Why No Heavy Bomber for Germany?

I hate using Wiki, but -

The advocates of divebombing first theorized, then believed they had sufficient evidence courtesy of the Condor legion's experience in combat, that divebombing simply gave better results...

 

Dive bombing was seen as a means of getting more 'bang for the mark' against a wide variety of targets; the capability was incorporated into the Ju88 and Me210 as well as the famous Ju87 Stuka. The Luftwaffe gave relatively little attention to maritime missions (other than trying to usurp the meager air assets of the Kriegsmarine) and of course Hitler had hoped to avoid war with Britain. They were fortunate that dive bombing turned out to be such an effective tactic against ships.

 

Only against slowmoving merchant shipping; this gets discussed often on AHF, and usually I bring to the table that as early at Norway in 1940, the Germans were shown this was not the case against well-trimmed naval assets with searoom to manouver Anywhere they were effective....if you drill down far enough you'll find something had compromised the RN's ability to defend itself or to manouver to avoid fall-of-ordnance...the Illustrious steaming in a straight line at top speed to launch aircraft, or the destroyers and cruisers compromised off Crete by fast-dwindling AA munitions and sent back into action without time to re-arm - or untrimmed due to carrying hundreds of evacuated troops aboard.

 

Illustrious steaming in a straight line at top speed to launch aircraft

Any documentation of Illustrious behaving in such a remarkable manner? Holding a steady course long enough for the Germans to hit her 6-7 times? Launching aircraft? - though I have read that there was a manned Skua? destroyed on deck. Gunnery might actually be a better argument; British prewar doctrine made gunfire a carrier's primary defense.

destroyers and cruisers compromised off Crete by fast-dwindling AA munitions and sent back into action without time to re-arm applies to two ships, Gloucester and Fiji, though time to re-arm wasn't a consideration in the course of a few hours at sea. Admiral Cunningham wrote later that "The sending back of Gloucester and Fiji to the Greyhound was another grave error and cost us those two ships. They were practically out of ammunition but even had they been full up I think they would have gone."

AFAIK the destroyers Afridi, Kelly, Kashmir, Greyhound, Jackal, Kipling, Lively, and Panther and the AA cruisers Calcutta, Coventry, and Carlisle among others were free to maneuver at speed when sunk by Ju87s/88s. The destroyers (except Lively and Panther) were hampered by the 40 degree elevation of their 4.7s, but that's another argument in favor of dive bombing.

No tactic in aspect of the war was perfectly effective, but dive bombing proved one of the best ways of hitting ships - fortunate for an air force which had given minimal attention to the problem.

 

What's remarkable about turning and steaming at full speed into the wind to launch carrier aircraft? The fact that the British used steam catapaults to assist aircraft launches didn't eradicate this need. it was one of the reasons why Royal Naval carrier commissions only lasted three years between the wars - at the end of those three-year commissions the engines were shagged from all that steaming into the wind at top speed and needed full reconditioning. As it was, the british entered the war with at least three needing major work, one of the reasons they were down on speed by a couple of knots.

Cunningham's memoir, written ASAP after the end of the war, is acknowledged as being very self-serving; he had many mistakes to attempt to justify - which was the main reason WHY he rushed into print, to get the first word in. For several decades the wrangling over his conduct of the Mediterranean campaign was almost as intense as the debate over the Dowding-Park-Leigh Mallory infighting.

As for the rest, I'll be back at my shelves tomorrow - but in the meantime, if you have access to it, it might be worth looking at what Brian Lavery, the naval historian, says about the usefulness of divebombing off Norway.... in his We Shall Fight On The Beaches.

Illustrious steamed long enough into the wind both to be hit, and to launch at least four Fulmars (one was shot down) and IIRC whatever Swordfish were on deck to clear them away (one of these was also shot down during the initial attack) - for they had to fly on to Malta, refuel, and return to protect Illustrious after she had been hit and was limping towards Malta...during which time they brought down 7-8 Ju88s! One more Fulmar was hit and literally vaporised on the elevator as it was being brought up to the deck, and it was this explosion that, because the elevator was only halfway up, entered the hangar and did so much damage there, destroying 11 Swordfish and 3 more Fulmars.

