The Rif War

One of the lesser known 20th century wars gets an Alternate History

Review: Sky People

A Polish Zero?

The Poles develop a fast, maneuverable fighter comparable to the Japanese Zero in the late 1930s.  

Point Of Divergence is an amateur press magazine and also a forum for discussing AH and AH-related ideas.  Here is my comment section.

What actually happened: Poland had many of the same problems and strengths that Japan had.  The Poles faced enemies with overwhelming industrial might, just as the Japanese did.  Both the Poles and the Japanese had been able to rearm more freely than their enemies in the early thirties.  As a result, both the Poles and the Japanese had small corps of extremely skillful pilots.  Unfortunately for the Poles, the similarity between the airforces ended there.  The Japanese developed world-class light-weight fighters like the Zero.  The Poles designed very good gull-wing fighters in the early 1930s, but their efforts to build a low-wing monoplane fighter comparable to the ME109 or the British Spitfire faltered, and was still at prototype stage when the Germans invaded.
    What if the Poles had been able to build a plane comparable to the Zero and get a couple hundred produced before the German invasion?  A Zero-like plane with its extreme maneuverability and skimpy pilot protection would have probably suited Polish pilots well.  With a decent fighter to produce, the Poles could have probably produced 150 to 200 of the new fighter before the German invasion.  That would let them replace the old PZL-7s. they were still flying historically, but not all of the PZL-11s.
    So what kind of an impact would a zero-like fighter have on the German invasion?  Well, contrary to popular myth, the German historically didn’t catch the Polish airforce on the ground, though they tried to.  The Poles fought hard, but their fastest fighters couldn’t catch most German bombers, and German fighters were a generation ahead of the Poles.  The German command of the air was devastating to the Poles, keeping them from finishing their mobilization, destroying strong-points and communication centers, and forcing the Poles to move only at night. 
    In this scenario, the Germans would have a lot more trouble controlling the air until they adapted their tactics or the Poles ran out of planes and bullets.  The Poles couldn’t be everywhere but when they appeared they would shoot down German fighters almost at will if those fighters didn’t run and leave the bombers they were accompanying to their fates.  Historically, British Spitfires flown by pilots hardened by the Battle of Britain were trivially easy for the Japanese Zeros to shoot down in early 1942.  Given very good Polish pilots and a similar plane, the Poles could have probably done the same thing to Me109s and 110s.
    On the other hand, the Poles didn’t have radar, and their early warning system was primitive.  A couple hundred good fighters could not cover the entire country, and it would be difficult to concentrate them where they were needed the most.  They would also be outnumbered by five or ten to one in any given area.  It would be an odd air campaign, with the Germans dominating the air except where the Polish airforce showed up, but forced to flee for their lives when the Poles did show up.
    Without fighter protection, Stukas would be deathtraps, and would probably be forced to curtail their activities.  Level bombers wouldn’t have anywhere near the accuracy that the dive bombers had, so German  air effectiveness would drop drastically if the Stukas became unusable.
    The Stukas were a key part of German operations in the early part of the war.  They could take out key strong points that would have otherwise forced the Germans to wait for their heavy artillery to come up, slowing down the pace of the advance.  Taking them out of the equation would have meant a much slower German advance in Poland.
    Now where would that take us?  Historically, the French appear to have essentially written the Poles off a week to ten days into the war.  In this scenario it would be more difficult fore the western Allies to write off the Poles and crawl back behind the Maginot line.
     Unfortunately, the western Allies probably weren’t capable of an offensive that would really threaten Germany in a reasonable period of time, though.  The French and the British simply didn’t have the type of armies that could move fast and far against even fairly weak German opposition.  They would probably take some additional territory, but unless the Poles held out for several months vital German territory wouldn’t be threatened from the west.
    That leaves the Poles pretty much on their own for a couple of months.  Unfortunately for them, their ammunition supply would probably not be up to holding out too much longer than that.  The western Allies did have some supplies in the pipeline, headed through Romania, but the Poles would have run low on ammunition fairly quickly.  Fortunately, so would the Germans.
