The Plane that won the second world war

[SYN_Mike77]

Here is an interesting article about a certain plane that has some impact on our favorite sim.

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/7/7/2037737/-The-Plane-that-Saved-the-World

[javelina]

Interesting read, thanks for the post.

[oc2209]

I'm glad they didn't choose a really predictable plane. I mostly agree with the logic of their final choice as well as the runners-up.

 

Unlike the B-17, P-51, C-47, Spitfire, etc, the Sturm is the only plane that directly influenced the frontlines throughout the war.

 

Even if the Sturm wasn't an ideal tank killer, the sheer volume of them in action had to reduce German combat efficacy on a broad level; psychologically, logistically, and of course, practically.

[Gambit21]

The original A-10.

[BraveSirRobin]

I love planes as much as anyone, but it was probably the Liberty ship or the deuce and a half that won World War II.  

[zan64]

3 hours ago, BraveSirRobin said:

I love planes as much as anyone, but it was probably the Liberty ship or the deuce and a half that won World War II.  

close, Krushchev in his autobiography said it was American trucks - which relied on ships like the liberty ships to get there. 

 

I read a comment from somebody somewhere, whose dad or grandpa was on the eastern front in the german army and an officer in logisitics in the caucasus front. He said he never saw direct combat but knew pretty much things were going to hell 1942 as basically the motorpool he oversaw ceased to exist due to fuel and lack of spares, etc. 

[Guest deleted@83466]

“The line between disorder and order lies in logistics”

[oc2209]

18 hours ago, BraveSirRobin said:

I love planes as much as anyone, but it was probably the Liberty ship or the deuce and a half that won World War II.  

 

The article did, I think, mention the inherent absurdity of saying any one plane won anything. But if you had to pick a plane, etc.

 

15 hours ago, zan64 said:

close, Krushchev in his autobiography said it was American trucks - which relied on ships like the liberty ships to get there.

 

Not to split hairs, but I've always understood the American contribution to Russian military capacity to be one of an offensive nature more than a defensive one.

 

As in, Western aid was of very little use to Russia in '41 and much of '42, when their war was almost exclusively defensive in nature and said aid had only arrived in small numbers if at all. When the time came for the massive offensives of '44 and '45, that's when American trucks would have mattered immensely.

 

It could thus be argued that Russia managed to defend itself from the German invasion without Western aid; but the liberation of Russia was greatly expedited and facilitated by Western aid.

 

Which is ironic, of course, considering the speed with which Russia was able to reach Berlin; something the Western powers, at that point, surely didn't want.

[Gambit21]

19 hours ago, BraveSirRobin said:

I love planes as much as anyone, but it was probably the Liberty ship or the deuce and a half that won World War II.  

 

Fair enough.

In that case, we finally know who actually won WWII.

 

John D. Hertz, founder of the Yellow Truck and Coach Manufacturing Company, designer of the GMC CCKW 2 1/2 ton 6x6 truck.

 

[CUJO_1970]

WW2 was won by the collective 4-engine heavy bomber force of the RAF and the USAAF.

 

The end.

[oc2209]

3 hours ago, CUJO_1970 said:

WW2 was won by the collective 4-engine heavy bomber force of the RAF and the USAAF.

 

The end.

 

Not really.

 

A simple way to prove that strategic bombing by itself doesn't win wars, is the following thought exercise:

 

Imagine Russia capitulated in 1942. Germany moves all of its army and air forces west. The Luftwaffe is able to put up stronger defenses. Daylight bombing raids aren't possible in 1943 as a result; the losses would be unsustainable. Only by '44 would America have built up enough of an air force to properly escort daylight bombers. Meanwhile, D-Day invasions would be resisted by an extra, oh, several million German soldiers who'd not been killed and maimed in Russia. Meaning D-Day in '44 would also fail with absolute certainty. It'd take until '45 at least to soften the Germans up, and untold more Western Allied casualties to do so.

 

Germany would still probably lose the war eventually, simply by attrition. And we'd probably have to nuke them to force a capitulation. But that in no way validates the claim that strategic bombing--with conventional bombs--won the war.

 

Strategic bombing facilitated the more rapid closure of the war. It didn't win anything. Not even close.

 

It could be argued that for all the disruption to German industry it caused (Japan could have been--and was--strangled to death industrially by submarines alone), just as much inefficiency was made in American industry.

 

Imagine that, instead of making thousands of 4-engined bombers, the British and Americans instead devoted that capacity to producing a vastly superior tank (compared to the Sherman, Churchill, etc). Imagine the practical and morale value from not being outgunned and outarmored by the Germans.

