ComradeClaus wrote:True, there was no point in building He111s past 1940, since the Ju88 was a far superior bomber which could even function as a night fighter (essentially a heavier DH Mosquito equiv.) & the Dornier 217 was virtually a heavy bomber (similar bombload to B-24, though 2 engines was not quite enough) Heinkel would've been better off using their production capacity building He-177 (a normal 4-engine version, not the paired-engine, dive-bombing, remote turret clusterfuck, which delayed service entry, KISS: KeepItSimpleStupid) I'm familiar w/ the failure of the Fw-190A at altitude & the Failure of the Fw-190B & C high-alt prototypes. But they could've gotten the Dora into service earlier if they gave it a higher priority. Instead, they felt the Bf109G was enough. (I must stress though, that out of 30,000 Bf109s built over 10,000 were lost in TO/landing accidents. Several sources; "BruteForce", & wiki iirc.That is a damn severe design flaw)
This is too stupid to be worth much time, but you know the majority of all aircraft built in WW2 were lost in accidents, not combat right?
Now, is it true what I heard about the Yamato's being designed so huge that whatever the US built to counter it would be too large to cross the Pnama Canal? Couldn't we have just used Shipyards on the Pacific Coast to render that premise moot?
No shipyard on the west coast was equipped to build battleships or large aircraft carriers upon the outbreak of war. I believe exactly one fleet carrier was built on the west coast; though large new facilities opened at Long Beach during the war (roughly 1944) that could have done so; they ended up mostly repairing war damaged ships instead. The Panama Canal was to gain a third set of locks that could take newer, bigger battleships. Work on these locks halted at the same time the larger battleships were canceled. In any case without the locks it takes six weeks to sail around South America, and most ships had to do that anyway including older battleships rebuilt with blisters too wide for the locks. The canal could only ever take high priority traffic.
Besides, our normal sized battleships, w/ destroyers & cruisers in support, should have no trouble dealing w/ the Yamatos even if all 5 (7?) planned had been built. Once the cruisers knock out the firecontrol for the big guns, our battleships would have little trouble coup de grasing (That is, if one ignores Carriers & subs as a factor, as the Japanese seemed to.) They'd have been better off building a quartet of 35,000 ton battleships w/ the resources (to replace the Kongo class, which would've been rebuilt as carriers. In RL, they were rebuilt during 1934-40, sufficent time to convert them to carriers, giving Japan 10 fleet carriers at the time of Pearl)
They would have been better off building zero battleships, pulling out of China and never starting a huge world war... but Japan was led by complete idiots who make Hitler look like a military genius.
Considering the Canal, what resources would the Japanese have needed to knock it out, say if when they attacked Pearl Harbor (Destroying the facility entirely, inc. the oil storage tanks), they went from there to the canal zone while we were still reacting. 6 carriers & 4 battlecruisers are beyond what the Canal zones defences could handle at the time, right?
The canal had enough coastal artillery to beat off any plausible battleship attack. Given the aircraft weapons Japan had they could put the locks out of action for perhaps six months, air defenses were major but not enough to deal with 400 planes attacking. However Panama was beyond the feasible reach of major Japanese surface forces due to the vast distance from even the most tiny Japanese held base. In any case, knocking out the canal for six months in 1941-42 would have had no major affect on the war. The canal facilities are too massive to take serious long term damage from any kind of attack Japan could mount.
Obviously they'd have needed far more tankers to fuel them, but the damage done would've been worth it right?
No, it would not at all be worth risking Japans only major offensive naval force, its six fleet carriers. Once Japan lost those carriers it could never replace them. In fact Japan was almost completely incapable of expanding its military forces at all after the war with the US began. Even simple things like infantry divisions and land based aircraft could only slowly be added because Japan was already hyper mobilized before December 7th 1941.
Leaving Pearl damaged but functional was a terrible error on their part.
We have other threads on that. The short version is 1) Japan was taking a huge risk by attacking Pearl at all. 2) Japan couldn't do that serious of damage to the base with a few hundred more tons of bombs. 3) attacking Pearl was stupid because it really riled up the US population against Japan, invalidating Japans own strategy of fighting America to a draw and getting a negotiated peace. 4) A far better idea would have been to simply not attack Pearl Harbor at all; even if we assume Japan still goes to war with the US.
Hell, if they landed a few divisions to capture Oahu, they could've really complicated things for us.
Totally Infeasible, Japan had neither the men nor the shipping nor the specialist assets to launch such an operation; and such an invasion would have almost certainly been defeated anyway. Oahu was defended by two infantry divisions, multiple artillery regiments, dozens of coastal guns including 16in batteries, the guns of all the warships in harbor many of which could fire even with the ships sunk under them and generally the terrain is well suited to defense and works against an invader.
While we had far higher production capacity than them, this does not necessarily guartantee their defeat. If they destroyed our Pacific fleet while preventing too much loss to their own, they'd have had the opportuinity to keep us from accumulating/deploying the giant armada we used to win the war.
Actually Japan could sink the US fleet twice over, and still end up outnumbered. That isn't even considering the fact that the US could basically blast its way to Tokyo primarily using land based air power if it wanted or that the US simply had better weapons from 1942 onward. Japan lost the war before it even started. As a nation with 10% of the economy of the US, it had no chance, it could not even defeat China which had almost no industry at all. 75% of the Japanese Army spent the entire war still trying to beat China.
