AmerikaBomber strikes New York

[hammo1j]

CBS Newsflash 12 Dec 1943: Tonight New York is aflame as Nazi Bombers strike on the capital. Manhattan, the Bronx and Wall Street were all hit in the early hours of the morning in a despicable attack by German aircraft on the civilian population of the USA. The death toll so far is 43 including 12 women and children.

But the question we have to ask tonight is: where were our fighters? None of the bombers met any opposition although an aircraft believed to be the giant six engined Focke-Wulf Ta 400 crashed on the outskirts of the city confirming the Nazis were behind this attrocity of bombing innocent women and children.

How much impact does the AmerikaBomber have?

1. Does it change attitude to US Bombing in Europe?
2. Can the US effectively counter these raids of 15-20 Ta400's in the Winter Nights flying at 40,000ft?
3. Does it cause mass panic and allocation of resources to the home front better suited for the battlefield? Will the Nazis get another month in the war by using this ploy.

 

[ComradeFlyer]

so the POD is that Albany isn't made the capital of NY?

 

[Tyr]

I'd think it'd damage the Nazi war effort.
The development of such a plane would take mammoth amounts of resources that could have been much better used elsewhere.

 

[CDurham]

1. It had a cruising speed of 202 MPH. The ME 264 had a cruising of 217 MPH and maximum of 350. A similar ratio would give this plane a maximum speed of 335 Mph.

2. Where the heck did you get your 40,000 feet ceiling from? Not from Wiki (I just checked). The ME 264 had an estimated maximum service ceiling of 28,000 feet and the B-29 had one of 33,600 feet. It would likely be coming in around 30,000 feet maximum service ceiling.

3. Even if it did come in at 40,000 feet, there would be P-47's and P-51's to greet them. The P-47 had a service ceiling of 43,000 feet and a maximum speed of 433 Mph. The P-51 had a service ceiling of 41,900 feet and a maximum speed of 487 Mph.

4. The 90mm M1 AA gun could reach 34,000 feet up. The 120mm M1 could reach 57,500 feet up. Both were availible.

So in answer to your questions:

Yes it changes attitudes on American bombing in Europe, in that the attitude is to vastly increase the size and strength of the bombing missions so that they take out the factories and other industry needed to build the bombers.

Yes they can counter the raids with coastal and seaborn radar stations to locate incoming raids and get the fighters up in time. The first time the Americans were caught off guard. Depending on the time between raids, a second might be lucky enough to sneak through to be torn apart by AAA.

The third will never get close. At 15-20 bombers is no match for a squadron or two of fighters.

New York City, Washington D.C. and Boston get some upgrades and additions to their AAA systems (put in after Pearl Harbor). Maybe a few squadrons of night fighters are kept on the home front instead of going over seas... and thats about it.

 

[CalBear]

This is well trod ground.

The United States launches such advanced combat aircraft as the P-35, P-36, and especially the exceptionally lethal F2A Brewster Buffalo (yes, I am being a wise guy) to destroy these huge white elephants that travel at the same speed as a target sleeve.

If the U.S. REALLY wants to get tough it uses some P-40C fighters. You probably have noticed that none of these aircraft were produced after 1941, yet they are ALL an overmatch for the Amerika Bomber types. With some reasonable early warning you can blow the things to Mars with P-26 Peashooter fighters.

The Amerika Bombers were worse than useless. They were SUPPOSED to fly at 40K and be 350 MPH bombers. They weren't. They WERE 200 MPH six engine targets that struggled to maintain 19,000 feet altitude. A remarkable engineering achievement in range, they were not war planes except in theory.

How bad were they? So bad that the Luftwaffe refused to use the models that were produced in combat, regulating them to transport duties well behind the front lines.

edit: Even if you play this straight the aircraft are still meat. The U.S. uses the P-38 in its actual designed role and kills them all in a single day. Or you use the F6F night fighter, or a couple solid nose B-26 bombers (ya' gotta love 16 forward firing .50 cals in a bomber interceptor)

 

[hammo1j]

edit: Even if you play this straight the aircraft are still meat. The U.S. uses the P-38 in its actual designed role and kills them all in a single day. Or you use the F6F night fighter, or a couple solid nose B-26 bombers (ya' gotta love 16 forward firing .50 cals in a bomber interceptor)

Begorrah! You Amerikans love your weapons and yoiur wars almost as much as the Nazis.

None of this array of weaponry is going to apply on the first raid because the USA is going to be taken by surprise (no blackout, no AA guns). If the Germans attack a second time its going to be harder but not impossible. What I am asking is not whether the US is capable of defending its own soil (of course it is), but would it overreact to the extent that its offensive capabilities were diminished.

In 1938 Orson Welles broadcast of "the War of the Worlds" went someway to inducing panic in the American populace. Would this have the same unproportionate effect. Its never going to go so far as to take the US out of the war, but there's a big range of targets you have to guard against and that will take some resource.

