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Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
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I propose a different strategy. I say we force all of these shitposters to return to their earliest verifiable* accounts. From that moment on, we should:

1) Only issue temporary (1-2 week) bans, not permabans, except perhaps in the most heinous cases.
2) Nuke or permaban all shitposter alts on sight.

RPG Codex 2018:

Infinitron said:
@Poster_X enjoy your week-long break for spreading hate speech :^)


Banning them is actually serving their shitposting agenda by confusing people with the endless parade of alts.

oh no people are being confused
 

Infinitron

I post news
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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
You should be nicer to me, Janise. There are other staff members who would prefer to nuke your accounts on sight without giving you an unbannable account to fall back on.

Why don't you volunteer to be the first? Was Orgasm your first account or was there one before that?
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
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Messages
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Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Might as well give you guys the original post, since I talked about this in Shoutbox previously anyway:

DarkUnderlord OK, so there a number of shitposters on the Codex who keep getting banned and coming back with new alts. Neckbeard Shitlord (currently Wehraboo), Orgasm/Black Bart Charlie (currently Janise), possibly others.

I understand the implicit rational behind the way we're dealing with these posters right now. You don't really want to permaban people from the Codex, so the idea is that if we ban them and let them create new accounts, they might improve their behavior when they get the opportunity to start over a with a clean slate.

Well, these guys aren't improving. They just keep doing the same shit again and again. Banning them is actually serving their shitposting agenda by confusing people with the endless parade of alts. And re-identifying them each time is getting pretty boring. It's not a sustainable strategy.

I propose a different strategy. I say we force all of these shitposters to return to their earliest verifiable* accounts. From that moment on, we should:

1) Only issue temporary (1-2 week) bans, not permabans, except perhaps in the most heinous cases.
2) Nuke or permaban all shitposter alts on sight.

Call it "Operation Alt Amnesty". Instead of allowing the shitposters to engage in an endless masquerade, this would take them out of the shadows and make them clearly identifiable to all. Once you put them on your ignore list, they'd stay there. They wouldn't get to shed all of their richly-deserved tags every time they got banned.

It wouldn't have to be exclusive to shitposters, either. You could offer everybody a chance to return to their original accounts, like Daedalos/Mengsk for instance. It could create all sorts of drama and surprises. I don't think we know what Neckbeard Shitlord's original Codex account actually is. Could it be the individual known as "Bryce"?

*That means the earliest account that they can prove they have access to its email address, I guess. Or maybe you could look at their IP addresses. We wouldn't want to give out oldfag accounts to shitposters purely on their say-so.
What a boring way of resolving things. Why don't you randomly ban and unban their alts for maximum confusion and lulz.
 

Delterius

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Entre a serra e o mar.
What a boring way of resolving things. Why don't you randomly ban and unban their alts for maximum confusion and lulz.

Agreed.

IMO there should be an alt roulette put into place, where each week all of a git's alts get banned except for one, picked randomly.
The remaining alt's password is altered with a random number right at the end.
 
Unwanted

Janise

Unwanted
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What the Codex needs for more popularity is making WEALTH OF NATIONS public. That would attract a much needed audience and boost our signal!
 

Alex

Arcane
Joined
Jun 14, 2007
Messages
8,750
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São Paulo - Brasil
What a boring way of resolving things. Why don't you randomly ban and unban their alts for maximum confusion and lulz.

Agreed.

IMO there should be an alt roulette put into place, where each week all of a git's alts get banned except for one, picked randomly.

But people without alts would miss on the fun. How about if who is whose alt is decided by roulette as well?
 
Last edited:
Unwanted

Wehraboo

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Messages
544
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The age of the Golden Baby
The only time I was banned was when I was banned for being an alt, which is just fucking retarded. I guess it's true that anything kikes infest is hopelessly destroyed because even on rpg codes if you have one disgusting faggot who doesn't like you and constantly complains because of politics or whatever you are ultimately just fucked.

Now go take a flying leap and go fuck your own face you worthless retarded twat. You can be replaced in five seconds with a script that reposts every twig update some fat jew pedophile at obsidian or biowhore makes and then whines about other posters once a week or so.

i dont remember :lol:

i do rememeber how neckbeard killed phelot

Indeed our mentally ill pearl clutching mods keep far better track than I ever have.

Thankfully I have formulated a plan to send back in time to Hitler so the good guys can win the war and send infinitron and his ilk to outer mongolia and build a giant wall around them.



******


I read The First and the Last by Adolph Galland 20 years ago or so, and remembered it as a riveting read that exposed an amazing number of mistakes. I reread it recently with an eye to whether Germany could have won or not, one of the oldest saws in alternate history which probably everyone has thought of at some point in time. How close did we come to a completely alien world to the one we know today? Would would really have happened? Of course even a minor change that far back could make the world unrecognizable so I doubt there is much value to speculate too much about how the world would look, but if you have an interest in warfare in general then it's a pretty interesting exercise to speculate on alternate courses of the war - and more or less what strategy games like Hearts of Iron are all about.

