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Bomber Crew

Started by Jarhead0331, August 22, 2017, 02:34:26 PM

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FarAway Sooner

I think that 4-engined plane with the fancy engine cowlings was the 4-engined cross between a P-38 Lightning and a P-40 Warhawk:  It's the P-78 Flying Tiger!!

I wonder if it'll be derivative of FTL, except flying over Germany?  I read an interesting analysis of WW II that suggested the Allied Strategic Bombing command did not have a major effect on German industrial output.  Rather than being a historical account of the economics of WW II, it was basically an economics textbook about WW II, but it was copiously researched and documented.

The author wasn't saying that the strategic bombing campaign was a waste of time.  That was outside the scope of his work.  He was just saying that, through massive inventories and widespread substitution, strategic bombing did very little to keep the Germans from running their economy full-steam until near the end of the war.  The one exception he identified was aviation fuel.

Silent Disapproval Robot

#16
So conflicted about this title.  I would love to see a detailed crew management type sim depicting Bomber Command during WWII but I am really turned off by the cartoonish art style.

At any rate, the tiger mouths painted on the engine nacelles are likely based on KB772  VR-R, a Lancaster Mk X (Canadian built versions of the Mk III) which flew with  419 "Moose" Sqn, No 6 (RCAF) Group from Nov 44-Apr 45 and then in RCAF Eastern Air Command until May 47.  It was nicknamed "Ropey" by the crew.  The Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum re-created the paint scheme on their Lancaster in 2015 during its summer tours before moving on to other iconic paint schemes in 2016.

       




mirth

So this is a historically accurate game!
"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

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Sir Slash

Stop getting history into my cuteness dammit!  >:(
"Take a look at that". Sgt. Wilkerson-- CMBN. His last words after spotting a German tank on the other side of a hedgerow.

FarAway Sooner

I'm kinda sad it's not a P-78.

:dreamer:

W8taminute

Quote from: FarAway Sooner on August 23, 2017, 11:45:27 AM
I think that 4-engined plane with the fancy engine cowlings was the 4-engined cross between a P-38 Lightning and a P-40 Warhawk:  It's the P-78 Flying Tiger!!

I wonder if it'll be derivative of FTL, except flying over Germany?  I read an interesting analysis of WW II that suggested the Allied Strategic Bombing command did not have a major effect on German industrial output.  Rather than being a historical account of the economics of WW II, it was basically an economics textbook about WW II, but it was copiously researched and documented.

The author wasn't saying that the strategic bombing campaign was a waste of time.  That was outside the scope of his work.  He was just saying that, through massive inventories and widespread substitution, strategic bombing did very little to keep the Germans from running their economy full-steam until near the end of the war.  The one exception he identified was aviation fuel.

I've heard a lot of arguments on both sides of the equation on whether the SW campaign was worth it or not.   If you look at the Normandy landings and the situation on the eastern front during that same period you'll see that the Germans had little to no air power in the form of fighter protection.  By that time most of the fighters they did have were reserved for defending against the allied bombing attacks.  That and the fact that Hitler insisted on putting production priority on bombers rather than fighters.
"You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend."

Romulan Commander to Kirk

BanzaiCat

Thanks for the heads-up, JH. Wishlisted.  O0

Looks like it comes out mid-October.

I don't mind cartoony graphics if the game play is fun, and it looks to be that way. I wonder how repetitive it can get, though - that'll be key for me.

In a way, it reminds me of 'The Few,' which was a tremendous disappointment, especially after the devs abandoned it.

JasonPratt

One of Microprose's final games, The Mighty 8th, features some internal crew management in a far more realistic (if also kind of buggy) B-17 bomber sim. I kind of feel like we even had a Groggy AAR on it once upon a time?
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Philippe

If it's the game I'm thinking of it had an awesome array of nose-art mods.  You had to master the different crew members roles to have a shot at a successful mission. 
Every generation gets the Greeks and Romans it deserves.


History is a bad joke played by the living on the dead.


Senility is no excuse for feeblemindedness.

FarAway Sooner

Quote from: W8taminute on August 24, 2017, 05:32:07 AM
Quote from: FarAway Sooner on August 23, 2017, 11:45:27 AM
I think that 4-engined plane with the fancy engine cowlings was the 4-engined cross between a P-38 Lightning and a P-40 Warhawk:  It's the P-78 Flying Tiger!!

I wonder if it'll be derivative of FTL, except flying over Germany?  I read an interesting analysis of WW II that suggested the Allied Strategic Bombing command did not have a major effect on German industrial output.  Rather than being a historical account of the economics of WW II, it was basically an economics textbook about WW II, but it was copiously researched and documented.

