to do with it. (Although it wasn't anti-Asian racism, just massive anti-Japanese racism by that point for the US). 

The scientists were not in charge of approving the targets.  Nor did they have the authority to create or continue the nuclear weapons research and development projects.  That was entirely in gentile hands: people like Roosevelt, Truman, and Groves.  After they had brought the issue to the authorities' attention, the scientists just did the work they were assigned to do.

Once they had the Bomb, three months after Germany surrendered, they had no reason not to use it on Japan.

Edited by R011
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On 4/8/2021 at 4:47 PM, MiloMorai said:

And PZ Lehr would have not been under strength and undermanned because of lost production.

Despite efforts by U.S. units to identify their positions, inaccurate bombing by the Eighth Air Force killed 111 men and wounded 490. The dead included Bradley's friend and fellow West Pointer Lieutenant General Lesley McNair—the highest-ranking U.S. soldier to be killed in action in the European Theater of Operations.

Even with all the mistakes you mention, (the USAAF ignored the US Army's advice on an east-west approach) the Germans suffered twice the casualties as did the Americans, and the result was an immediate clean breakthrough.   

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Retain enough command flexibility to perform both missions with the heavy bomber arm. Force Germany to defend against the strategic mission, flex the heavy bombers to the ground support mission as circumstances demand. Force multiplier theory in action.

The week of 17-25 September 1944 in Holland comes to mind as a particular circumstance.

On 4/8/2021 at 2:25 PM, MiloMorai said:

And it killed MANY USA GIs as well as a General.

War is hell.

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Strategic bombing was nowhere near accurate to use tactically, unless you count failures as tactical targets.Yes, it was used in Normandy, on a largely static front. And tellingly it was American bombers that missed, which fitted with the Norden in theory should have been more accurate than the RAF.

Heavy bombers needed static targets. They were not that great even at hitting the Tirpitz, and she was at anchor at the time.

 

 

 

Edited by Stuart Galbraith
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2 hours ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

Yes, completely ignoring the context of 2 months of fighting to wear the Germans out first. Do you seriously believe the Normandy campaign was decided by just one air raid?

I think he does.

Maybe Rich can come by and straighten him out, again.

 

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4 hours ago, MiloMorai said:

I think he does.

Maybe Rich can come by and straighten him out, again.

 

No interest in doing so. After so many years of this I've just decided the bullshit artists just need to be ignored. Its just another variant of trolling. I suspect he gets his rocks off by winding up people with his nonsense. The prattle about "I can't get to my Uni library" during COVID is a dead giveaway for an asshat just one step slightly better than the my "house fire destroyed my stash of sekret Pearl Harbour documents only I ever found" bullshit promoted by dabrob/robdab years ago.

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13 hours ago, glenn239 said:

Even with all the mistakes you mention, (the USAAF ignored the US Army's advice on an east-west approach) the Germans suffered twice the casualties as did the Americans, and the result was an immediate clean breakthrough.   

So it is okay to kill a certain number of your own as long as you kill twice that number of the enemy with your action?  All good then....

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2 hours ago, DougRichards said:

So it is okay to kill a certain number of your own as long as you kill twice that number of the enemy with your action?  All good then....

Remember, you're conversing with a serial asshat. The USAAF did not "ignore" U.S. Army "advice" about jack shit. Yet another giveaway this guy hasn't an actual clue what he's talking about.

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