 

[Father Maryland]

Begorrah! You Amerikans love your weapons and yoiur wars almost as much as the Nazis.

None of this array of weaponry is going to apply on the first raid because the USA is going to be taken by surprise (no blackout, no AA guns). If the Germans attack a second time its going to be harder but not impossible. What I am asking is not whether the US is capable of defending its own soil (of course it is), but would it overreact to the extent that its offensive capabilities were diminished.

In 1938 Orson Welles broadcast of "the War of the Worlds" went someway to inducing panic in the American populace. Would this have the same unproportionate effect. Its never going to go so far as to take the US out of the war, but there's a big range of targets you have to guard against and that will take some resource.

Oh yeah lets just forget the fighters and AA guns protecting the east coast. Even when it was known the Nazis couldn't hit the east coast they still kept up civil defense. Oh and I will just ignore the ignorant anti American statement.

 

[kojak]

In 1938 Orson Welles broadcast of "the War of the Worlds" went someway to inducing panic in the American populace. Would this have the same unproportionate effect.

In a word: No.

The invaders described in War of the Worlds were from another planet, and were seemingly invincible and infinite, able to destroy anything in their path, and easily dispose of anything humanity could throw at them; they were the unknown, with unknown intentions, and could not be stopped. The German bombers would be a different story.

 

[Doraemon]

According to Wikipedia (so don't kill me if its innacurate), some thought that it was the Germans invading.

study by the Radio Project discovered that some who panicked presumed that Germans — not Martians — had invaded.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(radio)

 

[dmz23]

Would the JU 390 not have been a more effective Amerikabomber? It did get close to NY during a flight[though the incident is controversial to say the least].

 

[Father Maryland]

Would the JU 390 not have been a more effective Amerikabomber? It did get close to NY during a flight[though the incident is controversial to say the least].

From what I have read thats just propaganda.

 

[Markus]

How much impact does the AmerikaBomber have?

The horror, the horror! Take all the fucking stupid the-nazis-have-superweapons-and-will-defeat-us movies hollywood made and multiply them by ten in term of quantity and devide them by ten in terms of quality and you get the result.

Ok, exaggerating here, zero devided by zero is still zero, so no change interms of quality.

3. Does it cause mass panic and allocation of resources to the home front better suited for the battlefield? Will the Nazis get another month in the war by using this ploy.

This is serious! In 1942 the US Army deployed 3inch AA-gun to protect ... the locks of the Great Lakes! Yes, the ones between the USA and Canada!


@CDurham: You got it wrong, the max. speed of a P-51 is 420mph at 25,000ft, a P-47 is as fast. If the engine runs at "combat power".

 

[Old Crank 67]

If anything, if the US were bombed by the Nazis, it would make the Americans even more determined to bomb Germany's cities to rubble and ashes. Did the British shrink before the challenge of Hitler? For every Coventry there were ten Dresdens.

 

[CalBear]

Begorrah! You Amerikans love your weapons and yoiur wars almost as much as the Nazis.

None of this array of weaponry is going to apply on the first raid because the USA is going to be taken by surprise (no blackout, no AA guns). If the Germans attack a second time its going to be harder but not impossible. What I am asking is not whether the US is capable of defending its own soil (of course it is), but would it overreact to the extent that its offensive capabilities were diminished.

In 1938 Orson Welles broadcast of "the War of the Worlds" went someway to inducing panic in the American populace. Would this have the same unproportionate effect. Its never going to go so far as to take the US out of the war, but there's a big range of targets you have to guard against and that will take some resource.

Okay. To directly answer the question:

No. Not a chance. The U.S. built 10,000 P-38s alone. The U.S. had over 1,000 F2A Buffaloes literally just sitting around doing nothing.

Again, 15-20 target-sleeve speed bombers will not make a damned bit of difference to the war effort since they MIGHT survive the first raid (although I think you will find that the USAAF was remarkably paranoid about any sort of air attack on the U.S. with numerous radar sites and fighter squadrons dedicated to Continental Defense). I would also point out that the City of New York was under blackout regulations in 1943, as were most American cities.

Of course now all you need to do is get the Luftwaffe to spend the resources to build 20 bombers to go on a one way mission (they MIGHT get in, but getting out, even the first time, will be a real bitch) using up the resources to build two or three SQUADRONS of fighters at a time that the Heer is screaming for air cover and the RAF & USAAF are starting to pound German cities into rubble. Get them to build a couple hundred of the piles of junk and the war might be over in December of 1944.

 

[CalBear]

Would the JU 390 not have been a more effective Amerikabomber? It did get close to NY during a flight[though the incident is controversial to say the least].

