Ural bombers vs. Ural factories

When russians move their factories in Ural mountain region, where did he put them? I dont find yet precise info.
This region was well protected against possible german bombing raids, or knowing that germans dont had bombers with that range attention was concentraded on the soil level - against saboteurs, commandos, etc. ?
Was this factories built fizically in mountain, to give much protection?
If Ural bombers were succesfull in this bombardments, Stalin can order re-emplacement of the factories more to the East, so, was Ural bombers the right solution?

Iama

Maybee armed with atomic bombs

Atomic bombs... I hate this solutions, and that with biological & chemical.
Atomic bombs - mass destruction weapons, are weapons like "V"'s of germany. Weapons for intimidation. When are used is need to have more, not one-two... Japonia was a terminated adversary in manny aspects, and bombing her with 2 bombs was just a measure of USA to aquire no. 1 place in World Domination.
In "on topic"... Ural bombers, were needed some quantity of this bombs. For successfull use, i think was need by a lot of this kind of bombs. You trhow one here. Ok. A town, an industrial complex, is eradicated. But it is only one. For all, one bomb for each, it is a modern possibility, but not from that period of time. And for a complete victory, i think was need to use some like atomic tactical bombardaments against front units (more like for back of the front concentration). Hard. Complex problem. Ww2 was a verry big problem to handdle on the Axis part.

Iama

"Ural" - the long range German bomber with 4 motors, was never produced.
If it would be produced, there were performant high altitude Soviet fighters ready to take him down, as early as June 1941 (first the MiG-3, later a version of Yak-9).

Germany had few types of planes able to reach the Urals and to turn back to the German controlled territory. I do not think these available planes had any self protection, as they were models previously designed for commercial purposes.

The problem I mentioned before, still stands: performable high altitude Soviet fighters ready to take the German planes down, as early as June 1941 (first the MiG-3, later a version of Yak-9). It would not make a notable difference if the German planes would carry some machine guns.

It is interesting to observe that designs targeting New York (like the V-3, or the Messerchsmidt "New York" bomber, or the flying wing, with turbojets and with no tail, of the Horton brothers) could perform as well against the factories dispersed in the Urals.
Even if those projects would be ready in early 1945, I don't think they could change anything. Germany was not able to produce its technical marvels in big numbers, and it seems WWII was not decided by quality, but by quantity. As I wrote in another post, the German leadership should capitulate after the failure of the Battle of the Bulge (the Ardennes Offensive).

This post has been edited by Florin on April 18, 2005 01:58 am

well from what i remember, some of these "factories" werea ctually metalshops placed right in the middle of the fields, with no protection of a ceiling or anything. so german bombers could have easily thrown bricks out of planes and still kill a lot of them if they had a large long-range bombers effectives

Underestimating the Russians is a bait and a trap in the same time.
The Swedish, the French and the Germans swallowed the bait, and fell in the trap.

An example: MiG-3, in the moment it flew over Moskow at parade, as prototype, was the fastest plane in the world: faster than Spitfire, faster than the Me-109. Its Russian made motor was more powerfull than the Rolls-Royce Merlin of the Spitfire, and more powerful than the Daimler-Benz of the Me-109.

Another example: T-34.

If the Red Army wouldn't be decapitated by Stalin's stupid purges, and handicaped by the idiotic Bolshevik / Communist leadership, I am wondering how far the Axis would be able to advance.

Some Soviet factories were relocated to Nizhniy Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and even Omsk!!!
If you look at a map, Omsk was way over the Urals, so the Germans had absolutely no chance.

take care

i was not underestimating, just presenting the situation

The production of the Mig started in late 1940.
The Mig-3 entered production around spring 1941.
Yet they were not needed. The German incapacity to reach the beyond-Urals relocated factories was so obvious, that the high-altitude capabilities of the Mig-3 were useless. So its engine was cannibalised and applied to the Ilyushin, which shows that low-altitude anti-armour fighters were needed.
The production of the Mig-3 stopped altogether in '42, and only 3,000 were produced. We can compare that with the 36,000 Ilyushins built throughout the war.

As for the germans I think several things would be useful to know:

-- what and how many bombers they had at the end of the Battle of England.
-- where and if they actually established some forward bomber bases in conquered Soviet lands. Did they ever try to bomb soviet factories?

If we find out info on the bases and the type and number of bombers we can actually form a clear picture of the german capacity to carry out strategic bombings.

Germany had a type of plane which made an experimental flight, starting from Europe, and crossed the Atlantic, reached as far as 20 km from the shore of New York, then returned to Europe, without refueling. In a word, twice the width of Atlantic without refueling.

In my previous post, I wrote few words about the Messerschmidt project for a bomber to reach New York, and the design for the flying wing of the Horton brothers, also intended to reach New York. If it is not clear, they were designed to return to Germany after the mission. So twice the width of Atlantic, not once.
Under this light, I consider them able to reach Omsk. I am too lazy to take a rule and measure the Atlantic, and then use the same rule, at the same scale, and compare to Poland-Omsk, or Germany-Omsk. Maybe you are right...

Whatever... The topic already shifted from "WW2 in general" to a non-existent "What if... Alternative history... Parallel worlds".

This post has been edited by Florin on April 19, 2005 01:58 am

They had a plan for that kind of plane, but it never flew.
And from what I know they were actually designed to ditch in the sea and the crew was going to be picked up by a U-boat...

Imperialist, i recomend you to look at (if you don't know the site, yet) this link:

www.luft46.com

Here you may find some information about long range planes - planned ones, and some prototypes.

Iama

thanx Iama, but I knew the site... well, I found out about it from this forum, you posted it some time ago...
nice stuff, but most of them are paper plans, and its a long way from that to actual long range strategic bombings...

take care

Gentlemen,

Two aircraft could do the job, but both were simply "too late":

- Ju 390

- Me 264

As for the Russian high-altitude fighters, their development started also as an answer to high-altitude, strategic reconnaissance flights performed in a state of relative impunity by the Germans since as early as late 1939, using especially modified aircraft and/or prototypes. Interestingly enough, the MiG OKB continued to develop high-performance, high altitude fighters (some w./pressurized cockpits) right up to the last stages of the war, with impressive results, the ultimate MiG high altitude fighter prototypes being the I-224, fitted with a large-chord four blade propeller to improve performance at altitude, and the superb I-225(5A), with a max. speed of 730km/h at 8.520m. This means that the Russians were always worried by high-altitude raiders, either bombers or recon birds.

Ruy