Uralbomber
Giulio Douhet, the Italian general and military theorist, developed the theory of air war - ??carrying out massive bombardment of enemy cities in order to exert the compulsion to surrender. In his posthumous "War of 19 ..." ["Rivista Aeronautica", 1930, #3] Douhet unfolded a picture of the air war, opposing in it two different military systems: on the one hand, German, built on new grounds, due to the fact that Germany, bound by the limitations of the Treaty of Versailles, was forced to seek new military means and to prepare hidden military forces; on the other hand, a conventional military system with numerous types of combat assets in the person of the French-Belgian armies. Douhet was the mastermind of the strategic bombing campaign.
In Germany in 1926, the book "Air War" by Captain Ritter, in France in 1928 - the book "Domination in the Air" of General Nissel. In general, agreeing with the arguments of the "popularizer" of aviation, these authors looked more carefully at the future development of wars and armed forces, without sharing its extremes.
The main means of the air army Douay called multi-engine "warships", playing, if necessary, the role of either an "air combat aircraft" or a heavy bomber. With a radius of 2,000 km and a ceiling permitting the migration of mountain ranges, "ships" would carry several tons of bombs, automatic weapons capable of creating a continuous fire area around the aircraft would operate in clear combat lines.
In the plans of the Luftwaffe, a special role was assigned to the Ural bomber. The Ural bomber was the original aircraft design program / competition to develop a long-range bomber for the Luftwaffe, created and led by General Walther Wever in the early 1930s. The possibility of re-creating strategic aviation began to be discussed in Germany in 1934. Even then, the problem of choice between tactical and strategic aviation, which had not lost its sharpness until 1944, was evident. A heavy bomber is an expensive toy, the equivalent of several front-line battles, and the resources of the belligerent country are always limited.
The most active lobbyist of the "strategists" was the first Chief of the General Staff of the Luftwaffe, Walther Wever, who believed that the Reich in any case needed an aircraft capable of reaching the industrial centers of the enemy. Unlike other staff officers, he realized that Hitler did not seek to take revenge against France and Great Britain for the defeat in the "great war". Rather, the Fuhrer believed that the Soviet Union would become the main strategic opponent of the Third Reich in the struggle for the conquest of the "living space" (Lebensraum).
In Mein Kampf ("My Struggle") Hitler explained that it was necessary to fight the "Jewish-Marxist world conspiracy" and to pursue a merciless racial war against the Soviet Union. The Zweites Buch ("Second Book", is an unedited transcript of Adolf Hitler's thoughts on foreign policy written in 1928. In the latter, Hitler declared that Germany's most dangerous opponent on the international scene was the Soviet Union. The ultimate objective was a war to obliterate what Hitler considered to be the "Judeo-Bolshevik" regime in the Soviet Union. Hitler's ideological assumption was that the Soviet Union is Jewish, because communism is Jewish.
Hitler wrote of " the striving of the Jewish people for world domination, a process which is just as natural as the urge of the Anglo-Saxon to seize domination of the earth. And just as the Anglo-Saxon pursues this course in his own way and carries on the fight with his own weapons, likewise the Jew.... the international Jew who completely dominates Russia today regards Germany, not as an ally, but as a state destined to the same fate... In Russian Bolshevism we must see the attempt undertaken by the Jews in the twentieth century to achieve world domination. ... And so he advances on his fatal road until another force comes forth to oppose him, and in a mighty struggle hurls the heaven-stormer back to Lucifer.... The hand of the world clock has moved forward since then, and is loudly striking the hour in which the destiny of our nation must be decided in one way or another."
Guided by these considerations, Wever organized the Luftwaffe counting on a strategic air war with the Soviet Union, considering it much more important (based on the need to save the human and material resources of the Reich) the destruction of enemy weapons at the factories producing it than on the battlefields. He was confident that Germany needed a heavy bomber with sufficient range to destroy targets in Soviet industrial areas and, moreover, capable of reaching the Ural Mountains located 1,500 miles from the nearest German border to the borders of the USSR. As a result, he managed to convince both Goering and Milch of the need to create heavy long-range bombers capable of achieving these goals.