 

If Germany hadn't been bled dry on the Eastern Front, you better believe the mediocrity of Anglo-American tank design would've been a much more critical flaw. We'd be facing inherently superior designs, but a hell of a lot more of them. The Sherman would go from being barely good enough to abjectly inadequate.

[Eisenfaustus]

18 hours ago, CUJO_1970 said:

WW2 was won by the collective 4-engine heavy bomber force of the RAF and the USAAF.

 

The end.

Even if you exclude lent-and-lease equipment and strategic bombing from the equation I see no way the third reich could have beaten the Soviet Union for good. 
So I think if we actually want to name the one weapon system without which the war might actually have taken a different outcome it should be the red army rifleman. 

[Rjel]

The IL-2 was the dominating force for the Allies in North Africa, moving north through the Mediterranean, then the Invasion of Western Europe and, of course, the whole of the Pacific. Obviously.

[oc2209]

4 hours ago, Rjel said:

The IL-2 was the dominating force for the Allies in North Africa, moving north through the Mediterranean, then the Invasion of Western Europe and, of course, the whole of the Pacific. Obviously.

 

Heavy bombers helped with none of the above. So that only leaves the C-47 as a candidate for helping across all fronts. As for Japan in particular, it was the Hellcat that deserves top honors there; but Japan would've lost regardless. Japan's inevitable failure was always much more assured than Germany's; Japan had all of England's economic weaknesses as a small island nation, with none of England's naval strengths or organizational abilities.

 

The funny thing about North Africa, is that, again, if Russia folded, the Germans would've had a lot more of everything to spare for the entire Mediterranean theater. Given the difficulties the Allies faced in Italy against a threadbare German defense, you can well imagine how an extra few hundred thousand German soldiers would've slowed things to a crawl of WWI proportions.

 

Everything once again goes back to the Sturmovik. The more Germans the Russians killed on their front, the less Germans were in every other front. Which made everything the Western Allies did that much more successful.

 

Imagine another alt-history scenario. Imagine if Germany didn't bother to invade Russia in '41. Stalin wasn't itching for war so soon, so peace there would be assured for at least a few years. Germany could've devoted everything it had to wiping the British out in Egypt and beyond. There's nothing the Western Allies could do in response, circa '41 and most of '42. Which means that both D-Day and Torch would've been monumentally more difficult.

 

Any way you slice it, Russia's continued existence as an enemy of Germany had a far greater influence on every other theater outside of the Pacific, more than any Western Allied plane design ever could. That's why it stands to reason that any plane that enhanced Russia's battlefield performance also has more influence than Western planes. German soldier body count is the only thing that matters in this equation. 

[cardboard_killer]

1 hour ago, oc2209 said:

The funny thing about North Africa, is that, again, if Russia folded, the Germans would've had a lot more of everything to spare for the entire Mediterranean theater. Given the difficulties the Allies faced in Italy against a threadbare German defense, you can well imagine how an extra few hundred thousand German soldiers would've slowed things to a crawl of WWI proportions.

 

Time was the problem. The Germans would have had to garrison a huge amount of territory in the USSR. Even with the vast bulk of their army in the USSR, they never really controlled more than the roads and rails in a good portion of it. To actually liquidate the Soviet partisans and exploit the gains would have been very manpower intensive.

 

The WW1 analogy is good. The Germans beat Russia and were able to transfer about a third of their troops from the Eastern front back to France. Where they lost the war.

 

[Eisenfaustus]

3 hours ago, oc2209 said:

The funny thing about North Africa, is that, again, if Russia folded, the Germans would've had a lot more of everything to spare for the entire Mediterranean theater.

The Germans even failed to adequately supply the Afrikakorps as it was - a much larger force would have been hardly sustainable. Maybe attacking Palastine through turkey might have been an option...

 

But all that is a very vague. Would a soviet defeat and the capture of the suez canal have enable the Wehrmacht to invade Britain successfully? I doubt it. Would it be enough to bring them back to a negotiating table? We'll never know.

 

What we do know is that the Heer and Luftwaffe had alraedy been weakened beyond repair in the east before the daylight raids started in earnest and before the Allies landed in Italy. But even if that wouldn't have been the case - the Western Allies planned for a war of attrition. That kind of war Germany would neither win against the British Empire nor the USA - and never against both at once.

