War and Power, page 5
It was soon discovered that making a bomber fast enough to outrun fighters would be practically impossible, so the He 177 started getting much heavier defensive armaments. For a while there was also an attempt to design the aircraft as a dive bomber. Dive-bombing was a more accurate manner of delivering ordnance on target, but any aircraft dive-bombing had to hold a straight course for an extended period as it moved from high to low altitude – making it extremely vulnerable. The most famous German dive bomber of the war, the gull-winged Junkers Ju 87, or Stuka, was so easy to shoot down that by the summer of 1940 it had lost almost all of its value fighting the British (though it continued to be used with some effect against the Russians on the Eastern Front until 1945).23 It eventually became apparent to the Germans that making a large and expensive aircraft like the He 177 into a dive bomber was completely impractical.
However, the greatest problem with the He 177 was the engines. All aircraft represent a balance between the airframe (the structure that is being propelled through the air) and the engines that do the propelling. An under-engined or poorly engined aircraft, even with the most brilliant airframe, is a flying turkey, which makes the He 177 the Thanksgiving dinner of World War II. Its airframe shape was advanced, with an aerodynamic domed front and top that reduced drag, and a large fuselage capable of holding a lot of ordnance. However, getting the engines to propel this excellent airframe ended up being a nightmare for the Germans. For years, Heinkel opted to try to link two engines, front to back, on each wing. They were hoping this would provide great power while also increasing performance. It was a design innovation, and the US and UK four-engine bombers were built with two engines side by side on each wing.
Unfortunately for the Germans, it was a terrible innovation, and the design did not work. The linked engines’ actions led to intense vibration, and they were known to leak fuel. They were also placed on wings that were not strong enough to lift the concentrated weight, and these frequently developed cracks.24 The engines produced so much power in such a narrow space that they often caught fire or exploded. The result was years of crashes and lost pilots as the Germans tried to make the configuration work. By 1944, even Hitler lost faith, and called the plane ‘garbage’.25 Trying to calculate the cost the Germans spent on developing the He 177 is impossible – but it might easily have matched the total Germany spent building tanks during all of World War II.26
Where the Germans failed, the British and Americans succeeded. The most famous British bomber of the war was the four-engine Avro Lancaster, an excellent flying platform capable of carrying a great deal of ordnance. The design and building process also took years, but it worked out much better than the He 177. The Lancaster emerged out of an aircraft programme in 1936. The first version was the Manchester, a two-engine bomber, which made its first flight in 1939 and was put into service in 1940. However, like the He 177, the Manchester suffered from serious engine troubles at first, and being a two-engine bomber it was incapable of carrying the weight of bombs the British wanted for a strategic bombing campaign against Germany. Plans were thus put in place to take the design, enlarge it, and equip it with four (better) engines. The result was the Lancaster, which started operational duty in 1942 and would be the backbone of the Royal Air Force’s strategic bombing of Germany for the rest of the war.27
If the British did better than the Germans when it came to designing and building strategic bombers, partly by being more deliberate and less adventurous, the US outdid them both – which was hardly surprising as the US was now the economic/technological powerhouse of the world. Like the British and the Germans, the Americans started conceiving of a new class of bombers in the 1930s, but unlike the British and Germans they were able to bring a design to active use far earlier. The famous Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, which would still be flying missions over Germany in 1945, went from design to operational use before Hitler invaded Poland. Its origins came from a call in 1934 by the USAAC (United States Army Air Corps, which became the USAAF in 1941 – there was no separate US Air Force at the time) for a next-generation bomber capable of flying long distances. The US, because of its relative isolation from possible enemies, always had to think about range more than any other power. While London was just over 200 miles from the German industrial heartland in the Ruhr, the US, even from its extreme western (Hawaii) and eastern (Maine) parts, was thousands of miles from Japan and Germany.
Maybe for this reason, the US invested the resources and had the technological expertise to develop the first true four-engine bomber before anyone else. The B-17 was everything an interwar-period design could have hoped for – and possibly more. It was notoriously robust, long-ranged with the ability to fly for approximately 2,000 miles carrying a significant bombload, and equipped with some of the finest engines in the world. The USAAC was determined to get as many as possible, though at first it struggled to convince Congress to fund the purchase of large numbers.28 However, once war broke out in Europe, funding was made available in much larger amounts, and as there was already a working design, the US was able to start producing the B-17 in quantity. It would become the mainstay of the US strategic bombing of Germany, preferred even over later-generation four-engine bombers such as the Consolidated B-24. By 1944, later B-17 designs had the range to fly very deep into Germany, and were known to reach Leipzig or even Danzig (modern-day Gdańsk) in far eastern Germany.29
Though by that time the US had taken four-engine aircraft technology and made another major developmental leap with the most expensive and complex weapons systems programme in the war, resulting in the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. Though often people assume that the Manhattan Project, which resulted in the atomic bomb, or even the German V-2 programme, which resulted in the world’s first ‘space rocket’,30 were World War II’s most expensive weapons programmes, they were both outstripped by a considerable amount by the US programme to develop a Very Long Range (VLR) bomber. It was so expensive that it was eventually labelled the ‘three-billion-dollar gamble’.31
The idea that the US would need a bomber of super-range went back to 1938 – and was accelerated by the Fall of France.32 At that point the US needed to imagine fighting a war with Nazi Germany by itself – and believed that American technological advances could still lead to victory. Key to this was extending the range of aircraft. Even if Britain fell or was driven out of the war, so the US reasoning went in its famous Rainbow war plans, the US should have the ability to strike Europe from Iceland.
