The german wehrmacht in Modern America (RAR!)

[bilateralrope]

Of course that will be little comfort to them when they start to starve to death. Fulton county and the surroundings has a population of around 1.5 million, most of whom will still be there and the food infrustructure to support that. Unfortunetly for them and their 12 million occupiers they are a metropolitain area so they don't generate that food themselves. No, they get it via their connection the the complocated US food markets which they are now cut off from.

How long until they run out of food ?


Lets assume they surrender within the first day. Getting enough food in there to feed everyone still sounds difficult.

[Jub]

Of course that will be little comfort to them when they start to starve to death. Fulton county and the surroundings has a population of around 1.5 million, most of whom will still be there and the food infrustructure to support that. Unfortunetly for them and their 12 million occupiers they are a metropolitain area so they don't generate that food themselves. No, they get it via their connection the the complocated US food markets which they are now cut off from.

How long until they run out of food ?


Lets assume they surrender within the first day. Getting enough food in there to feed everyone still sounds difficult.

They should last a few weeks assuming the troops start with full rations in their packs and they get a decent level of food stores in with the rest of the logistics. That should give enough time to either a) spread them out to the point where they don't overtax local supplies or b) setup additional food to the area as if their was a major disaster in the region.

[Elheru Aran]

Metro Atlanta has a population of ~5.6 million, with few large-scale local food providers. For survival if nothing else the Germans are going to have to spread out. Even if they surrender, the US government is going to have to basically consider it a national emergency and set up massive shipments of basic food supplies until they can adjust. I'm not sure there's ever been a population increase of that scale at any point in time, anywhere in the world...

[fordlltwm]

In leaded gasoline, the lead serves as a lubricant, meaning an engine that is designed to use leaded gasoline, CANNOT use unleaded gasoline. (Reference: Yahoo! Answers.)

As for the Wehrmacht taking over a car factory... Ha! Most contemporary vehicles have engines with ELECTRONIC fuel injection, meaning it's COMPUTER-CONTROLLED. They do NOT use carburetors- in fact, a Jay Leno's Garage article specifically mentioned contemporary mechanics find the device confusing. If the WW2 Germans try to fit a contemporary diesel into their Panther tank, they'll have no satisfactory answer for question "Where's the carburetor?"

Leaded engines can run for quite some time on unleaded with no real negative effects, the main one is valve seat recession which takes place after a few thousand miles sometimes, other times it never seems to make a difference. A lot of shite is posted about leaded / unleaded fuels on the internet, practical experience has certainly proved to me on small engines from 1910 to 1960 that it doesn't make a difference. Land rover engines 1958-83 do suffer recession but not for several thousands miles so I doubt it would be an issue for a warzone.

A lot of diesels still have proper injection equipment with just an electrical stop valve on them, they're only being phased out from next year to comply with euro tier IV or is it V IIRC, which would make them quite a bit easier to transplant.

[Sea Skimmer]

Yeah unleaded fuel would be fine for a serious amount of time, considering the lifespan of some of these German engines was only 1000hr in the first place, and attrition will be insane, its hardly going to matter. It bonus wont matter because the Germans will be out of a fuel very rapidly anyway. Local filling stations and what not have only a few days of fuel for normal use, and refineries do not maintain large buffers of refined fuel in the US. And almost none exist in Georgia or anywhere near it. The Germans are fucked when a single heavy bomber wipes out all of the cracking towers.


At that point we are back to horse mobile Nazis operating more or less on the lines of WW1. Except they don't even have trains because all of those burn diesel in that part of the US, and even if they could mod diesels to run on pure crude for limited periods, by the time they make those mods the USAF will have finished of all the oil storage tank farms too. Which means the Germans are totally screwed going more then a few hundred miles from their grand logistical base they got per the premise.

Even if the early German zerg rush can advance hundreds of miles, which is certainly plausible, its not going to be enough to capture anything that can solve the fuel issue. All the oil in the US is functionally either west of the Mississippi or coming from overseas or offshore and thus out of Nazi reach.

Interesting things should also happen when the US is able to start bombing whatever this giant pile of German supplies looks like. We'd be talking about a lot of square miles of ammo dump. In real life the Germans relied mainly on dispersion and a system of caves and tunnels to protect strategic ammo dumps, here, well, it would appear it'd just have to be dispersed across fields and what not or something.

[LaCroix]

Other question - what if the germans send all their planes out in (one-way, if needed) missions to destroy as many refineries as possible as a first strike?

I'm operating under the impression that they got their own pre-fab stuff with them, and know that these refineries wouldn't be of any use, anyway, since nobody would deliver them any oil, anyway.

There's pretty much no chance to stop them from bombing everything in range to cinders, the numbers are simply too high. If I look at the graph provided by Sea Skimmer, that would set the US back, like 50 - 60% of their refining capacity?

[K. A. Pital]

If the Germans also have the best equipment, that should stretch to bombers. Which means a lot of havoc could be dealt with that single blow.

[Thanas]

Predators/Reapers can operate out of any of literally a HUNDREDS international/municipal/corporate airports and military airbases in a 1100 mile radius and with a 14 hour full load loiter they don't need them as often as any German aircraft would, so there really is no problem operating from safe locations (not that attack is likely anyway). As you just stated both models have at least 10K' in ceiling advantage

No they don't and I never stated that. Go back and read what I said.

Also, there are several thousand tanks. There are not several thousand guided munitions or predators available. Heck, the US has at best several hundreds of them and most will have to be transferred back. That too takes time.

but how much fuel do they have again?

As per the OP, ample supplies. I assume that means enough to get them through one campaign.

This is of course assuming there are no F-15s/F-16s/F-18s/F-22s shooting Luftwaffe aircraft out of the sky by the dozen per sortie anyway. They don't need missiles to do this btw. They would be swatting 190s out of the sky of course, so making holes for strike packages is a minor thing.

Yeah but again, munitions and numbers issues. There aren't that many in the area, not enough to stop the Nazis from taking Georgia.

Do you have a source that actually says there is any shortage relevant to any specific tactic we are discussing?