[oc2209]

2 hours ago, cardboard_killer said:

 

Time was the problem. The Germans would have had to garrison a huge amount of territory in the USSR. Even with the vast bulk of their army in the USSR, they never really controlled more than the roads and rails in a good portion of it. To actually liquidate the Soviet partisans and exploit the gains would have been very manpower intensive.

 

The WW1 analogy is good. The Germans beat Russia and were able to transfer about a third of their troops from the Eastern front back to France. Where they lost the war.

 

 

There are major differences from WWI Germany to WWII, regarding Russia. Chief among these are that Nazified Germany had a much greater will to continue fighting despite staggering losses. WWII Germany suffered far more on the homefront than WWI Germany did, yet still fought on with considerable energy. Much the same way as Stalin's government was able to keep Russia cohesive in the face of German invasion.

 

The second critical difference is that if Russia folded in WWII, it would have been early (because once the myth of German invincibility had been shattered as it was when the Germans failed before Moscow, the Russians would never give up). If the invasion had begun a month earlier, if Hitler hadn't stopped the push on Moscow for weeks to divert south, blah blah blah. Best case scenario for Russian capitulation would have been the fall of Moscow before the end of '41. The Germans would still be relatively fresh at this point in the war. Not so with Russia's collapse in 1917-18. It was too late to matter for the Germans then; both because they lacked the totalitarian political unity of Nazi Germany, and because they were several years more war-weary. Also recall that WWI Germany had accomplished nothing in the west, which was a huge morale drain. WWII Germany owned the European mainland.

 

Beyond all of that, there's still the scenario where Germany doesn't attack Russia at all. That's what guarantees British collapse in Africa and the Middle East. Considering how far Rommel got with virtually no resources allotted to him, it doesn't take a stretch of credulity at all to guess what he'd do with a fraction of Barbarossa's resources.

 

And finally, in the event Germany had to maintain large Eastern armies either to control Russia after it surrendered, or on the Russian border if the invasion never happened--these soldiers would obviously never be crack units.

 

It's the crack units, the veterans from France and Poland, who were ground up in Russia. These were the core of the German army, and impossible to replace. Just like the Luftwaffe subsequently, any replacements made to pre-war trained formations were diluted in quality and cohesion by comparison.

 

24 minutes ago, Eisenfaustus said:

The Germans even failed to adequately supply the Afrikakorps as it was - a much larger force would have been hardly sustainable. Maybe attacking Palastine through turkey might have been an option...

 

See my statements above.

 

If Germany devoted enough resources of all kinds to the Mediterranean, including air support, proper escorts for transports, etc, I think the difference would've been more than enough to finish the British off.

 

24 minutes ago, Eisenfaustus said:

But all that is a very vague. Would a soviet defeat and the capture of the suez canal have enable the Wehrmacht to invade Britain successfully? I doubt it. Would it be enough to bring them back to a negotiating table? We'll never know.

 

No, the British would never surrender. And nothing would ever allow the Germans to build up their invasion force faster than America could build up a defensive force to supplement British defenses of the UK.

 

Germany would've needed to plan and prepare for UK invasion for at least 5 years before it was practical. And they weren't prepared, so it was never practical.

 

24 minutes ago, Eisenfaustus said:

What we do know is that the Heer and Luftwaffe had alraedy been weakened beyond repair in the east before the daylight raids started in earnest and before the Allies landed in Italy. But even if that wouldn't have been the case - the Western Allies planned for a war of attrition. That kind of war Germany would neither win against the British Empire nor the USA - and never against both at once.

 

Yeah, agreed.

 

But Russia's collapse or non-intervention would greatly complicate the Western Allies' plans.

 

For one thing, if North Africa fell to the Germans, that means the Allies have no way of bombing Romanian oil production. For another, if Russia lost or was still at peace with Germany, in either case, Germany could get some oil from Russia, if not the Middle East. Point being: Germany has more access to oil in this scenario.

 

Fast forward to 1944-45. Germany has all its fighters on industrial defense; strategic bombing is less effective; Me-262 production is greater, with more available fuel. That alone could eventually stop Allied strategic bombing completely, until the Allies can field jet fighters in sufficient numbers and quality to counter the Me-262 threat.

 

All of this delays the end of WWII in Europe to at least 1946, or however many nukes it would take on German soil to force their surrender without an accompanying invasion.

Edited July 11, 2021 by oc2209
Really didn't want this to merge into one monster post.

[Ghost666]

Ok, I have read through all the above post, some very interesting theories. but I believe the weapon system that beat Hitler. Was a a german made system, of very little fame. The Walther P-38. Once this weapon was applide correctly once. Then Germany surrendered.  

