Re: Amerika bomber mission profile

On Nov 12, 1:42 am, guy <guyswetten...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ignore the technical questions just assume that in early 1944 there
was a viable Amerika bomber, something like a Ju390.

Say there were 40-50 available based say in Brittany what would the
mission look like?

There are many groups in the world that want to bomb the *** out of
the USA the same
way the USA has done to many other nations but the WW2 Nazi Germany
was the most reluctant of these. The only nation which got anywhere
near to fielding a transatlantic bomber was the USA and that was the
b-36: a designe initiated before hostilties.

The Ju 390, which was a Ju 290 which had an extra section of inner
engines and wings complete with undercarriages inserted at the roots
had about 1800 miles extra range with load than the Ju 290, both could
reach America and neither could return the Ju 390 being
somewhat short. What varied was the depth of penetration. The
mission profile looked like bombing the USA and bailing out to
surrender. Presumably recovery of the crew by u-boat was plausible.

Overloaded Ju 390's using RATO were a possibillity but a quite
dangerous one.

There were several flight trials of in flight fueling equipment of the
probe and droque style (only the droque was a sphere that was snagged
and drawn in) and also a boom style structure that was winched down.
The trials were apparently quite succesfull and they
were specified for the 1945 jet bomber proposals.

The main piston engine designes considered; the Me 264/364 and Ta 400
never received the reosurces they required and they were abandoned
forthrightly becuase it was realised
that althouth they could reach the USA they stood little practical
chance of penetrating
the kind of defenses the USAAF could muster (P-47, P-38)

Hence after abandoning the piston engines aircraft or rather ignoring
their propnonents
a new generation of jet bomber proposals was produced.

The most well known is the Ho XVIII of which there were several
variants; this is the
one on which construction supposedly began;
http://tanks45.tripod.com/Jets45/Histories/HoXVIII/HoXVIII.htm

Messerscmitt kept comming up with more advanced proposals based on the
Me 264/364
that used turbo-porops, jet engines, swept wings etc but these were
not accepted.

Some spectacular but plausible regenerative turbo prop cycles were
explored; probably the most elaborate and efficient ever proposed.
Details in Anthony Kays "German jet engine and gas turbine
development". They used ceramic or quartze regenerators.

Probably the aircaft design the Germans had that got anywhere near
plausible was the Me 264 and that could only do the east coast return
and did not carry tail gun armamanet: it was only meant as a maritime
reconaisance bomber. The Me 264/6m also known as the Me 364 had an
additional pair of engines and heavy armament and could have covered
the USA east and west coast. The Me 264 was never a government/RLM/
Luftwaffe project. It was Willy Messerchmitts own initiative and it
ran into a lack of support and low priority.

The Ta 400 is an almost unneeded duplication of effort that evolved
for reason

Manfred Greihls "Luftwaffe over America" covers the inflight fueling
and the German designs reasonably well.

Duffy's "Target America" is a hatchet job written as a political
response to try and refute isolationist politician Pat Buchanan's
statment that Nazi German posed no reasonable threat to the USA.

Griehl is the more credible source i think.

The reality is that there was not even an single properly supported 4
engined bomber program to match the B-17/B-24 or Stirling/Halifax/
Lancaster let alone the B-29 or even the B-36 to carry out a raid on
the USA. There was no serious interest before the war and during the
early phases it was thought it would aggravate the USA so much it
would do more harm than good.

Erhard Milch consistently poo pooed these ideas ensuring they had low
priority; for instance the difficulties of rendezvous with a tanker in
bad weather rendered the
whole thing rediculouse to him; he didn't seem to have a can do
attitude.


A night attack or a day one? I would assume a night attack which would
mean take off and landing around 9 am and 3 pm

1/ Would the trans-atlantic trip be carried out in formation, in a
stream or individually?

German bombers often did not fly in formation, more like an RAF style
stream I think.
They didn't rely on guns quite as much as the "flying fortress"
concept.

2/ How good would their ability to find a target be?

Celestial navigators would have been well trained.

There was a ground mapping radar, more or less a derivative of the H2S
known as FuG 224 Berlin that might have been used to find a harbour
target.
Advanced derivatives of this radar almost saw service in Ju 388's. A
few of
the test radars flew quasi-opperational maritime missions on Fw 200's.

3/ Given the lack of reconnaissance what targets would be chosen?

New York; it's full of Jews. Many Nazis saw WW2 as a fight against
jewish
influence and saw organised jewery out to get Germany.

It's also a good propaganda coupe

4/ What defences were actually in place? (Day fighters and night
fighters)
If not available how long would this take to rectify?
5/ Was there radar coverage on the east coast US?
6/ Would RAF long range fighters be tasked with intercepting the
bombers flying out and coming back?

The RAF had already used Wellingtons equiped with a large rotating 5m
Yagi array (surely the first AWACS) to try and intercept Fw 200's
before they got out the the atlantic.

TRE Wellington Mk 1c R1629 (1941 to 1942) had a PPI. It was based on
the ASV mk II.

Althought the designe worked it needed more development, something
that would surely have been possible by 1944.

A half dozen of these on patrol supported by hispano armed mosquitos
would have been
formidable; althoug against a jet they would have been useless.


Guy



A note on engines:
The BMW801 radial or Daimler Benz DB603 were capable of powering such
bombers if 6 were used thought they were nothing like the Pratt
+Whitney R 4360.

The BMW802 (an 18 cylinder version of the BMW801 with the displacement
of the CW R-3350 and Centaurus) was bench tested but didn't quite make
it, the Jumo 222 was
cancelled and then resurected and also didn't quite make it. The
massive 28 cylinder BMW 803 was bench tested and there were some
spectacular engines from
Deutz, Argus As 413 (a sort of 4000hp twin flat 12 based on jumo 213)
and big
junkers diesel engines.

Developement of Piston engines beyond the jumo 213/DB605/BMW801G waned
as jets were seen as the the only hope and these big engines a waste
of resources.

Combining the new jets with the German understanding of swept wing
transonic wings offered the possibiltiy of ultra long range, altitude
and speed.

The Jumo 004b-4 of the Me 262 is well known; there was an enlarged
version known as the jumo 004H (8 combustion cans instead of 6 and of
3400lb thrust), there was the Jumo 109-012 which was a much scaled up
engine (4400lb thrust) and for which turbine and compressor parts had
been made and there was the BMW 109-018 for which rotatbles were being
assembled (about 6000-8000lb thrust) and also the Heinkel HeS 109-011
which was benching 1150kg thrust and which it was hoped would reach
1700kg eventually.







.