Who had the best bomber of WWII, America or Britain?

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America. B-29. We had the best bombs too.

>>32074882
America, hands down. The B-29 was absolutely fantastic.

As much as I love the Lancaster, the B-29 was the best bomber of the war, not just Britain and America

In terms of overall effectiveness one could make a solid argument for either the B-24 or B-29.

In terms of muh dik, the B-17 hands down. Probably the most gorgeous bomber ever made.

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>>32074898
>>32074914
>>32074929
>>32074944

>Prop Bombers

GTFO

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>>32074956
>German bombers

depends on what you mean by best.

most technically complex, powerful, and capable? the B29, hands down.

most capable of delivering vast amounts of material for the entire war? Lancaster. Not much use to having a bomber that only entered service in 1944, when the war started in 1939, after all.

best one to be in when hit by fighters? not that I'd want to be in that situation, but i'd rather be in a B17 then.

>>32074898
>America. B-29. We had the best bombs too.
although the superfortress was hands down the best (could quite literally go into combat in short sleeves and no oxygen), i would give the britbongs the edge with the bombs(unless you meant the a-bomb).
america had no barnes wallis.

>>32074882
best was the B29.

second best was the lanc, neither the B17 0r B24 could match it

>>32075189
Of course I meant the A-Bomb sense I mentioned the b-29. I was the only bomber capable of using it.

>>32075394
Fun fact: there was talk of using the Lancaster at one point, due to the success of Tallboy/Grandslam conversions. But for obvious reasons they wanted(and went with) a US design.

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>>32075394
bombers as well as bombs come in all types,sizes and intended uses and SINCE the atomic bomb hasn't been used again (for obvious reasons), might not qualify as "the best bombs" for most occasions.

>>32074882
Can i nominate the B-25 as best tactical/medium bomber?

>>32075068
>most capable of delivering vast amounts of material for the entire war
>could only bomb at night

L M A O
M
A
O

>>32075429
The tallboy Lancaster could not make it to Japan from Saipan, while Silverplate B-29 could. It would have to take off from a closer base like Okinawa, since Iwo Jima is too small to serve as a bomber base. When the bombers were being modified for the A-bomb, they weren't sure how long taking Okinawa would take.

>>32075546
How about it's better cousin, the B-26.

>>32075558
Wasn't that more of a doctrinal thing though? It's not that it couldn't, it's more that Americans took the arguably more dangerous role of daytime bombing while the Brits went for the night runs.

>>32074956
>implying it counts if it never saw combat

gtfo

>>32075701
But it did see combat, anon

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When we look at strategic bombing, we're looking at the trade-off between the resources required to build, field and crew the bomber forces VS the infrastructure, casualties and standard of living damage inflicted.

In the case of WWII, this means looking at all produced strategic bomber forces rather than individual models, as especially in the case of the US there was no one primary model.

We can argue about the effectiveness of day VS night bombing or industrial/military VS population center targeting when talking about the USAAF VS RAF, but my argument would be for the B-24 Liberator for one very simple but incredibly important fact. The B-24 closed the mid-Atlantic gap, was used in naval patrol in the Pacific and safeguarded convoys and supplies while decimating enemy submarine capabilities. This was a force multiplier. Without the USN and RN operating the B-24 as a naval patrol craft, the Brits and OSS cannot employ Blechley Park Enigma intel to its fullest extent; after the B-24 and radio direction finding they have a plausible excuse to be very closely aware of sub movements without tipping their hand.

The B-17, B-24, B-29 and Lancaster all were serviceable heavy bombers during the war, and they all had their weaknesses and strengths. But the utility and impact of the B-24 is often criminally underestimated.

>>32075651
they werent accurate enough for high altitude bombing. thats why they couldnt bomb during the day.

>>32075068
lancasters didn't hit shit though

pussy bongs had to bomb during the night and never hit anything except old women and school kids

>>32077436
u wot m8

They only bombed at night because they got their shit slapped when they flew during the day. British bombers had really inadequate defensive armament.

I nominate the PBY because of it's efficacy at recon, patrol, and killing submarines. Definitely had a more positive impact on allied effeorts that strategic bombing.

>>32075806
shut up faggot

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>>32075806
>my argument would be for the B-24 Liberator for one very simple but incredibly important fact. The B-24 closed the mid-Atlantic gap, was used in naval patrol in the Pacific and safeguarded convoys and supplies while decimating enemy submarine capabilities. This was a force multiplier. Without the USN and RN operating the B-24 as a naval patrol craft, the Brits and OSS cannot employ Blechley Park Enigma intel to its fullest extent; after the B-24 and radio direction finding they have a plausible excuse to be very closely aware of sub movements without tipping their hand.
>>32077563
>I nominate the PBY because of it's efficacy at recon, patrol, and killing submarines. Definitely had a more positive impact on allied effeorts that strategic bombing.
You guys make a good point.

