"A US-Soviet War in 1946/47" Topic

Interesting to read the full draft of 'Operation Unthinkable' (linked above), the correlation of forces in particular is very alarming.

Allies 103 divisions (incl 23 Amd)
Sovs 261 divisions (incl 36 Amd)

Allies 6048 tac air + 2750 strategic
Sovs 11802 tac air + 960 strategic

Sov division count adjusted for combat strength so they are 'division equivalents'.

I especially love the laconic remark "we are not in the position to take the offensive with a view to achieving rapid success."

Yes – a 1:3 ratio is not the best position to be in when you want your offensive to achieve rapid success…

Martin – I think that remark is 7 words too long. I am surprised that the sovs can put nearly 1000 strategic bombers on the table.

What sort of kill ratio do we assume Allies to Russian will be? I don't know the relative difference between German:Russian and German:Aliied but that ratio may be a good starting point.

the Soviet frontier on the Iraq border is mountainous. Really, really mountainous …

The USSR had no common border with Iraq -- they'd have had to come thru Turkey or Iran to get to Iraq -- but you're right about the mountainous part.

Hi

Freecloud, OK, fantasy it is.

but you then follow with "proofs" that I cannot hold. First, logistics are immutable. Second, vaguely saying the russians had high flying airplanes runs into the reality that they did not! The clue you are looking for is found in why the russian copy of the B29 was a failure.

In this case, the short version of the story is that the russians are not competitive until they get british turbines.

Thirdly, the VVS made good planes, but again, they could just barely control the luftwaffe while having a massive number superiority that would NOT exist against the allies.

Again, the 1946 scenario usually gets into the proposed super weapons the germans were working on, and always seems to be uninterested in the allied superweapons that were actually used and proved. The russians, outside of logistics, would be fighting 1946 with 1940 technology.

Rocky

If the sovs are going to invade Turkey, the Dardenelles are more interesting than Greece, but do the Sovs want to fight the Turks?

But remember that, unless we delay the start date too long, both the Sovs and the brits have forces in Iran. The problem with Iran is that the road network is not conducive to the direct approach to Northern Iraq. What the sovs would need to do is a push south to the gulf (fighting against the grain of the country) and then hard right to Basra to cut the airfields off from their supplies (Comparable excercise to going 200 miles south of the coast road in Libya).

That is why a couple of pages ago I figured that Bill Slim was likely to be told to grab whatever assets he could ship to Iran and take charge, because this front is vital to a British war effort, not only for its ability to base air attacks on trans urals factories, but also for the oil.

I have worked in Southern Iran and off the main roads (most of which are post war) it is far harder country than Tunisia – your logistics will be camels and mules.

@Grizzly – early '46 start. Let's go with Slim and the Indian army rushing for Iraq. Glubb pasha mounts an heroic defence against the initial surge.

@Rocky sorry, but I don't buy inevitable US tactical or strategic air superiority, nor nor do I buy it happening quickly. we will just have to agree to disagree on that.

I think it is easiest to assume that the super weapons exist in very small numbers, in fact I'd probably assume that only stuff actually in service at end '45 can be used, and in small numbers

The russians, outside of logistics, would be fighting 1946 with 1940 technology.

Like the JS3/T10? and the T44? and the SU 100? and SU 122?

It is precisely IN logistics that their tech would have been outdated, especially w/o Lend-Lease.

In 1946, the US could have put nearly 9000 B29s alone in the air, and given impetus to deploying the B36 faster than historically occurred and in greater numbers (possibly in the thousands, certainly more than 400). Keep in mind, the B36 was finished in 1945, but there wasn't any rush to build them anymore.

Freecloud, I'm still convinced that the Americans alone could have bombed the Russians out of house and home, completely ignoring the contributions of the British. My suggested goal was simply the most logical one I could think of, but plan B would be to drive south and conquer Iran. Lots of easily-accessible oil, and a warm-water port. Still a nasty set of mountains in the area, but the Caspian Sea is a nice set-up point.

Anyone know what the limits were of the Brit and Russian occupations? Logistically Iran is a pig – you are feeding everything down a single railway, and, if memory serves me correct, only south of Iran do you have a sealed road. And all the roads were radial from Tehran, so flanking operations are difficult.

