The same could be said of aspects of the Allied raids on Germany and especially Tokyo with bombers whose accuracy left a lot to be desired when attempting precision bombing. Which is precisely why area bombing was pursued.
I’m inclined to the view that whether or not a weapon is a terror weapon depends upon the intention of the user.
A bayonet or sword is not necessarily a terror weapon, but the Japanese certainly managed to use them as such to instil fear into their enemies.
Similarly, a knife and meat cleaver aren’t necessarily terror weapons, but the Islamic ****s who killed the soldier in England recently used them as such.
But what hasn’t been defined so far is: What do we mean by terror; terrorist; and terror weapon?
Perhaps a “terror weapon” would be a weapon system with little or very limited tactical or strategic value. But one pursued in order to achieve a political outcome such as influencing a population to pressure their gov’t to end the war more quickly. Of course, WWII pretty much showed it never really worked and only instilled either a sense of vengeance or a stoic acceptance of their plight. The V2 was a pure gamble designed to not only pressure the British, but to hit the continental United States and perhaps influence the civilian populations there to seek a negotiated settlement - as absurd as that would have been…
Which in the circumstances is somewhere between not a problem and completely depressing. Not a problem because the life expectancy of the pilot was rather shorter, hence rather depressing!
Remember that this was an aircraft which relied absolutely on speed for survival and combat effectiveness - lose an engine and chances are you lose the aircraft.
I would also point out that German quality control by the stage of the war that the Me-262 was actually in squadron service was extremely poor - so I don’t believe that bench test figures tell more than a part of the story. I can’t find figures for the Derwent 1, but the Derwent 9 (not a very closely related engine, but of the same era and probably metallurgy) has a recommended time between inspections of 450 flying hours in modern-day use. That suggests to me that UK engines were at least an order of magnitude more reliable than contemporary German engines.
At a time when other engines of the era were managing a thousand? Actually, that probably flags up some major design issues with the combustor, rather than just the control system - if you’re relying on training to ensure a ticklish system is operated well when people are fighting for their lives you have a problem.
Rather like A. A. Griffith - he’d pretty much invented the jet engine a decade before Whittle, but the technology didn’t really exist to build it. Whittle’s genius - and there is no other word for it - was realising that a simple, crude engine COULD be built using extant technology, and that it would outperform everything else out there. As an engineer, I’m in awe of that ability when I meet people who have it - precisely because it is so rare. Whittle had, pre-1945, come out with most of the concepts in modern jet aircraft - axial compressors, reheat, bypass, etc. - but didn’t work on them because they were out of reach of the technology of the time. The Germans worked on them despite being out of reach of the technology of the time - one of many reasons they lost so badly.
I would class a bayonet as a terror weapon. It has little use beyond intimidating the enemy. In the good old day of the musket it was one round at close range followed by a bayonet charge. They just never managed to catch the yanks. A French surgeon did a survey into the battle field injuries and found that most bayonet wounds were in the back.
I remember reading an account of the fighting in Vietnam by a soldier in 1RAR. He related that your perception changed when in the FUP and the order came to “change mags, fix bayonets”. It told you it was serious. Every one carries it but very very few have or will use it. And now that I think about it it was used as a riot/crowd control tool.
Certainly by the end of the war training was in the toilet . I remember reading that average LW training flying hours dropped from 235 in 1942 down to 150 hours by 1944 and after the collapse of the LW and the oil industry the best they could achieve was 50 flying hours. Mean while RAF flying hours increased from 200 to 340hours per pilot, while American pilots were up to ~385hours?
If you reference the increasing numbers of LW planes in service with the decreasing number of flying hours , it comes out consistently at about 1.05 million flying hour per year from 1942-44. By late 1944/45 these flying hours would work out to 1.15 million flying hours. So like a lot of their solutions to stretch their forces to meet the needs of attritional warfare, they just diluted the capability to achieve more.
It was never part of their doctrine to wage wars of attrition against multiple enemies on multiple fronts. Prior to the War the USA and Germany faced the same choice. Resort to the potential combination of rockery and remote guidance to make wunderwaffen for their forces in War, particularly strategic bombing. The USA rejected this since their entire doctrine infrastructure and war economy was based on massed ‘surgical bombing’ and the faith they had in the bomber bomb sight and numbers. Germany sought to develop such super weapons to aid their forces, fighting the western allies and keep these forces manageable. But that entire assumption was based on such a war not starting until the 1944-46 time frame.