I highly doubt the USA has tens of thousands of guided munition bombs or missiles around ready for deployment. To my knowledge the Tomahawk and guided munitions stockpile at the start of the Iraq war was around ~20.000 Link. That is not enough to stop an invasion of 12 million men. Heck, the Nazi Army here has got ~19k tanks alone (and that is not including the assualt guns (13.5k), Tank hunters (~6.1k) and self-propelled armored artillery (1.7k)).

Do the Germans have a magic porthole back to the Fatherland to get ammunition from?

Per OP they do have "ample supplies". So I assume that is not an issue.

[LaCroix]

RE: Stas

That's what I meant - If I had to plan for such a mission, my first idea would be to spread out as quickly as possible, creating as much harm to everything while I have the surprise effect working for me. I mean, the German aircraft can land on pretty much every road or flat surface once their fuel runs out, and then be picked up and resupplied by the advancing column - which will happen, since there is no chance to contain them - if they appear reasonably spaced out, they are spread over a quarter to half the state, you can't corral them in. In the second scenario, evne their fighters do carry bombs, as the FW-190 was capable of carrying a 500kg bomb.

Just drawing a mental circle on the map, they could reach everything east of Kansas City, with Chicago and New York in range for their heavier bombers. Dropping incendiary bombs would be horrifying.

Add ~12000 V1, and 3000 V2, and there's a disaster in the making. (Assuming lots of them are - like the airplanes, already in air en route at targets when the Germans appear. It would make sense to use them in that way, just like the planes.)

[LaCroix]

This is of course assuming there are no F-15s/F-16s/F-18s/F-22s shooting Luftwaffe aircraft out of the sky by the dozen per sortie anyway. They don't need missiles to do this btw. They would be swatting 190s out of the sky of course, so making holes for strike packages is a minor thing.

You seem to be forgetting that while the US does have ~2000 fighters/fighterbombers in service (spread out to wherever they are, and who knows how many can be in the air at any given time), there are over 50000 Fighters swarming the sky over atlanta - 25:1 odds, at best. Once they have to resort to guns, they will need to slow down to aim, and will receive return fire. Then there is, of course, heavy AA fire (8.8 & 12.8, for example). Adding normal attrition due to heavy use, you will see numbers dwindling.

Ignoring the lack of ready ammunition, I don't even know if the bases do have enough fuel at hand to keep all of them airborne for more than a few flights - what are the jet fuel stockpiles looking like? 2000 planes would need between 2 and 3.5 million gallons of fuel to fill up. That has to come from somewhere...

[Mr Bean]

Another note LaCroix is that the Germans will have strategic and tactical surprise. Per the OP the Luftwaffe is already in the air on the way to bomb targets meaning we are going to lose a hundred or so planes just thanks to the fact we are not on cold war footing anymore and the best any airbase can do is put two planes into the air at a moments notice. So we are going to lose a chunk of the airforce and a chunk of the ready ammo stores and the rest of our planes are going to take at least a week to get back.

And thanks to the odds involved all of our planes will have to operate from extended airbases since anything inside 800 miles which means you can draw a big circle with Columbus Ohio in the north, Miami Florida in the south, New Jersey in the East and Houston in the west are all within striking range of all the various heavy German bombers like the He-111 and Ju-88 even if the extreme ranges will require a slightly smaller bomb load. Places like Richmond, Nashville, New Orleans and such are all easily reachable. The various axis fighters are all limited to only about 250 miles away but thankfully for the Germans they have enough small airports to start moving those out quickly. And again while 70+ years of advancement means we can swat planes out of the sky by the dozen it's by the thousand that the first attack will occur.

The primary contention point is how the first day goes down and the forced quiet when night falls and the Germans hunker down.

Hey Zor if your still following what it the zero hour for the great German arrival? Is it a 6am attack or four in the afternoon? Forgiven me for not checking on this earlier.

[whackadoodle]

Yeah unleaded fuel would be fine for a serious amount of time, considering the lifespan of some of these German engines was only 1000hr in the first place, and attrition will be insane, its hardly going to matter. It bonus wont matter because the Germans will be out of a fuel very rapidly anyway. Local filling stations and what not have only a few days of fuel for normal use, and refineries do not maintain large buffers of refined fuel in the US. And almost none exist in Georgia or anywhere near it. The Germans are fucked when a single heavy bomber wipes out all of the cracking towers.


At that point we are back to horse mobile Nazis operating more or less on the lines of WW1. Except they don't even have trains because all of those burn diesel in that part of the US, and even if they could mod diesels to run on pure crude for limited periods, by the time they make those mods the USAF will have finished of all the oil storage tank farms too. Which means the Germans are totally screwed going more then a few hundred miles from their grand logistical base they got per the premise.

Even if the early German zerg rush can advance hundreds of miles, which is certainly plausible, its not going to be enough to capture anything that can solve the fuel issue. All the oil in the US is functionally either west of the Mississippi or coming from overseas or offshore and thus out of Nazi reach.

Interesting things should also happen when the US is able to start bombing whatever this giant pile of German supplies looks like. We'd be talking about a lot of square miles of ammo dump. In real life the Germans relied mainly on dispersion and a system of caves and tunnels to protect strategic ammo dumps, here, well, it would appear it'd just have to be dispersed across fields and what not or something.

So much of this scenario depends on how much intelligence the Germans can obtain early on. Although there are no significant refineries in Georgia, a major refined petroleum products pipeline runs within 35 miles or so of Atlanta. If the Germans learn about this in the first 48 hours or so, it is a short run to a nearby state park that has above ground access to the pipeline. All they would need are their tanker trucks and a geiger counter, and a good deal of gasoline, diesel and kerosene could be obtained before the powers that be figure out that they need to shut the flow off.

[Elheru Aran]

Bean--

The napkinwaffe I did earlier in the thread indicated that, using the He-111 as an example, DC would be a long round trip. Richmond and Nashville could certainly be reached a little more easily, but ultimately there is not a whole lot that's really strategically significant (as far as I know) in reach of the fighter formations. The bombers can go a bit farther, but after some distance you're talking one-way trips. As I understand it, most American jets have rather better range than that.

That's the only observation I have on your post.

Whackadoodle-- the OP specifies that the Germans have up to date intelligence on military bases. It's not beyond probability that they will also know where various supplies can be sourced. They aren't going to have Geiger counters on hand, though...

