IRIAF vs. Allied Air Power in Europe

[radicaldude1234]

Hello, long time lurker, first time poster.

Anyways, I was watching a WWII documentary on air warfare and was wondering about how Allied air power would fare against a moderate modern air force.

So, by the act of the divine being of your choice, the German Luftwaffe in 1942 is replaced by the Iranian Air Force (or the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force, to be more technical). They have all the aircraft they have today, support hardware, and have transplanted their entire integrated air defense system of SAMs and AAA to cover Germany. Personal are also contemporary Iranian, so no Erich Hartman or Adolf Galland in MiG 29s or Tomcats.

The catch is that they can only replace whatever can be produced indigenously in Iran today. Every other aspect of the Wehrmacht is the same as in history and the only way the war is influenced differently is from the air. All factors that affected the Luftwaffe, like fuel, raw materials, and replacing pilots, still exist.

So would technology prevail, or would the overwhelming might of the USAAF, RAF, and VVS still pound Germany into a cratered wasteland by 1945?

[Knife]

Meh, lots of B-17's and such would be shot down for a few months, then the Germarians would run out of missiles and bullets. 1942 Germany couldn't make replacements with their tech, though they could make the fuel.

[Mr Bean]

Ok let me give you a few quick notes

1. Iran posses bombers that no WWII Fight plane can reach
2. Iran has over 80 F-14's in service which by themselves could deal with all the planes ever built in WWII, between the agility and speed available. Keep in mind the F-14's ability to engage from far outside visual range and by the time they can be see your already firing Sparrows at them which without Chaff or flares most WWII plane's will have no chance in hell of dodging.
3. And they get Iranian air-defenses? They might have the serious issue of running out of missles before they run out of enemy planes but trust me when I say Hurricane's and Spitfires going up against SA-7's will die in vast numbers.

[thejester]

It's more like 24+ Tomcats in service with a similar number in storage...but yeah, the Allies get raped.

[K. A. Pital]

Only slightly slowing the overall progress. You can't fight, much less WIN a huge war with a few dozen uberplanes.

[JointStrikeFighter]

Just like with the Me 263 allied planes cab rank over the airfields and destroy the Iranian AF as it takes off and lands.

[radicaldude1234]

Ok let me give you a few quick notes

1. Iran posses bombers that no WWII Fight plane can reach

2. Iran has over 80 F-14's in service which by themselves could deal with all the planes ever built in WWII, between the agility and speed available. Keep in mind the F-14's ability to engage from far outside visual range and by the time they can be see your already firing Sparrows at them which without Chaff or flares most WWII plane's will have no chance in hell of dodging.

3. And they get Iranian air-defenses? They might have the serious issue of running out of missles before they run out of enemy planes but trust me when I say Hurricane's and Spitfires going up against SA-7's will die in vast numbers.

1. Well, cross referencing sources at globalsecurity and the ever popular wikipedia, Iran doesn't seem to have any heavy bombers other than a few H-6 (Tu-16s) and Tu-22Ms, the latter which were probably inherited from the Iraqis in 91. Granted, fighter bombers today could probably carry more than those B-17s and B-24, but could sustain a bombing campaign?

2. Theres no question that the Tomcats, Phantoms, and F-5s can more than deal with Spitfires, Hurricanes, and Mustangs, but is their total fighter force of just over 300 (globalsecurity, and in a odd application of the stand of the 300) enough to stem the tide? I mean, some of the things I wanted to consider were when the IRIAF runs out of the "good stuff" SAM and missile wise, wouldn't they be vulnerable on the ground? Remember, they can only replace the stuff the Iranians make, so once the F-4s, F-14s, and F-5s are gone, their gone forever.

3. Again, not arguing that Russian made SAMS will ruin anyone's day. But how many do they have fielded anyways? And against the 2000 bomber and 1000 fighter strong 8th Air Force, the similarly equipped RAF, and diverting of aircraft to fight the Russian horde.

Oh yeah, if you had the choice to command either of the 2 (Western Allies, or our new arrivals while the Russians do their own thing) what would you do to ensure victory?