[cardboard_killer]

1 hour ago, oc2209 said:

See my statements above.

 

If Germany devoted enough resources of all kinds to the Mediterranean, including air support, proper escorts for transports, etc, I think the difference would've been more than enough to finish the British off.

 

Logistics cannot be solved by more troops, only by more stuff or less troops.

 

1 hour ago, oc2209 said:

Beyond all of that, there's still the scenario where Germany doesn't attack Russia at all.

 

Besides the fact that the stated goal of the Nazi party was to seize a large chunk of the USSR, kill everyone in that chunk and replace them with "aryans", Germany could not have maintained a war economy without Soviet goods (and after 1941, slaves). And the Soviets wanted things the Germans either could not (hard currency) or would not (high quality industrial machinery) give. I recommend Adam Tooze's Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy.

 

1 hour ago, oc2209 said:

The second critical difference is that if Russia folded in WWII, it would have been early

 

Well, it would have to have been since the Germans lost a million men in 1941 just getting to Moscow. Again, the pacification of the USSR would have taken almost as much in terms of military effort as the continued operations. In taking just Poland and Ukraine from Russia in 1917, the Imperial Army had to leave more than a million men behind, and even those numbers did not, as expected, provide food for Germany, which was starved into submission.

[oc2209]

38 minutes ago, cardboard_killer said:

Logistics cannot be solved by more troops, only by more stuff or less troops.

 

Not true in this case. The Germans lost a good deal of supplies en route, due to a lack of sufficient air/sea support. Had Barbarossa not been having resources reserved for it prior to its launch, and been given top priority after launch, there certainly would've been enough of everything to better protect the supply lines into North Africa. That means more transport planes, more 109s providing escort and neutralizing Malta more thoroughly, more bombers disrupting Allied airfields and shipping, etc, etc.

 

There is absolutely no way that the British hold Egypt if Germany hadn't been slightly distracted in Russia. This is not opinion, but born from concrete knowledge we have from how close the British came to losing even to a severely deprived Rommel. The only reason the British survived was that Hitler's attention, like the Eye of Sauron, was looking elsewhere.

 

48 minutes ago, cardboard_killer said:

Besides the fact that the stated goal of the Nazi party was to seize a large chunk of the USSR, kill everyone in that chunk and replace them with "aryans", Germany could not have maintained a war economy without Soviet goods (and after 1941, slaves). And the Soviets wanted things the Germans either could not (hard currency) or would not (high quality industrial machinery) give.

 

And back when Hitler was still relatively sane, his own timetable for the invasion of Russia was, if I'm not mistaken, '45 or later. The urgency of the invasion only came as his megalomania and departure from reality grew.

 

I'm not saying Germany and Russia would be BFFs and never kill each other. I'm saying it didn't have to occur in '41.

Stalin absolutely did not want war in '41, as he also knew he was unprepared. Therefore, war between Germany and Russia was by no means a guarantee prior to the mid '40s or later. It was known to all parties as a vague inevitability, but nothing beyond that. Roughly similar to America's own Cold War with Russia that lasted decades (and possibly never really stopped, at least in a political sense).

 

56 minutes ago, cardboard_killer said:

Well, it would have to have been since the Germans lost a million men in 1941 just getting to Moscow. Again, the pacification of the USSR would have taken almost as much in terms of military effort as the continued operations.

 

True, except there wouldn't be millions of more casualties after '41. And, again, it would no longer require crack units with the best equipment, but rather the dregs of the army and the armies of German allies to fight the partisans. This is something the Romanian/Hungarian armies could be trusted with far more than resisting the encirclement at Stalingrad.

[Irishratticus72]

The plane that won the second World War, was a truck. 

[AndyJWest]

4 hours ago, Irishratticus72 said:

The plane that won the second World War, was a truck. 

 

And the truck that won the second world war was an infrastructure capable of producing vehicles, vessels, aircraft, munitions, fuel, trained troops...

[NoelGallagher]

you corrected the tile well

the plane won the ww2 YES no doubt 

but the plane that saved the world ? hmm 

what a naive person he is ..

Edited July 12, 2021 by NoelGallagher

[unlikely_spider]

5 hours ago, Irishratticus72 said:

The plane that won the second World War, was a truck. 

And the real victory of WW2 was the friends we made along the way.

[Irishratticus72]

3 hours ago, AndyJWest said:

 

And the truck that won the second world war was an infrastructure capable of producing vehicles, vessels, aircraft, munitions, fuel, trained troops...

No, just 6 wheels and a driver called Ivan. 