Related Q: wasn't the strategic bombing not that effective at hurting the German war machine? Or until they started focusing on bombing oil infrastructure, anyway

>>32077658
no usaaf day time bombing was the single most important and influential effort in ww2

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USA

>>32077529
None of the strategic bombers hit anything specifically, hence the massive scale of operations to increase the chance of useful damage. The Lancaster on the other hand though performed numerous low level daylight raids with specialist bombs against targets of importance with bombs which were only ever carried by the Lancaster against things like dockyards, Uboat pens, V-1/V-2 bunkers, dams, ships, train tunnels/bridges.

>>32077541
And your claim is the B-17 and B-24 didn't get their shit slapped? Doesn't matter how heavily armed the bombers were they got anally devastated by fighters unless they had escort screens and carrying more weapons meant they carried less bombs.

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Unironically the best bomber in the ETO

>>32075722
>But it did see combat, anon

it might've literally *seen* combat, in the sense that it was a recon aircraft

>>32075394
>I was the only bomber capable of using it.
Eh? It was the only bomber with enough range to complete the two missions Abombs were used in, the bombs themselves weren't heavy at about half the weight of a grandslam.

>>32077874
read a book queero, kg76 droped bombs with them.
most sonderkomando units and the Fernaufklärungsgruppes used them as recon planes which was a far more important task at the end of the war but some did drop bombs. hell, im pretty sure the only surviving arado 234 is a bomber variant.

even Erprobungskommando 234 operated a experimental night fighter but im not sure it did much.

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>>32077658
>wasn't the strategic bombing not that effective at hurting the German war machine?
Depends what your metric is. If you're looking purely at wartime production numbers, the strategic bombing effort really doesn't seem to have accomplished much - production pretty much continued to ramp up across the board in spite of bombing until forces on the ground started to overrun vital supply areas.

However, the efforts did force the Germans to devote massive amounts of resources to the defense of the Reich. I forge the exact numbers, but most German aircraft were lost in defense of the Reich, and fighters were regularly being sapped from vital theaters (particularly the Eastern Front) to defend the homeland. An absurd amount of guns and shells were also wasted on the skies over the Reich when they could have been put to use instead defending the fronts.

Again, it's hard to say exactly how decisive that impact was, but it was pretty tangible, especially on the Eastern Front. The Luftwaffe on the Eastern Front was perpetually undermanned, and from about 1943 onwards a section of front was lucky to have more than a single Gruppen of fighters to aid them. By the end of the Crimea campaign, for example, the Luftwaffe had just 16 fighters holding the peninsula against over 800 Soviet aircraft. Meanwhile, their best aces were being downed over the homeland. Gunther Rall - the third highest scoring ace in history - was downed just a couple missions after he was transferred to JG 11.

>>32077819
Still my favourite WWII plane.

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>>32075558
>>32077529
If it hit Germany it was on target.

>>32077700
no lend lease was
some1 had to arm the illiterate communist horde

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>>32077658
>wasn't the strategic bombing not that effective at hurting the German war machine?
Pic related alone makes it a massive success. Lancaster raids on sub pens etc., creating bottlenecks in production because ball bearings are now worth their weight in gold for the next four months, reducing rail stock and disrupting transportation/logistics hubs, that's all just gravy in hindsight.

Keeping the Luftwaffe fully engaged over Germany and unable to sufficiently support strategic retreats, much less interdict materiel and impose air superiority over Russia and Italy turns out to be the biggest quantitative success of the strategic bombing campaign. Not only are those resources tied up in Germany and France, but they're being lost and replaced in prodigious numbers, which means more production tied up in this losing defensive effort.

>>32077874
That, and
>The most notable use of the Ar 234 in the bomber role was the attempt to destroy the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen.[13] Between 7 March, when it was captured by the Allies, and 17 March, when it finally collapsed, the bridge was continually attacked by Ar 234s of III/KG 76 carrying 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) bombs.

No Mosquito love? Sure it isn't the "best bomber of the war", but it was in service relatively early, used materials and expertise (wooden construction) that were readily available in Britain, and with its speed could often avoid interceptors. it also has a good record of precision strikes

Though the B-24 for its role in the Atlantic probably had the single biggest impact. Available early in the war, closed the mid-Atlantic gap (insert Churchill quote about U-boat peril), and produced in astonishing numbers.

