If the War had gone on, NeverWhere Projects 1946

For all the (at times tenuous) Luft 46 types, there are a lot of interesting RAF 46 and USAAF 46 types out there that are less well known, but equally worth a look.

One central issue for me in regard to L46 is that there wasn’t really even a Luft ‘45 in any numbers or consequence, nor the capacity to build one after the CBO really hit its straps. Indeed, once the Allies are in France, their weight of numbers really comes to bear. Oh, and from July 1945, there is the small matter of the atomic bomb.

As well as that, there is the smaller matter of the Red Army coming in from the East; in regard to that, I’m reminded of the cartoon of two Soviet officers in Paris, with one asking the other “By the way, who won the air war?”

So, for me, the ‘cool plane’ factor of L46 needs at least 4 major suspensions of disbelief, and in many manifestations, doesn’t let the Allied ‘WW2 project cancelled’ planes come to play in the same sandbox.

Perhaps; it is up to you, with the more nations included, the more capacity there is to look at different weapons systems.

The Soviets did have many, many more planes than the Luftwaffe in 1944 and 1945. At the end of WW2, the USAAF had 75,000 planes, the VVS at least 15,540 (https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA086016.pdf Page 145) the RAF 9200 operational frontline planes and the RAAF 5585; the Luftwaffe on January 10 1945 had 56 serviceable planes in Italy, 214 stranded in Lithuania, 1305 of all types in Western Germany, 1022 in Central Germany, 568 of all types in Hungary and Yugoslavia, 351 in Norway and 843 in East Prussia and Poland for a paper strength of 4359 (https://www.ww2-weapons.com/luftwaffe-orders-of-battle-january-1945/ ), 264 of which were Ju-52s.

The maths don't work out for the Luftwaffe.

Also, what is never answered on the Luft 46 website or by its fans is what would the Luftwaffe be fighting for in 1946? The continuation of the last horrid gasps of the Holocaust, of killing just one more Jew? The Luftwaffe of WW2 cannot be divorced from the bestial, nay, Satanic government it served.

Lets get started then.

Luftwaffe 1946: Wunderwaffen - Propaganda vs. Reality (feat. Flugwerft Schleißheim)

Yes, Avro would build Lincolns, but as to whether there would be no Lancasters would depend on the type of war being fought, against whom and where. There were a lot of other companies building bombers other than their original marques, as well as other organisations: content.tfl.gov.uk/halifax-plane-production-by-lptb-during-wwii.pdf

Friar Lawrence once said ‘riddling confession will bring but riddling shrift’. Well, Shakespeare actually wrote it, but the effect is much the same. Here, that means for us that “Undefined and generic questions won’t get the most in depth answers.” One could even say that is related to the issue of closed and open questions.

For anything beyond the general, we’d need to work out why things have gone into 1946. That is where the Luft ‘46 ‘model’ falls down, really, as it requires taking into account logistics, grand strategy, industry, the game changing nature of the atomic bomb and overwhelming material superiority - all of which don’t gel with an approach of just looking at ‘stats of aircraft X or Y in isolation’.

Thus, the answer to your scenario is different for ‘Japan fighting on as predicted in the absence of or delay to the atomic bomb’ than ‘Germany somehow continues fighting, whilst facing Allied armies in France and Soviet armies in the East’ or some other permutation.

TBO: No Lincolns with no Britain
American Nazi War: No point discussing that piece of very overrated fantasy
July 1944: The Allies are breaking out of Normandy and can’t be stopped; the Soviets are steaming through AGC in Bagration. No chance of making it to 1946