Most people concentrate on vastly different strategies as ways that Germany could win. It could perhaps go through Spain and take Gibraltar, then the lightly guarded North Africa and Suez canal. From there Malta and Crete would be useless because they could not be resupplied. Then Germany could seize oil fields all over the region and thus eliminate its great Achilles heel. The problem here is that they would have a completely insecure rear exposed to the Soviets. According to Galland the Soviets were demanding all of Bulgaria and access to Mediterranean ports and this was what ultimately, abruptly, ceased the Battle of Britain.

Soviets were not good neighbors, and while we can't really know what would happen, the idea of Germany getting at unlimited oil supplies should be enough to panic anyone sane since Germany was not exactly a pleasant neighbor to have around as it was. So maybe the Mediterranean plan would work but it depends on the political situation more than anything else, and most of the world leaders hated Hitler with a passion. Stalin his supposed ally made constant demands and invasions of his neighbors since the day he came to power, and could hardly be depended on to remain peaceful for long.

Of course Germany could also prepare more. Go slower with retaking Sudetenland and East Prussia for example. However even before the war, while still ostensibly German citizens, physicists like Meitman and her nephew Frisch were already working with foreign groups with fission research that would probably have put a very firm timer on Germany's continued existence. But then of course perhaps they could have simply done nothing at all after Czechoslovakia and only fought a defensive war with the Soviets if forced to it.

Regardless there are many obvious things that could have been done beforehand, such as making more synthetic fuel factories from the start. This would require more steel but there are many areas Germany was a bit wasteful with steel such as laying down a few pocket battleships as well as a pair of truly gigantic ones. One Bismark battleship used enough materials for dozens of submarines, and was many times more difficult and lengthy to construct. Or you could make a mini fleet of pocket battleships with the same resources, and in less time to boot. They really were that huge.

Not to mention lack of steel was the reason for limiting Goering's plans for building synthetic fuel industries before the war. Even so approximately half of Germany's war time oil production was synthetically created.

Submarines are another area those resources might have been especially well spent. If they had started with boats more similar to the type XXI from the beginning and had a decent number of them, that alone would probably have been enough to starve out England.

There were a few high tech gizmos on the Type XXI but the main difference was simply that it was more hydrodynamic and had much bigger batteries that allowed it to stay underwater much longer. The original U-boats were simply boats that sometimes submerged for a few hours. The Type XXIs were not some kind of techno gadget they simply designed it to do the opposite - be a ship that goes underwater and sometimes comes up for a few hours to recharge its batteries.

Yet again, nothing they might have done would exist in a vacuum. If Germany started laying down hundreds of large submarine hulls before the war, that might have provoked a much bigger response from England than even moving in on Czechoslovakia did. Certainly though they could have done much more to gear up for mass production of planes and subs and especially tanks which were produced pitifully slowly; the number of planes made in 1939 for example is just tiny, and at that time the tank factories were rolling out a mere 35 tanks per month.

To have any meaning though I feel we need to set an exact date where the battle is already ensured to take place and make changes only from there - otherwise you could wildly speculate that Poland could win against Germany given enough time to prepare and doing everything just so for the last few centuries!

I think Jan 1, 1940 is the easiest starting point. Many mistakes go back to the beginning of the Luftwaffe but at this point it was not too late to fix them yet, and 1940 also saw several crucial mistakes that affected the whole course of the war. Blunders that no one should have considered in the first place.

The chief mistake of the Luftwaffe that haunted it throughout its existence was one that plagued all the other air forces of the time as well; the leadership became almost absolutely dominated by bomber captains. Being a fighter pilot is a young man's game so this should not be so surprising, but in the Luftwaffe this led to serious problems for the fighter wings at every turn, and they needed fighters much more than their opponents since they were numerically inferior and had all their industry in easily reachable areas.

It also was believed at the time that you could simply bomb entire nations to their knees using bombers as a terror weapon. The infamous "Bomber" Harrison exemplified this more than anyone else, certain that killing off as much of the population possible was the only way to truly win a war. However this did not work at all for the Germans and shockingly, even the horrific bombing of Germany by millions of tons of explosives that wiped out virtually every decent sized town and killed endless civilians did basically nothing at all to really impede the war effort. Quite the contrary, production went up in all areas right up to the very end. So many of the presumptions that led to the outcome of the BoB were heavily ingrained to the thinking of the day and that was a large contribution to its failure for the Germans.

There were also issues unique to the Luftwaffe. The idea of a schnellbomber which was so fast it could make it to the target, drop its bombs, and escape before interception was an idea that became fixated in the Luftwaffe and in Hitler himself which was simply not a feasible way of operation and cost them a great deal of wasted resources on what amounted to suicide bombing. Dive bombing was an obsession for Ernst Udet, and one which ultimately crippled the entire long range bomber production program for Germany in World War II.