[CUJO_1970]

Yeah, so it was the Allied 4-engine bomber.

 

Without them there is not the fast attrition in trained Luftwaffe pilots - and more resources may be diverted from Reich Defense echelons to both the east and the west.

 

As an example, in the east, where FW-190 fighters and bombers were always in precious short supply (never more than 200 odd FW-190 aircraft together at one time across the entire eastern front) - now they may be diverted to further intercept and destroy IL2 ground attack aircraft, something they were extremely effective in doing, 190 pilots like Kittel, Brandel, Romm etc shot those planes out of the sky in droves. Just two or three additional Geschwaders of FW190 would have had a terrible effect on IL2 attack formations.

 

As far a six-wheeled Ivan is concerned, he now has the full attention of a much larger 190F series ground attack force.

 

Luftwaffe fighters are now largely unburdened with the heavier armor and armament requirement to break up and destroy heavy bomber formations. Sturmoviks were largely massacred by aircraft carrying only 1 or 2 20mm cannon. Larger numbers of aircraft not needed for bomber interception by day and night like Me110, Me410, Ju-188 etc are now tactically free to turn their ample ordinance on, and destroy your stuff on the ground as well. The Luftwaffe flak arm (which was massive) are now pointing those 88s at your tanks and stuff, in addition to the Sturmoviks, which as it turns out are really starting to catch hell now.

 

Also - say goodbye to the fuel famine for a much longer period of time. Tanks and aircraft have much larger supplies now, along with the infrastructure to move enough of it around to be a very big problem. (Germany will also be hanging on to those oil fields in Romania for a lot longer now.)

 

In the end, German industrial output itself may not change quite as much - but where it does is going to be much much more effective is in logistics and moving things around from place to place. German civilians are also not being massacred from the air at a prodigious rate both night and day in their cities so they feeling much better as well.

 

No aircraft, no Allied fighter and certainly no IL2 Sturmovik could ever hope to have a modicum of the effect that the combined 4-engine heavy bomber force of the RAF and USAAF with the around the clock bombing campaign had on Germany. Comparing a tactical force to a strategic force in its effect will be found very wanting.

 

This is not a discussion about if Germany could win the war - it's a discussion about what aircraft had the greatest effect in winning the war. In this regard the Allied 4-engine heavy bomber is without equal.

Edited July 13, 2021 by CUJO_1970

[oc2209]

1 hour ago, CUJO_1970 said:

Yeah, so it was the Allied 4-engine bomber.

 

Without them there is not the fast attrition in trained Luftwaffe pilots - and more resources may be diverted from Reich Defense echelons to both the east and the west.

 

As an example, in the east, where FW-190 fighters and bombers were always in precious short supply (never more than 200 odd FW-190 aircraft together at one time across the entire eastern front) - now they may be diverted to further intercept and destroy IL2 ground attack aircraft, something they were extremely effective in doing, 190 pilots like Kittel, Brandel, Romm etc shot those planes out of the sky in droves. Just two or three additional Geschwaders of FW190 would have had a terrible effect on IL2 attack formations.

 

Um...

 

Not to point out the obvious, but none of what you outline above has even the slightest meaning prior to late 1943. As in, that would be the first time the Luftwaffe starts taking unsustainable fighter pilot losses.

 

So what were the Russians doing from mid '41 to Kursk, without any appreciable impact from the Anglo-American bombing offensive? Those were the crucial years; those were the years Russia was most in danger of losing (even if at a low probability). German offensive power in the east was dealt 3 death blows prior to the end of '43: first, at Moscow; second, at Stalingrad; third at Kursk. Germany was offensively inert in the east by the time the Anglo-American bombing effort started to show results. It only decisively damaged German industry in '44, and by then, the war was lost for Germany in so many ways it was more like making the rubble bounce. In other words, it was more rapidly concluding a foregone conclusion. 

 

1 hour ago, CUJO_1970 said:

This is not a discussion about if Germany could win the war - it's a discussion about what aircraft had the greatest effect in winning the war. In this regard the Allied 4-engine heavy bomber is without equal.

 

My whole point in bringing up scenarios where Germany could win, was to illustrate that heavy bombers would have little-to-no impact on the ending of the war in those scenarios.

 

If Russia falls early in the war--or, again, never is invaded at all--the only way Germany surrenders is by military body count or by nukes. Strategic bombing without millions of German dead in Russia would be far, far less effective than it appeared.

 

Here's another simple way of looking at the equation:

 

Which is worth more:

 

A) Millions of German soldiers dead and wounded, thousands of planes and tanks destroyed, veteran core of the army annihilated, by 1943, in Russia.