IIRC the Argyll & Bolton Wanderers used them in Iraq, and this chap got an MC in similar circumstances. They tend to be a secondary weapon though, rather than a formed up charge.
Regarding the bayonet, 2nd of Foot is quite correct. Of course it has been used from time to time in recent wars. However, in Bonaparte’s day, it was (as Wellington described it) “queen of the battlefield”, in succession to the halberd and the long pike of the later Middle Ages. In fact, the musket with bayonet was very much the same thing as a long pike much of the time, just with a rather limited addition of firepower. This changed radically with the arrival of fully practical muzzle-loading rifles in the 1840s. The difference lay in the ability to lay down effective fire at 400-450 yards as compared with the approx. 90 - 140 yards of the smoothbore. It was no longer possible for a running soldier to cover the ground between himself and his opponent in the space of 1 (or at most 2) shots, so that the old-fashioned bayonet charge became, in most circumstances, impractical. Not that generals immediately understood the point. The one great muzzle-loading rifle war (in which the front-line troops on both sides were armed with such weapons) was the American Civil War, and generals on both sides did their best to fight it in Napoleonic fashion. Ordinary soldiers often had more practical ideas. A read of Stephen Crane’s “Red Badge of Courage”, written on the basis of the author’s interviews with Civil War veterans, gives one some idea. As Civil War historian Shelby Foote said, of the men killed in action in the Civil War, few died from bayonet wounds. Best regards, JR.
A common misconception generated by bad reporting in the Sun, it was the PWRR. I believe the case is still being inquired into as it was wrong to kill the poor militia in such a nasty and unwar like way.
Back to the actual topic, I feel that if the Germans had not treated the Ukrainians in such a bad way they would have had a much larger force pool to fight the Soviets. The only advantage in winning the BofB for the Germans would have been a possible peace treaty with Britain. German would never have been able to invade Britain, so taking them out in another way would have eased up supply and production problems. With Britain out of the war lend lease would not have been in place and the Soviets did not have the production capacity to beat the Germans. Moscow would have fallen and if Germany had a peace deal with the Soviets which included Ukraine being part of Greater Germany the war would end for a short time. Russia may then go east to sort out the Japanese but would not have the supplies to win another war against German on it own.
Not true as if Germany had taken over Britain then the Usa never would of had any form of staging for bombing campaigns or any amphibous assault. Without britain the Usa never could of gained any real Advantage over Germany and with the fall of Britain the rush to the east could be easily completed with the reasigning of all western troops to the east. But in the end its all about recources and the Brits held their ground against BOMBING campaigns well which drained the German war machine without that there would of been no chance of russia being able to survive also there would of been no point in a preemptive attack of russia before the fall of Britain. As if Britain wouldnt of held out so well then the German war machine wouldn’t of been exhausted.
That was the entire point of the B-36 - it was capable of hitting Germany from the continental US. That explains the development history - it was started with high priority at around the time of the Battle of Britain, but when the British were clearly safe the B-29 took higher priority. Should Germany have taken out the UK, the US would have had the ability to hit Germany with a huge tonnage of bombs and potentially nuclear weapons. Critically, nobody could intercept the B-36 until the development of jets like the MiG-15 - it’s service ceiling was just so high.
The Nazi Wasserfall radar-directed S.A.M. would’ve made short work of the lumbering B-36…
& likely…Ta 152’s could reach/destroy any unescorted B-36 toting a useful bomb-load…
Strategic bombers used against technically proficient opposition have never cut it…
Ta-152 could just about reach the operating height of the B-36. However, they would be using max boost and hence have extremely short endurance/range at that height. One of the odd things about aerodynamics is that large aircraft are more manoeuvrable than small ones at very high altitude. The Vulcan is a classic example - design operating altitude is about the same as the B-36, and when it entered service it could outmanoeuvre any fighter jet on earth at that height.
Incidentally, US and German sources quote “service ceiling” differently - IIRC for the Germans it’s absolute ceiling while carrying a warload, for the US it’s when rate of climb dropped below a certain value (1,000 ft/min rings a bell, not sure though). The Pilot’s manual makes it clear operation at 50,000ft+ was routine, yet the ever-reliable Wiki gives a service ceiling of 43,600 ft.