The author wasn't saying that the strategic bombing campaign was a waste of time.  That was outside the scope of his work.  He was just saying that, through massive inventories and widespread substitution, strategic bombing did very little to keep the Germans from running their economy full-steam until near the end of the war.  The one exception he identified was aviation fuel.

I've heard a lot of arguments on both sides of the equation on whether the SW campaign was worth it or not.   If you look at the Normandy landings and the situation on the eastern front during that same period you'll see that the Germans had little to no air power in the form of fighter protection.  By that time most of the fighters they did have were reserved for defending against the allied bombing attacks.  That and the fact that Hitler insisted on putting production priority on bombers rather than fighters.

Yeah, my sense is that the industrial bombing was not terribly successful (I'm sure it made some differences somewhere, but German war-fighting ability was brought to its knees by Russian occupation of Balkan oil fields and not strategic bombing).  But, as you said, it drew the Luftwaffe back into Germany, which ensured Allied air superiority over France starting in early 1944.

This had implications not only for German movement at the operational level, but also for the destruction of railroad stock and French rail connections.  The reality is that, in the sixty days following the D-Day landings, the Allied Force build-up significantly outpaced the German force build-up.

Given that the Allies had to cross the Channel without any functioning harbors during this time and the Germans had the advatnage of interior rail lines, it's hard to view this as a failure.

One other relevant fact I learned recently:  During WW II, the Amercians spent 5 dollars on aircraft for every dollar they spent on tanks.  A logical decision, given their need to project force over great distances, but still an interesting one.

DennisS

Quote from: FarAway Sooner on August 23, 2017, 11:45:27 AM
I think that 4-engined plane with the fancy engine cowlings was the 4-engined cross between a P-38 Lightning and a P-40 Warhawk:  It's the P-78 Flying Tiger!!

I wonder if it'll be derivative of FTL, except flying over Germany?  I read an interesting analysis of WW II that suggested the Allied Strategic Bombing command did not have a major effect on German industrial output.  Rather than being a historical account of the economics of WW II, it was basically an economics textbook about WW II, but it was copiously researched and documented.

The author wasn't saying that the strategic bombing campaign was a waste of time.  That was outside the scope of his work.  He was just saying that, through massive inventories and widespread substitution, strategic bombing did very little to keep the Germans from running their economy full-steam until near the end of the war.  The one exception he identified was aviation fuel.

The United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS) concluded that the war could have been shortened if the Allied efforts and priorities had been different. Aviation fuel, lubricants, and other things that allowed machinery to operate should have been more heavily hit. I'm looking at you, Schweinfurt!

DennisS

Quote from: BanzaiCat on August 24, 2017, 08:02:03 AM
Thanks for the heads-up, JH. Wishlisted.  O0

Looks like it comes out mid-October.

I don't mind cartoony graphics if the game play is fun, and it looks to be that way. I wonder how repetitive it can get, though - that'll be key for me.

In a way, it reminds me of 'The Few,' which was a tremendous disappointment, especially after the devs abandoned it.

I am very, VERY angry about The Few. Specifically, as you get stronger, so does Germany. To the point, that about 1/3rd of the way into the game, the game becomes unwinnable, with Germanic Stacks of Doom (tm) being impossible to defeat.

Silent Disapproval Robot

Lots of books on the subject of strategic bombing and its effectiveness.  Some rambling thoughts off the top of my head, in no real coherent order.

The Brits adopted the policy of night area bombing basically because it was their only realistic option of conducting offensive operations against Germany after the defeats in France and Norway.  They had to switch to night bombing due to the unsustainable casualty rates they suffered in daylight attacks.

Initial results were terrible but after the Butt report came out and highlighted the shortcomings, tech and tactics improved.  In the mid-war years before the USAAF really built up strength in England, the RAF achieved devastating results in the Ruhr campaign, with Hamburg and Cologne being hit especially hard. 

RAF's plan was to break civilian morale and hopefully cause a enough unrest to cripple the economy or topple the government.  After Hamburg, Goebbels was himself stated that a few more attacks on the level of the Hamburg raid and Germany might well collapse.  However, once summer ended and the weather cooled, the likelihood of a firestorm dropped of significantly.  Further, the Germans changed their tactics after the use of Window rendered the Himmelbett "box" system ineffective and with the introduction of Tame Boar and, to a lesser extent, Wild Boar tactics, bomber losses mounted significantly.