In the course of this thread it's become fairly clear that while Atlanta is important, perhaps some of us (myself included) have focused on the metropolitan area a bit too much, and it's more likely that the Germans would scatter to try and take the state and surrounding areas. They obviously have enough fuel and soldiers that they can do this quickly enough, within a couple of days at least. It's also quite possible that, barring spontaneous resistance from military bases in the line of fire, they are going to be spread out enough that the US military is going to have to start going after them piecemeal. It would be insanity for all 12 million-plus to stay congregated about the city of Atlanta and be a big fat target like that. Expanding their front is one of the better ways for them to survive.

[K. A. Pital]

They will expand, and frankly after considering the sheer number of weapons they have or can set to attack airfields, it is not entirely out of the question that the US will lose a massive chunk of airpower. DC and New York can be wasted in minutes with weapons like V2, and serious decapitation is not out of the question

[LaCroix]

So much of this scenario depends on how much intelligence the Germans can obtain early on.

Since the op states:

They have maps of the modern US, including maps of all military bases. Upon arrival half their bombers and ground attack aircraft are in the air fully fueled and are headed to nearby US military bases to bomb the crap out of them.

we must assume that they do have equally good information on civillian infrastructure locations - so they know exactly how to hit hard.

@Bean
Right. If it's a dawn attack, then by nightfall, you'd probably have the Germans control Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina, too. Mainly unopposed on a good road network, they'd easily spread out 2-300 miles in any direction til nightfall. (Like they did in Denmark.) Meaning that by evening, (assuming they were in a loose circle of 200miles around Atlanta, initially) they'd have everything useful within ~800 miles of Atlanta in range for fighter bombers and their V-Weapons, and probably destroyed.

I'd imagine all mayor cities withing that 800 mile circle you mentioned they haven't reached, yet, will have firestorms raging due carpet bombing/firebombing, and/or they'll use the night to send V-Weapons Type 1 and 2 out for carpet bombing of these targets. These weapons can operate at night.

You could face millions of casualties at nightfall, already, if they attack cities.

By next morning, we can expect Chicago, New York and DC being the recipients of 'Bald Eagle Day'. I don't know how the reaction would be to the Big Apple firebombed, the white house burning, again, and the Pentagon in ruins. (It's impossible to stop that many airplanes in so little time, they simply will be able to hit everything the first few days, by sheer numbers, alone.)

Even without terror bombings, I'm envisioning the sheer mass of cars trying to run from the German front will have epic proportions, and cause huge problems.
(Let's be honest, nobodywith a car will sit and wait the Nazi invasion out, especially not the non-whites. We will have a Hollywoodesque mass evacuation traffic jam at hand in 3 or 4 states, at least.)

[Patroklos]

No they don't and I never stated that. Go back and read what I said.

No they don't what? Have the range I stated or the ceiling advantage? You clearly stated the ceiling advantage.

This all started because you claimed drones brought nothing to the table that the Germans were not already used to enduring. I brought up several capabilities that contradict your statement which you called "wank". So please tell me which ones I mentioned you think are not true/do not qualify as new to the Germans or otherwise clarify your objection.

Also, there are several thousand tanks. There are not several thousand guided munitions or predators available. Heck, the US has at best several hundreds of them and most will have to be transferred back. That too takes time.

The article you yourself just posted clearly states that after two weeks of Shock and Awe the US was running low, a relative term. Imagine that, after two weeks of using your stockpiles in an all-out air campaign they start to run low by some undefined measurement. Fascinating. It goes on to mention that running low meant that they can still maintain the Shock and Awe operational tempo for three weeks. So basically we could run a Shock and Awe on ATL for at least five weeks at 2003 levels of stockpiling, not exactly a “WHERE ARE THE BOMBS!” situation for this scenario.

And this article is from over 10 years ago. I see no reason why a post major campaign count from then is relevant to now. The very last line in the article says clearly that the DOD will take delivery of 250,000 JDAMs alone by 2008. That’s in addition to whatever Mavericks, JSOWs, TLAMS, GBU-XXs and however many thousands of Hellfires we have.

Also of note is that the Germans have no idea what our inventory is, or even WHAT exactly is seemingly magically blowing them up without warning. All they know is that every day they are losing hundreds to thousands or tanks and planes to random strikes regardless to front lines/weather/day or night with no visible delivery method. If they do see a TLAM coming in (they are kind of slow) it would probably look like a kamikaze to them.

As per the OP, ample supplies. I assume that means enough to get them through one campaign.

Assuming none of it is interdicted. Assuming they have the real-estate to operate more than a fraction of their airframes and that is also not interdicted. That’s of course not going to be the case.

Yeah but again, munitions and numbers issues. There aren't that many in the area, not enough to stop the Nazis from taking Georgia.

F-16
Combat Radius: 340mi (four 1Klbs bombs)
Ferry Range: 2620mi

F-15
Combat Radius: 1100mi (air interdiction load)
Ferry Range: 3,450mi

F18
Combat Radius: 460mi (air interdiction load)
Ferry Range: 2070mi

F-22
Combat Radius: 470mi (110mi at super cruise)
Ferry Range: 2000mi

What this means is that any airframe located west of the Rockies is pretty much immediately available. Anyone CONUS can be there in hours. Maybe a day or two for Hawaii, Japan, and European assets to make it (including the deployed carrier airwings, we just fly them off). That’s easily initially 1000+ fighters and that’s not including the B-52s, B-1s, B-2s, A-10s, AC-130s, etc.

As to where those fighter assets are really located at on the National Guard front, near Georgia:
AL: one F-16 squadron
SC: one F-16 squadron
FL: one F-15 squadron, one F-22 squadron
LA: one F-15 squadron

A random sampling of active duty assets off the top of my head:

NAS Oceana, VA: nineteen F-18 squadrons
AFB Langley, VA: three F-22 squadrons
AFB Seymour Johnson, NC: four F-15E squadrons
MCAS Cherry Point, NC: 4 AV-8B squadrons
AFB Eglin, FL: two F-35 squadrons, one F-15E squadron
AFB Tydall, FL: one F-22 squadron
AFB Moody, GA: two A-10 squadrons
AFB Shaw, SC: three F-16 squadrons
MCAS Beaufort, SC: six F-18 squadrons, one F-35 squadron

That’s from Wikipedia so not authoritative but the military is usually not too open with numbers like that. I think that’s more than enough to put a serious bruising on the concentrated Wehrmacht for a start.