Prepost Edit: God I type slow, 2 replies before I finished.

[K. A. Pital]

the Russian horde

You mean the well-organized behemoth Army which mauled the German one?

Yeah, that's one hell of a problem.

Even under air superiority of a few fighters (there's only what, 20 F-14s in service?), the front is so wide and huge. Russia will just advance and crush Germany like it did in reality.

[Chris OFarrell]

the Russian horde

You mean the well-organized behemoth Army which mauled the German one?

Yeah, that's one hell of a problem.

Even under air superiority of a few fighters (there's only what, 20 F-14s in service?), the front is so wide and huge. Russia will just advance and crush Germany like it did in reality.

Iran has a lot more then 24 Tomcats. They had an eclectic but formidable mix of modern fighters including Russian MIG's, French Mirages, US Phantoms and F5's. They also have AA refueling aircraft. These fighter bombers are perfectly capable of flying with refueling support, where the Russians can't touch them, over to the previously untouchable Russian or British industrial heartland. They can drop plain old 1000 pound bombs with accuracy unheard of in the days of WW2 and easily wipe out all these factories, who's locations I'm sure the Iranians will know thanks to a history book or two they brought.

Seriously, in a week, this air force would be able to kill every arms and munitions plant with little trouble. Even if they DIDN'T have laser guidance technology, even the simple computer/radar aiming systems will let say a flight of F-4's level a tank factory or an aircraft plant. Things like SU-25's will be a NIGHTMARE if the USSR for example, tries to fight out the Battle of the Bulge. Disperse it to try and hide from the air support and you'll dilute it far too much to resist concentrated enemy formations.

Now its probably not going to be enough of an advantage to let Germany topple the USSR, but they can surely cripple their war effort and defend Germany, assuming Hitler is smart enough to pull back or perhaps accept a peace that leaves him with a chunk of Russia and call it a day. Dito Britian after the Royal Navy ends up at the bottom of Scarpa flow, the RAF is blown out the sky and incoming shipping isn't incoming anymore.

And they can afford to use their aircraft as an OFFENSIVE arm quite quickly, because their IADS will make thousand bomber raids thousand bomber targets. After a raid of 1000 B17's has perhaps 10 return, air attacks are just going to STOP. Period.

And God help the allies if the Iranians have REAL bombers, like Badgers or something. I thought they did, but I can't find any real evidence of it.

[ray245]

Well the Irans can always make use of the given time to increase their airforce.

If you can have air dominace, grab the chance and start producing more planes, tanks, ships and etc, while the allied is force onto a defensive battle.

By the time your elite airforce runs out of parts and etc, you will have a slightly weaker airforce with weaker planes, but planes that can still match the combined might of the allied air power.

[K. A. Pital]

Hell, people... they have barely a HUNDRED units!

If the real Luftwaffe with it's thousands of planes suddenly gets exchanged for a very small but modern airforce, you know what will happen?

Germany will fail to have the planes everywhere at once.

[Master_Baerne]

And the Allies won't give up, oh no. There's too much war enthusiasm for a hundred planes to defeat. At worst, the US gets a taste of strategic bombing.

[Beowulf]

According to globalsecurity.org, the IRIAF has some 300 fighters. About 2 dozen flyable F-14s and 5 dozen flyable F-4s, but those have very low missions capable rates. As in, at any given time, 60% of the fleet can't fly. There's another 5 dozen F-5s, with better readiness rates, but those have low payload capacity.

There's also the issue of it being impossible to acquire spare parts for a number of the aircraft. Along with the golden BB effect, it's fairly unlikely that the IRIAF would last a year.

The IADS is great, except that once the SAMs are gone, you're not going to be able to replace most of them. The SAMs are generally imported from Russia or China, neither of which are a source in this scenario. Also, some SAM systems are vulnerable to saturation attacks. Too many targets confuses them, which is exactly what a 1000 bomber raid is.

Without nuclear bombs, pretty much any bombing campaign by the Iranians will be ineffective. Sure, they can send a flight of planes to do a deep strike into Russia, and demolish a tank factory. A month later, the factory will be back in business. Tooling is remarkably resistant to blast/frag effects. Sending them at the US is an even worse idea.