Dive bombing puts a huge strain on an air frame and requires heavier construction, and the larger a craft is the more proportional weight in structural reinforcement must be used. So for example the Ju 88 "wonder bomber", while it was quite versatile, in the end was simply a giant waste of resources for the amount of bombs it could drop. It was an awkward to fly, crash prone albatross that should have never been made. Worse, it stole its engines directly from the Do 217 production line, while the Me 110 stole two engines from the Bf 109 line and for every Me 110 made two Bf 109s could have been made. So much power was needed to move its highly reinforced air frame that only the most high tech engines of the day could do the job, yet of course did not have speed anything close to a Bf 109 or even Me 110.

And ultimately it was given up on for dive bombing because it simply caused too many problems. Yet amazing numbers of these largely ineffective bombers were built, using up resources which could instead have gone to fighter production or to produce more standard bombers like the Do 217, the updated version of the Do 17 "flying pencil". This was a very efficient and competitive design which could drop three times the bomb load of the Ju 88 while using the same engines and virtually exactly the same amount of war materials. It also had a longer range and more defensive arms by far than the Ju 88.

Do 217
2,050 km (1,274 mi)
4,000 kg (8800 lb) bombs
empty weight 9,350 kg

The 217 was available early and was a very good medium range heavy bomber but it simply never got built in sufficient quantities to matter, while instead endless resources went into useless and outdated or poorly chosen designs instead. When you compare raw stats certainly the 217 comes off well compared to the Ju 88 and also to the B 17 in most respects. My assumption is since they are all metal planes the basic resources ie war materials are the same. Things like specific designs that are time consuming or actual money spent are not taken into account but that is unlikely to be an actual limitation on production, and presumably most of these things would kind of balance out. For comparison we can look at some raw stats.

Ju 88
317 mph top speed
9,081 kg empty
Range: 1581 km (981 mi))
1400 kg (3100 lb) bombs

Do 217
303 mph top speed (347 mph for later models)
Range: 2,050 km (1,274 mi)
4,000 kg (8800 lb) bombs
empty weight 9,350 kg

B 17
top speed: 287 mph
range: 3,219 km (2,000 mi) with 2,700 kg (6,000 lb) bomb load
empty weight: 16,391 kg

At a glance the 217 seems to pack the most bang for the buck of the three options, with a caveat that it does not really have a huge range - but then the Ju 88 had a much shorter range still, and since none of their fighters did then it is wildly optimistic to think they would be doing much bombing at a longer range than that - and neither would the allies either, at least not until much later in the war when they had longer range escorts. The few times they did try un-escorted bombing they got little result except shot down bombers. However this range is way more than what's needed to hit any target in England, which is what we care about here though I don't think bombing is really a solution to England - air superiority is.

If raw weight has anything to do with the war materials needed to produce something, the 217 is virtually the same in resource use as the Ju 88 and a very surprising degree smaller than the B 17, which it outperforms in most ways. This makes it a much more efficient delivery system. In addition to all that even though the Germans had neglected level bombing, their new bomb site was the best in the world at the time, based off the Norden bomb site design which was stolen through spies and then improved on. With all these advantages and a design that seems like an absolute winner and since there were only 20 Ju 88s produced in '39 and the 217 went in mass production in '40, one has to wonder why on earth they built any Ju 88s at all.

Another craft compeating for resources at the time was the Me 110. This was also a versatile craft, and turned out to be about the largest craft possible for a successful dive bomber. The Me 110 required fewer resources, was tough and well armed, had a larger range and a top speed that was competitive with the best fighters of the day. Large numbers of the plane would also have been invaluable in the Battle of Britain as this was initially the only fighter able to actually reach the whole island. This craft was also capable of delivering a light load of bombs as well.

Dive bombing requirements are also the root cause of the crippling of the Me 210, one of the biggest failures of the Luftwaffe; and to some extent the only true long range heavy bomber Germany managed to produce in numbers, the He 177. This was a plane which would have been highly useful in the Battle of Britain but never showed up because of absurd design decisions and requirements much steeper than any other similar bomber.

The finished result of the He 177 was ultimately a bomber that was much faster than a B17 Flying Fortress yet had a similar bomb load and range, but by the time it arrived on the scene Germany was already under heavy air attack and even when it did arrive, the high command continually demanded more building of the ju88 tactical bomber instead of a more serious strategic bomber like the He 177 or even the medium-ranged but very heavy hitting (and becoming more and more important) cheap Do 217. Yet when they were actually used these bombers were very successful.

Not to mention of course at this point the smartest idea would have been to heavily reinforce the fighter wings with new production and build a large fighter reserve for training and for countering the most important raids. This never happened until 1945 when it was far too late, and even then they squandered these fighters by using them merely as an extension of the Army much like the Russians did with their own force, throwing them away trying to strafe the oncoming armies and thereby letting them get cut down by enemy fighters without doing any good at all for the German defense.

None of these things were set in stone, though. The lessons had already been learned, but somehow the failures simply never got corrected even though many like Galland constantly railed against the high command and even Hitler himself. It was clear way back in Spain that the schnellbomber concept was flawed, for example, but things carried on much the same nevertheless.