Sounds like Garden in the hills

@Lion – firstly, total B-29 production during and after WW2 was c 3,970 B29s. It was an incredibly complicated machine to manufacture and operate.

Secondly, the Japanese were shooting down B-29s with AA guns and aircraft like the Ki-45 with a 340mph max speed and 32,000 ft service ceiling. You *can* fly a B29 at 38,000 ft and 350 mph, you just can't put many bombs in it. The problem the Japanese had was "not enough aircraft" amd "not enough big AA guns". This was not a problem the Russians had.

Thirdly, the B29 got to fly low and slow over the sea for a long time, saving fuel, knowing no Japanese fighters were around. Flying over Mother Russia you have no such security, so you have to go high and fast, which burns far more fuel, which means you have to go closer to the target, which means Russian fighter-bombers can get you on the ground.

Fourthly, Russia is very big (2x size of Europe) – the idea of bombing Russia out of their homes, never mind quickly, falls into the same sort of mistake Napoleon and Hitler made. Incidentally, a lot of that space is open and bombing from 30,000ft plus was very inaccurate…

Freecloud, if we buy points 1 and 2, they switch to night bombing – the trans ural factories are big enough to hit at night and there will be a big baseline of radar navigation aids.

The targets in trans ural SU are spread out which means that the few AI radar equipped night fighters that the Sovs have will be dispersed.

The trick is not to bomb Russians out of their homes, but to shut down the trans Ural industrial complexes. This puts strain on the transportation system (that Magnetite they mine at Magnitorsk is going to be much harder to move to the new arctic circle factories before it is turned into tanks). Then when you have bombed the industrial complexes and the Caspian oil facilities, you can bomb the Russians that live in western Russia out of their homes.

Now, what were Sov capabilities in ADS information flow and radar, as you so correctly point out, this isnt the home counties or even the Ruhr. You are dealing with a bomber stream which will saturate your defences and counter measures which will make it hard to concentrate your small night fighter force. And dont tell me about carrots '46 – you need AI radar, lots of it.

A thousand heavy bombers hitting a target has a more serious impact than a nuclear weapon and the allied airforces can probably do this 4 times per week.

What you are doing is somewhat like trying to do Roundup in '43, but because its inconvenient to do so, you dont allow for an intact French rail system, or for disputed control of the air so it works – so does casting a death spell, but it aint whatif its fantasy.

Just like the Allied bombing in 1944-45 stopped the Germans producing record numbers of tanks and planes…………….

mkenny, your analysis of German wartime production, what drove it, and trends in resource utilisation might benefit from a little study.

Hi

Free, again, there is more to the story than the simple "my big tank" issue.

In the case of the B29:
1)The Japanese had several aircraft with operational ceilings in excess of 29K, the russians had none.
2)We had a a general named "Curtiss LeMay who chose to bring the B29s down into range of the japanese AA and fighters which were made for political purposes which would not be in place for a supposed russian war.

Russia's size meant something to the euros, but not to americans. You might not understand ameircan long range training involved finding small targets in the areas of the US where the steppes are identical.

See, the point here, is that we can, without any work, point to problems and your response is to cast a "disbelief spell" rather than actually present facts and understanding.

The vastness of russia also means that the air defense is either concentrated around the important places OR you hope that randomly placed fields will someohow present americans flying over it. German point defense aircraft were an effective failure. The same supposed benefit for russia would have the same problem.

When I said "1940s tech don, I was talking aircaft. Not tanks.

Rocky

mkenny, your analysis of German wartime production, what drove it, and trends in resource utilisation might benefit from a little study.

Been doing it for 4 decades.
Why do you always presume any disagreement with your conclusions is a result of ignorance?
Perhaps the problem might lie closer to home?

@Rocky the La 3, 5 and 7; Yak 3 and especially Mig 3 were all 30,000 ft plus aircraft, and they had established Pe2 variants that could but there was no need. These were formidable aircraft compared to the Japanese planes and they had a lot of them.

