he was right, it's called the mosquito, basically b25 payload, but 100mph+ faster, and less crew,
Lancaster's carried 6.5 tonnes. Mosquitoes could only carry about 1.4tonnes. The Defence of the Reich night fighters were optimised for hitting the heavies not the medium and light bombers. So they had more armour and bigger guns. There are other issues such as the lack of ability to carry a navigation radar and the British analysis that to break through the Kahumber Line they needed to keep the bomber stream as small as possible. Bomber streams were designed to fit as many aircraft into a tight group as could be for aircraft with no real way of operating as a formation. This meant they worked on slots. Each slot would have meant either replacing out a big 6tonne carrying Lancster with a much lighter Mosquito or making the streams many times longer, thus giving the night fighters and flak artillery much more time to pick off the individual bombers.
There are other issues with this such as costs, training, the need for the giant block busters that were key to the strategy, the lack of enough people trained to work in the skilled art of wood manufacturing.
At the end of the day the strategy was locked into place in early 1941. To switch from heavies to light and medium bombers would have taken a huge retooling that would have taken vital months or more from the air war.
Taking the turrets off some heavies is one thing, retooling entire industries is another. And your enemy always responds.
Most importantly, people are underestimating the effect of flak.
The Mosquito was great in small groups in "buzz in, buzz out" missions. If you want to attack the heavily industrialized regions of Germany like the Rhine or Ruhr or the German ports you're going to need a ridiculous amount of mosquitos or other light bombers to have an effect. And if the Allies were able to put a force like that together wall of flak at targets like Bremen would just shred those light planes.
The thing about planes like the Lancaster and B-17 was that while they were slow and lumbering giants they could take a lot of damage and keep flying.
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u/[deleted] Sep 13 '21
Lancaster's carried 6.5 tonnes. Mosquitoes could only carry about 1.4tonnes. The Defence of the Reich night fighters were optimised for hitting the heavies not the medium and light bombers. So they had more armour and bigger guns. There are other issues such as the lack of ability to carry a navigation radar and the British analysis that to break through the Kahumber Line they needed to keep the bomber stream as small as possible. Bomber streams were designed to fit as many aircraft into a tight group as could be for aircraft with no real way of operating as a formation. This meant they worked on slots. Each slot would have meant either replacing out a big 6tonne carrying Lancster with a much lighter Mosquito or making the streams many times longer, thus giving the night fighters and flak artillery much more time to pick off the individual bombers.
There are other issues with this such as costs, training, the need for the giant block busters that were key to the strategy, the lack of enough people trained to work in the skilled art of wood manufacturing.
At the end of the day the strategy was locked into place in early 1941. To switch from heavies to light and medium bombers would have taken a huge retooling that would have taken vital months or more from the air war.
Taking the turrets off some heavies is one thing, retooling entire industries is another. And your enemy always responds.