Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: zenon@chopin.llnl.gov (Maciej Zenon Pindera)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Learning in War
Message-ID: <10100@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 11 Oct 89 03:36:43 GMT
References: <27388@amdcad.AMD.COM> <27442@amdcad.AMD.COM> <9864@cbnews.ATT.COM> <9928@cbnews.ATT.COM>
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Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
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From: zenon@chopin.llnl.gov (Maciej Zenon Pindera)

In article <9928@cbnews.ATT.COM> fiddler@Sun.COM (Steve Hix) writes:
>
>As for Germany, their main strength, applying Blitzkrieg, also hobbled them.
>They treated offensive airpower during almost all the war simply as tactical 
>artillery.
>
  The whole idea behind Blitzkrieg (a name, incidentally, coined by the
allies), precluded the development of big bombers.  From the economic
and political point of view, it was decided that Germany could not
support a protracted war. In a long war where the opposing country can
bring its whole economic resources to bear, a big four engined, long
range bomber would have been more suitable. And as it turned out, the
Germans did have an acute need for such a bomber, especially on the
eastern front. (in order to get at the Soviet installations in the
Urals, for example).
  For a short war however, a kind of war that Germany was preparing
for, a dive bomber was much more preferable since as you have pointed
out, it could be used as very accurate 'tactical artillery'.

maciej


[mod.note:  To throw in my 2 cents, I would posit another reason for
the limited nature of the Luftwaffe; interservice rivalry.  In Germany,
the Army was top dog; everybody who was anybody was associated with it.
Goering's close association with Hitler enabled to Luftwaffe to reach as
far as it did, but I wonder how much additional funding was cut by Army
machinations, in their desire to remain the premier arm of the state.  The
Navy, obviously, never received more than token interest compared to the
other branches.

And let's not forget, Germany did develop a few long-range bombers;
specifically, the He 177 "Greif" (Griffon) comes to mind.  But until
late in the war, these were hobbled with the requirement that they be
capable of dive-bombing, as well.  This smacks of similar compromises
in the US military which resulted from interservice rivalries; such as
the nuclear barges mentioned in another posting today.  - Bill ]