The reason LeMay brought the B 29s down was not just political, it was practical. The higher you go, the harder to navigate, the less accurate the bombing, and the less bombs the planes can carry. leMay concluded that only 5% of the precision bombing was hitting the target, and given the operational costs (and complexity of the B 29 it was quite unreliable) so they needed a higher impact than that. They thus had to trade off higher losses against higher impact by flying lower. Without escorting fighters however even the B29s had to revert to night area bombing as day losses were too high. And that is against the weakened Japanese AF not the huge VVS.

The vastness of Russia means that the bomber approach routes are quite predictable for the very long distance runs ( not too much route deviation possible ) and most countries mixed regional defences with point defences. also this makes it easier to predict where to put Radar. Given that it's all land you can use observers far more( radar is most useful if the enemy aircraft can't be seen early, eg Battle of Britain)

Also even the most cursory reading of strategic bombing in Europe and the Pacific will tell you that it didn't really effect production in the short or medium term nor make the enemy civilians give in – if anything it increased resolve.

As to US navigators being way better than the Commonwealth and German ones I've seen no evidence of that – but I do know the US adopted british pathfinding practice in Europe and the Pacific.- so I would be interested to see what proof you have.

Freecloud, in 1945 the US *canceled* orders for 5000 B29s of all types. 3700 B29A and B models, plus 300+ B29C (excuse me, B50s), plus 5000 planes on order equals 9000 B29s of all types.

Boeing had the capacity to build them and could deliver them in months, and in the meantime there were still 4000 B29A, B and B29C/B50 available. B29Bs were equipped with a bombing radar for night operations, and could also act as flight leads for daylight attacks, since the radar gave them precise altitude and range information. B29Cs had twice the bombload of the earlier A/B models, and were convertible from B29A/Bs in the field.

Now, the USAAF is playing 'where's the factory' with the Soviets, and it's really hard to build tanks and trucks when your factories are getting reduced to rubble, your steel mills are rubble, and your refineries are burning. Plus, most of the high-octane Avgas that the Russians were using came from the US.

I'm sorry, I just can't see how the Russians can pull this off quickly.

@Lion and @Grizzly I think this boils down to whether you think strategic bombing can bring Russia to its knees within weeks of a campaign rather than the 6-9 months minimum that I think is more likely. You do, I don't, we've assembled the bulk of the evidence on the two sides, and now its just time to agree to differ in any scenario build.

Anyway, from my selfish POV I'm not going to build superfortresses and bombed russian factoreis anyway, I want to play the front line…..

(As an aside I did read up more about the PE-2 for our discussions – the "Russian Mosquito" – it is a formidable 'plane and I want one for my Russian army now!)

So if we assume the Russians at least believe that mass bombing can't brung them to their knees anytime soon, let's assume a Balkans push and rush for Trieste campaign. Question is what they will do in Germany. I think it will be diversionary – Thoughts?

Do we assume a successful campaign to destabilise Yugoslavia beforehand?

I think everybody would have sucked.

Fighting former allies, war weariness, veterans being demobilized and probably not eager to get back in etc.

Freecloud

The issue is not whether a strategic bombing campaign can do anything in a matter of weeks; it can't.

The issue is that the Russian war aims appear to be to grab Trieste (not quite as useless as their black sea ports, but close) Austria (totally land bound) and Greece – a real Russian prize, second only to Constantinople.

At this point what next?

The lion lies down with the lamb, everybody smiles and says "well done"? No, now the real war starts. This is not Georgia a couple of years ago, this is a serious land grab, the Allies cant lose a long war and the Russians can no more stop the war at their high water mark than the Japanese could have in mid'42.

Smart people dont start wars unless they know that they can win and Stalin was not the sort of gambler that Hitler was. Which is why he didnt pick a fight that he could lose and why he and his successors preferred proxy fights to real wars.

@Grizzly I think the scenario would be based on Viktor Suvarovs thesis that USSR wanted Germany to soften up the Western European powers, then they would enter the field and grab the spoils. (Suvarov believes Germany attacked Russia as a pre emptive strike, only weeks before the reverse was to happen)

I think the backstory could be something like Stalin wants to go back to the original aims, does not see the amount of western allied materiel in Europe as a major barrier and believes he can cover off the pacific threat.