Likewise Udet was eventually hounded into suicide due to lack of quick production and slowness of the prototype phase, but through inertia programs like the Ju88 went on through the whole war and were produced in staggering amounts even long after much better bombers were available like the Do 217 and the He 177. This program should have been canceled immediately once Udet was gone, or better still in the prototype phase - yet another medium bomber was not even needed at this point anyway.

There was also a huge amount of resources, manpower and money spent on the anti-aircraft gun. For the resources used to make a single 88 mm AA gun, you could make approximately 3.5 Bf 190s! Yet endless thousands of these relative ineffectual AA guns were made when an air force with enough fighters to maintain total air superiority could instead have been made instead and turned the tide of the air battle perhaps even in 1944. And again prewar production was quite low, there are no factories standing empty, they had to make the machine tools and so on to make these AA guns in the numbers they did.

At the battle's start Germany had the best of almost everything and the absolutely most experienced and disciplined air force in the world. The Bf 109 was not only the best single engine fighter when it came onto the scene, but also smaller and cheaper than any comparable fighters that rivaled it, not to mention more heavily armed. The .30 caliber machine guns used by the RAF early in the war could take hundreds or even thousands of hits to take down a plane at times, were jam prone, and were not that accurate due to being wing mounted. Fire at the wrong range and the bullets could completely miss even if your volley is aimed perfectly! A single 20 mm shell was often enough to take down a single fighter, and one burst of a later 4x 30mm cannon planes like the Me 262 was enough to obliterate even the sturdiest bomber.

The Bf 110 was a rugged and powerful yet versatile 2-man fighter with a long range that was faster than even the Bf 109 and early Spitfires. This 'destroyer' was heavily armed enough to take down bombers with ease and yet could be used as a dive bomber or even a torpedo carrier. However, it was already becoming a bit dated by 1940 - it did not turn as well as it could and this would turn out to be a big problem when it came up against the Spitfire. Along with the Ju 88 the Me 110 was a good example of a design that was amazingly versatile but not really great at any single role. Still, it was more than equal to most enemy fighters and could have been used to good effect - though its later role as a night fighter was probably the most logical place to relegate it instead of throwing it into an air superiority war.

Even before the battle started though, there had been several critical blunders. Perhaps the worst was the cancellation in 1940 of all research programs that would not yield results within a year. This had enormous long term consequences and it could be argued this was the decisive factor in the loss of the war as a whole. These programs included the German nuclear program, the Fw 190 fighter, the Tiger tank, and perhaps most importantly jet engine research. This set the Me 262 back by about 18-24 months according to The First and The Last, with a later setback of about six months due to Hitler's initial demands that it be used only as a bomber.

A much more easy to correct blunder that would have had immediate positive effect was the lack of drop tanks for the Bf 109 before the BoB commenced. This blunder alone essentially doomed the entire operation before it began. The only area where the Bf 109 could reach at all was the SE London area, less than 10% of the entire island. The Bf 110 had longer range but very low numbers and that combined with lack of maneuverability doomed it to a short life if it strayed too far inland.

Even so the main issue with the BoB was simply the production and strategic priorities. Aside from poor designs like the Ju88 being produced ad nauseum, many obsolete designs like the He 111 were not only continued in production right until the very end of the war, but dramatically increased in their production over time.

These designs were a huge drain on German resources, and most of them were entirely redundant like the He 111. I have already argued that the entire Ju 88 line was a giant mistake, but it's likely even the Ju 87 line was a mistake, certainly by war's end it was utterly obsolete and at any rate should have been phased out of production in 1942 at the latest. The Fw 190 could do the same job, but also could perform other roles as well.

Yet arguably, even without changing production the BoB could have been won. To quote Rise of the Wehrmacht, the German armed forces and world war II.
Goering had predicted that Fighter Command would fight for
its bases, and he had been proven right: during the period August 24
to September 6, the Royal Air Force lost 273 fighters against 308 Luft-
waffe aircraft (most of which were bombers). In the decisive category
of fighter aircraft, the Luftwaffe lost 146 Me-109s, but the Royal Air
Force lost 208 Spitfires and Hurricanes. Casualties now exceeded pro-
duction, as British factories could no longer cover the Fighter Com-
mand’s losses The attacks on aircraft factories and airfields were working. If this had continued on then the number of RAF fighters would have dwindled while the number of Luftwaffe fighters continued to dwindle. However Hitler stepped in, in a furious rage, after a few small raids on Berlin following the accidental dropping of a few bombs on London. After that the air war shifted to pointless civilian bombing. The losses shifted to being favorable to the RAF instead, and that was the end of any chance to subjugate England.

With enough fighters and pilots you have air superiority, and with that England would have been helpless. At this point many people will scream about the wonderful fleet full of battleships the Royal Navy had. Well, welcome to planet earth post World War I. The Pacific war decisively proved decisively air power easily trumps any navy except for a naval which itself has so much air power it can beat back the enemy air power! And England was well within range of enemy fighter bases so therefore the navy didn't matter even one lick, only the air force really mattered.