The three Fulmars were added to Malta's air defence, but one by one were lost during the many raids on Illustrious as she underwent repairs there.

Interestingly, this first divebombing attack when the Illustrious was compromised by sailing into the wind was by BOTH Ju87s and Ju8s, a mixed force of ~25, but a second divebombing attack later that day, between 1600-1700, is only "believed" to have managed to hit the wallowing (down by the stern) carrier once, although I've also read it was belowdeck stores "cooking off".

And of course - in the first attack, the carrier was hit by five bombs at the same time at the stern - with a sixth possibly being the near-miss that damaged her rudders and chains. That's a stick from a Ju88...so the inference has always been that tho' she was hit by six bombs in total during the attack - only two aircraft actually hit her. Out of over two dozen...

 

Steam catapults were a postwar invention, by the British, first tested on the aircraft maintenance ship (ex-light fleet carrier) Perseus in 1949. WWII catapults were mainly hydraulic. Of course carriers steamed into the wind to launch; what I'm skeptical about is that they would hold religiously to a straight course as bombers were actually diving and hitting.....

The majority of bombs dropped or projectiles fired by any method in WWII missed their targets. An effective tactic was one which scored significantly more hits than other techniques, as dive bombing did against maneuvering ships.

 

Bollocks, just lost a long post...

Why? She was still trying to launch fighters, so still needed to steam into the wind.

Yes, that's the important condition - high- and medium-level conventional attacks were not as effective...but what REALLY made divebombing "effective" at sea in terms of number of hits wasn't the tactic - it was the aircraft involved I.E. massed use of bombers...E.G. Jackal, Kipling, Lively - and the JU88's dropping sticks of bombs E.G. Illustrious and others.

But the point is - they required a massed or highly intensive effort to achieve this. It wasn't that divebombing was "great" at sea - it was just "better" than high-and medium-level bombing!

 

Bollocks, just lost a long post...

Did the system make you log on again? I've had that happen a few times, but there's usually a "Restore Auto Saved Content" tab which appears in the Quick Reply block, will get most of it back. Learned that after retyping a couple long ones....

 

On this...

Afridi wasn't - she was nearly stationary after taking on survivors of Bison, and sinking her by gunfire, when attacked from both sides at once; Kelly wasn't - her ability to weave was IIRC restricted by being too close to the shoals off Gavdos Island; Jackal, Kipling and Lively made the tactical error of attempting to negotiate "Bomb Alley" by daylight and without air cover...and were hit with a massive attack by Helbig's LG 1. Incidently, Jackal wasn't sunk by them, just heavily damaged; she was "lost" when scuttled by HMS Jervis when her tow broke and couldn't be reattached.

In Calcutta's case there was another major tactical oversight - once the red warning had been hoisted at 0917 on the 1st of June 1941, 17 minutes after approaching aircraft were detected, a blindfiring "up sun" barrage should have been commenced but wasn't...a double oversight as Calcutta was the only AA cruiser with no radar and was being attacked out of the sun! Coventry, like Afridi, was attacked from all sides by 16 Ju88s even then, only one stick hit her.

Carlisle wasn't sunk; badly damaged, she was listed as a "constructive loss" as not worth repairing.

 

Tho' we're verging further and further off-topic now - it's worth noting that the reputation of divebombing took a bit of a dent in the Luftwaffe as early as the first three days of the war!

The numbers of Stukas involved in Paul-Werner Hozzel's account of the action are very inflated - but it appears there was a massed action of ~80 Ju87s against the Polish "Mlawa Line" north of Warsaw; this line of entrenchments stiffened by a core of 37mm A/Tgun-armed bunkers was ocupied by the Army of Mlodin on the first day of the war; situated between two areas of marshy groud, it defended the approaches to the city of Mlawa.

There were two armoured attacks directly on the Line, both of which were repelled; finally, the position was outflanked by a German light infantry unit that penetrated one of the marshes, and the Army of Mlodin forced to retire from the compromised position...

But the massed attack by Ju87s - a great investment in both time and munitions, the later of which was in increasing short supply - didn't put a single one of the concrete bunkers out of action; the bunker crews were rocked and somewhat demoralized, but they held.