So It's now or never – Western allies are exhausted, voting in pacifist governments. Possible deal with Japan/Cinese communists to secure Pacific.

They also calculate strategic bombing won't easily hurt their productive capacity owing to extreme ranges and having to fly over land.

As to war aims a few good warm water ports in the Med is a very good one and a long standing Russian desire. I like the idea of seizing Constantinople too.

I admit I'm not sure what to do about Germany in this scenario – invade to seize more, ( ideally breaking western forces in WEurope) or just threaten, to keep allied units from rushing south. Invasion has the benefit of getting access to more machinery, technology etc.

So maybe it's time to take a big risk – one last push and the capitalists are in the sea ideally, or at least pegged well back behind the Rhine and the Alps.

The alternative ( assuming they have looked at GDP data etc) is a slow steady erosion of their position.

If Stalin had Hitler's mindset, this would be credible, but he wasnt that sort of gambler. The argument that we cant win a shooting war now, but we cant win by an even bigger margin in the future, so lets go is pure AH.

The Japanese are incapable of projecting power outside Tokyo Bay, Mao and his buddies are looking more and more like losers.

Suvorov seems to have built himself a franchise not dissimilar to Tom Clancy's but his bold and repeated assertions without any substance behind them do not change the facts. Whilst the Sovs were collapsing under the weight of Ronald Reagan's arms production he was making them look like the Wehrmacht of 1939.

For a war in Europe to appeal to Stalin he would have needed considerably more evidence of pacifism in the west or to know that he could drive the US out of Europe. There is little evidence that Attlee was of the Chamberlain mindset, note that he kept the British army in Greece.

The more I think about this, the more I find myself wondering why Stalin didnt provide conventional assistance to the Chinese communists whilst providing more weaponry, supplies and training to the Greek, Italian and French communists.

I doubt an invasion of West Germany in 1946 would have yielded serious loot for the Sovs, they had already taken their bite out of German technology, the machinery in the Ruhr was not going to be much use to them and pushing to the Rhine is just going to extend their logistics when they least need it.

One way or another they have to make the war short or face a 1:4 GDP ratio in a war with the west. The alternative is status quo, which is the historical high watermark of the Russian Empire.

Hi

Look, any russian source brags about how clever Stalin moved his factories by brute force out of range of german bombers, but now we argue that that effort didn't matter because of the VVS being wonderful?

That is the real issue. No factory, so supply point was out of reach.

As for the spurious reasons quoted by leMay, they are just that, spurious. In WW2 the british managed to put 83% of bombs on target. That target was defined as withing 1000 feet of the city limits. It is argued that bombing german cities at night did not affect anything but killing germans…basic politics.

In WW2, the 8th air force put 81% of bombs on target, defined as within 1000' of the boundry fence of specific targets such as a facory.

With japan, the 5% number is silly. While there had been an effort to hit individual factory targets and similar in japan, the japanese dispersed their production to thousands of individual shops through out the city. And we responded by fireboming and carpet bombing whole cities. And Le May made a political choise. Simply, at 35,000 feet, the bombers were pretty invisible, and bringing them down to thunder over the city was for psychological and political points.

Oddly, this was allied to the use of the atomic bomb which, of course, was not targeted on a city. And part of that was the arrogance of a single B29 being uninterceptable.

Yes, things like the LA7 have a 35,000 foot service ceiling. What this means in the real world, absent the range issue, is that any turn more than 1G and the LA would shed either speed or altitude or both. While it is capable of over 400mph at 20,000 feet, by the time it is at 35, the maximum speed is ca 340, add in the lack of performance in specific excess power, and the best you have for an interception mode is hopefully being placed higher, getting one diving pass where the difference in speeds are such that the defensive gunners are sort of shooting at a almost motionless target.

Now, I understand the "down in the mud fantasy" thing. I have played innumerable games where we pound each other's tanks without the distraction of P47s and napalm. Or had lovely fights between battlewagons at 20 miles without any concern for land or carrier air.

That is wargaming. All is good.