An unarmed 175 mph aircraft (that was max cruise speed if it was going to make a round trip) at 6,000 meters altitude supposedly getting to within 100 km of the U.S. and an actual bombing attempt is slightly different.

As I have noted earlier, the P-26 could have handled the Ju-390, much less the masses of fighters the U.S built after 1932.

The evidence of this flight is also spotty, at best.

 

[RCAF Brat]

CBS Newsflash 12 Dec 1943: Tonight New York is aflame as Nazi Bombers strike on the capital. Manhattan, the Bronx and Wall Street were all hit in the early hours of the morning in a despicable attack by German aircraft on the civilian population of the USA. The death toll so far is 43 including 12 women and children.

But the question we have to ask tonight is: where were our fighters? None of the bombers met any opposition although an aircraft believed to be the giant six engined Focke-Wulf Ta 400 crashed on the outskirts of the city confirming the Nazis were behind this attrocity of bombing innocent women and children.

How much impact does the AmerikaBomber have?

1. Does it change attitude to US Bombing in Europe?
2. Can the US effectively counter these raids of 15-20 Ta400's in the Winter Nights flying at 40,000ft?
3. Does it cause mass panic and allocation of resources to the home front better suited for the battlefield? Will the Nazis get another month in the war by using this ploy.

1. USAAF devotes more resources (B-29s) to burning Germany to the ground, Germany is ruined by end of 1944
2. As others have said, Yes. Very easily. 15-20 large, slow low-altitude bombers are target practice even for obsolete aircraft, which the US has in large numbers
3. A. No. Given what was already allocated to civil defense in the US at the time, the next (or even the first, if the air force is alert) air raid is wiped out, and the Luftwaffe is shown to be weak, in that they cannot strike at the US, while the US can bomb them at will.
___B. No, the war in Europe will be over 4-6 months sooner, as the Germans get to feel the full weight of American industrial and military might. The war in the pacific lasts until late 1945, then Japan gets nuked anyways.

 

[adam888]

There seems to be a lot of anger and disbelief the Germans could get anywhere close to the USA but remember Pearl Harbor and 9/11 and I
think it's entirely possible the Germans could take the US by surprise
and affect one strike against the USA but it's clear the Germans don't
have the logistics to maintain further strikes.

I would doubt the timetable for the defeat of Germany for the War department would not be so impacted out of emotion to grossly affect timetables for war unless the Germans had a nuke or used Chemical weapons to kill thousands of people. I doubt the death of 43 women and 12 kids would cause such emotion.

 

[Father Maryland]

There seems to be a lot of anger and disbelief the Germans could get anywhere close to the USA but remember Pearl Harbor and 9/11 and I
think it's entirely possible the Germans could take the US by surprise
and affect one strike against the USA but it's clear the Germans don't
have the logistics to maintain further strikes.

I would doubt the timetable for the defeat of Germany for the War department would not be so impacted out of emotion to grossly affect timetables for war unless the Germans had a nuke or used Chemical weapons to kill thousands of people. I doubt the death of 43 women and 12 kids would cause such emotion.

So you are using 9 11 as a example why the Germans could use extremely slow aircraft to fly cross Atlantic bombing runs and bomb the US.

 

[Earling]

If the aircraft could do it then it could happen. Strange things happen in war and I doubt many people were sitting there waiting for German bombers to suddenly appear over New York. Even if they were, you can still miss things and perhaps the raid gets through due to some considerable luck.

The results however are fairly minor. A few people get killed, a few air defences (ground AA, some more interceptors, whatever is handy) are set up upon the Eastern Seaboard and at a guess that is about it. Since the USA was producing vast amounts of material which was arguably just gathering dust, getting enough defence to calm any domestic fears would be a relatively simple process which would probably not diminish the volume of material being sent throughout the world by any noticable amount. In any case the bombers are probably all but wiped out after the second or third venture across the Atlantic.

I don't really see why the attitude to strategic bombing in Europe would change. It seems to rest on this strangely common fallacy that the USA wasn't really trying.

 

[Father Maryland]

If the aircraft could do it then it could happen. Strange things happen in war and I doubt many people were sitting there waiting for German bombers to suddenly appear over New York. Even if they were, you can still miss things and perhaps the raid gets through due to some considerable luck.

The results however are fairly minor. A few people get killed, a few air defences (ground AA, some more interceptors, whatever is handy) are set up upon the Eastern Seaboard and at a guess that is about it. Since the USA was producing vast amounts of material which was arguably just gathering dust, getting enough defence to calm any domestic fears would be a relatively simple process which would probably not diminish the volume of material being sent throughout the world by any noticable amount. In any case the bombers are probably all but wiped out after the second or third venture across the Atlantic.

I don't really see why the attitude to strategic bombing in Europe would change. It seems to rest on this strangely common fallacy that the USA wasn't really trying.

This is early world war 2. America was paranoid as hell about German and Japanese planes.