[Mr Bean]

The naysayers are forgetting the moral and strategic issues if the British launch a two hundred plane attack and TEN planes come back. Never mind the bombing campaign if you send in your air force and a third of the attack is destroyed from beyond visual range, then swoop in, nail a plane or two and zoom out.


Lets review a quick match up here

Spitfire MK IX(Latewar)
Max. Speed 656km/t, service ceiling 13,420 m, range 1,060 km

F-14
Max Speed 2,485km/t, service ceiling 17085 m, range w/pods 2,000km+ without 1,130 km

A top speed(Which it does not need to use) a F-14 is 3.7 faster than a Spitfire in a level flight. Assume it restricts itself to simply going 2x faster than a Spitfire that's a huge advantage in a dogfight, a Spitfire sure as hell can't catch him in a climb, and while the SAM's last they won't be able to hit them on an airfield.

These are uberplanes in every sense of the word to WWII, and your telling me that they will keep on attacking headless of the losses? Never mind how quick the UK's fleet goes to the bottom of the ocean, nevermind how quick the factories get blown up, but simply put, how long would the RAF keep sending planes over Germany when they don't get any planes back?

[MKSheppard]

Hey Bean. You're forgetting something

24 x F-14s x 6 HAWK missiles = 144 x 2 missiles in stowage = 288 Missiles.

24 x F-14s x 2 Sparrow Style missiles = 48 x 4 missiles in stowage = 192 missiles.

288+192= 480 missiles x 0.9 P(k) = 432 kills stowed total, before you're down to guns.

Number of Bombers sent out in one night for Nuremberg: 792.

Daily production of Victory Aircraft, Canada ALONE: 1 Lancaster per day.

Attrition rate of F-14 due to heavy combat operations, as in "fly around for 4 hours, land, get refuelled, fly around for 4 more hours" kind of attrition in airframe maintenance.

[K. A. Pital]

That is if they continue air attrition attacks. As opposed to pouring all effort into a land advancement, like, uh... in the East?

And then Germany gets steamrolled.

300 planes defending a front over which a dozen thousand aircraft clash, a front several thousand km wide?

Sure, great losses to those planes, but remember, there are no several dozen thousands of ordinary Luftwaffe planes no more.

Just a small airforce.

That would be great for shock attacks, but terrible at holding anything warfare.

Once the enemy figures out where the air bases are, either from the ground or from the air, they'll make short work of the uber planes.

Given the terrific intensity of plane usage in WWII, you'd have those 300 planes flown at such a rate they'd be crashing in pretty large numbers even due to accidents, which will wear down the already inadequate airforce.

[MKSheppard]

I think a better RAR would be:

Germany gets it's Z-plan of 1945

Four aircraft carriers
Six H Class battleships
Three "O Class" battlecruisers
Twelve "Kreuzer P Class" Panzerschiffe
Two Hipper Class heavy cruisers (Seydlitz, and Lützow)
Four "M Class" light cruisers
Two "Improved M Class" light cruisers
Six " Spähkreuzer Class" large destroyers

in place of it's existing fleet at Jutland.

[Raesene]

I think a better RAR would be:

Germany gets it's Z-plan of 1945

Speed advantage, longer-ranged guns and carrier aircraft for the Germans? Poor RN...

[brianeyci]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but every single one of these RAR scenarios, the Russians usually lose if Stalin's killed.

What's to stop the Iranians from a decapitation strike to kill Stalin, then sinking the entire British fleet to deter a possible D-Day? All they need is really good photo reconnaissance, and mass offensives are totally screwed. The idea isn't to have 300 planes stretched on a huge front, but concentrated to blunt any offensive.

The idea like Chris and Mr. Bean says isn't to hold off hordes of tanks from overruning airfields. It shouldn't ever come to that if the planes are used properly. Yes, Hitler could piss away his advantage, but that's a possibility with any of these RARs. He could even piss away a Z-Plan.

