PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Greatest ever blunder in the history of the UK aircraft industry?
Old 23rd Jan 2011, 10:26
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Mike7777777
 
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Quite, but they can outrun every nightfighter in the sky and turrets don't help much against anti aircraft guns.
With hindsight, with regards to Me110 and JU88, yes. Other, faster, nightfighters were available. But from the info at the time it would have taken a brave man to make the decision to remove armament from heavies.

Moreover, this was not hindsight but a conclusion made at the time
That conclusion could not be valid (at the time) because the full info re: causes of bomber losses was not available (at the time) eg Schrage Musik

As far as I can recall no one suggested an entire bomber force composed of Mosquitoes
Previous threads (perhaps Nostalgia). See Mosquito losses in WW2. Grand Slam was not particularly effective at shortening the war, more an exercise in "Can we build it? Yes we can!" Lots, or even several Mossies bombing the U-boat pens when under construction on the French coast would have been a more effective use of resource IMHO (with hindsight!)

But as with all these things, the Germans would have responded. Windows was very effective over Hamburg, the Luftwaffe modifed their tactics, Windows was subsequently not as effective. If the average speed of the bomber stream increases then, eventually, more high performance nightfighters would appear. Me262s (probably) caused a sharp increase in Mossie NF losses at the end of the conflict.
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