But the thread was not "wargame" but how things would work in reality. In the cold war, we spent a lot of time telling congress we needed this cool bit or another cool bit because of russian superiority, but most of the actual analysist community were also privately convinced that the russians were not going to drive through fulda gap and reach the coast. Logistics were the russian problem.

Rocky

I really don't understand this thread's concentration on strategic bombing of Soviet factories. Much more efficient, and with immediate effects, would be bombing the logistical tail of the Red Army. It doesn't matter how many T-44s the factories are turning out if you can't get them to the front. So the Allied air forces could bomb the Soviet rail system into stagnation, rather like they did in France before D-Day.

Would the VVS put up a fight? Oh yes, a rather good one for a while, at least until they run out of high-octane gas for their fighters, such fuel being almost entirely supplies by Lend-Lease. So the issue wold be in doubt, but I think cutting off the Red Army from its factories would be much more effective in the short term than bombing the factories themselves.

Mserafin, I would agree with much of what you say, but there is a big slice of difference about Western versus Sov capability.

The key point that Rocky and I are making is that whatever the local Sov advantage, however succesful their first 6 months, they can only win battles. The 6 month war might look very appealing in terms of grabbing Piraeus (sp) but the 2 year war is a non starter for the Sovs. So they are not going to trade Germany's fate for the temporary advantage of Greece.

Now, Stalin was a brutally pragmatic man, he was not going to revel in greek ports whilst time was on the allies side. To make this work, we need to turn the Soviet Union into Nazi Germany. Stalin has to be an egotistacal ideologue who invokes the unification of the Orthodox church, the right of mother Russia to have a warm water port and damn the consequences.

IF you are willing to build this level of personality change into things, you can have brits in battledress fighting to delay the Sovs on the plains of Thermopylae, and some sort of fighting retreat of the US/Brit armies in Germany.

Personally, I would see the TAC airforce equation in Eric Hartmann's terms. At his war crimes trial he corrected the Sovs who said he was Germany's highest scoring ace on the basis that his Eastern front kills were each worth a third of a western front kill, putting Hans Marseille a hundred kills or so ahead of him.

Working on that force multiplier the allies have a 3/2 advantage over the sovs and will devastate the irreplaceable trucks and trains. I think that there is a substantial voice which would refuse to accept this.

But the question is moot, Stalin is too smart to let it happen in the first place.

Freecloud, what you have apparently missed in my commentary (I may not have been really clear on this point) is that by having to use B29s etc to hit the factories, the US was free to use B17s and B24s for interdiction strikes on railheads, etc.

it's bad enough when there are fighterbombers shooting up all your trains, but when B17s are based out of France and Germany, they can hit your logistics elements.

No Logistics, no warfighting capability.

German tank production last half 1944 & early 1945 when bombing was at its peak.

Stug/PzIV/Panther only

June 2506
July 2592
Aug 2421
Sept 2250
Oct 2241
Nov 2359
Dec 2455
1945
Jan 2022
Feb 1217
Mar 1014

Total; bomb tonnage dropped in 1943 255,000t
dropped in 1944 971,000t

Bombing sure knocked the stuffing out of tank production

@Lion – interesting side issue is that by 1945 the big 4 engined bomber is obsolete in the West – the British analysis in 1944 of Mosquito vs Lancaster:

* Mosquito carries to Berlin half the bomb load carried by a Lancaster, but…
* Mosquito loss rate is just 1/10 of Lancasters' loss rate
* Mosquito costs a third of the cost of a Lancaster
* Mosquito has a crew of two, compared to a Lancaster's crew of seven
* Mosquito was a proven precision day bomber and the Lancaster was not.

The Mosqito carried the same long range bomb load as a B17 or B24 to Berlin with an even better loss rate than vs the Lancaster. In addition the Mosquito was its own fighter escort.

And here's the kicker – The "Russian Mosquito", the Pe-2, was finding similar things on the Eastern front to the British one on the Western….except the Russians have c 10x more of the things…..

The only reason the US could keep going in 1944/45 with strategic bombing in big, slow bombers was air superiority. They won't get that vs Soviets (more and better 'planes), and they have to cover bigger distances to targets.