The B-29 was to provide the US with the ability to fight such a long-range war against Germany. Considering the extreme technological demands placed on the aircraft, it moved relatively rapidly through the design process, making its first flight in 1942. The B-29 could fly for 3,000 miles in comparison to the B-17’s 2,000 miles, and was almost a third faster, all while carrying 20,000 pounds of ordnance.33 However, this was just scratching the surface of its advances. It was also all electric and completely pressurized, allowing it to fly at 30,000 feet but for the crew to operate as if they were at 8,000 feet.34 Maybe most remarkably, it had automated defences – basically guns linked by an early computer, so that one gunner inside the plane could control a number of guns at the same time. In fact, the B-29 had so many technical advances that some of the technicians at Boeing were ‘uncomfortable with the aircraft, feeling that they were going too far forward into the technological unknown’.35 Amazingly, the US had a flying version deployed to war in 1944, and by 1945 the Superfortress was the main weapon used in the air campaign against Japan.
So, making four-engine bombers ended up being an operation of great complexity, and doing so cost far more than any other weapons programme of the war. Designing and building the B-29, for instance, cost a minimum of $3 billion and might have reached $3.7 billion.36 In comparison, the designing and building of the atom bombs under the Manhattan Project cost $2 billion. And the total costs of the four-engine bombers, including those that never made it past the drawing board, would dwarf the cost of all other weapons systems.
In terms of successfully harnessing technological development, the Americans not only won the war; they won the production battle as well. The US ended up developing three successful models of four-engine bombers that were flown in combat before the end of World War II: the B-17, B-24 and the very long-range B-29. The British built one real success, the Lancaster, and the Germans struggled to build the He 177, which was not particularly effective. In overall production terms, the competition was not close, with the US building approximately 30,000 B-17s, B-24s and B-29s, the British just over 7,000 Lancasters, and the Germans just a few hundred He 177s.
Of course, these figures obscure the real level of US technological/economic dominance. One B-29, for instance, cost the same as five Lancaster bombers.37 In winning this competition, the US set much of the strategic course of the whole war. The Germans, as time went on, spent more and more of their resources – not in the land war, but in the air war as they tried to blunt the US and UK strategic bombing offensives. By 1943 not only were they spending half of their economy to building aircraft (overwhelmingly fighters, to confront Allied bombers), but German expenditure on anti-air weapons and ammunition (once again, overwhelmingly directed at the British and American bombing campaign) was approximately equal to the amount spent building all German tanks and self-propelled guns.38 At the same time, these Allied bombing offensives dislocated and then seriously degraded German production. Factories were dispersed, then at least partially destroyed, and in the end the transportation network linking them was dislocated. The result was that the German economy was basically ground down trying to fight (or directly by) the strategic bombing campaign. Meanwhile, in the Pacific, by the end of 1945 the B-29 was unchallengeable in the skies over Japan. It was the only platform capable of carrying and dropping the atom bomb – and it ended the war as basically the prototype for all future bombers.
So, the four-engine bomber, like the dreadnought before it, stands out as a key weapon of war, because it not only engaged the Germans and Japanese directly in battle, it also greatly affected their whole power creation system, limiting the ability of those countries to generate more armed forces and materiel as the war went on. In the end, a state needed not only to make the best equipment, but also the most, and to support that equipment and use it in complex operations in order to effectively exercise power in peace and war.
Aircraft Carriers since 1945
If the naval vessel was the main point of competition before World War I and the bomber aircraft before World War II, arguably it is the combination of the two in aircraft-carrier battle groups that best demonstrates how economics and technology have separated the powers since. A fully stocked aircraft carrier is not just the largest warship afloat; it contains one of the most advanced and expensive stores of aircraft. It must also be supported and protected by a small fleet of its own. Indeed, it is so expensive today that the long-term viability of the large fleet carrier is being questioned.
During the Cold War and for two decades after, however, building, equipping and deploying aircraft carriers separated the most advanced powers from the others. However, in this case, the difference was even greater than with the dreadnought and the four-engine bomber. Essentially, there was the United States, who could build and deploy a large number of fully equipped carriers at the same time – and everyone else. Many states, from the USSR to France and Britain, had pretensions to being aircraft-carrier powers. What they built, however, was small in number, small in size and limited in abilities. The Soviet Union, the other supposed superpower of the Cold War, never built what could be considered a true fleet carrier, opting for more of a hybrid carrier/cruiser in the Kiev class.39 These were small vessels, less than half the size of US carriers of the time, with deficient aircraft, and they suffered from a huge number of teething issues. Only four of them were built in the 1970s and 1980s, and half of these today are theme parks. The French built two carriers in the early 1960s, Foch and Clemenceau, but these were smaller than Kiev-class vessels, could accommodate half the aircraft (at most) of US carriers, and lacked integrated radar. The British ended up with the smallest carriers of the lot by the end of the Cold War, and officially they were not even carriers. For the first decades of the Cold War the largest British carrier, Ark Royal, was a World War II-vintage vessel – construction started in 1943. When plans were made to scrap Ark Royal in the 1970s, the British opted for the mini-carriers of the Illustrious class (they were even called through-deck cruisers), from which could fly only a handful of jump jets.