 

...or...

 

B) Hundreds of thousands of dead German civilians, reduced industrial output, reduced fuel output, after 1944.

 

Point (A) is what the Sturmovik contributed to.

 

Point (B) is what the heavy bomber contributed to.

 

I leave it to the reader to decide. I'm getting bored with repeating myself here, to defend what I consider self-evident truths.

 

The impediment to truth is that people see all of these issues with political and personal antipathies instead of looking at it like the dispassionate numbers game that it is. I don't care if faction X was bad and faction Y was good. I believe in giving credit where it's due. That's all.

[CUJO_1970]

Yes, Russia - along with General Winter did a good job of defending itself in battles that were not decided by the IL2 Sturmovik, 3 years before the war was over. Those defensive battles also did not win Russia the war.

 

What aircraft had the greatest role in winning the war? The answer is and always will be the strategic heavy bombardment arm of the two most powerful nations on the planet: England and the United States. The 4-engine heavy bomber.

 

You can't compare the tactical arm of one nation with the strategic arm of two, more powerful nations. Especially when Stalin and the socialists were so reliant on

 

(A) more powerful nation #1 The United States of America, who on it's own had a vastly more powerful air force than the soviets.

 

and

 

(B) more powerful nation #2 England, who also on their own had a more powerful air force than the soviets.

 

In fact, I'm not sure the IL2 Sturmovik is even in the top 5 of most effective aircraft of WW2, and certainly not in anything less than overwhelming numbers (which would be true of almost any front line ground assault aircraft). Claiming it's the aircraft that won the war does not hold up to scrutiny of any kind.

 

Simply put: Was the IL2 Sturmovik so good the Germans could have held out even one week longer with it? No. The FW190G/F is arguably a better ground attack aircraft and I would choose it every day of the week over the IL2 (and twice on Sundays)...But what if the Germans had...I don't know...their own strategic bomber force capable of leveling those factories that were moved beyond the Urals?

 

Now, too make the point even further...what contribution did the IL2 Sturmovik play in winning the war in the Pacific? What role did the Allied 4-engine heavy bomber play in the Pacific?

 

There is no real argument to be had here.

 

[oc2209]

15 hours ago, CUJO_1970 said:

Yes, Russia - along with General Winter did a good job of defending itself in battles that were not decided by the IL2 Sturmovik, 3 years before the war was over. Those defensive battles also did not win Russia the war.

 

General Winter wouldn't have achieved much if the Russians didn't actually do things in the inclement weather. This is frequently overlooked by people who just assume frostbite kills off all the invaders.

 

According to German accounts I've read, the Russians were crafty bastards. This includes: digging entrenchments rapidly, even in frozen ground; moving artillery into areas that seem inaccessible; and flying in conditions that most other air forces would consider grounding weather.

 

And yes, those defensive battles did win the war for Russia. They certainly would've had an offensively worthless German army on their doorstep for a longer period of time without Western Allied help; but Germany effectively died in front of Moscow in '41. Barbarossa was the last time the Germans had a well-trained, effective fighting force. Every time their army was shattered and put back together with duct tape, it lost efficacy and striking power. The Stalingrad offensive was a joke if you think about it; an unsustainable push into mostly worthless territory that left massive, weakly-protected flanks. The oil fields at the end of the offensive would have been an asset, obviously--but that was under the assumption the Russians would just sit there and ignore the tactical blunder the Germans made in the process. Kursk was the ultimate joke. A Japanese banzai charge into multiple layers of fortified defense. All proof that Germany had no punch left in it. If you want to use a boxing analogy, Germany was dead on its feet. Quite literally. When you burn up all of your offensive power in failed campaigns in the East, obviously that means you won't be able to adequately push in other fronts; including across the English Channel, or in North Africa. That's what Germany did. That's why I say the war was lost in Russia. A Germany without offensive strength is a Germany on the defensive; which is the same as a slow death. 

 

15 hours ago, CUJO_1970 said:

Now, too make the point even further...what contribution did the IL2 Sturmovik play in winning the war in the Pacific? What role did the Allied 4-engine heavy bomber play in the Pacific?

 

As I've said, the Japanese shot their arrow at Pearl Harbor. Badly, I might add. Bombing Japan itself meant nothing, as the Japanese were down to trickles of raw materials because of America's very effective annihilation of the Japanese merchant fleet.

 

Japan was always destined to lose because its carrier fleet (its only striking power) was missing two critical components: effective radar, and effective radio communication between pilots.