With full air superiority, the threat of a fleet is meaningless. You can send thousands of bombers and torpedo planes to wipe out any size. Even simply building an early Atlantic wall to support the channel crossing would make it rather suicidal to rush the whole fleet into the channel to beat back the crossing (something that should actually have been done instead of the useless Siegfried line).

In addition, dock facilities were an Achilles heel that was impossible to attack when heavily defended by fighter cover, but would ultimately be worn down day by day without it; and at that point lend lease and aid from imperial colonies is effectively dead. Then the English would not even be able to feed itself let alone maintain any sort of war machine. Not to mention the ships themselves being bombed before they could dock, a fate that fell to many ships before the allies manages to get long range fighters into position to protect the shipping lanes.

These ports had been built up over centuries, and it would simply be impossible to repair them with a hostile air force ruling the skies, strafing every train and truck as they did in the final days of Germany's defeat. At the time farming was also not as advanced today - in fact neither Germany not England (or even France!) could fully feed their populations on their own. And England simply didn't have any resources besides moderate levels of oil, either - without outside shipments of raw resources the production of all its factories (still much less than Germany anyway) would grind to a halt.

So the objective is clear, air superiority, but can it be done? When you look at what was produced, it becomes clear that yes, they could easily have outproduced the British. The key is simply avoid many of the blunders of the Luftwaffe command, especially to prioritize the correct industries and to build up a huge air force all through 1940 before starting the Battle of Britain in 1941.

It's also likely possible to attack in 1940 just as before and win through production (historically they were actually winning slowly over time, but they eventually just gave up), or even to win just because they did not make the strategic blunders, keeping production just the same. But there is no reason to waste the manpower and resources when you can make a close contest become a totally certain victory.

A wait gives England more time to prepare but once you have air superiority over an island country then any other preparations they have made really make no difference. All the barbed wire and flak guns in the world is not going to stop bombardment. There is also a not inconsequential chance that waiting a while without starting aggression could lead to a truce or even make the English look like aggressors since you are taking a peaceful stance while they (very ineffectually) attempt to bomb you and accomplish nothing but the killing of a few women, children and elderly.

Even if a peace was not secured in this time, that could easily have been enough to win the war politically. People rallied around Churchill because they were afraid, but if the war turned into another Sitzkreig then it is very possible that Churchill would end up losing power in short order. Perhaps, too, Germany should have stopped and thought not about what it could do to England, but what England could do to Germany. Without America in the war or at least giving huge amounts of war aid, that answer is essentially nothing at all. And in 1940 that aid was far from guaranteed.

Even more precarious was Roosevelt's political position, and he only very narrowly squeaked by with a victory in Nov. of 1940. Without Germany's actions seeming to play into his narrative that Germany was a menace to the whole world it seems quite unlikely he would have been elected, and his death as a political entity would also have been the death of lend-lease as all his opponents were highly in favor of staying un-involved. Without lend lease there is little doubt that England would eventually be forced to negotiate, it might hold its own but any threat it posed would be a sham.

Even so I believe production priorities were the main problem. It may seem unrealistic to think you can change production drastically in such a short time, but the truth is that none of the Luftwaffe's planes were truly being truly mass produced in 1939 and the fighters and bombers were all mainly using the same engines anyway meaning it was just a matter of making the correct decisions before mass production started in the first place. They could have chosen much different priorities at that point and the ones they did choose, while not necessarily making BoB and the rest of the war impossible, made it many times harder than it needed to be. By addressing the main mistakes to emphasize more traditional bombers and fighters and fewer oddballs like the Ju 88 and Me 110, the Battle of Britain would have gone much differently.

And for those who stubbornly will keep protesting that for some reason you can't change production priorities, you merely have to peak ahead a little and see that in the later years of the world Germany did shift dramatically to fighter production in a very short time. The vast majority of all fighters were made in '43 and '44, too late to make any difference however.

Of course failing to plan was perhaps the main issue with the Battle of Britain so I will spell out a new plan explicitly.

1. Don't attack piecemeal. Instead of simply attacking immediately first build a superior fighter force and a solid bomber force throughout 1940 and attack only in spring of 1941, easily doable with different build priorities since nothing was being truly mass produced at this point and most of the craft used the same engines.
2. Hold back on the sub war until enough subs are gathered to have a chance to blockade the island, even if you can't attack until after the air war starts. Initially the sub war went well and it took a long time to develop tactics to neutralize subs - time they should not have been given.
3. Make air superiority the number one goal. The few heavy bombers like the Do 217 the Germans did make sunk over half of the shipping lost by the allies. With air superiority this number can be vastly increased, and losing air superiority is also what ultimately lost the sub war as well because subs are very vulnerable to air attack when they are surfaced or at periscope depth.
4. Make a serious invasion plan and stick to it, a fleet of channel boats and gliders will have to be constructed. Most of the problems in the actual BoB came from constantly shifting priorities - when they were constantly going after the radar, factories and airfields early on, this strategy was working.
5. Build radar controlled coastal guns all over the channel capable of sinking capital ships from 20 miles away.Many times cheaper than a single Bismark class battleship.
6. Launch overwhelming air and sub campaign simultaneously once the numbers are there.
7. If no peace accommodation can be made, follow through on the invasion once the peak achievable level of resource strangulation is achieved (UK itself had even less of most resources than Germany, especially lacking entirely in aluminum). Even if resources are not depleted, invasion can still be successful if air superiority is achieved. The actual plan for Sea Lion does not matter much. They could build a damned bridge to London or even tunnel under the channel if they wanted, once they had total air superiority.