Albert Speer, later the Reich Minister of Armaments of Germany, wrote about the potential targets for the Uralbomber: "We remembered the vulnerable places in the energy sector of Russia. According to our data, there was no established air defense system ... In the Soviet Union, electricity production was concentrated in several locations, usually located in a vast area of industrial zones. For example, Moscow supplied electricity to the power plant in the upper Volga. But according to the information received, 60% of all devices necessary for the optical and electrical industry were produced in Moscow ... It was enough to bring down a hail of bombs at a power plant, as in the Soviet Union would there be steel mills and the production of tanks and ammunition would completely stop. Since many Soviet power plants and plants were built with the help of German firms, we had all the technical documentation."
But Victor Suvorov [really - Vladimir Bogdanovich Rezun] noted "Hitler proceeded from the premise that the Ural industry generally does not need to be paralyzed, that the Urals do not pose a threat, that the Urals itself will cease production of weapons. Well, if, contrary to expectations, it will produce something there, then "it will be possible" to paralyze it ... Where does this optimism come from? .... Hitler's scouts and strategists ... knew nothing about Irkutsk, about Krasnoyarsk, about Stalinsk, or about Barnaul. And now, without knowing anything about our country and its economy, German strategists plan to rout the "last industrial region in the Urals" with raids of powerful formations of long-range strategic bombers ... which they did not have..... German intelligence was staffed by eminent analysts who, however, failed to obtain information that Russia is a big country and that in Russia there is sometimes winter with frost and snow."
Uralbomber - Erstes Programm
In 1934 the RLM ( Reichsluftfahrtministerium , "Reich Ministry of Aviation") established the requirements for a new four-engine bomber that was to surpass the best heavy bomber of that time, the Soviet TB-3. According to the assignment, the aircraft was to be a monoplane with retractable landing gear, which should be able to deliver 2.5 tons of bombs to targets in the Urals or in Scotland.
Under the Ural bomber program, there began secret negotiations with two of the leading aircraft manufacturers in Germany, Dornira and Junkers, requesting designs for long-range bombers. The two companies responded with Dornier, Do 19 and Junkers Ju 89 respectively and RLM ordered prototypes for both aircraft in 1935. In the beginning of autumn, each of the companies ordered three experimental aircraft, designated Do-19 and Ju-89. and it was to these firms in the summer of 1935 that Walther Wever handed over the specifications for a new aircraft designed for bombing Soviet plants.
Wever died in a plane crash on June 3, 1936 and a program ceased almost immediately. Albert Kesselring took his position in the Luftwaffe, leaving most of his projects and turning others into tactical bombers. Kesselring canceled the program directly on April 29, 1937 and the prototypes of Ju 89, and Do 19, were used for cargo duties and research in flight.
Some sources argue that, contrary to widespread belief, it was not Kesselring, which destroyed the Ural concept of the bomber; rather it was Hermann Goering, who stopped the development of strategic bombers in Nazi Germany before the Second World War, on the advice of Kesselring, Ernst Uudet and Erhard Milch. Kesselring was an eloquent supporter of double engine bombers and supported Udet who preferred dive bombers. This was a dubious decision that was made to transform the Ju 88 medium bombers and an even more disastrous decision to transform Heinkel He 177 heavy bombers, in the form of the "Big Stuka" dive bomber, on the very day it was given its RLM case number 8-177 on November 5, 1937. This movement opposed the request of Ernst Heinkel one year later for the third and fourth He 177 V-series prototypes.
Milch wanted a project canceled simply because at that stage German aircraft production was incapable and will remain so the construction of a large fleet of heavy bombers. Thus Göring postponed the project and, as later assumed, stated, "The Fuhrer will never ask me how big our bombers are, but how much we have."
However, after requests from the Head of Section 1 of the Luftwaffe Operations Officers, Major Paul Duchmann to Reichsmarshal Goering, an amazing about face occurred at the end of 1937, when technical requirements were issued to design the aircraft to deliver a five-ton load of bomb to New York. By March 1942 the Amerika Bomber project was launched as a return to the life of the Ural Bomber idea.
