Tactical Strikes of World War II

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Originally Posted by syscom3

Youre mixing up the large strategic bombing raids witht he smaller tactical raids

Thats not the point of his post. Besides if you read what he said and not just what you wanted to read you would see that he was talking about small groups taking out small things at an airfield. Like a small group of planes taking out the POL or the mechanics or what not.

But again you only read what you want to read because that is how blind you are.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Originally Posted by syscom3

I can find budweiser anywhere in the world.

And I can find real and good beer anywhere in the world as well, and no matter where you find your Bud in the world it is crap!

[k9kiwi]

Beer.

Is said as SPEIGHTS with a reverent tone to the voice in decent kiwi households.

www.speights.co.nz

Try walking into most liquor outlets in New Zealand and asking for a "Bud".

Your most common response will be. "Sorry mate, we sell Beer here."

[syscom3]

Originally Posted by DerAdlerIstGelandet

And I can find real and good beer anywhere in the world as well, and no matter where you find your Bud in the world it is crap!

Youre so emotional about it.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

No I just have a real taste for beer, you are ignorant to the matter.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Anyhow this is not the beer thread so lets get off that topic in here.

[plan_D]

"I was reffering to small light bomber raid. And the 8th AF list shows about the same numbers of heavy bombers would attack an airfield as this raid."

No you weren't. As the quote from you below clearly shows, you said medium bomber missions. You've got the memory of a goldfish. And the 'Dinner' raid wasn't against an airfield, so why bring the 8th Air Force attacks on an airfield into this?

"Now tell me what small raids changed the course of the war or battle? Not the fighter bomber ones, but the medium bomber missions."

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

He just keeps on digging, deeper and deeper.

[syscom3]

Originally Posted by k9kiwi

Well done Rocket Scientist.

Thats what the Allies did too.

PS. Apparently it worked, as Les' replies are in ENGLISH.

You dont need to be a rocket scientist to know that there were no medium bomber raids east of the Rhine untill 1945 (maybe in late 1944).

And that goes for the light bombers.

[syscom3]

Originally Posted by plan_D

"I was reffering to small light bomber raid. And the 8th AF list shows about the same numbers of heavy bombers would attack an airfield as this raid."

No you weren't. As the quote from you below clearly shows, you said medium bomber missions. You've got the memory of a goldfish. And the 'Dinner' raid wasn't against an airfield, so why bring the 8th Air Force attacks on an airfield into this?

"Now tell me what small raids changed the course of the war or battle? Not the fighter bomber ones, but the medium bomber missions."

8th AF records show that airfields were attacked with about the same number of aircraft in your list, depending on whether you want to count the fighter bombers as bombers only.

Once they dropped their bombs, they became fighters. B17's, B24's, B26's never reverted to another role after they dropped their ordinance.

[plan_D]

"You dont need to be a rocket scientist to know that there were no medium bomber raids east of the Rhine untill 1945 (maybe in late 1944).

And that goes for the light bombers."

3 September, 1939. The first RAF plane across the German frontier was a 139 Sqdn. Blenheim from RAF Wyton. It's mission was to reconnoitre the German fleet at Wilhelmshaven. Flying at 24,000 feet FO McPherson took 75 pictures of the fleet and recorded the wars first in the ORB.

On the same date, 83 Sqdn. Hampdens fly off to conduct a raid on the fleet anchored at Wilhelmshaven. FO Guy Gibson led a flight of six Hampdens to target. The cloud cover was 10/10 at 100 feet, so all Hampdens turned back without attacking.

Throughout the war, light and medium bombers attacked Germany. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that.

8th US Air Force raids on airfields don't have anything to do with the 'Dinner' Raid. Unless you are implying that raid is large because the US 8th Air Force used those numbers sometimes. But carried a lot more tonnage to target with the same numbers!

[syscom3]

Originally Posted by k9kiwi

Thanks for the great laughs.

yes, you gave me a chuckle too.

Albert Speer (heard of him SysCon) stated that over 700,000 able bodied men were involved in manning anti aircraft batteries throughout Europe, from 20mm upwards in 1944

Many of those workers were not of draft quality or were not capable for front line duty, such as too old or too young.

Further, that 20,000 (one third of all production) of the 88mm cannon was involved in anti aircraft defence, when they would have been better employed in the anti tank role on the russian front.

yes, and what does that have to do with light bomber raids?