To aid in this, many production priorities should be shifted around. To illustrate, I broke down the actual production in 1939 and 1940 into raw numbers and estimates of how much raw resources it took.

1939 production

b109 449
resources 449
me110 156
resources 312
ju87 134
resources 190
he111 452
resources 1085
Do 217 1
resources 4.16
ju88 69
resources 279
do17 215
resources 497
88 flak 139
resources 660
1939 total resources 3476

First off I was stricken by how little production there is in 1939 compared to 1940 and how some planes in 1940 simply skyrocketed to huge levels of production from one year to the next. This shows that at this point we have a "blank slate". There are no factories to retool because no factories of note are made yet to bring planes like the Ju 88 into mass production and other planes being produced are only being produced at very small levels.

We can make whatever we want basically, though I am sure there is a little extra cost to close out some of the outdated programs like the He111 but the production levels are so low they basically make no difference anyway - shockingly though these numbers don't go down but up over time. Remember factories don't just magically exist to make all this stuff, they actually spent a lot of time building factories and machine tools to mass produce these obsolete designs in great quantity. And in fact the Do 217 flew a full year before the Ju 88 so its later and more lukewarm production is truly astonishing.

It should also be noted that the overall industrial base of Germany was roughly twice as big as that of the UK. So while technically the UK did outproduce Germans in fighter aircraft in the early war this was only because the vast majority of the resources of German air production went into light bombers and obsolete craft for some inexplicable reason, while they focused on fighters. And the Do 217 which flew long before the Ju 88 was not mass produced until the following year and only is small, sad numbers.

1940 production

b109 1667
resources 1667
me110 1006
resources 2012
ju87 603
resources 856
he111 756
resources 1814
Do 217 20
resources 83
ju88 1816
resources 7336
do17 260
resources 1080
88 flak 1,130
resources 4118

2673 fighters
3,195 bombers (all but 20 outdated or inefficient designs)
1,139 flak guns (limited effectiveness, high expense)

1940 total resources 18157

The flak guns alone used up enough resources and money to build 4000+ fighters with the same resources. Germany's main issue in 1940 was simply that there were not enough factories. The reason for this is that there was not enough steel to go around, which is needed for virtually all construction and of course for virtually all machine tools. Instead of putting this steel and labor into more aircraft factories, instead they built up a giant flak battery industrial base with that steel, and for the guns themselves.

However even without taking flak batteries into account the true standout is the Ju88. A staggering 7336 Bf 109 fighters could have been built with those same resources. With that kind of air superiority even if the English channeled everything they had into Fighter production it could not remotely rival the Germany production. I came up with an alternate production scheme for 1940 that would have much different priorities. Alternatively if the Do 217 had been mass produced instead they would have had a bomber force capable of delivering about 3x the bombs, with much greater range and defensive armament.

Alternate 1940 production
Do 217 1000 resources 4160
Bf109 14,000 resources 14,000

Instead of producing redundant and obsolete medium bombers instead the main focus is fighters. Even so, the purpose made heavy bombers produced would still be more effective than all the second rate bombers that they actually did produce. At this point the BoB should have been a cakewalk, allowing them to clean up operations in time for a land invasion in 1941. With over 15000 fighters equipped with drop tanks, there would simply be no way to maintain a strong enough defense to give meaningful opposition to 1000 heavy bombers that the Germans inexplicably completely failed to produce in the real world until the end of 1944.

1941 production

bf109 2764
resources 2764
fw190 228
resources 324
me110 594
resources 1188
me210 92
resources 184
ju87 400
resources 568
he111 756
resources 1814
Do 217 260
resources 600
ju88 2146
resources 8670
88 flak 1,998
resources 6973
10.5 flak 509
resources 2316
total resources 25401

In 1941 we see all the same mistakes being made in the Luftwaffe even though at this point fighters were needed even more critically than ever.

In addition this is where the early blunders start to catch up - 1941 is where the Fw 190 would have started mass production (if not earlier) had it not been put on hold. While the Bf 109 once it had drop tanks was arguably better than the early Spitfires, there is no arguing that the Spitfire was in any way a match for the Fw 190.

Using a tough and powerful radial engine, this fighter was almost as tough as a Bf 110, but was a better dogfighter than the Bf 109, more heavily armed, similar in cost to a Bf 109, and yet could fulfill the role of ground attack plane as well as the Ju 87! It was most likely the best all around prop plane created in the entire war, yet bafflingly it was not only delayed unnecessarily but also never truly mass produced as it should have been and worse yet was used more often as a ground attack plane than as a fighter.