The Ju87 wasn't quite that accurate; only a few hits were actually made directly ON the bunkers. Prior to Poland, Ju87 crews were aiming (sic) in training for accuracies of ~10 metres from target. Doesn't sound like a lot...but it is thirty feet or so

What saved the divebombers' reputation in Poland however was the damage they did attacking more "traditional" corps aircraft targets; they caused great loss in the open entrenched infantry of the Army of Mlodin, and while they were retreating. But in THIS role, they weren't acting much differently than fighters and corps aircraft in the last years of WWI...

 

Afridi was Philip Vian's flagship as commander of 4th Destroyer Flotilla - Captain (D) in British parlance. In Action This Day, Vian recounts Afridi's captain avoiding one attack by putting the helm hard over, so the ship at that moment was not quite as helpless as suggested. The captain wanted to reverse the turn as the next attacker came in, Vian recommended against, and as he writes next "This was fatal.", no excuses.

< dug out Action This Day for some additional information. After the French destroyer Bison had been wrecked by a Stuka attack "despite two further air attacks, [aircraft not specified, but the Luftwaffe didn't always hit] the rescue proceeded, and by eleven-thirty it was completed. The hulk was sunk, and the [British] destroyers proceeded to overtake the convoys...On reaching Admiral Cunningham's force at 2 p.m.......a formation of Stukas arrived simultaneously with us" with the fatal hits scored by the second of two which attacked Afridi. This was 2 1/2 hours after the rescue of Bison's survivors was completed; sadly some thirty of them were lost in their second sinking of the day >

Kelly sank about ten miles south of Gavdos (34.40N, 24.10E) almost immediately after being hit, but I suppose it's possible there were shoals nearby. Incidentally it turns out Gavdos is the southernmost point in Europe, we learn such interesting things in these discussions!

"Bomb Alley" - the area between Crete and North Africa - is almost 200 miles wide, so whatever we think about sending destroyers there, it certainly did not impede their ability to maneuver. The first attack, sinking Lively, occurred almost in mid-"Alley". That was by 14 Ju88s, ironically Lively was the best AA ship of the four. The second attack, by 7 planes, inflicted fatal damage on Kipling and Jackal. In each case all or most of a stick from one plane hit one ship, so 3 of 21 individual attacks resulted in hits.

Correct on Jackal and Carlisle, thanks, sloppy wording on my part.

Dive bombing appears to have been brought into this thread in #38 above in the context of maritime attack, so not so far off topic.

 

Sumat's amiss, can't get to see your last post...

 

At last I can see this....

So Vian inhibited Afridi's ability to manouver to avoid fall-of-shot!

No, the mistake there was tryint to run it in daylight....

 

Good to have you back!

Running through Bomb Alley in daylight is only a mistake if dive bombers are a threat to maneuvering destroyers....glad to see we're on the same page!

 

lemme correct you: towards the end of the war, when the US fighters (P-51Ds) were resorting to cat-and-mouse tactics to catch the me-262s while they were taking off or landing, the germans responded by having TA-152s flying overhead, covering the jet fighters over the airfield. just as you said: two-engine fighters being guarded/escorted by single engine fighters. not a good thing either.

 

Lots of salient points discussed here. I think the lack of a strategic bomber PROGRAM was a good choice for Germany. As was said, Germany's central position in Europe enabled her to CAPTURE overland the enemy's war industrial plant rather than bomb it from afar. Thus, Germany focused on tactical ground-support aircraft. The Soviets did so similarly. It was the "overwater" powers (Britain, US, and Japan) that focused on long-range "Strategic" aircraft.

"Strategic Bombing" campaigns against ecomonic assets are/were EXTREMELY costly to implement and maintain. It really wasn't until mid-1944 that even the US, with all its unleashed (and bombproof) production power, finally brought a strategic PROGRAM to fruition. Germany just didn't have the wherewithal to do that (though it wasted a TREMENDOUS amount of war economy on the "bomber B" program anyway). It was much "cheaper" to produce a fighter defense and instead let the enemy "waste" resources trying to project "strategic" power to the German industrial heartland.