I highly doubt the USA has tens of thousands of guided munition bombs or missiles around ready for deployment. To my knowledge the Tomahawk and guided munitions stockpile at the start of the Iraq war was around ~20.000 Link. That is not enough to stop an invasion of 12 million men. Heck, the Nazi Army here has got ~19k tanks alone (and that is not including the assualt guns (13.5k), Tank hunters (~6.1k) and self-propelled armored artillery (1.7k)).

See above, your ammunition worries are unfounded.

And again, we do not have to kill every soldier or hull every tank. We have seen what happens when organized conventional armies find themselves on the obvious losing end of a tech war. We saw it in Iraq twice.

Per OP they do have "ample supplies". So I assume that is not an issue.

Same issue as the fuel, but okay, let’s assume they have no ammunition woes not created by US action.

You seem to be forgetting that while the US does have ~2000 fighters/fighterbombers in service (spread out to wherever they are, and who knows how many can be in the air at any given time), there are over 50000 Fighters swarming the sky over atlanta - 25:1 odds, at best. Once they have to resort to guns, they will need to slow down to aim, and will receive return fire. Then there is, of course, heavy AA fire (8.8 & 12.8, for example). Adding normal attrition due to heavy use, you will see numbers dwindling.

1.) See above, based on the range and speed of the modern US airframes as well as their physical location there are no issues getting them to the scene and quickly.

2.) There is no issue with keeping them airborne outside of maintenance as the US has the entire fuel infrastructure of the CONUS to draw from. Most of those refinery bubbles on seaskimmer’s map are actually adjacent to major US military airfields. Not to mention our craft can use any commercial airport’s fuel supplies as well as operate from them. We have ample military and commercial aircraft control radars ringing Atlanta, and also happily much of our airborne military control apparatus such as AWACs and JSTAR assets are right there.

3.) Numbers in this case have jack all to do with odds because every single USAF/USN military aircraft can operate higher than the Luftwaffe making the odds for the Germans exactly zero. Perhaps one gets a lucky shot on a jet making a strafing run. Congratulations? How does that negate the thousands of Luftwaffe craft dying to AIM-9s and AMRAAMs as fast as we can sortie in to fire them? (only for those pilots to return to the apocalypse that will be their airfields) Are YOU going to continue to go up in your Bf109 after a couple days of that?

4.) The German numbers are not an advantage, they are an extreme handicap. Not only does it mean extremely packed airfields (whether they are proper ones or improvised ones) we are talking about 94000(!) aircraft. There is no way to effectively organize or operate that inside the airspace of Atlanta. They have zero radar or radio control, they have packed taxiways, they are relying on extremely vulnerable tanker trucks storing fuel by the 10K lot on the surface instead of 100K via underground aviation facilities. As soon as TLAMs start dropping those places will be hell on earth, personnel running everywhere while fuel dumps and tankers go up around them, fire spreading from aircraft to aircraft. It is a nightmare scenario.

5.) As for German AAA, how do they shoot into a sky with 94000 planes flying around (I believe we assume they start out flying and some seem to think they will continue flying)? Are you going to shoot into a sky packed 25:1 your guys to theirs? When you probably have to shoot THROUGH your guys to get to theirs. They didn’t do that in WWII. Do you think your WWII flak is going to any better at shooting down high flying supersonic aircraft than Iraq or Serbia was with their ADA plus SAMs? How about at night? Is German flak all weather? Will they even know there are targets up there 90% of the time? JDAMs can be dropped with over fifteen miles of lateral distance. A JSOW at eighty-five miles.

6.) Where do these 94K planes land when they get back from the initial scenario start? You know, when 94K pilots are all looking to land at a half dozen airfields within a few hours? On roads and freeways around ATL? I am sure that will be great for fueling and rearming operations.

Ignoring the lack of ready ammunition, I don't even know if the bases do have enough fuel at hand to keep all of them airborne for more than a few flights - what are the jet fuel stockpiles looking like? 2000 planes would need between 2 and 3.5 million gallons of fuel to fill up. That has to come from somewhere...

Yeah it does, like any of a thousand international/municipal/commercial airports around the country sitting in nice, full and large underground storage stocks with perfectly compatible fueling equipment. Places like Craney Island in VA, for instance. Hell, any of the fleet oilers who recently filled up at Craney Island can keep a carrier air wing running for months by themselves. We have hundreds of air refueling tankers that can shuttle a dozen fighter sorties worth of aviation fuel from uninvolved airports, delivering them to hungry F-15Es in flight if they need to.

They will expand, and frankly after considering the sheer number of weapons they have or can set to attack airfields, it is not entirely out of the question that the US will lose a massive chunk of airpower. DC and New York can be wasted in minutes with weapons like V2, and serious decapitation is not out of the question

Let’s conduct an experiment. Let’s take a random city, like say ATL. Let’s throw in a random traffic hazard situation like 19 million people randomly and all at ones showing up around the metropolitan area with their millions of vehicles and then tell all of them plus the 5.4 million inhabitants to get out. All within 24 hours. Also throw in some panic, lots of shooting, looting, random nasty Nazi stuff.

Nah, unrealistic. Lets just have a snow storm and tell those 5.4 million to travel a dozen odd miles home and see how it goes.

DC and New York can be wasted in minutes with weapons like V2, and serious decapitation is not out of the question

How exactly will they “waste” DC and New York” in minutes with V2s? Leaving aside the fact that no city was wasted by V2s in real life both of those cities are many hundreds of miles outside the range of a V2.

[Mr Bean]

Actually his ammunition worries are founded Patroklos. We (America) has a shit ton of ordinance spread out all over the place. Lets say we have 100,000 air to air missiles ready to go. That spread across the entire world with massive concentrations in places like Germany, Turkey, Japan, Hawaii and when you need to move 1,000 anti-air missiles in America or move 20,000 tons of bombs around it's by sea... something not exactly know for super fast speed.