The United States had developed carriers of a completely different proportion. From the mid-1970s, while the USSR was struggling with the small Kyiv class, the US started producing Nimitz-class carriers. Two and a half times the size of the Kyiv class, Nimitz-class carriers could house up to ninety of the most advanced aircraft of the time. They were also equipped with the most sophisticated support systems, from integrated radar to missile defences. Before the end of the Cold War in 1989, the United States was able to launch five Nimitz-class carriers. These formed the backbone of the US carrier force in the 1980s, which would have crushed all the rest of the world’s fleets combined. During every year between 1982 and 1989, the US deployed at least ten large aircraft carriers overseas – giving it an unparalleled ability to project power.40 Each one of these carriers would have been the equal of the carrier force of any other nation.
This US carrier dominance remains today. But the rise of China has led to the appearance of another country that is attempting to build and equip a large fleet carrier of approximately the same size and carrying the same air-wing as the largest US vessels. Though they have not yet put it into production, the Chinese do have one currently undergoing sea trials, Fujian, which is as large as the newest US carriers.41 The fact that the Chinese can do this speaks to their economic and technological might.
The irony is that the future of both Fujian and the very large American carriers of today is being debated. Changes in the technology of warfare have led some to wonder whether such massively large, technically advanced and extraordinarily expensive vessels are worth the investment, in an era with much cheaper and ever longer-ranged anti-ship missiles and even UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones).42 It’s a question that needs to be asked. If a newer, disruptive technology appears that can destroy an older, more expensive one, then trying to hold on to the old for too long risks military failure.
One of the key areas for any such disruptive technology will be the race for autonomous systems, which can be put within the larger race to develop artificial intelligence (AI). If one nation – or alliance – can develop workable autonomous weapons that can be sent out to identify enemy targets and then attack them without relying on human control, it could change the balance of deterrence and even the outcome of wars. Both the US and China, for example, are working on a range of AI technologies. Though the US first looked to have a significant lead in this area, in early 2025 the Chinese showed that they could devise a cheaper, simpler AI system that used less power (which is a key development in using AI for weapons systems). Though we are still a long way from having this competition decided, it could easily be the ultimate test of economic technological power in the mid-twenty-first century.
One thing we can say now, however, is if one technological era is ending and another is starting, then in the competition to dominate military technology in the new era, the most economically powerful states with the most advanced technology will rise to the top.
They can always make the best and most stuff.
Footnotes
i The Nassau was originally to be built as a pre-dreadnought (as these battleships would soon be known), but its construction was halted when news of Dreadnought emerged, and the Germans converted it into their first dreadnought class.
ii The three most famous of air power thinkers of the interwar period were arguably Giulio Douhet, Hugh Trenchard and William (Billy) Mitchell. They all believed that the introduction of aircraft had revolutionized warfare and they believed that in any future war aerial bombing would play a crucial role in determining the outcome.
iii For the sake of consistency and clarity, anti-aircraft systems of all types will be referred to as ‘anti-air’.
2. Leadership
Adolf Hitler wanted to invade Poland for a long time before he ordered the German Army to cross the Polish border on 1 September 1939. For years he had believed that Germany needed to go to war by 1943, which is when he expected the balance of military production and preparedness would turn against Germany.1 Also, Poland was always going to be one of his targets. He viewed the Poles as racially degenerate and, even worse, as squatting on land he lusted after as an integral part of the ‘greater’ Germany he wanted to create.
The question Hitler faced was when to do the deed. By the spring of 1939 he was ready to put his plans into action.2 As he told his leading henchmen, including his deputy Hermann Göring, in his typically rambling and repetitive way: ‘There is therefore no question of sparing Poland, and we are left with the decision to attack Poland at the first suitable opportunity … There will be war. Our task is to isolate Poland. The success of the isolation will be decisive … The isolation of Poland is a matter of skilful politics.’3
For the next few months Hitler would do just that – isolate and then invade Poland. The first part of the process would not be easy. Poland had security guarantees from the British and the French and even the possibility of support from its large neighbour to the east – the USSR, led by Joseph Stalin. Hitler sought to weaken that group of allies and possible allies, and on 23 August he believed he had achieved his dream. He signed a deal with Stalin, gaining Soviet support for an invasion of Poland by promising to turn half his booty over to the Soviet leader. By signing this dictators’ pact to divide Poland, Hitler believed (wrongly) that he could keep Britain and France from going to war.