Uralbomber - Zweites Programm
Directive No. 21 for Operation Barbarossa, which Hitler signed on December 18, 1940 stated: "The ultimate goal of the operation is to create a barrier against Asian Russia along the common Volga-Arkhangelsk line. Thus, if necessary, the last industrial region remaining in the Russian Urals will be paralyzed with the help of aviation."
At the time of signing Directive No. 21 in December 1940, it was quite clear that light single-engine and twin-engine bombers had too little radius and insignificant bomb load, so they were not suitable for the destruction of industrial facilities. At the same time, German bombers flew from the magnificent airfields of Northern France across the strait and bombed industrial and military facilities in London, Bristol, Coventry, Plymouth, Southampton. The supply of fuel and ammunition from Germany to the airfields of Northern France was of no concern.
In December 1941, the German offensive drowned near Moscow. The Soviet army launched an offensive and began to dislodge the Germans. It was on December 5, 1941, the offensive began, which ended with the storming of Berlin. But Berlin was still very far away, but the well-established military machine of the Wehrmacht failed. When analyzing this situation, the German generals did not attach importance to such a fundamental factor as the dedication and courage of Soviet people. First of all, their failures were connected with the appearance of T-34 and KV-1 tanks, LaGG-3 and MiG-3 fighters, and IL-2 fighters in the Red Army. In short, the Germans saw the reasons for their retreat in increasing the military-industrial potential of the Soviet Union.
In the summer of 1941 an unprecedented operation was carried out in the Soviet Union, the purpose of which was the evacuation of military factories. Of the areas that, obviously, in the near future were supposed to fall under the German occupation, all the industrial equipment was exported and exported to the Urals. And it was by the beginning of the winter of 1941 that many evacuated factories had already begun to work and began to supply everything needed to the front. Almost in every Urals city appeared several defense enterprises, and many evacuated factories joined the technological lines already existed before.
At the end of 1941 - beginning of 1942, the German bomber aircraft could not reach the Urals, and this was when strategic targets were located at a distance of a little more than 1,500 kilometers from the advanced German airfields. After the transition of the Soviet army to the offensive, the distance of the bomber strike across the Urals began to increase, and the Luftwaffe did not have any aircraft capable of reaching the Ural military factories.
Even if the Hitler bombers had a sufficient range of action, it would not have been possible to bomb the Urals anyway. By then, Hitler had a problem with gasoline. Already in August 1941, gasoline was so scarce that the conduct of major operations had to be stopped. If gasoline was in abundance, then in October-November 1941, it would not be possible to deliver it to the Volga airfields, which had yet to be built.
In early March 1942, the German concern Junkers began to build a long-range bomber named Ju-390. Its ultimate range, though with minimal load, was to make 10,000 kilometers - unthinkable for 1942. At a bombing strike of 2,500 kilometers, the Ju-390 could carry 7 tons of bombs. It is quite enough for the Ural bomber. But even with a prototype, there were always problems. The Ju-390 long-range bomber was able to arrive on test flights only at the end of 1943, when the design was already obsolete. The tests and debugging of the raw Ju - 390 to the mind continued until the middle of 1944, but the plane remained in a single copy.
However, to the attention of the Luftwaffe at the end of the summer of 1941, Heinkel presented a sketch design of the He-274 long-range bomber with a bomb load of about 4 tons and a flight range of over six thousand kilometers. But during the German triumph, as it seemed then, offensive, the He-274 project was considered unnecessarily complex and expensive. Still, with complete supremacy in the air, the He-274 flight altitude above 10 kilometers was not needed, and the range of flight with a rapid offensive was not considered the main advantage.
The plane was remembered when the German units, under the onslaught of Soviet troops, began to retreat from Moscow and on all fronts. The forge of Soviet defense power - the Urals, it was possible to get only He-274 or similar aircraft. But the He-274 project seemed too complex to the Luftwaffe command.
