World War 2

Have none, but bump.

Didn't the Battle of Britain prove the RAF was superior to the Lufftwaffe?

>>945432

Did the complete ineffectiveness of RAF raids over Germany in 1940-41 prove the Luftwaffe was superior to the RAF?

>>945008
>>945008

I'll toss out a question:

In Germany, interservice rivalry between the Luftwaffe and the Heer mostly took the form of the air force trying to horn in on stuff that was properly army business: the Herman Goerring panzer/paratrooper hybrid division perhaps being the most famous example.

Over in the Anglo-American world, it went the completely opposite direction. Bomber command was completely committed to winning the war on its own, and snubbed at acting as flying artillery for those ground dudes. The USAAF never got quite that far, but it was pretty clear they would have enjoyed the independence and strategic dictation that Bomber command enjoyed. In both cases, it was a trying to win the war on their terms, not the army's terms.

Why did Germany go one way and the Brits and Americans go the other?

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>>945783
Well the Luftwaffe got fucked by the dive-bomber meme really early on in their rearmament, and, once the sole proponent of strategic bombing in the Luftwaffe died, everyone decided that everything needed to be able to dive bomb. Given the comparatively small size of theaters and short range of the Bf 109, that worked fairly well, as the medium bombers of the Luftwaffe early on had the range necessary to perform theater-level interdiction.

The doctrine ended up focused very heavily on direct support of the army thanks to being obsessed with dive-bombing, and experience early in the war only reinforced this. By the time the Battle of Britain came around and showed that their forces were inadequate for a strategic bombing campaign, it was too late to undo the clusterfuck they'd stuck themselves in.

>cont

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>>945008
>What was its impact on the air war in Europe?

If you don’t control the skies, you can’t win the war.

It’s as simple as that.

>>945907

>strategic bombing
>Better than the Luftwaffe's CAS doctrine.

You're making an awfully big assumption there anon.

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>>945907
The doctrine of the other belligerents was the result of other factors. The Brits initially had a focus similar to that of the Germans, albeit with less dive-bombing. The RAF inventory at the outbreak of war consisted of a lot of lighter tactical bombers like the Fairey Battle and Bristol Blenheim. They had "strategic" bombers like the Wellington, Whitley, and Hampden, but they were roughly on the same level as the Luftwaffe's bombers.

The Battle of France ended up showing that pretty much none of those planes worked. The Battle was a complete piece of shit, and the Blenheim wasn't nearly as fast as it needed to be to operate as designed. Once the Brits got pushed back across the Channel, tactical bombers weren't too useful, while the RAF still needed longer-ranged aircraft to retaliate against German targets.

So it's really during the Battle of Britain that you see RAF doctrine for the war mature. Longer-ranged bombers began raids deep into enemy territory, usually at night due to the lack of an adequate escort, and what few fighters weren't defending the skies over Britain were performing low-level cross-Channel attacks on Luftwaffe airfields. The Brits seemed to like this concept, so by the end of the war, their tactical support aircraft would generally follow this trend of being high-performance fighters fitted with bombs.

>>945783
The Luftwaffe Field Divisions are massively overlooked, it's just such a massive mistake I can't believe it was actually implemented.

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>>945907

The German air force’s experience in Russia only reinforced their fascination with for dive-bombers, as the Soviet air force was weak, as was their AA artillery; for example, almost their entire available mechanized AAA in the war, was made up of only 1,100 U.S. Lend-Lease half-track AA guns.

In comparison, the Germans had their asses handed to them fighting above the UK during the Battle of Britain.

>>945950
Ehh the problem with the Luftwaffe's CAS doctrine was that everyone got so hyped about dive bombing that they made everything have to be able to do it. Plus dive-bombing was a very niche role, and the way the Germans implemented dive-bombers effectively created a niche plane that was helpless without air supremacy.

>>945976
Yeah surprisingly enough all the "make everything dive-bomb" actually came in handy during Barbarossa. There were a bunch of times where there weren't enough Stukas to go around, so Ju 88s were thrown in instead. They suffered heavy casualties from it, but it got the job done.

>>945952

The problem with what you're saying, is that quite frankly, it's just wrong. Trenchard was the architect of British aerial strategy, and he was always in favor of winning war by terror bombing the enemy into submission, at the cities, not the line of battle. They were never interested in tactical bombing of any sort.

The reason the bombers were light, and on relatively even design with what the Luftwaffe was fielding is that internal projections about what it would take to break the German will to resist were comically low. I believe it was something like 650 tons spread across 8 of Germany's biggest cities would bring them to the peace table. It's why the Brits had way, way more bombers for each fighter than the Germans did.


>. The Brits seemed to like this concept, so by the end of the war, their tactical support aircraft would generally follow this trend of being high-performance fighters fitted with bombs.