I do think that there was an opportunity for a strategic "Kommando", or Geschwader or so of "specialty" long-range heavy bombers for missions like the British "Dambuster" raid, etc. or other deemed strategic targets. If the RLM had allowed Heinkel to split up the troublesome double-engines of the He-177 and use the He-277's four individual motors (he did so on his own, without permission) right "off the bat", maybe Germany would have had a viable, small strategic air force component.

(Forget the "Amerika Bomber"---that was going to be a "Doolittle Raid"-like "stunt" and never a serious "campaign")

Mac_bolan00: brndrt's post stands as correct despite the good information included in your post. Notice he said "the only ESCORT fighter..." No way was the Me-262 an "escort fighter".

 

nice one on that "escort" qualifier.

if germany developed a bomber force to attack britain, it would not have been strategic bombing but still tactical; to facilitate invasion. strategic would have required at least 2 years (based on bombing effect on germany and japan) before any good results appear.

 

Dear David Scott & Fellow WW II AvFans:

Bader's Briar here - the most important supporter for Goering's new Nazi air force to have a full-blown strategic bombing capability was General Walther Wever, who was promoting the Ural Bomber design competition. He lost his life on June 3rd, 1936 when the He 70 he was going to take a flight to Berlin to honor a passed-on WW I fellow aviator took off WITHOUT its aileron gust locks disengaged, with the He 70 doing an aerial version of a ground loop during its attempted climbout fatally injuring the general.

Strictly as a coincedence, that very same day IN Berlin, the RLM actually issued a so-named "Bomber A" specification for what would become the Heinkel He 177A Greif.

The widely known "dive bombing" task that the He 177A was meant to be afflicted with was laid on it the very day - November 5, 1937 - that it received its RLM airframe number of 8-177 as its final design details were being worked out.

There IS evidence that Ernst Heinkel wanted to have two of the eight prototypes of the He 177, primarily the third and fourth examples to each get a quartet of the then-commonly available Junkers Jumo 211 inverted V12s used for powerplant trials, the exact same selection that first powered the Me 264 V1 first prototype into the air just before Christmas of 1942. Erhard Milch and Ernst Udet overruled him, so none of the eight He 177 prototypes built ever got the quartet of Jumo 211s, most likely the unitized Kraftei (power-egg) versions then being used to power the Ju 88A.

The development of what became the He 274 high-altitude bomber was started as the first-proposed version of the He 177A's airframe to get a quartet of separate engines of any kind as early as mid-October 1941, under the "He 177H" designation.

The KEY item of knowledge that has emerged on why it took so long for any work on a separately engined He 177A-based airframe to even get four "individual" engines emerged with the publishing in 1998 of what appears to be THE most authoritative book on the whole line of Heinkel heavy bomber airframes ever published...the Manfred Griehl/Joachim Dressel book entitled "Heinkel He 177, 277, 274" that I obtained several years ago.

According to what is mentioned in the book in the vicinity of page 52 and 53, it appears that Fat Hermann apparently had no "certain" knowledge of the cobbled-up "high-output" DB 606 coupled powerplants being in the He 177A series heavy bombers up through the mid-August 1942 timeframe. When Goering was being briefed by one Oberst Edgar Petersen on the poor engine installations in the He 177A near to the end of August of 1942, here's what Fat Hermann had to say about that whole mess that we know about causing the engine FLAMMABILITY problem the "gruesome Griffin" was afflicted with due to its RLM-preferred powerplant choice...

"Why has this silly engine suddenly turned up, which is so idiotically welded together? They told me then, there would be two engines connected behind each other, and suddenly there appears this misbegotten monster of welded-together engines one cannot get at!"

The following month (September 1942) Goering took matters into his own hands and RESCINDED the dive-boming mandate that had been laid on the He 177A, making its priority mission of being a heavy bomber bringing it part-way to being the Nazis' answer to the Flying Fortresses and Lancasters of the Allied strategic bomber forces. The way was finally open for the Heinkel firm to start work on what actually became the He 177B, of which three ordered prototypes, then one additional one began to appear as 1943 progressed, with the so-numbered V102 prototype achieving the first known "separately-engined" flight for an He 177A-based airframe on December 20, 1943 from the power of a quartet of DB 603 engines, each powerplant within a ''Kraftei'' unitized installation, complete with annular radiator, normally used for each of the powerplants used on the Heinkel He 219.