[K. A. Pital]

Killing Stalin would result in a blow, but I'm sure the military, who had a huge grip on industry and many things in the country, could've taken over in such a case. Remember, Germany's strategic situation was very bad. A single morale blow would not make a war won. Besides, in case of bombing threat Stalin, along with some higher officials, had a deep bunker in Moscow. How'd they kill him? It'd be rather hard.

Sinking the entire British fleet is harder, albeit doable probably. However, you'd have to dedicate quite a huge percentage of this airforce to sinking an enemy Navy, and use it with high intensity while in all other places you have NO air support whatsoever for your forces.

How badly would be the Eastern Front screwed if suddenly the Luftwaffe bombings simply ceased to exist. Disrupting enemy positions, reconaissance... all just became a lot harder.

The 300 planes are good for terror strikes, but they can't fulfill the attrition war tasks of the mass Luftwaffe plane park which reached dozens of thousands of planes. The number disparity is just too huge.

[Big Phil]

Two questions - how effective will the Iranians be having to split ~100 flyable fighter aircraft over three fronts? Say 40 planes on the Western Front, 40 on the East, and 20 in Italy - they can't all fly at the same time, and we know maintenance is an issue.

Does it even matter if the Germans get Iran's Air Force? Once the Allies lose air superiority, it's not like the Iranian Air Force will be able to effectively interdict American and Russian ground forces - how well trained are the Iranians, and how accurately would they be able to bomb factories, ships, and soldiers in the field? All that happens is that the Russians and Americans need to rely more on artillery, tanks and ground troops instead of their Air Forces.

[K. A. Pital]

Indeed. Aviation really stalling the progress would require atrocious kill rates against non-aviation targets. That is not possible with such a small airforce. Several dozen planes, concentrated, can wreak total, unmitigated havoc on one part of the front against opposing airforce, probably score good against armor - but meanwhile thousands of miles further down the line the front is broken and there are no aviation at all there. Whoops.

[j1j2j3]

The thing is that the allies won't know that a war of attrition will work in their advantage. For all they know the Germans have gained new superweapons and they will lose whatever they throw at the Germans/Iranians.

Realistically if I were an allied war planner I would stop attacks to assess the situation, which would actually give the German/Iranian force more leeway.

[thejester]

Indeed. Aviation really stalling the progress would require atrocious kill rates against non-aviation targets. That is not possible with such a small airforce. Several dozen planes, concentrated, can wreak total, unmitigated havoc on one part of the front against opposing airforce, probably score good against armor - but meanwhile thousands of miles further down the line the front is broken and there are no aviation at all there. Whoops.

Where, exactly? We're talking 1942 so presumably the majority of the IRIAF would be thrown into either the Mediterranean battles or the Operation Blue/Stalingrad/Uranus battles. Where exactly is the Red Army blowing through elsehwere? AGC, which it singularly failed to do during the MARS battles?

At the very least, you'd think the strike elements present in the IRIAF are going to be able to all but shut down the Volga ferry crossing - and that would have significant effects on the Soviet ability to hold Stalingrad and, in turn, the German ability to respond to the URANUS counteroffensive.

[thejester]

The other thing that (obviously) really affects this thread is the estimates of IRIAF strength. You've got low end estimates from the CSIS [warning: PDF, about 680 kb] and then you've got the high-end estimates from Tom Cooper. This thread at ACIG demonstrates this [registration necessary but free]...Cooper argues, for example, that Google Earth alone offers blatant evidence that the CSIS is wrong on the number of Iranian aircraft operational: put in 'Sharaz Air Force Base' and have a browse, there's what appears to be at least 3 P-3s and 9 Su-25s on the ramp against CSIS's 2 and 5 operational respectively. Then again, they could be decoys...so I suppose the end lesson is that we're making educated guesses. Cooper also fiercely contests the availability/sortie rates of Iranian aircraft, arguing it is/could be considerably higher than at present.

But even if we do assume poor availability rates...we're still talking quite a few modern aircraft with PGM capability that could seriously hurt the Allies, even in small numbers. The F-4/Su-24 combination would be virtually unstoppable against Allied shipping, particularly given they carry stand off weapons such as C. 801s.