Bungling in the He 177 program could also easily have been avoided. There was simply no need for bomb diving capabilities, or special power plants that make the bomber go much faster than any similar bomber in the air. It could have been released with weaker engines and still outperformed the B17, and been upgraded later if desired. The schnellbomber concept was obviously faulty since the mid thirties so with better overseers controlling things this would be the year that the He 177 that Hitler so angrily and often demanded would make its debut.

Taking that into account, suddenly the Luftwaffe is startlingly transformed.

alternate 1941 production
88 flak 100 resources 349
10.5 flak 100 resources 455
ju 87 1,000 resources 1,420
do217 500 resources 2,080 (4304)
he177 1,000 resources 7,480
fw190 5,000 resources 7,100 (18983)
bf109 6,418 resources 6,418 (25401 total)

Suddenly instead of England doing 1000 bomber raids in 1942, it would be Germany doing 2000 bomber raids in 1941 with 10000 or more escort fighters paving their way straight to any target in England. Even so the He 177 is not really needed for England, though it could possibly be of use in other places.

Regardless that this point certainly Britain would have then made peace...or fallen. Yet as time went by the problems with strategic oversight did not become better, but worse. The strategic planning more and more foolhardy and confused. So what of the rest of the war, assuming something like Barbarossa would occur at some point (maybe 1942 instead of 1941, a year with much more favorable weather anyway), or instead perhaps a red attack on Germany?

Actual German production 1942
bf109 2657
resources 2657
fw190 1918
resources 2724 (5381)
me110 501
resources 1002 (6383)
me210 93
resources 186 (6569)
ju87 960
resources 1362 (7931)
he111 1337
resources 3209 (11140)
ju88 2270
resources 9171 (20311)
Do 217 564
resources 2346 (22657)
he177 168
resources 1257 (23914)
88 flak 3,052
resources 10651 (34565)
10.5 flak 701
resources 3190 (37755)
total resources 37755

In 1942 the Germans continued making ever larger numbers of outdated and redundant medium bombers. And continued spending less that 20% of their resources for air arm on fighters, the thing they most vitally needed, especially now ad the Americans started to appear with large numbers of planes.

I would assume that if they followed this plan, the BoB is now over and England is no longer in the war, and America has zero chance to directly fight Germany if they do come into the war at all. But maybe not. Perhaps the English get lucky and hang on and the Americans start to show up in '42.

It's generally assumed that Germany is done once the US arrives in England but D-Day could have been a disaster even having a badly battered Luftwaffe that continued making crazy top level decisions and kept expecting the western defense of a few hundred planes to be able to stop ten times their number on a daily basis.

It might be much different with more fighters in reserve however. They would not need to fly every day so there is no reason to believe fuel would be a big issue. On the contrary, without the ability to bomb synthetic fuel plants Germany can keep its war machine running on synthetics almost indefinitely and would have been able to greatly increase its output in this time instead of constantly losing output to bomber raids.

Perhaps even more of a shock for the Americans in this situation is that without interference from Hitler and the high command, this is also the year that the Me 262 would have gone into mass production. The Ar 234 Blitz Bomber would also go into action, the first schnellbomber that actually lived up to its name. Now we are into speculative fiction, but again at this point do we even need these better designs that got delayed historically? I doubt it. The real change was to eradicate terrible mistakes by figures like Udet and Hitler.

Alternate 1942 German production
88 flak 500 resources 1745
10.5 flak 250 resources 1137
ju 87 2,000 resources 2480 (5,362)
Ar 234 2,000 resources 4620 (9,982)
he177 1,000 resources 7,480 (17,462)
me262 5,000 resources 7,500 (24,962)
fw190 5,000 resources 7,100 (32062)
bf109 5,693 resources 5,963

So in this speculative plan, we have not only produced 15,963 fighters, but they are far more advanced. And instead of continuing even now to make terrible medium bombers and ever growing numbers of very expensive but not very effective AA guns that both belong to the 30s. We would also have produced a very able bomber wing to rival that of the Americans and English put together at this date in time.

Moreover, the total number of fighters built is now 15963 in 1942 alone. Historically only 2673 were produced in 1940, 3678 in '41 and 5196 in '42. The historical total is a mere 11547 through the end 1942. By contrast with the adjusted plan the production would be over 37,000 in the same period, and of more advanced models to boot.

The truly stunning thing is that these more capable fighters like the Me 262 and Ho 229 also cost less than the old style fighters. Instead of the high octane fuel that takes special factories to produce, mere diesel is acceptable for a jet engine. Even more importantly they are very cheap to produce. No special tools or labor are needed, they are essentially a tube of rolled steel that can be made by just about anyone. The cost was a mere 50-75 reichmarks, while in comparison a single tank's cost was at least 100,000 reichmarks - for the cost of one tank in resources and labor you could make 1,600--2,000 jet engines! The engines did need constant maintenance, but this was very simple - just popping a new engine in which took 20 minutes, and sending the old one off to have its rotors changed out. It was estimated if the war had continued that by mid 1945 Germany would have been able to make over 100,000 jet engines per year.