The reason for this is that the fighters weren't under the control of Bomber Command and Harris, who would fight tooth and nail to support anyone (usually the navy) rather than continue attempting to flatten every building in Germany. But they were exercising a pre-existing doctrine, not one that was developed during the war. Tactics were developed during the war, yes, not just heavier and longer ranged bombers, but better guidance systems, and the exact ratio of "cookies" to incendiaries, but the plan was always bomb the cities, not the troops.

It's old, but you might want to pick up Bomber Command by Max Hastings, it goes into the development of British strategy in immense depth.

>>945432
Not neccessarily, as far as I'm aware it was an even game after the battle of Britain, and then the focus was on fighter sweeps over northern France - meeting not a lot of opposition as German fighters were either tied down providing CAP in Germany, the ostfront or North Africa/Italy

On the topic of biting, it was a commando raid into the area around le havre to literally steal a giant wurzburg air search radar

Given the fact that the Brits managed to steal a German radar, complete with operation manuals and a few radar operators and mechanics, I'm wondering how this managed to influence the British development of chaff and radar jamming, given that these types of radars were the ones coordinating the air defence of the rhineland at the time - I'm wondering what you guys think the impact of Operation Biting was like given those considerations

>>946006
ah I see thanks for correcting me. I'll take a look a that book.

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>>946056
>Given the fact that the Brits managed to steal a German radar, complete with operation manuals and a few radar operators and mechanics, I'm wondering how this managed to influence the British development of chaff and radar jamming

The British were the leaders in the field of radar tech and well ahead of the Germans, who didn't recognize the value of radar until it was too late.

>>946056

Not him, but focus on France was really mostly in two periods, first in late 1940 very early 41, when there were worries of a sealion, and then later on in 1944, to support the eventual D-Day landings with a lot of interdiction efforts. In between that, France got very little bombing, there were some efforts, but the bulk of the offensive was over Germany.

The other reason that efforts into France didn't get the same caliber of opposition is the simplest one: Raids were quicker to launch from bases in England to northern France, which gave less detection and scramble time, even when there were fighters available, they often weren't in the right place at the right time to stop an attack.

>>946096

That's not really quite true, but the inter-relation of radar systems in WW2 is VERY complicated. It's not just "We have radar" vs "We don't have radar." British radar was primarily for aerial detection at long ranges and then later in the war for guiding planes and their munitions. The Germans, on the other hand, were mostly interested in guiding their flak, although Freya was quite a good detection system, and arguably better from a purely technical standpoint than the Home Chain, what with its smaller antennae and better resolution.

bumping the best thread on /his/ atm

It might die though ;~;

Oh hell, I'll ask a question.

Could anyone educate me on the Polish contribution to the north African Campaign (Which is inclusive of the Western Desert and Tunisian campaign, up until the fall of the AfrikaKorps in Cyrenica.)

Apart from THE SOLDIER BEAR, serving with a ton of distinction, and that it was led by a Polish General that was in a Soviet POW camp, the information regarding Polish II Corps in Africa is very scant.

>>945952
This is quite possibly the most wrong post on WW2 air war that I have ever seen.

>>946006
>The reason for this is that the fighters weren't under the control of Bomber Command and Harris, who would fight tooth and nail to support anyone (usually the navy) rather than continue attempting to flatten every building in Germany.
Bomber Command was a strategic bombing arm. It was not suited for tactical bombing, and it was definitely not suited for supporting the fucking navy. Harris's personal beliefs are far from the only reason the Bomber Command did not routinely perform tactical bombing or naval attacks. The more relevant reason was that doing so would have been an extremely retarded use of your military resources.

>>945008
Strategic Bombing campaign was a failure.
At the start they thought they could destroy german industry on their own, but the worst it did was to delay shit for a few weeks at most. Everything was eventually repaired in time.
Then they focused on the civilians, thinking that if you bomb enough of them, they'll give up. All it did was to strengthen german resolve to fight till the end.
Not to mention the horrendous casualty rate that the allied airmen suffered throughout the war, it just wasn't worth it.

>>948920

Bomber command was the bombing arm, full stop. Especially earlier in the war, it included non-strategic bombers, as well as a host of reconnaissance, jamming, and other support planes. Yeah, an Avro Lancaster isn't a good tactical bomber, but that wasn't the whole of their asset list. The scout planes would have especially been useful in the convoy war, and during the Happy times, Britain needed all the help she could get.

Furthermore, Harris was dead-set opposed even to mission profiles that would fit his heavy bombers. The interdiction campaign in France in 1944, for instance, was wildly successful, but it wasn't Germany, and was one of the few times Harris didn't get his way. Bombing French ports which hosted submarines or Norewigan ones which hold the Tirpitz isn't fundamentally different than bombing a set of dams on the Ruhr, or any given German city.

>>948753
They were completely ineffective and useless, just like all the Allies minus the Soviets, who could have won the war with one hand tied behind their back.

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>>949292

>>951369
I'm serious.

Why don't you head over to >>949153 and join the discussion.