Arthur Harris was a zealot when it came to pushing for continued area bombing and did as much as he could to quash any other bombardment tactics which, in hindsight would have produced better results.   Earlier in the war Churchill's science advisor, Lindemann, also pushed for area bombing as a war winning strategy and Churchill went with it.

Speer said the RAF's area bombing tactics were not effective in reducing German industry directly but they did act as a significant drain on Germany's warfighting ability as they forced Germany to open a "second front" several years before Normandy.  Tremendous amounts of production capacity, men, and materiel that would have gone to the eastern front were instead deployed against the bomber attacks.

12.2% of Britain's expenditures went to strategic bombing.  I've seen various figures about Germany's expenditures but they're often contradictory.  One that does stick out is that 80% of the artillery Germany produced from 1942 onward went to AAA production and 10-15% of total manpower went to manning these guns.

One raid that was particularly significant was the attack on Peenemunde.  This is where the Germans were working on their V2 rockets as well as a bunch of other nasty stuff.  The raid did heavy damage to the facility and killed a large number of scientists and staff.  The raid is credited with pushing back the deployment of the rockets by 2-3 months thereby preventing them from being available during the Normandy landings.

There are some who suggest that the use of heavy bombers such as the Lancaster and the Halifax was a waste of material and manpower and that it would have been a better idea to use Mosquitos instead as they could reach Germany with bombs and were much harder to intercept due to their speed and could better evade radar due to their wooden construction.  I suspect that if the Brits had gone this route, the Germans would have responded by developing the He-219 Uhu and the Ta-154 Moskito much more quickly and subsequent RAF losses would have been comparable to what the heavies suffered.

Harris reluctantly gave up on area bombing in the run up to D-Day and, along with the USAAF, sent his heavies against the German transportation network.  Results show that this was a misuse of heavy bombers as they didn't have the accuracy required to take out bridges and canals and damage they did to marshaling yards could be quickly repaired.  The tactical airforces (Bomber command's No 2 Group) and USAAF 9th Air Force) were much better suited to knocking out key choke points in the transportation network.  As soon as Normandy was done, Harris went right back to area bombing.  This was probably a mistake as the RAF's tonnage carrying capacity was much better than the USAAF's and those bombers could have done great damage to Germany's oil production.

The USAAF were opposed to area bombing and targeting civilian workers and went after German industrial targets.  There were different camps pushing for attacking the transportation network or the oil network with transportation generally winning the argument although priorities changed quite a bit (sub pens, transport, oil, ball-bearings, etc).  Hindsight shows that Germany's ability to recover from industrial attacks and disperse prosecution was much more resilient than Allied planners believed possible but that oil was one of the few industries that couldn't be dispersed.  Even so, it wasn't until very late in '44 where the loss of oil production really reached crisis levels.

In book I recently read, the author claimed that Germany's real Achilles' heel was coal.  Coal was used to move everything, especially once production was dispersed and that it was the raids that hit coal production that worried the Germans the most and eventually caused the most headaches.  The Allied planners weren't even aware of this until after the war when they did their analyses. 


Some good books on the subject.

RAF Bomber Command

https://www.amazon.ca/Bomber-Command-Max-Hastings-Sir/dp/0760345201/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503610024&sr=8-1&keywords=bomber+command+max+hastings


https://www.amazon.ca/Other-Battle-Luftwaffe-Versus-Command/dp/0785814183/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1503610133&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=The+other+battle+henchcliffe

https://www.amazon.ca/Hardest-Victory-Denis-Richards/dp/0393037630/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1503610158&sr=1-1&keywords=The+hardest+victory+richards

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ONZQ5MU/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o01_?ie=UTF8&psc=1


USAAF

https://www.amazon.ca/Masters-Air-Americas-Against-Germany-ebook/dp/B000JMKVMG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1503610376&sr=1-1&keywords=Masters+of+the+Air%3A+America%E2%80%99s+Bomber+Boys+Who+Fought+the+Air+War+Against+Nazi+Germany


https://www.amazon.ca/Command-Sky-Superiority-Smithsonian-Spaceflight-ebook/dp/B00S9I81SI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503610313&sr=8-1&keywords=To+Command+the+Sky%3A+The+Battle+for+Air+Superiority+Over+Germany%2C+1942-1944







W8taminute

Great post SDR.

Yes it's probably true that strategic bombing was not very effective in crippling the industrial power of Germany.  The side effect of adding another dimension to the fight that the Germans had to divert resources to is probably more significant than the industrial damage.
"You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend."

Romulan Commander to Kirk

jomni

#29
Crew doesn't have any sense of urgency. Or maybe legs are too short.