In addition to all that, the newer planes like the Ho 229 and Moskito were also much cheaper to make and used much fewer critical war materials than allied planes (except for the Mosquito of course). It is amazing to think a largely wooden plane like the Ho 229 could out fly anything else in existence at the time, and was superior even to the Me 262 in speed, maneuverability and range.

The He 162, another wooden jet fighter, did not see combat until 1945 and only in limited numbers but this was even more light on resource usage than other wooden designs, and by looks would seem to belong in the Vietnam war on a carrier deck, not in World War II. With a top speed over 550 mph and handling that was later described by a a Luftwaffe test pilot as "a first class combat aircraft" and by an allied test pilot as having "the lightest and most effective aerodynamically balanced controls" it was an amazing achievement for a light single engine jet fighter hastily designed and assembled.

However I don't include this in my speculative 1943+ lineup because I don't think this short range and cheap fighter would have been made unless Germany would be in its final death agonies, as I presume would not be the case if they had chosen these resource priorities.

With this kind of Luftwaffe, any landing, or interference of any kind from England or America, would simply be impossible. England could even safely be largely ignored.

Of course you still had to worry about the war in the Soviet Union if that still occurred but with such huge air superiority and with a devastating heavy bomber force it would likely be easy to fight them into a standstill even if all the same disasters like Stalingrad and Kursk still happened.

And if the USA never gave lend lease to the Soviets then it would almost be certain they would completely collapse, especially with this much huger bombing and air superiority capacity that could be brought to bear. If the English were knocked out of the war, I find it hardly doubtful US would interfere at all for that matter, let alone give lend lease the Soviet Union.

If the war continued into '43 and beyond, the story is the same. Except without the big delays with jet engines and long range bombers things get even scarier. And that does not even count the possibility of more materials and production capacity taken from England.

1943 production

bf109 6013
resources 6013
fw190 3354
resources 4763 (10,776)
me110 641
resources 1282 (12,058)
me210 89
resources 178 (12,236)
me410 271
resources 542 (12,778)
ju87 1672
resources 2374 (15,152)
he111 1405
resources 3372 (18,524)
ju88 2160
resources 8726 (27,250)
Do 217 504
resources 2097 (29,347)
he177 415
resources 3104 (32,451)
88 flak 4,712
resources 16,445 (48,896)
10.5 flak 1,220
resources 5,551 (54,447)
total resources 54,447

alternate 1943 production
88 flak 1,000 resources 3,490
10.5 flak 500 resources 2225
Ar 234 2,000 resources 4620
he177 2,000 resources 14,960 (25295)
me410 1,000
me262 8,000 resources 12,000 (40295)
fw190 10,000 resources 14,200 (54,495)


1944 production

bf109 12807
resources 12807
fw190 11867
resources 16851 (29,658)
me110 128
resources 256 (29,914)
me210 74
resources 148 (30,052)
me410 629
resources 1723 (31,775)
do335 37
resources 122 (31,897)
me262 564
resources 846 (32,743)
ju87 1012
resources 1437 (34,180)
he111 756
resources 1814 (35,994)
ju88 661
resources 2670 (38,666)
he177 464
resources 3474 (42,140)
88 flak 6482
resources 22622 (64,766)
10.5 flak 1331
resources 6056
total resources 70,822

alternate 1944 production
88 flak 1,500 resources 5,325
10.5 flak 750 resources 3,338 (8,663)
Ar 234 2,000 resources 4,620 (13,283)
do335 1,000 resources 3,290 (16,573)
fw190 5,000 resources 7,100 (23,673)
Amerika 1,000 resources 23,640 (47,313)
ho229 23,509 resources 23509


In this scenario in 1943 the Bf 109 which should have historically long since been replaced by Fw 109 and Me 262, is now officially retired. In 1944 the Ho 229 which is even more able and efficient than the Me 262 also comes onto the scene. Presumably in 1944 the Amerika bomber would also be on the scene, or in 1945 at the latest - the B 36 also had the same schedule and came out just as the war ended. Several candidates were completed by the end of the war but it could have been into full production by '44 without the earlier delays - and without a giant invasion of Germany finally killing off any emphasis on long range bombers once and for all.

Regardless of speculations like this, with the new production plan by 1944 even if Germany were somehow surrounded by the same forces that came to destroy her historically, it is likely that an invasion from the west could be staved off and a peace could be forced in the east. However my guess is that in reality Britain would have toppled quickly in 1941(and added its manpower and materials to Germany) and that the Soviets would have had to face Germany alone and with no lend lease and that would be the end of them. And of communism, 50 years early.

I assume there would be no war with the USA in that case, but of course it is impossible to know for sure how things would play out. It is certain though that the way things did work out was by no means written in stone. Poor planning and bad assumptions and decisions all through the development of the Luftwaffe are what really killed Germany's chance of knocking out England and thereby avoiding a two front war.

The idea that the tank and the air force would make or break the war effort was correct, but the way that they (and many others) believed that the air force should be constructed and used turned out to be very faulty.
 

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