A 'what if' question RE: LW vs 8th AF

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by mars

I am a little confused, what USAAF combat boxes ? I think we were talking about Luftwaffe low level attack US airbases in the night, all of USAAF heavy bombers would be on the ground that time.
And as far as I know, in WWII it was not possible to maintain large formation in night time flying, any large scale of German night time attack would have to go in small group, two or three at best, at first they would suffer losses, possible very high losses, in the hand of British AAA and night figters, if the survivors were lucky enough to find the USAAF airport which I highly doubt, they had to go into attack one or two aircraft a time, there would be no coordination among each other, and would not cause any nearly serious damage.

(1) the thread has been discussing various ways the heavy bomber threat might have been countered. This has included air-to-air tactics and pre-emptive raids on allied bases

(2) The raid on the Corsican bases actually happened and the results are well documented. None of the factors you mention prevented that isolated success. I do not think a similar result was impossible to achieve over England in early 1944 if the defenders were expecting another raid on London, for example.

[NickM]

For what it's worth, Roger Foreman commented that he was surprised that the luftwaffe didn't try to attack the 8th on their home bases via intruder missions--he noted that given the congested skies over East Anglia, it should have been more 'do-able'.

[mars]

Originally Posted by Nokose

I know that the British radar was very good but the Germans could have caused a lot of trouble in other ways. Bombers mixing in with returning RAF bombers could have slipped into England for strikes. Even a captured B-17 or B-24 returning from a strike with a bomb load to an 8th AF base could have caused a very bad situation (a Trojan horse). The loss of one captured bomber for a massive strike on a base full of bombers would have been worth the trade off.

By frequently changing the identification signal, British could easily detect the German aircraft mixing in with returning RAF bombers? and how could a large amount of German aircraft managed to "mix" in the returned RAF night bombers without being detected anyway?
About Trojan horse, I do not know, believe me, I read a lot of WWII air combat history, I never know a single case that indicate, one or two heavy bombers, even without opposition, had the ability to inflict any serious damage. In WWII, the only way to inflict damage to the level of "making a difference" was repeat and sustained attack, which I do not think Luftwaffe had that ability

[mars]

Originally Posted by Nick Beale

(1) the thread has been discussing various ways the heavy bomber threat might have been countered. This has included air-to-air tactics and pre-emptive raids on allied bases

(2) The raid on the Corsican bases actually happened and the results are well documented. None of the factors you mention prevented that isolated success. I do not think a similar result was impossible to achieve over England in early 1944 if the defenders were expecting another raid on London, for example.

Nick, all of my posts are replied to Mr drgondog's post relates to the possibility of Luftwaffe night attack USAAF air bases in UK, second I never deny the possibility that Luftwaffe could achieve isolate success, my point is that there is NO WAY that Luftwaffe could accomplish anything that could really effect USAAF's ability to execute their bombing campaign

[drgondog]

Originally Posted by mars

British night air defense system was not just “some AAAA units around the airport”, it included mosquito night intruders over continent, excellent radar system, when those “large amount of Me-410s and Ju-88s” reach the airspace even before the UK airspace, they would be detected for sure, than RAF night fighters, armed with the most advanced airborne intercept radar, would be put into action, Flaks from the coast all the way to the US airbases would open fire, what the chance do you think Germans would have?

Flying low over the water in max 2 ship flights, each tasked to strafe heavily populated airfields with fueled bombers and fighters in unprotected hardstands? I think great success.

Don't confuse WWII vinage land based or air mounted radars with sophisticated capability to see nap of the earth inbound aircraft, or confuse that rudimentary capability with integrated air defense command interception capability or think that AAA had much of a chance at knocking out any aircraft at night near the deck - to effectively score against such attackers would be accidental. Even a few attempts would drastically change mission preparation processes and dramatically collapse the window available to pre-flight check, fuel, load bombs, co-ordinate take off and assemby for 40+ bomb groups.

Light radar guided systems like Soviet ZU -23 were lethal because they could slew rapidly and automatically fuse the shells - which did not exist in any dimension for WWII - and neither the Brits or US could stop them from attacking.

FINDING the airfields is another story but hitting just one fully loaded up will be visible for many miles.

Regards,

Bill

[mars]

Sir, please consider the FACT that there is no way to find your target if you choose to fly at low level from, say France, to UK and find your target at night based on WWII navigation technology, you have to come in, locate your targe, then dive and close your target from lower leverl, this would let British air defense caught you long before you even have a chance to going low, but if you want to wander around, drop you bombs randonly on the field, then be my guest

[Nokose]

Another example of a Luftwaffe air strike on an airfield with B-17's was Poltava, Russia on the night of the 21Jun44. Out of 73 B-17's there was destroyed 47 and the rest suffered damage. There were captured B-17's that entered American bomber formations that could have returned to England with them. USAAF bomber crews mentioned suspicious bombers in there formations on occasion. If checked out I am sure that indication by them would be "radio problems" on visual. Even the Jabo raids if used properly to strike the fuel depot at an English airfield in the evening would have a signal fire effect for follow up bombers. War time is taking risk for success.

[mars]

Nokose, I know the Poltava raid well, Russian's air defense at that area was no way to be comparable to the British air defense system over UK. And commando style raid may be impressive, but I can not recall a single case of commando style raid had any significant impact to the war in the military history, I will welcome anyone to prove me wrong.
By the way, "Even the Jabo raids if used properly to strike the fuel depot at an English airfield in the evening would have a signal fire effect for follow up bombers", this is much easier say than actaully done, you could look into the combat history of both RAF bomb command and Luftwaffe bomber forces, how much time and effort they spend in this kind of pathfinding tactics, and huge difficulty they are encounted when they tried to hit a city, not an airbase

[Laurent Rizzotti]

German night Jabo, Intruder and bomber missions over Britain in 1943-1944 were often costly and often ineffective.

In spring 1944 several German raids of 100+ bombers failed to hit their target at all, and these were cities as big as London, Hull and Bristol. Targetting an airfield seems harder to me.

And the main German Intruder mission in late war, operation Gisela, was a success in terms of shot down bombers, but the Intruders suffered between 10% and 20% of losses, and their kill ratio was far less than above Germany.

The key here is that the Allied could replace any losses suffered during a German success (the raid on Corsica only stopped the raids by B-25s for some days, the Gisela operation did not stop it at all), while German could not replace all crews and aircraft.

[RT]

In the ''Blitzkrieg" way that is working to kill planes on earth level, that's give you an immediate advantage on later stage of the war, where force ratio was to 10/1 or 15/1, that means german hv to kill 10 folds more allied planes than their own losses, you hv prob. better things to do.

Steinbock was a complete failure, to add that bombing by night was maybe not the right idea, probably the whole brit. night-offensive gave not material results matching the investment .
Gisela was also partly a failure as the gains, some few shot-down bombers ,were far to compensate the loss a highly trained crews, 1 month of gisela action would hv annihilated the complete german night-fighter force.

Rémi