There is a very real possibility that the Germans could lose 15% of their air force and everything in continental United States has already been used. Since Clinton left we've had 15 years now of forwarding deploying a massive percentage of our air power ammo forward because of the constant low level intervention that's been going on globally for over a decade now.

[Patroklos]

I stand ready to see a source about this, but this line loses credibility when the only source posted actually stated the exact opposite. In fact another thing it stated was that the problem then was getting the tens of thousands of warheads needed for Shock and Awe FROM the US to the Middle East. That was in 2003, well after Clinton.

But even if we did have to move lots of ordinance to say restock for what was lost in the first weeks bombing ATL (sort of the exact opposite of the problem during shock and Awe) thats what we have hundreds of AMC cargo craft for. They obviously figured it out in 2003 and this is probably a more pressing situation.

[Simon_Jester]

You seem to be forgetting that while the US does have ~2000 fighters/fighterbombers in service (spread out to wherever they are, and who knows how many can be in the air at any given time), there are over 50000 Fighters swarming the sky over atlanta - 25:1 odds, at best. Once they have to resort to guns, they will need to slow down to aim, and will receive return fire.

For one, they can outfly and outfight anything in the Luftwaffe order of battle, dancing around them like they're nailed to the floor. The F-15, for example, can escape an undesired fight straight up with no loss of speed. The F-22 can make maneuvers that don't even make logical sense by the standards of normal aircraft- "supermaneuverability."

For another, there's no compelling need to get into a gunfight, since they can simply fly back to load up more missiles. It's not realistic to expect them to shoot down the whole Luftwaffe in one sortie.

Then there is, of course, heavy AA fire (8.8 & 12.8, for example). Adding normal attrition due to heavy use, you will see numbers dwindling.

Heavy AA guns in this context will not be effectually guided by radar (which takes too much time for the Germans to set up), so it's a totally random hazard unlikely to inflict significant losses.

The heavy AA won't even be able to reach US fighters unless they fire into an aerial dogfight, which for one requires that the US fighters consent to get into such a battle. And for another, random barrage fire into an area occupied by many German fighters and few US fighters will hurt the Germans more than the Americans.

Ignoring the lack of ready ammunition, I don't even know if the bases do have enough fuel at hand to keep all of them airborne for more than a few flights - what are the jet fuel stockpiles looking like? 2000 planes would need between 2 and 3.5 million gallons of fuel to fill up. That has to come from somewhere...

Jet fuel stockpiles might well be relatively good, because many of these bases routinely receive transport aircraft flights.

So we are going to lose a chunk of the airforce and a chunk of the ready ammo stores and the rest of our planes are going to take at least a week to get back.

Just how much information were the Germans supposed to have on the exact locations of things they want to blow up?

And thanks to the odds involved all of our planes will have to operate from extended airbases since anything inside 800 miles which means you can draw a big circle with Columbus Ohio in the north, Miami Florida in the south, New Jersey in the East and Houston in the west are all within striking range of all the various heavy German bombers like the He-111 and Ju-88 even if the extreme ranges will require a slightly smaller bomb load...

On the other hand, any bomber wings headed for targets like that will be intercepted by fighters based far out of the Germans' immediate reach, so the fighter units in those areas will have time to arm themselves, take off, and engage the enemy- possibly even to rearm and hit them again while they're still in the air.

The primary contention point is how the first day goes down and the forced quiet when night falls and the Germans hunker down.

Well, the Air Force will be sending in strategic bombers, and the fighter pilots will be popping amphetamines and dropping air strikes targeted by whatever's left of the National Guard in the area...

They will expand, and frankly after considering the sheer number of weapons they have or can set to attack airfields, it is not entirely out of the question that the US will lose a massive chunk of airpower. DC and New York can be wasted in minutes with weapons like V2, and serious decapitation is not out of the question

Washington and New York are both at least 300 miles out of range of the V1 and V2 from the Wehrmacht's starting positions. Moreover, V2 rockets are quite conspicuous targets, and the US knows very well to target them. V1s are worse because they are trivially easy to shoot down with anti-air weapons, fly well within the ceiling of radar guided AA guns (say, Phalanx on a truck) or shoulder-fired SAMs, and must be launched from fixed launch sites that will have to be constructed before V1 barrages can begin.

@Bean
Right. If it's a dawn attack, then by nightfall, you'd probably have the Germans control Alabama, Tennessee and South Carolina, too. Mainly unopposed on a good road network, they'd easily spread out 2-300 miles in any direction til nightfall. (Like they did in Denmark.)

I'm honestly not sure they'd be that thoroughly unopposed, if only because they'd be targeted by air strikes from long range rather early in the engagement, plus of course the sheer physical difficulty of coping with the huge traffic jams you describe later. Sure, you can shoot drivers and terrify them into driving off the roads, but it takes time.

Meaning that by evening, (assuming they were in a loose circle of 200miles around Atlanta, initially) they'd have everything useful within ~800 miles of Atlanta in range for fighter bombers and their V-Weapons, and probably destroyed.

I'm not sure they can be redeployed that effectually. Also, WWII aerial bombardment has very real limitations, and "every target within two hundred thousand sqaure miles" is too many to hit all at once even with tens of thousands of planes. Especially since the Luftwaffe lacks the personnel to service all those aircraft simultaneously- their ground crews outlived a lot of planes.

I'd imagine all mayor cities withing that 800 mile circle you mentioned they haven't reached, yet, will have firestorms raging due carpet bombing/firebombing, and/or they'll use the night to send V-Weapons Type 1 and 2 out for carpet bombing of these targets. These weapons can operate at night.

Yes, but they can't hit the broad side of a barn and they don't have enough trained personnel or equipment to launch all of them at once.

By next morning, we can expect Chicago, New York and DC being the recipients of 'Bald Eagle Day'. I don't know how the reaction would be to the Big Apple firebombed, the white house burning, again, and the Pentagon in ruins. (It's impossible to stop that many airplanes in so little time, they simply will be able to hit everything the first few days, by sheer numbers, alone.)

In the first round of attacks, either they concentrate massively on high profile targets or they carpet-bomb lightly over large areas. We're not talking Lancasters here; most of these planes have limited bombloads, and even a thousand bomber raid by them won't obliterate cities as thoroughly as the late-war Allied strategic bombing operations.