Though if the Germans used their Uboat arm to prey on our Atlantic fllet, it'd take a lot of pressure off the IJN. The IJN also should've put resources into training more aircrews (& putting armor on their planes so they wouldn't lose so many.)
God... you tried to claim you are writing books before but you are ignorant of some of the most basis points of WW2 history... WTF do you exactly think the German U-boat fleet was doing historically? Going for summer pleasure cruises?
I know it'll be argued "It can't be done" since "It wasn't done in RL"
No, most of the stuff you want can't be done because it can't be done and you simply too ignorant of the subject matter to realize it. Most of the rest wouldn't be done because its just simply a bad idea or a pointless one.
Back to the Soviet Oil topic. What kind of damage would a full geschwader (~9 squadrons) of Fw 200 (How long would it have taken to modify the design to allow it to function as a decent heavy bomber?) or He 177s armed w/ 7 tonne bomb based on the Dora shell? (Since Dora had already leveled Sevastopol it & it's shell would've been in the area. If Krupp had made the shell capable of having bumb lugs & a tail for stability, they'd gave a damn good 'Tallboy' equivalent)
Please buy a clue. Shells make bad bombs. Shells have thick steel walls with withstand high pressure when fired out of a gun. Bombs have thin cases and lots of explosives. The 7 tonne Dora shell contained only 250kg of explosives, about as much as a German 500kg general purpose bomb did. That isn't like a Tallboy, its like a 500kg bomb with a lot of big fragments. In fact the 7 tonne shell was intended to pierce heavy concrete fortifications, the lighter 4.8 tonne shell was intended as a high explosive projectile and contained 700kg of explosives. Using either one as a bomb would be a tremendous waste of a hugely expensive round of ammunition. By 1942 Germany actually had dedicated bombs as heavy as 2,500kg anyway, use of an 1,800kg bomb against England was fairly common during the 1943 Baedeker Raids.
As something else I am sure you don't know, the RAF actually had two different 12,000lb bombs. One was the famous Tallboy, which was intended to dive deep into the ground to attack heavy fortifications and structures and also used only from late 1944 onward. Most of its weight was steel. The other was a high capacity bomb consisting effectively of three 4,000lb bombs welded together introduced earlier and used much more heavily. By making the high capacity bombs out of welded sheet steel the British were able to make them 75% explosive by weight, meaning that a single 12,000lb HC bomb had 9,000lb of explosive. That means it has more blast then six of the 4.8 tonne Dora shells put together.
The same goes for Gibraltar's fortifications. Could Germany have taken Gibraltar if they dropped a few hundred Dora bombs followed by Glider & paratroops? Closing the Mediterranean to the Allies, would've aided in the seizure of Malta & suez canal.
How exactly do you propose that paratroopers and gliders land on a tiny land mass which is nothing but 1) steep rocky slopes and 2) dense city. Ever seen a picture of Gibralter? If you dropped paratroopers on Gibraltar half would drown in the ocean and the rest would die or be crippled smashing against the rocks and roofs.
Plus if some He177 started dropping 7 tonne "air mines" (thin-shelled HE bombs) w/ incindiaries on london, it might've made their will waver. One thing reducing the impact of the Blitz was the small size of bombs used (generally SC500 & light fire bombs), a firestorm the size of Hamburg's never resulted. Giant HE to turn buildings to kindling, cluster fire bombs to light em up. Far more efficient than V1s & V-2s. Plus He177s during Steinbock proved hard to intercept as well. With the right loadout, they'd have caused considerable destruction.
Okay... so you think some heavy bombs will make the British waver, and yet one sentence later you mention Hamburg which was largely destroyed in a firestorm... without the Nazis wavering. Do you see the contradiction in thinking here? BTW the four engine He177 is the He 274; two of these were built and one actually flew in 1947.
Plus would it have helped if the Germans actually shared more weapons designs w/ the Japanese? Like the MG42, which was faster & cheaper to build than other machine guns of that type, or the 37mm clip-fed FlaK 18/36/37, vastly superior to the 25mm box-fed Hotchkiss AA gun Japan used & The Panzerfaust; a better alternative to the "Lunge Pole" the Japanese used at Iwo & Okinawa to deal w/ our armor. Imagine how much harder it would've been clearing the Pacific if Japan actually had effective weapons for their infantry. (And imagine if Japan had some license-built Panthers & Tigers on Okinawa
)
Germany did share weapons with Japan extensively. That went as far as several complete U-boats being given to Japan as well as numerous crates of weapons designs, Japan sent back raw materials like rubber and opium (needed to make pain medication) in exchange by blockade runner and U-boat. Japan had a shitty economy and could not produce any of the designs, nor had the resources to spare to try. Japan had plenty of its own good weapon designs alongside the crap ones, none of them were built in sufficient numbers. Funny enough Japan even did buy a Tiger tank prototype only to find it had no way to ship the vehicle to the far east, so it was donated to the Waffen SS by the Japanese ambassador! The very notion of Japan producing fifty ton tanks when it could not build sufficient rifles is a joke.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
off Leningrad, Murmansk & Archangelsk. Which they could leave to the Finns to free up their forces for the next phase.
