Here’s one of the sites I saw this claim
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=216598
*Original post:
The Germans had nothing equal to Superfortress B-29 (or even B-17).
Replying Post:
The first one is true for service aircraft, but the Ju 390, and Me 264 were more than a match for the B-29, but for the B-17 that’s laughable. The He 177, Ju 290, and even Bomber B medium designs were completely superior in mosts, if not, all respects.*
This is what I had come to post.
Although the Pacific War is more my thing, my relatively uninformed WAG is that Hitler was just too over confident of the abilities of his armies and completely underestimated the staying power of the Soviets and the UK.
The weapon development priorities – in hindsight – were wrong. Had they diverted more resources into the u-boats and naval aircraft, for example, they may have won the Battle of the Atlantic.
JU390= 314 mph, 6,030 mi (as recon), 1800 kg
Me 364=350 mph, 9,500 mi, 3,000 kg
B29=357 mph, 4,900 mi (as recon), 9,000 kg
B29 is faster and carried more bombs. The Ju & Me both had a excellent range in recon mode.
For recon, they had a edge. However, they were bad fliers: Me 364: *Trials showed numerous minor faults, and handling was found to be difficult. One of the drawbacks was the very high wing loading of the Me 264 in fully loaded conditions… led to performance problems across the whole flight envelope, in particular bad climb performance, loss of maneuverability, and in-flight stability, and the need for high take-off and landing speeds.
*
More importantly, neither German aircraft *was ever operational. * Some of those numbers may be pure fantasy.
An excellent point, Sir.
I have a whole book about the Amerika Bomber programs. Read it all, even. Most didn’t even look that good on paper.
He believed in Blitzkrieg above all, which is why he insisted on mediums that could dive bomb. He didn’t plan for defense, even when he needed to. Complete nutter.
Not “Pro-German propaganda” but, I suspect, “Pro-Nazi propaganda.” The Amerika Bomber was an obvious joke and an obvious waste waste of the limited resources the Germans had. It was a pipe dream Der Fuehrer could masturbate over. Had I been in charge of engineering at Focke-Wulf I’d’ve assigned two detailers fresh out of gymnasium to take existing drawings of the FW-290, copy them, and add two more engines. Which, it appears, is what they did.
The Germans were way more realistic about the potential for 1930s/40s aircraft winning a war than the RAF or USAAF. To “conquer the world” (or even Europe) needed large armies with excellent air support and that is how the Wehrmacht was set up. Flying big bombers over the Soviet Union and bombing the shit out of - say - Moscow would have had zero chance of influencing the course of the war on the Eastern Front - except in so much as a large heavy bomber force would have taken resources that could otherwise have gone into tank, guns, ground attack aircraft etc.
Trenchard his successors truly believed the RAF could win the war on its own by strategic bombing with the army just coming in to mop up the shattered remnants - and large sections of the pre-war USAAF had the same mindset. Hence the requirement in 1930s UK and USA to design and build heavy bombers. The Luftwaffe just did not buy these theories - and they were proved right. An argument can be made that the Anglo-American strategic bombing campaigns were cost effective in the damage they did and the German resources they consumed to counter them but no way did they win the war on their own. Massive armies were needed to defeat Germany, armies provided by the USSR and the USA. Britain’s army in WW2 was not on the same scale even allowing for size of population, in part because so many men and resources had gone into Bomber Command. It was only the USA, with it’s extraordinary productive capacity, that could afford a strategic bomber force as well as a really large and generously equipped army.
Bolding mine. Completely aside from the fictionality of an actual Amerika bomber and its flight characteristics, the bolded bit is so absurd I’d question the credibility of anything else the person said. Of the three aircraft he claims to have been better than the B-17 in most, if not all respects, the Ju 290 was never used as a bomber so were left with speculation on a fictional planes characteristics.
Bomber B is even worse, it was a project to replace all operational bombers that was a complete failure that didn’t produce any results, and worse, bolded bit mine:
That leaves us with only the abortion known as the He-177 as the only real plane to compare to the B-17. On paper it had a similar payload/range capability to the B-17, higher cruising and maximum speed, and a much lighter self defense armament. That’s only on paper though, the He-177 was beset by major problems:
One can’t help but draw comparisons to the Panther, an excellent tank when its engine wasn’t setting itself on fire. And like the Panther, it wasn’t just teething problems in initial versions; it was plagued by severe operational problems throughout its career.
I think that Legal case of Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt etal vs Hitler proved that the Luftwaffe was *wrong. *
Good points.
Not to mention that for the price of a Panther the Allies could crank out a dozen T34s or Shermans (maybe both). I’d match a Panther against either tank *one-on-one *anytime, but would hesitate to try one Panther vs even 4 of either.
I believe it was on the SDMB that some one posted that the purpose of tanks was to support infantry, not attack other tanks. That had certainly changed by Desert Storm, probably before.
Japan thought it could beat us by stomping their feet.
Rommel, Patton and Guderdain changed that.
Actually pre-WW2 doctrine of tanks generally had them in two categories, slow heavily armored tanks dubbed Infantry tanks that supported infantry advances and faster lightly armored Cruiser tanks that pushed forward and engaged any enemy armor they encountered. (This was the British and French armored doctrine but the Americans, Soviets and Germans had similar ideas in regards to their armored forces) Both were expected to engage any armor they encountered however and were given the appropriate rounds to do so. It was only post World War 2 into the 1950’s that we began to see tanks that combined both features into what became known as “Main Battle Tanks”.
The Luftwaffe was right in terms of the actual concept proposed, (bolded, here).
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey certainly noted that the use of long range bombing was “decisive” in winning the war, however, it never made a claim that bombing, alone was going to defeat the enemy.
The USSBS actually addressed the point I bolded in the post by MarcusF:
How many were the “some,” is not identified. Fortunately, the actual planners during the war took a more realistic view.
I understand that undertaking nailing and continuing to support it is just not going to happen if you have sucky hammers–or have perfectly fine other methods of getting results-- but as a matter of record–I’ve just now read about the Ural campaign–what was the record of Nazi strategic bombing?
Blitzkrieg and strategic bombing are antithetical, I am guessing, the former certainly was doing quite fine for most of Europe.
Well, yes, airpower alone wouldnt do it- not counting nukes of course.
But without crushing strategic bombing, D-Day would have failed.