 

If America had been a little more patient, we could've starved the Japanese island garrisons into submission everywhere. Could've saved a lot of American blood that way. Why bother taking Iwo Jima by force, for instance, when six months of starvation would accomplish the same end?

 

So, no, the heavy bomber achieved absolutely nothing in the Pacific. It firebombed a lot of civilians; it bombed factories that, at best, would've produced a few hundred planes a year with no fuel to fly them or trained pilots to use them, or carriers to fly them from. The only bomber that was necessary was the Enola Gay. I'm pretty sure we didn't need to build tens of thousands of 4-engined bombers to deliver a few nukes.

[MiloMorai]

oc2209, if there had been no SBC in Europe, how would the fighters flown against the SBC have been used? There was around 24 Gruppen in the West and Reich.   

[MiloMorai]

thtrloss.gif (762×713) (don-caldwell.we.bs) from don-caldwell.we.bs/jg26/thtrlosses.htm

[CUJO_1970]

2 hours ago, oc2209 said:

 

~snip~

 

Nothing you wrote said anything about the IL2.

 

21 hours ago, CUJO_1970 said:

This is not a discussion about if Germany could win the war - it's a discussion about what aircraft had the greatest effect in winning the war.

 

 

[oc2209]

2 hours ago, MiloMorai said:

oc2209, if there had been no SBC in Europe, how would the fighters flown against the SBC have been used? There was around 24 Gruppen in the West and Reich.   

 

It would have been necessary to have Luftwaffe fighters stationed across the channel for the inevitable Allied invasion and the preliminary 'softening up' phase leading up to the invasion. There would, in other words, be an aerial meatgrinder of apocalyptic proportions in N/W France even without the strategic bombing campaign. Germany would lose that air battle, eventually. However, there would probably be significantly higher Allied fighter losses, as they wouldn't be fighting from the tactical advantage that high-altitude escort provided (and the fact that bombers served as bait, which was always a means of dividing German strength). That said, there also wouldn't be ~10 men lost per downed aircraft, so the actual bodycount for the Allies would probably not change much.

 

Point being: Germany would not be able to afford to leave the area totally unprotected.

 

Contrast this with a scenario in which Russia is no longer a combatant; and yes, every single frontline German plane could be moved West from the East, leaving only second-rate planes to murder partisans with.

 

1 hour ago, CUJO_1970 said:

 

Nothing you wrote said anything about the IL2.

 

 

Well, yeah, I already explained it before in this thread. Like I said, I'm getting tired of repeating myself when people are just hellbent on not seeing the obvious.

 

Russia wipes out the German army at its peak level of performance, multiple times. That means the Western Allies don't have to face fresh German armies (you know, the kind that pushed the Allies out of France, the Balkans, and Norway); they are always going to be facing a qualitatively depleted German army. That, in turn, means everything the Western Allies do (Torch, D-Day landings, Italy, etc.) is more successful because all operations are being opposed by fewer German troops and materials than would otherwise be the case (if they weren't dead/destroyed in Russia).

 

Anything (as in, the Sturmovik) that contributed directly to the Russians destroying the German army for 3 solid years before Normandy, logically, inescapably, has more impact on the war and the German ability to successfully wage offensive war, than something (heavy bombers) that only contributed to the German collapse in the final 2 years of the war.

 

Something else I'd like to add, since I've noticed that you totally ignored the valid points I made about Japan and heavy bombing there.

 

The point of strategic bombing was to break the enemy's will to resist. We didn't build +30k bombers just to marginally slow the rate at which Germans built 109s. We didn't sacrifice thousands of airmen in lost bombers just to slow down enemy production of tanks or ball bearings. We didn't firebomb purely civilian targets to hurt industry. The psychological component of strategic bombing, indeed, the entire concept of 'round the clock bombing day and night, was meant to not only harm industry, but to bring the enemy to its knees and surrender without having to invade said enemy nation.

 

In that respect, strategic bombing failed utterly. We still had to march all the way to Berlin. Germany didn't surrender 1 second sooner because it had been bombed to ash. We had to pry the gun out of Germany's cold, dead hand. Japan, likewise, didn't surrender from conventional bombing. Only the nukes made Japan surrender.

 

So, please do explain how strategic bombing actually wins wars.

 

It's an Allied strategy that plainly failed in its psychological component; and was only marginally successful in its economic component. German oil production could have been crippled without building 30k heavy bombers to do so; and German oil production was the only really critical strategic target worth repeatedly bombing.