>>32075601
But what about the A-26?

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And the award for 'Worst Four-engined Bomber' goes to this heap of spontaneously-combusting scheiße.
Looks cool though.

>>32077819
Yep. One of the few bombers capable of hitting point targets.

>>32078080
Do it again Bomber Harris

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>>32079752
>Sure it isn't the "best bomber of the war"
Best survivability of all bombers, great accuracy and mission rates, relatively cheap. The Brits would have been better off building aluminum mossies instead of Lancs for everything other than niche missions (Tallboy, Grand Slam, Upkeep and maritime patrol).

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Pe-8 was pretty decent for 1940

>>32079885
>Four-engined
did you miscount anon?

>>32078147
your pic is only of the eastern front though. no relation to how effective strategic bombing was on German production.

Strategic bombing in ww2 was a joke.
Firebombing and terror bombing was where it was at.

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>>32080252
Soviets built the best B-29 version.

>>32080262
>did you miscount anon?
Nah, he's correct. The He 177 was a four engine bomber - with two propellers. Each pair of engines was coupled together.

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>>32074882
Aesthetics, something anglos don't care about

>>32075558
Being able to hit targets hundreds of kilometres away in complete darkness in 1942 is somehow a bad thing?

>>32080699
...what?

>>32080501
>for maximum engineering difficulties

>>32080262
good job reading his post. he even says that it was gravy. the point of his post and that image is that germany spent a very large amount of resources defending itself from allied air raids over france and germany. and those are just the aircraft. something absurd like a quarter or a third of all german munitions production ended up staying at home manning anti air batteries and being shot into the sky.

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my dick

>>32077436
dissing the bomber because it "couldn't" bomb in the daytime is like dissing an AR for not being able to shoot rockets.

The Lancaster "couldn't" bomb in daylight because it wasn't designed to because the british didn't believe it was a worthwhile pursuit.

It was designed to be a nighttime bomber.

>>32081103
It did bomb during the daytime, it just didn't apply a strategic bombing campaign during the day, the British didn't have a fighter screen capable of supporting this, nor did the Americans initially and paid the price for it. It did plenty of tactical bombing missions during the day, just like B-25's, B-26's, Halifax's, Mosquitos etc

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The one with its own heavy metal tribute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t37OuyJt0YY

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>>32075806

this desu

maritime patrol air armed with huff-duffs fucked the u-boats up big time. you send a radio message back to Dönitz then suddenly RAF coastal command shows up and sinks you with all hands

poor bastards no wonder only 1 in 20 uboatmen survived the war

reminds me of the time in the falklands war when that argentine ww2 Baleo class(ex-Catfish) was radar detected running on the surface by two british frigates

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>>32077529

>>32077819
And allegedly carried a personal vendetta against Gestapo.

>>32077910
I'm experiencing some serious mandela effect here. I swear to god these have always been calle d B-52's. I googled B-52 and it was a plane I've never even seen before. How would I know that number if I didn't know about the plane?

>>32080969
those aircraft losses are from the eastern front though. The eastern front is not over France and Germany.

>>32080969
hardly counts if it only has 2 propellers

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>>32074956
>Kraut bombers

>>32087396
Because 52's have been ubiquitous for years but the Buff is a dirty kero burning jet powered bomber, awesome to see in person though. The confusion might come from their names, the B-29 was called a Superfortress, the B-52 is a Stratofortress and ofc the B-17 was the Flying Fortress.

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>>32074956
If you want to nuke Atlanta, maybe

>>32087626
Im pretty sure the numbers under "Exclusive of eastern front" refers to losses in all other areas other than the Eastern front.

>>32074898
I Imagine B-29 variant that has AC-130 gunship style.
That would be scary is fuck.

>>32080262
The power of four engines with less drag from having only two nacelles/props.

>>32080553
Sorry Krauts, but American Aircraft had the best Aesthetics in WW2.

>>32080252

At the time of its introduction it was absolutely revolutionary with no reliable counter on the German side

>>32087396
nope your just retarded

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>>32074882

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>I'm going to rig this claymore to this British bomb that didn't explode when dropped in the middle of the jungle near no strategic target and clear half the jungle with it.

This is where people get the impression the British had good bombs.

>>32096702
It's almost retarded enough to have been designed by /K/!

>>32087396

>he doesn't know and love about the B-52

disgusting desu I hope one fires a nuclear stand-off missiles at you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CRRVZqrRl0