I would also question the selection of the Ta-152 - it was built in response to the B-29, only a handful were built and it was a right bastard to fly, by all accounts. If the US is in the war and bombing Germany with the B-36, odds are it’ll be a nuclear campaign. That won’t give Germany time to come up with an interceptor.
Wasserfall had similar problems, even if it was inherently a better solution. Taking the data from Luft '46 (usually pretty optimistic - those are best-case values usually for what they thought they could build rather than actually did) gives a radius of action of 26,400m and ceiling of 26,400m. Since max ceiling will be straight up, and max range will be at zero altitude (coming down on a ballistic path) that gives a maximum cross-range ability of 12.8 km at 50,000 ft (expected B-36 operating altitude).
Maximum speed is quoted at 2736 km/hr, or 758 m/sec. This will be achieved immediately before the motor burns out (least air resistance and lightest rocket = peak acceleration), so average will be lower - I’d suggest assuming 500 m/sec unless you have other data. At 15,000m that gives a ~30 second reaction time for the B-36.
The flight manual for a heavily loaded B-36 (370,000 lbs at 50,000 ft) gives a maximum speed of 167 mph indicated. What I can’t find is the true airspeed, but it looks to have been around twice that. Assuming 300 mph true air speed, that cuts the no-escape zone down by ~2.5 miles (4km). Manoeuvring a missile also bleeds off a lot of energy, so we can assume say a 5% loss in total slant range from this. The two together gives Wasserfall only a 5km radius no-escape zone - so the B-36 will have to overfly within ~3 miles of the battery not to be able do dodge the missile - and that is even before we get into questions of how good the guidance actually is (given that the radar guidance never actually worked…).
Oh, and checking the B-36 once in service was generally armed with twin Hispano-Suiza 20mm cannon (radar-aimed), while the Ta-152 had twin MG 151 and an MK 108. We can probably ignore the MK 108 here in a “dogfight”, which gives two radar-aimed cannon in a more manoeuvrable aircraft versus two eye aimed cannon in a less manoeuvrable one!
Some good tech info presented in this thread, thanks fellas…
Also in Chuck Yeager’s memoir is an evaluation of the MiG 15 as a B-36 interceptor…
The SAC guys jumped on his report of the Soviet plane being a poor gun platform at altitude… til he
pointed out the fact that the MiG’s cannon shell cone - spread nice & effectively on a B-36 sized target…
Fact is, anytime the Strategic bomber has been met by serious opposition, it gets real costly, real quick…
Has anyone seen a mission profile for the B-70?
Maybe, given the difficulty shown in intercepting other Mach 3 planes,
it could have actually done the job…
Radar directed but manually guided by radio control, so immediately negating its effectiveness in cloud, night, poor weather conditions. Any radio guidance system is also vulnerable to jamming as are the radars themselves.
By 1944 the British and US had many different types of jamming systems for Radar and Radio mounted on aircraft (some were specialist aircraft built to test and goad German equipment to gather data iirc).
Yefim Gordon’s book gives a service ceiling of 49,868ft for the MiG-15, and 50,853ft for the prototype MiG-15 bis. The table in the back gives a range of 43,963ft to 52,493ft (late 1951). Just enough to reach the B-36, but like the Ta-152 a bit marginal. The MiG-17 is a different kettle of fish however - the reheated engine and thin wing made a big difference and essentially confined the B-36 to night bombing.
The big advantage of the B-70 isn’t even in the difficulty of intercepting it, but in the reaction time needed. It isn’t just a case of faster interceptors, they would have had to rebuild their entire air defence system - longer range radars, faster C2 systems, longer-ranged SAMs, longer ranged & faster interceptors, etc. Same thing happened with the B-36 and B-52 - the performance increase was sufficient to render the existing air defence system obsolete, so the Soviets built a new one.
The Strategic bomber campaigns against Germany were saved from defeat in 1944 by…
A, The P-51 escort for the USAAF…
B, The invasion of France for the RAF…
The British were losing 90+ heavies on their worst nights in `44, it wasn’t 'til the defence network was disrupted by loss of early warning/radar/control sites & etc, post invasion, that losses became bearable…
They could hack down 60+ heavies over Germany in daylight, but could not stand their own losses to the escort…