    The Germans actually ran low on bombs during the historic Polish campaign, so they would have certainly faced shortages in a prolonged war.  The German war machine was geared to short campaigns, with a lot of tanks, planes and artillery produced, but not a lot of ammunition or spare parts to keep them in the field.  The Germans would have probably had to slow the pace of the fighting within a couple of months due to supply shortages.  They would have also run short of some categories of oil.  Their stockpiles were not large enough for a prolonged war, and they didn’t have access to Romanian or Soviet oil during the Polish campaign.  Synthetic oil plants couldn’t make up the difference in 1939 because a lot of the plants weren’t on line yet.
    Would the Soviets join the war as they did historically?  They might eventually, but not as early as they did historically.  The Soviets weren’t prepared for the speed of the historic German advance, and had to put together a hasty offensive that they probably wouldn’t have tried against a more intact Polish army.  The Soviets also had the Japanese to worry about.  They had just beaten the Japanese in a major border clash at Nomanham, but the issue wasn’t totally settled yet.
    Given a slower German advance in Poland, the Soviets might have tried to make the Japanese pay a higher price in the long-standing rivalry along the Manchurian border.  It would have been an ideal time for the Soviets to deal with the Japanese in Manchuria.  With the Germans and Poles tied up fighting each other, the Soviets could have fought the Japanese with no immediate fear of having to deal with a second front in the west.  The Soviets wanted to knock the Japanese out of Manchuria eventually.  They had just dealt the Japanese a crushing defeat.  Would they have followed up on a larger scale if the Germans appeared stalled in Poland?  An all-out offensive is probably a long shot.  The Soviets tended to be cautious—chess players rather than kamikazes.  At the same time, this would have been an ideal time to deal with an old enemy, so the Soviets might have at least tried to further humiliate the Japanese and seize some additional territory.
    So what would the ultimate result of all of this be?  The Poles would eventually run out of ‘zeros’, no matter how good of a kill ratio they had.  The western allies would undoubtedly ship them some additional planes, such as the French Morane Saulner MS406s that the Poles historically had on order, but the MS406 would not be a giant killer like the ‘zero’  My guess is that the Poles would hold out until late December 1939 or January 1940, with the Germans forced to pause for around a month in late October and early November to replenish their logistics.  The Soviets would come in and grab their spoils only when it was obvious that the Poles were about to fold.  That would probably mean no Soviet Winter War against Finland, which means that the Soviet Army would not discover how bad most of its divisions actually were until later.
    By the time the Poles folded, the western Allies would have advanced quite a bit further into German territory, but not decisively so.  Their offensives would be essentially an improved version of a World War I offensive, with objectives measured in miles or the low tens of miles at the most.  The French army would get some additional combat experience and shake out some of the worst of the dead wood.  The Germans probably wouldn’t have to pull significant forces away from the Polish front.
    How long would it take for the Germans to attack in the West after Poland fell?  Historically, the German army wasn’t ready for an offensive in the west until January of 1940, three months after the bulk of the Polish fighting was over.  Given a more prolonged Polish resistance, they probably wouldn’t be ready to attack France for at least four months.  That would mean that they would be hard-pressed to be ready in time for the excellent blitzkrieg weather in mid-May 1940.  They would probably also be hard-pressed to get the Luftwaffe back in shape to take part in that offensive.  The Germans didn’t have an unlimited supply of planes or pilots, and the Luftwaffe would have lost far more of both in the Polish campaign than they did historically.
    Would the Germans still win in the west?  Every month they delayed would mean that the western Allies got stronger, especially in the air.  Historically, the French were shifting from the MS 406 to the much-superior Dewoitine 520 when the German attack came, one of the reasons why not all of their fighter squadrons were available when the attack came.  Any German delay would have also risk running into bad weather.   Western Europe doesn’t have a lot of months of good flying weather, and the Luftwaffe of 1940 was definitely a fair weather airforce.
    At this point, I probably need to cut this short lest it grow past the mini-scenario stage.

Revised Version - Posted on Feb 3, 2012.

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