What we've seen before as an almost nose-on shot of what appears as a four-engined He 177-based aircraft is actually the first-built "V101" prototype of the He 177B, which ended up here and here as a wrecked airframe at the end of the war in Cheb, in today's Czech Republic. The whole "oft-told story" in a multitude of earlier aviation history books, of the "He 177B" never being more than a "cover designation" for what WOULD become known as Heinkel Flugzeugwerke's evolving entry in the Amerika Bomber program, the nose-wheeled He 277 design is brought into serious doubt from the accounts and text in the Griehl/Dressel book, as the finalized mid-1943 design for the never-built He 277 featured a fuselage appearing to be nothing more than an enlarged He 219A's complete with the twin-tail empennage, adapted to be a fuselage of a heavy bomber, capable of having a six or seven man crew, an 11,100 km total maximum flight distance with a three metric-ton bombload (six SC 500 bombs). All that knowledge comes from the timeline of the Amerika Bomber program itself as retold in their book, along with the fact that the earliest-known mention of the He 277 from ANY official source is dated as February 1943 from the RLM, nearly a year after the Amerika Bomber program specification was itself released to German aviation firms, and six months after Goering's initial mention of his "welded-together engine" complaints regarding the He 177A.

Think about it - there has never been any mention of where the "oft-told story" regarding the origin of the He 177B being only a "cover designation" for the real-world He 277 Amerika Bomber exactly originated, and DEFINITELY NO documents ever verifying that story's accuracy have ever been seen. However, on page 166 of the Griehl/Dressel book is seen a photo of the Heinkel 3-view factory drawing of what the B-5 version of the He 177B was meant to look like...the drawing's title block contains the "8-177" airframe number, along with the designation "B-5" in the title-block's upper right-hand compartment, and VERY closely resembles the He 177 V101 aircraft in the familiar linked photo, that's the first linked photo in the previous paragraph in this reply.

So, if anyone's fortunate enough to have that Griehl/Dressel authored volume on the He 177 and its derivatives in their aviation history "library", get a REAL good look at its pages, and be prepared to lean quite a few "new" things about the most troubled aircraft design to ever enter active service with the Third Reich's Luftwaffe.

Yours Sincerely,

Bader's Briar....!!

 

Hello. I'm new to this forum. Re why Germany had no heavy bombers: in one of Albert Speer's books (he wrote 3 of them and I don't remember which it was) he said Goering told him this: At our conferences, the Fuehrer only asks me how many bombers we are producing. He doesn't ask what type.

To impress hitler with numbers, Goering built large numbers of the lighter bombers, instead of small numbers of heavy bombers. This was said to Speer before Speer became armaments minister in 1942.

But it's also true, as someone else pointed out, that Goering's main focus was ground-attack bombers, built at a time when infantry support was considered the crucial task of bombers. Dive bombers and light bombers were the right mix for this role. Strategic bombers were not considered necessary or useful in the early part of the war.

However Germany did develop a 4-engined bomber. This surprised me, because I hadn't read about it before. But it turns out the Heinkel 177 Greif was 4 engined, and was used on the eastern front. "At first glance the aircraft appeared to be twin engined, but it was equipped with four DB 601s, linked in pairs on each wing". (from The World Almanac of WWII, Brigadier Peter Young). Its bomb carrying capacity was 4500 pounds. This aircraft wasn't used much because it kept having engine flame-outs. It got the nickname "the Flaming Coffin".

Craig.

 

This wasn't a uniquely German problem - CHURCHILL was ther same! He blithely talked about squadrons of aircraft, as if they could pop up out of nowhere...and forgetting that a squadron of aircraft...12 rostered, an airfield defence flight or spare flight of four...and several more "spares" when others were being worked on...also meant 220-240 trained personnel including dozens that had gone through the RAF's technical training side, and 22-24 aircrew (in a fighter squadron)!