Summarising the objections then, they are that:

(i) Uncle Joe wouldn't be that nuts as the US would beat him big time.

(ii) How will the US beat him, even if they don't have ground superiority? By strategic and tactical blanket bombing, which were proven to work vs German and Japanese industry.

(iii)How will the US stretegic bombing work given huge ranges and the VVS efforts to stop them? Simple – the Russians will somehow be unable to shoot down the same aeroplanes the Germans and Japanese did (despite having more and better stuff.)

(iv) Besides,the Soviets rely on Lend Lease for all their stuff. Oh,OK, so they don't rely on Lend Lease that much in 1945 vs the 1942/43 era, but still – Lend Lease gives them all their *good* stuff. Like their T-34 and IS-2, artillery, fighter planes? Ah. Well OK, Lend Lease gives them all their transport so their logistics won't function. Oh OK, so 2/3rds of their trucks by 1945 are Soviet ones – but when we said "All" we meant all the best trucks. Oh – so their truck factories making light tanks largely stopped in 1945 to make trucks again…

(v) But even if they could make their own trucks, the dumb s can't even refine enough fuel to run on – especially 'plane fuel to keep aloft.

(vi) OK, they have vast oil fields and natural resources and decen enough engineers – but even if they could get enough fuel and materials, all their edible food was Lend Lease too….

I see a pattern here :-)

@freecloud: Except the PE-2 isn't the de Havilland Mosquito, any more than the Me-110, 210 or 410 were, any more than the P-38 Lightning or the B-26 was. The Mosquito was a genius, one-in-a-million piece of engineering that did pretty much everything asked of it. But while the Mosquito is a twin-engined fighter-bomber, it does not follow that all twin-engined fighter-bombers are similar to the Mosquito.

The Russians also had supply lines that ran through exceptionally hostile territory…

As I said before, getting Poles to shoot at Russians has never, historically, required much effort.

And the Rumanians and Hungarians weren't exactly fans of Uncle Joe either.

Simply promise the neighbours of the USSR as much territory as they can take, to be ratified at a UN conference later…

Drop explosives and AT weapons to partisans.

Laugh as Soviet back yard explodes.

@Bangortsu – sounds like a genius counterstroke by the Allies, instant partisans in the rear. Definitely aprt of any scenario, and possibly the sot of things the Russians might underestimate

@King re Pe-2 you are right in general re not all 2 engined planes being Mosquitoes, but that particular 'plane was a goody too (the Russians had women flying them). The Me 110 was a previous generation, the B-26 an old style bomber using turrets etc not speed for defence (totally different design), the 210/410 was just a turkey.

The P-38 was not up to the European theatre for a whole variety of reasons, but a key is that it's power/weight ratio is inferior to the (post 1943) Pe-2 and Mosquito, never mind the later European fighters, and it doesn't have a planform to allow a light bomber like the Pe 2 and Mosquito.

Yeah, but can a Pershing defeat a JS III?

Hi

So, the essence of your argument is that the Mosquito was wonderful, but the B29 carrying a lot more, much longer ranged, flying higher and faster was not?

You are simply looking at numbers in a book, free. The mosquito bomb load and speed did not leave them as their own escorts. Rather low level short range misssions where they were successful were not the same aircraft or profile as the high altitude "uninterceptable" ones.

While there were 400mph mossies, the FB6 which is our issue here cruised long range at ca 290. With radar givng a 20 minute optimum warning, the issue was not that german fighters could not reach and run down and kill the mossie, the issue was enough TIME to do so.

But again, the long range cruise of the 29 was both higher and faster which means, again, you argue against yourself. Throw in the B36, throw in the armament, throw in long range escort, throw in the short range availablity of the P80, the russians have a lot more issues than you realize.

As an aside, since you didn't respond to a previous hint: the only country in the world that could make 110 octane aviation gas was the United States. This is the primary reason the Russian screw for screw copy of the B29 was such a huge failure.

Both the Germans and the Russians were effectively limited to 87 octane. German Chemists had developed a number of chemical "cheates" to address the issue, a technology the russians did not have.

