re: #114 William Barnett-Lewis

This presumes the could have gotten there. I’d have to rate that as about … oh, I dunno, Highly un-fucking-likely? While it’s true they built a decent bomber with good range, it couldn’t have survived without escort - we couldn’t have without resources far deeper than every other nation in WWII combined and the B-17 (for all it’s very real flaws) did have by far the best on board protection of any pre-war bomber - the losses would have ended their attempts within a month.

That would have been hard for the Soviets to do: Their interceptors were best at low-levels, and the P-108 could fly high enough as to give the BF-109 greater strength against them. And even in that, the P-108 would have done a service: every fighter and 85mm AA gun it kept positioned east of the Urals would have been one unable to protect the Red Army’s tanks from FW-190 fighter-bombers and JU-87 Stukas.