The Heinkel works was commissioned to carry out a major upgrade of the existing He-111 bomber. Thus, the He-111z appeared, perhaps the most unusual (if not ridiculous) aircraft of the times of the Second World War. The designers proposed a very bold decision, to make a coupled He-111. As a result, instead of two twin-engine planes, one five-engined plane would have been produced. Soon the first He-111z went up into the air. But this plane could not reach the required performance.
The range of flight was completely disappointing: the new He-111z could bomb the targets no further than 800 kilometers from the airdrome, the aircraft could not claim the title of Ural bomber. In order to fit the He-111z to the requirements of the Luftwaffe, several more advanced aircraft were built. Soon the developments were curtailed, because the construction of one He-111z distracted the forces with which it was possible to build more than a dozen ordinary He-111, so necessary for the retreating parts of the Wehrmacht.
But the German command continued to entertain the hope that a blow to the center of industry of Soviet Russia - the Urals, would break the resistance of the Soviet army. But on the ground, the German troops continued to suffer defeat after defeat. The industrial center grew farther and farther.
To strike the Urals, the command of the Luftwaffe was ready to take up any idea, even if it seemed unrealistic. Given that all previous attempts either failed or were delayed for an indefinite period, it was the unrealistic idea that could help create the Ural bomber. And in 1944, jet engines capable of dispersing a medium-sized bomber to a speed of 800 kilometers per hour appeared at the disposal of the Luftwaffe designers. Sealed cabin with a complete life support system, suitable for use at altitudes of up to 14 kilometers, had already been tested by experimental propeller aircraft.
The appearance of Arado's jet bomber 234 did not take long. Without load, an entirely new type of bomber showed outstanding results, and was even used as a high-altitude scout. Arado 234, unattainable for piston fighter aviation, during his career made several sorties for reconnaissance of Soviet positions. Means to combat the high altitude goal simply was not. But the Soviet command did not know the most important secret of Arado 234 - in the present form this outstanding aircraft ... could not carry the bomb load! If loaded with three tons of bomb load, the engines will eat so much fuel that serious strategic attacks were not possible.
But German engineers have found a way out of this impasse. Under the hull of Arado 234 a glidfe ["planning"] aerial bomb was suspended, not much inferior in dimensions to the carrier aircraft, while the bomb was equipped with one and a half tons of powerful explosives. At first glance, an absurd decision? But this planning bomb was a huge fuel tank! Not only the fuselage of the air bomb, but also the plane of the wings carried a huge stock of fuel for the carrier aircraft. On the way to the remote target, Arado 234 was giving full throttle, generating the last remains of fuel from the suspension, and the planning air bomb was fired from the carrier. Now the aerial bomb, becoming light and possessing perfect aerodynamics, turned into an excellent glider capable of reaching a strategically important goal at a distance of tens of kilometers from the point of discharge.
This system: a carrier aircraft and a planning aerial bomb, were to become a terrible weapon. A half-ton heavy-duty explosive stuffing the Germans experienced on the ground, retreating from Ukraine. For the test, a medium-sized factory, not severely destroyed during the fighting, was chosen. After the explosion of the explosive mounted on the truck, all the plant's workshops were either completely destroyed, or severely damaged, and communications were completely destroyed. According to German experts, the restoration of such a plant should take at least three years.
To destroy the Soviet defense capabilities, Arado 234 had to make from 25 to 80 successful sorties. But only the implementation of these plans did not allow the rapid advance of the Soviet Army and the bombardment of German territory by the armadas of the Allied bombers. After the war, all the drawings of Arado 234 and the planning air bomb went to the Soviet Union. Soviet specialists were particularly impressed by the glider guidance system: a television camera mounted on the nose transmitted a black and white image to a carrier aircraft for tens of kilometers, and the remote control of the glider in a carrier plane was a copy of a primitive pilot cabin, but instead of a flashlight there was a small television screen. The carrier already laid down on the reverse course, and the operator, as if nothing had happened, "virtually" guided the glider to the target.
