Actually, the close escort method was of limited use most of the time. You ended up forcing fighter pilots to sacrifice their main advantage (speed) and give them a very short window of opportunity to engage German fighters blasting through the bomber formations at a closing speed of around 600 knots (the Germans preferred head-on attacks to make it harder for the American gunners to tag them). The strategy they ended up settling on was for one group of fighters to hang close to the bombers while a larger group swept ahead of the formation to hunt out the Germans and act as a picket (compare to the CAPs and destroyer pickets used by the Navy’s carriers for the same purpose)
Ideally, you’d find the German fighters before they had formed up for the attack, making the most of their confusion. Or, even better, just catch them on the ground and relieve them of the trouble of taking off to find the Americans.
Can’t speak for how the 332d Fighter Group achieved their record, but I understand they were probably one of the best trained groups of pilots in the USAAF, due in part to the fact that the USAAF leadership were hesitant to send them to the front, so they kept rotating them to different training programs.
I think people get confused by supposedly “superior” German technology from so many of the Nazi conspiracy shows which show Nazi UFO’s, Nazi’s messing with anti-gravity, Nazi bases in Antarctica, and Nazi bases on the moon. The shows really are quite amusing. I remember one movie where they saved Hitlers head and create this super Hitler-robot from it. It’s kinda fun ok.
In reality, yes, they messed with some advanced stuff but didnt have much luck with it. They pinned their hopes on a few fancy weapons would win the war when in reality the allies also had equally advanced stuff but numbers overwhelm technology many times.
Frankly the one “advanced” weapon they had I am impressed with were the advanced Uboat the Type XXI which was truly a better submarine who’s shape and design made it faster and superior to anything the allies had and alongside guided torpedoes, would have given the allies much more trouble if introduced earlier.
You seem to believe there is a significant difference between being directly above a target and two miles away. There isn’t. As has been repeated pointed out, the He-111 loaded with a V-1 would not make it to the release point which was well past the picket destroyers. They would be picked up on radar so far out that the CAP would get them first, and any which would slip through would be blasted out by the destroyers and then the other escort craft far before they could get into range of whatever they wanted to hit.
You are repeating that the He-111 carrying a V-1 would be a viable anti-ship weapon and it would not for all the reasons sited. If wishes were horses then beggars would ride.
But not in the configuration you propose and not with the aircraft which Germany had at the time up against the countermeasures which the Allies had.
And against a ship, that is neither here nor there.
CAP did not operate close to the ships because the ships had their own AAA. CAP fighters had to break away from chasing targets when they entered the AA zone for the ships.
And for very good reasons. A radar-guided proximity-fused 5 Inch DP shell does magical things to a single-engined airplane. And I don’t believe they had IFF systems back then.
They did by 1940, although I’ll have to track down (no pun intended) when they were implemented on US naval aircraft. I just finished reading a book on naval operations in 1942, and they weren’t implemented in the operations prior to Midway, although they would have been by the 1944.
I suspect our friend here isn’t aware of the level of sophistication of Allied AA systems by 1944. Radar guided fire would make short work of an approaching He-111, even if it somehow got past the CAP coverage.
Even in 1941 a capital ship’s AA would make short work of a single bomber. Which is why the preferred strategy was for several dozen bombers to attack from multiple directions and altitudes. There’s a reason that two early US aircraft carriers were named for swarming stinging insects (USS Hornet and USS Wasp).
See that’s like, two good reasons right there. It was meant to be.
I was very amused to learn that the USS Enterprise’s name tracks back to a series of Royal Navy warships. Admittedly the first US Navy ship of that name probably just adopted the name because it sounded cool.
Well, the first vessel I can find with the namke was the French L’Entreprise, a sixth-rater, which was captured by the British and “renamed” Enterprise. Not surprisingly, L’Entreprise was a privateeer, a privately-owned warship trying to make a profit seizing enemy commerce. One meaning of "enterprise " is “business venture,” and that’s exactly what she was.
Edited to add link: see here (under the heading Light Horse in bold) for at least one prize captured and sold by L’Entreprise.
Early war AA was woefully inadequate. WWII aircraft were three to four times faster than their WWI predecessors, but the AA weapons hadn’t kept up. By 1944 and '45, AA weapons has gotten infinitely better, especially as the VT proximity fuse weapons were implemented.
On on the the sites, it said that there were about 100 of the He-111 modified to carry the V-1, and about 80 were shot down. These weren’t even attempting to get within a hundred miles of their target, let alone two.
The USN actually had reasonable success against the tokko attackers, despite facing numbers which far surpassed whatever numbers of He-111 Germany could have launched, with planes that flew much, much faster than the He-111 and with far greater maneuverability.
Even had the Germans managed to modify a V-1 for wire guidance, they would not have been able to get their He-111 anywhere close to the ships they would want to target.
And, of course, since the European theater was a land war by that time, there weren’t any really critical naval targets anyway.
Another area in which the Allies had a technological edge was in using pykrete to build stuff. Apparently never considered by the Nazis for wonder weapons.
But, like almost everything mentioned in this thread, it went nowhere.
In thinking about my pykrete post, I wondered what the situation would be if the Germans had worked on pykrete and had plans to develop ice-ships or some such.
Wikipedia and such has lists of Amazing German Secret Weapons! and this would have made the list. And would be added to the mythos the OP talks about. Why?
I think the answer goes something like this: During a war, there is an urge to de-humanize the enemy. There are knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, troglodytes. But after beating them, you enhance your self-image but turning it around. These people we beat were specially-bred, Übermensch. Which means their technology had to have been beyond ours by decades, if not so advanced we haven’t even figured it out yet.
How great and noble must we and our cause have been to have beaten such an undefeatable foe! Etc.
My theory is that a lot of us like to play the “what if” game and with just a little more development, could they have changed things? “What if” the Germans developed the jet fighter a little sooner?
They both developed the jet engine independently and they both worked on axial flow and centrifugal designs. The British wisely chose centrifugal engines because they were more stable. The axial flow engine was a metallurgical grenade waiting for the pin to be pulled by inexperienced German pilots.
There is no doubt that the Germans were intelligent and were working on neat stuff. Many more such things than the Japanese who didn’t have the resources to really develop much during the war.