I didn't address the rail system. I thought that was implied where I observed that Moscow didn't have enough rail or road to feed its supposed population. As we commonly used strat boming to shut down choke points, the issue just gets worse.

Again, my pet peeve is that "luftwaffe 46" always focuses on the german superweapons that didn't exist and when tried usually failed, and ignore the actual super birds that did.

Rocky

@JSIII vs. Pershing? The Pershing can KO the JSIII with relative ease with it's 90mm high-velocity gun. The JSIII has a lower profile and heavier armour, but has lower mobility, ammunition capacity and anti-tank capacity.

Clearly someone has never heard of the serious problems with the M-26 power plant.
And of course the T-44(100mm)was in the trials stage and it could have had the bugs ironed out IF the war had continued.

Interesting to see this has turned into a typical 'USA can walk on water/Reds are technologicaly inferior' thread

"The JSIII has a lower profile and heavier armour, but has lower mobility, ammunition capacity and anti-tank capacity."

Not an issue, as most Soviet heavy tanks would have been IS-2, which was quite adequate to take on anything the Americans had. The Soviets never quite worked out the bugs of the IS-3, as it was terribly over-loaded. They came out for parades, but the Soviets kept large numbers of IS-2s in reserve as they knew they worked.

Actually, no, mkenny, I haven't heard of that, beyond the development at of the Pershing there does not seem to be any major issues with it's mobility. Would you happen to have any sources that say anything in regards to the Pershing's mobility.

As I said before, getting Poles to shoot at Russians has never, historically, required much effort.

Shouldn't that actually be, "It requires much effort to get the Poles to NOT shoot at Russians"?

Freecloud, the problem I have with your scenario is that the Soviets don't gain anything really valuable in less than 6 months, get their teeth kicked in after 6 months, *and Uncle Joe knew it*.

Lion

I agree with your overall thrust, but I think that an occupation army in Greece is valuable – warm water ports are a Russian dream. Going after the Jugs and picking up landlocked Austria gives him nothing, but, given his enormous forces is probably relatively harmless.

The problem comes back to a 1:4 GDP ratio – long war that is the only thing that matters. So to make this work Uncle Joe has to exterminate two Brit divisions in Greece and then say "OK, lets all stop fighting each other. This is my last territorial ambition and we need peace in our time."

The dress rehearsal for that scene was less than 8 years earlier.

@Rocky the typical B 29 long range mission was to fly low and slow over water then climb up over the target to avoid the "worst of" AA & Fighters (and plane is lighter as a lot of fuel is gone) but still maintain accurate enough bombing (too high and that is lost). The return home was again a drop down to low and slow over water to maximise range.

My point is the B 29 Pacific mission was unique as there was a lot of water (no enemy airstrips) and air superiority.

They could only do the low and slow option as there were no Japanese fighters in the Pacific. Doing the same trick over enemy land is far riskier they have airstrips and aircraft.

To move a B 29 up to 25000 feet plus with a lot of bombs and then fly it fast takes a huge amount of fuel, which means you can't take so many bombs, or the range comes down a lot.

HI

M26 unreliability was quite noted and I have seen many references to it.

Basic Wiki [yes I know but easiest to access]

link

Engine and transmission changed to get M46.

Still some problems but all finally resolved with M47 [new turret as well] and then further evolved for M48/M60 series.

Also several 90mm were used in M26/46 and I think penetration was not huge initially [about T1 88mm] but improved post WW2 with revised versions etc.

This is not the 90mm of the M47/48.

Of course as stated above ISIII left a lot to be desired but T44 would have been a big problem once in mass production and then evolving to T54 pretty rapidly.

Hi

Free, you keep changing your criteria. Yes, that was the mission profile, but irrelevant to the discussion. That mission profile had more reasons than you suggest.

But you miss the point, again, that the factories had been out of range the whole war, and with the new war, there is no point of the soviet union out of bomber range.

That is pretty simple.

That the 29 and 36 could fly at speeds and altitudes that made them uninterceptable was just gravy. That the russians who enjoyed something along the lines of a 4:1 numerical superiority was also no longer on offer.