Let alone the number of 20mm Vierling and 37mm guns needed to defend against low level, Both of which the Germans had a great penchance for using in the ground role against troops etc.

Thats why the medium bombers stayed up at 10,000 feet or so.

Also, raids by medium bombers served as double edged swords, sending 12 different raiding strikes against different locations at the same time as your bomber streams are reaching for 2 or 3 main targets has a slight dispersal effect upon the enemies resources.

Unless you put enough bombs on your target to destroy it, then why bother?

If you now configure things with window strips, ECM etc so that the effect is to confuse or delay the realisation by ground control of where the main strike is to occur, you further weaken the defenders chances.

The heavy bombers rarely confused the Germans. Medium bombers rarely surprised their targets since they were only at 10,000 feet and quite noisey.

If you time strikes against a number of airfields while the planes are up in the air, and destroy their capacity to handle aircraft for, oh lets say 4 hours, Where do the aircraft land?

(They could stay up their only so long)

If they now have to fly 150 miles to the nearest airfield, how much is their combat time and effectiveness reduced?

Airfields to land at was never an issue for the Luftwaffe. There were hundreds of them, and most were open at any given time.

Now you have repaired the holes in the dirt in 4 hours, but we have a little problem, the piddly little 1,000 pound bomb just took out or POL resources, and that tiny 500 pounder nailed the armoury.

Well, thats a shame that you couldnt refuel your airplanes through oil barrels on the back of a truck, didnt properly disperse your POL and bombs. I think youre making a case for the RAF being totally unprepared for an air attack.

The other one didn't cause structural damage to the airfield, but we sure are going to miss those mechanics that were in that bunker (read BIG HOLE) cause we need to fix the planes.

Lucky hit, it happens in war doesnt it. Now how often did that happen?

Also we are having a slight problem because of the 12 RAF planes that sneaked in and made a small mess at the local power station, so we are running limited resources on local generators.

So you have to do some load shedding. Big deal.

Starting to get the picture. If you take a more "Holistic" view, every strike was tacticaly and Strategicaly important for the domino effect to occur.

Youre right. The heavy bombers, the medium bombers and the fighter bombers all made contributions, but the light attack bombers didnt contribute much.

[syscom3]

Originally Posted by plan_D

3 September, 1939. The first RAF plane across the German frontier was a 139 Sqdn. Blenheim from RAF Wyton. It's mission was to reconnoitre the German fleet at Wilhelmshaven. Flying at 24,000 feet FO McPherson took 75 pictures of the fleet and recorded the wars first in the ORB.

On the same date, 83 Sqdn. Hampdens fly off to conduct a raid on the fleet anchored at Wilhelmshaven. FO Guy Gibson led a flight of six Hampdens to target. The cloud cover was 10/10 at 100 feet, so all Hampdens turned back without attacking.

Throughout the war, light and medium bombers attacked Germany. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that.

sept 1939 is far removed from summer of 1943 when the Luftwaffe would have butchered any medium or light bomber getting to deep into germany.

All you just proved is a port area was photographed at high altitude on the 2nd day of the war.

Now show me an RAF tactical raid into central germany in 1942, 1943 and 1944.

8th US Air Force raids on airfields don't have anything to do with the 'Dinner' Raid. Unless you are implying that raid is large because the US 8th Air Force used those numbers sometimes. But carried a lot more tonnage to target with the same numbers!

The AAF was loath to split groups and air divisions up on missions. So if a target was attacked, in theory it would be done by three groups.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Originally Posted by syscom3

You dont need to be a rocket scientist to know that there were no medium bomber raids east of the Rhine untill 1945 (maybe in late 1944).

Absolutely wrong agin syscom and I can prove it to you.

Remember the war was allready going on before the Americans entered. The British were fighting (yes syscom WW2 started before Dec. 7, 1941).

The British were using Mosquitos in small numbers to bomb Germany as early as 1942.

The first raid was by 5 Mosquitos to Koeln Germany on 31 May 1942. This raid accomplished nothing but keep the Germans off there guard but it was still a raid.

19 Sept 1942: 6 Mosquitos attacked Berlin

Those are just two example, do you care to retract your statement syscom?

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Originally Posted by syscom3

Now show me an RAF tactical raid into central germany in 1942, 1943 and 1944.

Just did numbnuts!