German Tonnage War Strategy

A fairly interesting read. Like others I'm skeptical the submersable seaplane tender would work. Alternately consider this: Rather than attack the UK directly, the Sea Lion plan, use the German Air Force in close coordination with the navy to blockade. Specifically

1. Create a larger air reconisance force than the single KG 200 historically provided.

2. Assign at least 300 bombers to attacking Brit cargo ships in the western approaches (south of Ireland), the Irish sea, and as far into the Atlantic as practical. Two secondary air groups would fly from Norway and Holland to interdict cargo ships along the east coast of the UK.

3. Another air group would specialize in attacking ports.

4. A fourth group would be responsible for diversionary attacks on British industry in a effort to draw RAF defenses away from the ports and coastal attacks.

5. Crash programs to provide air dropped mines and torpedos.

6. Provision of auxillary (bomb bay) fuel tanks to increase range of the bombers.

7. Development programs for navigation and search aids for the long range interdiction aircraft.

Historically one KG of the Condor aircraft and two other KG using shorter ranged He 115, He 111, Do 17, eventually Ju 88 were able to sink a fair number of British cargo ships in 1940-41. From July 1940 though April 1941 these KG usually with barely 100 operational aircraft were able to account for 10% to 15% of all British ships sunk in those months. How much more damage could have been accomplished had Hitler firmly enforced cooperation between the air and naval forces?

I'm not expecting a instant result with this, It would be the spring of 1941 before serious effects result, and I think it would take until the autum before any decisive result could be had.

A few questions:

A. I've seen remarks about auxillary fuel tanks for the bombers. anyone have a refrence for when these were available & ow they affected preformance?

B. Air droppable mines and torpedos wer not available in 1940, correct? What were the techincal problems, and when were they fianlly resiolved?

 

IIRC KG200 had a long range recon Staffeln (Sp?) but was a very "mixed" unit, it even actually operated some captured B17 bombers for dropping agents, another of it's Staffeln was planned to receive torpedo equipped Fw190 but was never formed. Most of the Condors went to KG40 , historically I/KG40 operated from Bordeaux-Merignac and was responsible for most of the Atlantic flights while III/KG40 operated from Norway against the PQ convoys.

There eventually were many specialized anti-shipping units in the Luftwaffe, if you look at the OOB for the late 1943 Med operations you can find a lot of units with specialized anti-shipping planes.
A "Britain first" strategy without attacking the Soviet Union may actually work provided it doesn't trigger a US entry in the war.
As the British Isles are too tough a nut to invade directly the Germans must target the British Empire and it's comunications lines (and as a side effect making it very hard for FDR to sell "defend Britain" to the US public). Historically the Germans never came close to winning the Battle of the Atlantic but had they put more resources into it they could have done better.

There is a limit to how fast the U-Boat force can be expanded but if you look at 1944 boat production they could have done more than they historically did with an earlier start. A couple of hundred operational boats in late 1941 backed by a dozen long range Gruppen is not outside the German industrial capability and would be a very tough opponent for the British that were short of long range planes, the single pilot British heavies are not well suited for long duration ops.

One key element of this is pre-war planning, the roughly 2million tonns of merchant shipping captured by the allies because they could not reach a friendly port at the time of the DOW is an unforgivable mistake, but Hitler did not think "navy" and Mussolini simply ... did not think.

 

Thanks for the analysis. My thought is this 'blockade' strategy must bear have results before mid 1942. Otherwise the USSR and US will be to powerfull in arms production and too close to effective military intervention. So the sort of effectiveness at attacking ships that existed from sometime i 1942 or 1943 must be developed sooner. Of course not all the technology and skill of 1943 can be had within a year, but enough must be in the air to sink the desired weight of cargo before early to mid 1942.

Hence my questions about the details of air delivered torpedos and mines. Also my numbers from various sources are a bit vague about how many air groups were specializing in naval reconissance and attacks.