McKenney, I am unsure about your point of "usual". I think that stating the facts might be usual, the US and british technical superiority in this area was clear. Later, even 15s had trouble with 29s, but throw in that the first 5000 Mig 15s had british built turbines, and you have, in simple forms the basic problem with the airwar.

And, of course, I think the actual "usual" is that of the tank buffs insisting on eliminating or minimizing the effects of airpower so that they can do some sort of ideal "tank/tank" fight which is their area of interest.

I can accept that, no problem. The thead did not start with this issue, but actually asking about the reality of such a possible conflict. The real "secret weapon" besides the unique ability to make high octane gas, was the low tech "redball express". Another overlooked issue.

Rocky

"What sort of kill ratio do we assume Allies to Russian will be?"

I'd have to dig out Dupuy but IIRC the CEV of Germans:Allies was 1.2:1 and Germans to Sovs 1.7:1 in 1945 (it was rather higher at earlier points in the war).

Kill ratio tends to be the square of the difference in CEVs, but in terms of weighted division equivalents the adjusted CEV Allies:Sov is roughly 1.43:1. Which means the Allies are now only outnumbered 2:1 on the ground….

I've no idea what these mysterious 960 strategic aircraft are, LL Bostons??

One mobility problem the Pershing had was its size and/or weight being too much for many bridges, which Shermans could cross OK.

No doubt the same was true of JS2s and 3s compared to T-34s (or T-44s).

As for the airplanes … I don't really care, as I wouldn't game that aspect of the war.

I think this has been a very interesting discussion thus far.
The very fact that Stalin DIDN'T try to grab additional territory in (eg) Finland or Greece lends a lot of weight to the arguments made by those who think he was too astute to risk war with the USA. I don't think he held back because he was a nice chap.

But COULD war in Europe have re-ignited in late '45, early '46? As others have observed, there were various clashes and disagreements between Soviet occupying forces and those of the West – could one of these have blown up into something worse? Could an international incident have flared up over (eg) Western refusal to hand over Soviet prisoners who had been captured fighting for the Germans? There remain conspiracy theories over Patton's death – was there really a worry that his out-spokenness and aggression could have sparked conflict?

What I am driving at is that we are tending to focus on any possible conflict between East and West only occuring because Stalin desired it so to do (or, as most people seem to think, it didn't happen because he didn't want it to). But could it have happened, for want of a better word, by accident? Wars are not always planned – events spiral out of control, mistakes are made, gambles don't pay off, intelligence reports are ignored, things go wrong, some tiny catalyst sparks something that quickly takes on a momementum of its own.

In Europe in 1945, there were millions of armed men squashed together and extremist groups fighting for ideoligical reasons all over the place; thousands of warplanes were in the theatre – surely some of these might have crashed for 'mysterious' reasons and started a diplomatic row? The society of many countries in Western Europe had been torn down the middle by war, and there was a great deal of Communist support in the likes of Italy and France. As others have mentioned, there was a huge resentment in eastern Europe over Soviet occupation – could a heavy-handed Soviet crack down on partisans in Poland or Hungary have snow-balled into conflict with the West? Could a Bulgarian uprising against Soviet occupation have dragged in the British forces then deployed in Greece? Suspicion remains over the mysterious sinking of the Russian (ex-Italian) Battleship Novorossiysk in 1955 – was this a result of Italian sabotage? Or the murder of RN frogman, Buster Crabb – allegedly at the hands of the Soviet navy. Could a similar incident / accident in 1945 have provided a catalyst for war?

The historical massive numbers of American troops / aircraft might not even have been there had things been just slightly different. Could an isolated incident of rape / murder / looting by American troops (perhaps hammed up and egged on by leftist CND type 'useful idiots') spiral out of control and lead to European demands for the Americans to pull their forces out? Could an American ammo ship have accidentally blown up in a French or Italian port, killing thousands? Could a USAF plane have crashed into a Belgian town, hitting a school and killing dozens of children? Afterall, the Russians are our allies, why do we need all these Americans here?

When you think of the tinder-box conditions, it is almost a surprise that there WASN'T a flare up somewhere or other.