After the first round of Luftwaffe bombings the bombers are a nonissue, because the means do not exist to land or coordinate them all, or to rearm them efficiently for the next sortie, even if there is no enemy action interfering with them whatsoever.

Even without terror bombings, I'm envisioning the sheer mass of cars trying to run from the German front will have epic proportions, and cause huge problems.

That part is true.

[K. A. Pital]

For another, there's no compelling need to get into a gunfight, since they can simply fly back to load up more missiles. It's not realistic to expect them to shoot down the whole Luftwaffe in one sortie.

Fly back to get AAMs? Those are in limited supply. They will run out before Luftwaffe runs out of planes. I know that's a silly scenario, but attrition still works.

Heavy AA guns in this context will not be effectually guided by radar (which takes too much time for the Germans to set up), so it's a totally random hazard unlikely to inflict significant losses.

Except of course some airplanes will die on their own simply due to the massive use, and it is expected that some will be downed by heavy flak fire while trying to approach the territory on a low altitude. It is very likely low-altitude runs will be tried.

Washington and New York are both at least 300 miles out of range of the V1 and V2 from the Wehrmacht's starting positions. Moreover, V2 rockets are quite conspicuous targets, and the US knows very well to target them. V1s are worse because they are trivially easy to shoot down with anti-air weapons, fly well within the ceiling of radar guided AA guns (say, Phalanx on a truck) or shoulder-fired SAMs, and must be launched from fixed launch sites that will have to be constructed before V1 barrages can begin.

I thought that the Germans were given some territory that is adequate to their weaponry stock and manpower; I forgot about the problems of initial dispersal. Though the OP was fairly vague here, "around Atlanta". Considering they have dozens of thousands of tanks, and those need to be in formations, there are also supply vehicles and engineers and whatnot, I assumed that they do start with some land. They cannot just materialize in one spot, you know. If they start materializing all over the place, they get more area. If they pour out like from a portal or something, then it's different.

I'm honestly not sure they'd be that thoroughly unopposed, if only because they'd be targeted by air strikes from long range rather early in the engagement, plus of course the sheer physical difficulty of coping with the huge traffic jams you describe later. Sure, you can shoot drivers and terrify them into driving off the roads, but it takes time.

Except the Germans maintained a good advance tempo even over virtually roadless terrain, and the tanks they used travelled on ground roads easily, the horses that were a mainstay logistical transport would not have problems there either. The jams will be a massive problem, but I guess more for the US, because roads will not be clean for the troops to go through, and it is likely traffic jams will also occur in US territory.

Especially since the Luftwaffe lacks the personnel to service all those aircraft simultaneously- their ground crews outlived a lot of planes.

Unlikely most of them will be redeployed; more like they will utilized them (given the knowledge of what they are up against - they cannot know everything about future US' bases without understanding at least partially just how far away it is in terms of tech) in an all-out attack and later just ram planes into the ground for maximum damage, pilots jumping out with parachutes.

Yes, but they can't hit the broad side of a barn and they don't have enough trained personnel or equipment to launch all of them at once.

Didn't Zor say they do have the manpower for a simultaneous attack? Considering there were what, 20+ million that ever went through all the forces, it is very much likely they will find the manpower to launch, fire or in the worst case blow up everything they have.

In the first round of attacks, either they concentrate massively on high profile targets or they carpet-bomb lightly over large areas. We're not talking Lancasters here; most of these planes have limited bombloads, and even a thousand bomber raid by them won't obliterate cities as thoroughly as the late-war Allied strategic bombing operations.

A thousand-bomber raid would be an absolute massacre; most US cities are poorly designed in terms of surviving the apocalypse of industrial war. Disruption of public services and massive deaths are to be expected even if they deal limited damage compared to World War II firebombings

[Thanas]

No they don't and I never stated that. Go back and read what I said.

No they don't what? Have the range I stated or the ceiling advantage? You clearly stated the ceiling advantage.

They don't have a ceiling advantage. Later versions of drones (like reaper) does, but cannot use it for operations.

The article you yourself just posted clearly states that after two weeks of Shock and Awe the US was running low, a relative term. Imagine that, after two weeks of using your stockpiles in an all-out air campaign they start to run low by some undefined measurement. Fascinating. It goes on to mention that running low meant that they can still maintain the Shock and Awe operational tempo for three weeks. So basically we could run a Shock and Awe on ATL for at least five weeks at 2003 levels of stockpiling, not exactly a “WHERE ARE THE BOMBS!” situation for this scenario.

The article also mentioned only ~20.000 of those munitions were stored. Please reread it.

Also of note is that the Germans have no idea what our inventory is, or even WHAT exactly is seemingly magically blowing them up without warning. All they know is that every day they are losing hundreds to thousands or tanks and planes to random strikes regardless to front lines/weather/day or night with no visible delivery method. If they do see a TLAM coming in (they are kind of slow) it would probably look like a kamikaze to them.

They don't actually lose hundreds or thousands of tanks a day. There will be a huge strike as the US unloads everything...and then runs out of ammo. But that is about it and it certainly is not above the losses sustained on the Eastern front.

That’s from Wikipedia so not authoritative but the military is usually not too open with numbers like that. I think that’s more than enough to put a serious bruising on the concentrated Wehrmacht for a start.

It is relatively little, for one we don't know the level of readiness. During 9-11 they couldn't even get consistent air coverage to protect the cities. In most cases it took hours for them to even have a (still leaky) patrol schedule. Heck, New York did not even see a plane patrol for hours until after the incident and they were hit. I really doubt that after drawing down several wars the readiness levels are any better, especially with the budget crunch.

And again, we do not have to kill every soldier or hull every tank. We have seen what happens when organized conventional armies find themselves on the obvious losing end of a tech war. We saw it in Iraq twice.

You are not seriously comparing the Wehrmacht to the Iraqi Army, are you?

[LaCroix]

Iraq had like 800 planes, ~2000 tanks, another 2000 towed and self-propelled artillery, and a few hundred thousand badly trained men in 2003 - that's a few orders of magnitude lower than what the Wehrmacht has, and the Wehrmacht has the surprise moment and momentum, while in 2003, the US were the attackers.

