Isn't speculation fun?

OK, 262s are operational in some numbers.

The war is prolonged.

The US then deploys P-80s in numbers that the Luftwaffe cannot match.

Game over.

Or...

A a massive night B-29 raid escorted by P-80s, P-51Hs, and P-82 Twin Mustangs, flys to Berlin one night. Only one B-29 has a bomb though...

Game really over.

Any scenario that the pro-facisti can come up with is easily countered.

It still complicated the task of concentrating their forces and of course the 262 was useless at protecting against its own greatest vulnerability: the long landing approach from which it couldn't quickly accelerate away in an emergency.

dduff

Yup, that's pretty much the way i tend to see it when theorizing about it. The difference was that the man with the funny mustache was expecting a sudden rebound and counterattack in his paranoia, while people like Galland were realists and were pushing for a different outcome: a stalemate in the west, maybe going as far as ensuring a separate peace agreement, so that they could concentrate on holding off the Soviets.

The 262 still couldn't win the war, but when the LW almost crippled the 8th AF bomber offensive with prop fighters alone up until the arrival of a long range allied escort, it's obvious that they would have benefitted greatly from having 262s in sufficient numbers.
The reasons the 8th AF loss figures dropped and the disasters of the Regensburg and Schweinfurt raids were not repeated is exactly what you guys are pointing out, long range meant a bunch of mustang groups roaming at will in big wolfpacks, able to cover the bombers all the way to the targets. The 262 was the tool that although unable to directly take the mustangs out, it was perfectly capable of bypassing them entirely and nullifying their impact to a great extent. The real objective was the bombers.
If the LW was able to maintain a 10% atrrition rate against the 8th on most raids, the Normandy landings would have been delayed and German industrial production would have got a very significant respite (as evindeced by data that showed production rising even during the strategic bombing campaign under Speer's guidance).

However, there's an small tid-bit here that sometimes doesn't get enough recognition and it's pretty important, as even if enough 262s and capable pilots were available it would still put a serious dent in LW's plans.

Near the end of the war, allied fighters operated mostly in advance fighter sweeps and not close escort. Some people in the brass fought tooth and nail to convince their peers to "set the fighters free" as they put it. Not easy to convince people about that when it had become clear that unescorted bombers resulted in prohibitive loss figures. However, it proved to be very effective, because it's exactly this strategy that enabled the allies to camp LW bases and deny them a safe haven. Regardless of the range of the pony, if they stuck to operating them in the close and top cover escort roles there wouldn't be mustangs camping over the 262 bases to catch them at their most vulnerable.

In brief, if the hardware is good enough and compares well to contemporary adversaries, the outcome rests mainly on the application of said hardware. It seems to me that it's actually two factors, the flawed application of the 262 that delayed its production and the waste of experienced LW aircrew in the ardennes offensive, coupled with the new doctrine in allied fighter operations favoring advanced roaming squads instead of point defence, that really tipped the scale during the final months. In that sense, it's not the pony that won the war...it's the sound way it was employed in, combined with the faulty way the LW employed their jets.

Even after 'Berlin Week', the bombing campaign probably wasn't worth the vast expense. It did allow the UK and US to fight on at a sustainable rate, however. The aero-naval engagements in the Med, Channel and Pacific were ideal for their industrial power and high standards of training.

It's doubtful if those resources would have been better used if committed to an early land invasion. The western allies would have struggled if involved in prolonged intense land fighting. WWII was much more popular than WWI precisely because the UK was spared horrors such as the Somme.

The bombing campaign really came into its own during the campaign against communications in France & Belgium prior to D-Day. That, and the devastating attack on German the refining and synthetic fuel industries, were the crowning achievements of the air war.

German fuel stocks actually rose during the east-front lull in spring '44, but production collapsed after May '44 and stocks were rapidly depleted thereafter.

dduff

It's not really necessary to be pro-fascist to speculate on such matters. The fact is that the war could have been a lot worse if rationality and common sense had not disappeared from Germany's leadership.

When it came down to it, in spite of all the rhetoric about the body national etc Germany was just a vehicle for the personal ambitions of the top Nazis. Even nuclear weapons couldn't have guaranteed their surrender, because they cared more about themselves than anything else and would have dreamt up rationales for fighting on. The actual effects of the 1000-bomber raids on Germany were not less than atomic bombs in any case. Atomic weapons might have even reinforced the millenarian mindset the Nazis encouraged.

Retaliation with chemical weapons, including nerve gas on a large scale, would have been possible. Large regions might have been made uninhabitable, and the fury of the allies would have been much more intense when they finally did break into Germany.

dduff442

I tend to agree. Surprise and concentration are two of the most fundamental principles of war. Germany was surprised by massive concentrations of P-51s on a daily basis from Feb-44 on.

dduff442

Blackdog_kt and ElAurens... you guys both make some great points! The tactics employed on the strategic level enabling the Mustangs to "go free" had a huge impact... It's much bigger than the plane itself. But having fighters marauding over the entire airspace and being encouraged to show initiative and shoot up anything they can find changes things so much.

And it's also true that since Germany was on the front lines they were able to bring to bear more recently developed aircraft in the late days of the war while the U.S. geographic distance from the conflicts prevented the higher performance types from reaching the battle... It's important to remember the much improved P-51H, P-80, P-82 and B-29 that likely would have been deployed had the war continued.

Not to mention the B-36 if things had gone really bad.

Remember, it was initially designed to bomb Germany from bases in the US.

..we went from pony talk to phoney talk ;)

I still think that the stock Mustang in 46 is .. questionable... and from what I understand this was actually proven.. the length was too short I believe.. This was corrected in the HSFX Mustang.. and from my understanding that was all they did, was correct that number and added API to the belting... IMO the stock Mustang had issues.. Your tracks are great Thor.. but yoiu know back in CFS the 99th flew Mustangs there too... and that is to say that we just took what we had and used it.. which is what we do here... when flying D-20NAs .... but there are ussues with the stock P-51s that were never addressed.. even in terms of the 50s... Why is it that in the stock sim you can take a P-40 ... same 6 50s right? And bustem up!! but in the Mustang ... it is harder.. because there were stability issues in the stock Mustang that I have not heard one pilot who flew a Mustang mention... Often flying the stock P-51D was like trying to balance a ruler on a pencil eraser ... Hopefully in 4.10 some of those issues are addressed....