 

Because, however, the Allies won in the end, no one really cares to scrutinize just how pointless so much of their strategic bombing was.

[MiloMorai]

40 minutes ago, oc2209 said:

Point being: Germany would not be able to afford to leave the area totally unprotected.

It wasn't with JG2 and JG26.

 

In the mean time, most of those Gruppen stationed in the Reich could have been moved east with devastating results for the Soviets.

 

As for your meat grinder comment, it was a meat grinder for the Lw in the West with ~75% loses for the Lw in the West and ~ 25% the East from Sept '43 to Oct '44.

Edited July 13, 2021 by MiloMorai

[oc2209]

8 hours ago, MiloMorai said:

It wasn't with JG2 and JG26.

 

In the mean time, most of those Gruppen stationed in the Reich could have been moved east with devastating results for the Soviets.

 

As for your meat grinder comment, it was a meat grinder for the Lw in the West with ~75% loses for the Lw in the West and ~ 25% the East from Sept '43 to Oct '44.

 

Right, and 2 geschwader could hold off the entire Allied invasion by themselves. Either before, during, or after the invasion, Germany would need to shift fighters West again.

 

German air superiority in the East would be temporary and defensive in nature; because they still lacked the ground forces to capture and hold territory. Germany was never going to pose a threat to Russia again, in terms of total conquest, after their one shining moment was gone in '41. The fact that they pushed south instead of going after Moscow in '42 was a tacit admission of defeat. It'd be akin to the Allies being routed outside of Berlin, then regrouping and going after... Vienna instead.

 

As I said: a Germany without offensive power is a dead Germany; it could neither afford nor sustain a protracted defensive war like Russia or America could. And who stripped the German army of its offensive power before the Western Allies returned to the continent in force? The Russians. That's not my opinion as much as it's the end result of deductive reasoning.

 

There are many times in history where a historian must decide when an empire/nation/faction begins to die. The pop-culture historian will see widely advertised, movie-subject battles like Midway and Stalingrad and D-Day, and think those were the turning points.

 

Well, they're not the turning points. The Japanese lost the war the moment they attacked Pearl Harbor. The Germans lost the war the moment they attacked Russia. Acting like the war was won or lost by any decisions or actions made in '44 is consciously disregarding the laws of cause and effect, and the chain of events that led to supposedly decisive moments in history. The seeds of the Axis' inevitable failure go back to the 1930s at least.

 

Claiming that strategic bombing won the war is also saying the following: Germany still had a chance of winning the war up to that point, or at least a negotiated peace. Up to 1944. And that supposition is... nowhere close to being realistic. Germany was way beyond obtaining a favorable peace by then.

Edited July 14, 2021 by oc2209

[MiloMorai]

The airplane that did win the war was the Hawker Hurricane with help from the Supermarine Spitfire. It defeated the Lw in the BoB.

[Monksilver]

8 hours ago, oc2209 said:

 

The Japanese lost the war the moment they attacked Pearl Harbor.

 The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour because they had been impressed by the results of the British attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto. So it can be said that the war in the East was won by the Fairy Swordfish - but that is perhaps stretching it a bit.

 

 

[oc2209]

3 hours ago, Monksilver said:

 The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour because they had been impressed by the results of the British attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto. So it can be said that the war in the East was won by the Fairy Swordfish - but that is perhaps stretching it a bit.

 

Good point, and a little funny too.

 

The Swordfish was, at times, a stupidly effective plane that defied all laws of common sense.

 

You would, naturally, assume a biplane crawling along with a torpedo/bomb load would make for an easy flak target. There isn't anything slower in the air, short of a barrage balloon.

Edited July 14, 2021 by oc2209

[Monksilver]

18 minutes ago, oc2209 said:

 

The Swordfish was, at times, a stupidly effective plane that defied all laws of common sense.

 

You would, naturally, assume a biplane crawling along with a torpedo/bomb load would make for an easy flak target. There isn't anything slower in the air, short of a barrage balloon.

 

Certainly with the Bismark it was its slow speed that made them so hard to hit because all the gun aiming equipment was made assuming reasonably modern planes would be attacking so the lowest plane speed setting they had was still rather faster than the Swordfish's top speed. 

[oc2209]

1 minute ago, Monksilver said:

 

Certainly with the Bismark it was its slow speed that made them so hard to hit because all the gun aiming equipment was made assuming reasonably modern planes would be attacking so the lowest plane speed setting they had was still rather faster than the Swordfish's top speed. 

 

Might've been better to get some K98s out instead. Only half joking.