This is a Zerg rush szenario - if the Wehrmacht shows half the staying power they displayed during the war, they won't back down, and will simply extend forward until the US runs out of ammo. In Iraq, there was a simple goal - go to Baghdad, get them to surrender.

Here, you got a huge army dispersing into your nation, with an ever expanding front line - and the others do have enough Soldiers to let them stand shoulder to shoulder from the Pacific to the Atlantic... (3000-3400 miles equal 15-16 million feet)

Meanwhile, they will kill a significant portion of US population.

Frankly, if there ever was a scenario that called for a nuclear strike, this is it.

[Patroklos]

Fly back to get AAMs? Those are in limited supply. They will run out before Luftwaffe runs out of planes. I know that's a silly scenario, but attrition still works.

Lack of ammunition has not been shown, nor is the majority of the destruction of the Luftwaffe going to take place in the air (just like real life). There is no requirement to destroy every German airplane.

Except of course some airplanes will die on their own simply due to the massive use, and it is expected that some will be downed by heavy flak fire while trying to approach the territory on a low altitude. It is very likely low-altitude runs will be tried.

How many did we lose due to "heavy use" during Desert Storm? Eagle Eye? Shock and Awe?

Strike aircraft come in at low altitude specifically to defeat air defense radar systems and the SAMs they control. The Germans have none of this so their is no need do that unless the aircraft in question specifically requires it like the A10 (even then only if it is using its gun, it can be a precision bomb truck too). Unlike fighting the most obsolete air defense systems of the poorest countries today there is actually an easily invulnerable air space from the get go for our aircraft to use and no reason why they wouldn't.

I thought that the Germans were given some territory that is adequate to their weaponry stock and manpower; I forgot about the problems of initial dispersal. Though the OP was fairly vague here, "around Atlanta". Considering they have dozens of thousands of tanks, and those need to be in formations, there are also supply vehicles and engineers and whatnot, I assumed that they do start with some land. They cannot just materialize in one spot, you know. If they start materializing all over the place, they get more area. If they pour out like from a portal or something, then it's different.

Even if they materialized in the entire Atlanta metro area comprising several counties 19 million still puts them a figuratively nut to butt from each other. Do they show up blanketed over every horizontal surface (tops of buildings? In the buildings?) or only in the streets and open areas of an urban center (drastically concentrating them) However they show up it won't be pretty and they are not going to be able to just drive forward in spearhead formation. It would probably be more like the airborne troops on D-day, only this time not with just combat arms or even just the infantry to reorganize and get moving. Oh yeah and 5.4 million civilians milling about wondering what the hell just happened or actively impeding their progress but regardless of what they are doing greatly confusing the situation. How many 5 million population cities did the Wehrmacht take over with complete surprise in WWII? With many not already having fled? Not already bottled up in their homes with a few days or weeks of supplies to try and wait things out?

You could materialize them in all of Georgia and you still couldn't effectively get anything done. You have essentially tripled the population overnight, why do you expect the roads and other infrastructure to in any way efficiently provide for the mounting of an offensive when they are designed to serve 1/3 the traffic (poorly I might add)?

Except the Germans maintained a good advance tempo even over virtually roadless terrain, and the tanks they used travelled on ground roads easily, the horses that were a mainstay logistical transport would not have problems there either. The jams will be a massive problem, but I guess more for the US, because roads will not be clean for the troops to go through, and it is likely traffic jams will also occur in US territory.

Please define good pace? Which offensive had 19 million Wehrmacht radiating out of a single point? Barbarossa was 3.8 million spread of more than a thousand miles of front. You know everything north of Georgia is mountains right? a hundred miles east or south and you are in swamps. All of it heavily forested. Which part of that sounds conducive to Wehrmacht style armored maneuver warfare designed for the Northern European plain and perhaps the steppes of Russia for the later war units?

Unlikely most of them will be redeployed; more like they will utilized them (given the knowledge of what they are up against - they cannot know everything about future US' bases without understanding at least partially just how far away it is in terms of tech) in an all-out attack and later just ram planes into the ground for maximum damage, pilots jumping out with parachutes.

More likely all those millions of Luftwaffe personnel will be sent to the infantry, but on this timescale with no time to train them so what it really means is 4-5 million of the Wehrmacht numbers will be useless mouths to feed.

And crashing their planes and parachuting? Was there a rash of this in real life? Are these alternate reality Nazis that are even more fanatical than real Nazis?

Didn't Zor say they do have the manpower for a simultaneous attack? Considering there were what, 20+ million that ever went through all the forces, it is very much likely they will find the manpower to launch, fire or in the worst case blow up everything they have.

Also a technical question for zor:

Many thousands of Wehrmacht soldiers who crewed the PzIIs and PzIIIs in Poland and France are the exact same ones that crewed the PzIVs and PVs in Russia. The same goes for those who flew the Bf109s of the early war and the FW190s of the late war. Or in other words the Germans might physically have 94000 planes and 46000 tanks, but even taking into account that some of those crews died (and are now resurrected) thousands and thousands of planes and tanks don't actually have crews.

On top of this, did all of this resurrection happen with ample time before this invasion? Were hundreds of new divisions stood up to absorb the millions of men the Wehrmacht never actually had to manage at the same time in the real war? Did they just double the size of the divisions they had to absorb them? Battlefield casualties are generally lower ranked and young, do they come back that way now in those numbers without new NCOs and company grade officers to direct them? Do they have the staff officers and other leadership resources to actually manage all these new soldiers? How about mechanics and what not to support tens of thousands more tanks and aircraft at the same time than they ever had to do in reality with the knowledge that the support functions like motor pools staff probably remained relatively stable throughout the war more or less, they didn't take the casualties the front line did nor are they as easy to train? When a tank got destroyed they didn't replace it with a new tank AND a new maintenance team so now you have one, two or even a dozen tanks being maintained by basically the same few dudes.

A thousand-bomber raid would be an absolute massacre; most US cities are poorly designed in terms of surviving the apocalypse of industrial war. Disruption of public services and massive deaths are to be expected even if they deal limited damage compared to World War II firebombings

Are they now? So you are saying that our famously sprawling decentralized and low density cities (relative to say Europe) with their dispersed industry is specifically vulnerable to carpet bombing? Like, MORE vulnerable than say WWII cities and their abundance of wood? The country with a GDP roughly the same as the EU but spread over twice the area is more vulnerable to bombardment? Even the downtown urban centers we have are generally financial and other services in office buildings accessing servers somewhere else instead of anything particularly valuable to a war machine.

That low density is also, btw, a reason why the Germans would be hard pressed to occupy their rear areas effectively.

[Patroklos]

They don't have a ceiling advantage. Later versions of drones (like reaper) does, but cannot use it for operations.

Rgr, so not the Predator. Ceded. The point however was the US has the drone capabilities I mentioned that are wholly unknown to the Wehrmacht and they can be delivered by 100 odd Reapers in the inventory (and a few Avengers).

The article also mentioned only ~20.000 of those munitions were stored. Please reread it.

Lets:

In the first 11 days of the conflict, the US navy has fired 700 of its stock of 1,200 Tomahawk cruise missiles on ships and submarines in the region. Meanwhile, the air force and navy together have used 5,000 satellite-guided bombs, known as JDAMs, which account for more than 80% of the bombs dropped so far. The JDAM (joint direct attack munitions) arsenals on the five US aircraft carriers in the Gulf are already running low.

...

The other solution is to take more Tomahawks and JDAMs into the region. But even worldwide inventories would not last for many months, and US military planners, always thinking at least one war ahead, are concerned that the US might use all its firepower in Iraq and not leave enough to deal with another possible threat, such as a North Korean attack on Seoul.

So here they straight up state that they have months morestock to maintain Shock and Awe tempo, AFTER already dropping over 5,000 JDAMs and firing 700 Tomahawks. Not many months, but months nonetheless. Note that's just the numbers of JDAMs and TLAMS, it says nothing about the JSOWs, GBUs of various types, Mavericks or Hellfires.Apparently that supply that is left is supposed to be enough to blunt an attack by NK, or in other words there are a lot more.

There are about 13,000 JDAMs left in stockpiles around the world, according to air force estimates, and they can be shipped to the region relatively easily. They may need to be. US warplanes are maintaining a rate of 500 strike sorties a day (and 1,000 more support flights) as they continue to attack Baghdad and the Republican Guard divisions around the city.

There are also about 2,300 Tomahawk missiles left in American global arsenals, enough for about three more weeks of air strikes at the current rate. They are much harder to bring into action, as the missile arsenals of ships and submarines cannot be replenished at sea. More Tomahawks can only be brought to the battlefield by bringing new ships and submarines into the region.

I am guessing this is where you got your 20,000 figure, which again is the number AFTER the thousands already used. Again it is just for JDAMs and TLAMS. On the TLAM side thats actually more that I would have thought, how many TLAMs do you think it takes to destroy every runway in Georgia?

he Pentagon has already placed orders to replenish its stocks. Admiral William Fallon, the vice-chief of naval operations, said last week that the navy was requesting at least $3.7bn to replenish its munitions stocks to "restore inventories to pre-conflict levels".

In the short term, JDAMs can be reallocated from the air force to the navy. In the longer term, Boeing is due to double its production to 3,000 a month by the end of this year. The company will supply the air force and navy with a 250,000 of the guided bombs by 2008.

Are you just willfully ignoring that bolded part there? Perhaps you didn't notice that 2008 is after 2003 but before 2014? You were pretty emphatic about the US not having a precision munition for every panzer but right there in your article it says that by 2008 we clearly do, times five. Actually we have 5 JDAMs for every panzer, all the others types are just spares.

What now, are you going to say that 250,000 just disappeared?

They don't actually lose hundreds or thousands of tanks a day. There will be a huge strike as the US unloads everything...and then runs out of ammo. But that is about it and it certainly is not above the losses sustained on the Eastern front.

The issue here is that the Wehrmacht had at least something to show for their efforts on the Eastern front like the millions upon millions of Russians and their material they were destroying. In this case they won't even see the (air) enemy. Great for moral eh?

And no the Germans never sustained such losses on the Eastern Front. They had roughly 3500 tanks for Barbarossa and unless you think they lost every one of them in the six months of the campaign they never approached the level of destruction of say Iraq in 1991. Note they didn't lose that many over six months, Iraq did lose that many (basically all of them) only in days. Its not just the physical number, its the rapidity of the losses and unless you want to stereotype the German commanders into mustache twirling bizarro versions of their real selves they will be smart enough to realize what losing thousands of tanks in days means.

It is relatively little, for one we don't know the level of readiness. During 9-11 they couldn't even get consistent air coverage to protect the cities. In most cases it took hours for them to even have a (still leaky) patrol schedule. Heck, New York did not even see a plane patrol for hours until after the incident and they were hit. I really doubt that after drawing down several wars the readiness levels are any better, especially with the budget crunch.

Except we are not talking about nebulous unknown enemy flying civilian airliners. We are talking about 19000000 soldiers and 940000 aircraft sporting nice clear swastikas on their tails. A little easier to localize and react to than say one of thousands of in flight airliners across the continental US while also worrying about shooting down 200 innocent people.

Do you know how long it takes to sortie the entire Atlantic fleet and move all 100+ squadrons from Norfolk for a hurricane? 24 hours. We stay at that readiness for six months of the year. Its really no different any other time either for all intents and purposes. Guess where hurricanes also like to hit all the time and also has the same sortie capability?

You are not seriously comparing the Wehrmacht to the Iraqi Army, are you?

That would be unfair. The Iraqis had far more superior equipment than the Wehrmacht for combating the US. At the same time the Wehrmacht was far more competent than the Iraqis to know just how much more inferior their weapons are for combating the US.

I predict I will be listening to von Rundstedt at a college speaking event weeks after the Wehrmacht's prompt surrender. Assuming he isn't standing for war crimes anyway.

[Borgholio]

Has anybody given thought to assistance from our allies? Canada and Mexico are within striking distance already for long-range bomber attacks. Their fighters could easily be relocated to the Midwest and Texas respectively while their land forces take the highways and assemble in whatever staging areas we have set up. European navies could arrive within a week once they were loaded and stocked with supplies.