Even if D Day had failed. And there were several ways it could have. The war couldn't have gone on much longer than it did.

Germany and Japan were out of everything. People, metals, fuel, bullets, food. Everything.

Everyone saying that the Axis might have had nukes is full of shit too. After the war Werner Heisenberg. (The physicist who headed up the Nazi atom bomb program. Not just a pseudonym for a meth cooker.) And his team was captured by the British. While they were in custody they heard a radio news report about the Hiroshima bombing. Heisenberg believed that it was a hoax at first. The scientists in charge of the Nazi atomic program couldn't believe that the Americans had developed a nuclear weapon. Let alone one small enough to fit in an aircraft.

http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English101.pdf

The Japanese may have detonated a crude "dirty bomb" type weapon. But evidence for that is sparse and I think their test site is in what's now North Korea so we can't test the site. Either way, even if the Japanese had a fully operational 'Fat man' type weapon using it would have just made the Americans atomic bombings fully justified instead of just mostly justified.
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Had the war somehow gone on there would have been deployment of a few more advanced prototype weapons. Particularly aircraft. But by that point the Axis didn't really have fuel or competent pilots to fly them. Volksjager would have been a complete clusterfuck. That plane was difficult for experienced pilots. Crewing it with Hitler Youth and putting it up against experienced allied pilots in Gloster Meteors and Lockheed P80s would have been suicide.

As absurd as the thought of continuing the war is. It's not the craziest thing like this I have ever read. That would be the the Axis of Time series by Birmingham. Joseph Stalin turns into an honest to god wizard in that one. Pulling atomic bombs and numerous other advanced weapons that the Soviets simply didn't have the resources to make out of thin air.

Hitler gives permission to Rommel to stage his armored divisions wherever Rommel wants.  Rommel believes Normandy is the real invasion site and doesn't fall for the Pas De Calais deception plan.  D-Day invasion is thrown back into the water.

Interesting piece of history:  few people know that Ike planned for this and had his "we failed" message already written.

Or.....Hitler maintains his non-aggression pact with the USSR.  Reinforces Rommel with several more divisions before too many American supplies come in.  Rommel, conquers Egypt and seizes the canal.  Moves into the Middle East and secures the oil fields. No war with USSR and a source of petroleum could send the war into 46-47.

The US was pretty much unscathed by the war. You only lost 400,000 people,which as a percentage of the population was near nothing.Germany took more losses at Stalingrad alone than you absorbed in the entire war,on all fronts, but I don't think that's something Americans appreciate.

Again though,this discussion needs a frame of reference as to why the war is still going on in 1947. What shifted the timeline? What was the setback? It's far too simplistic to say "well,B-36s would have been facing 15 year olds in Natters in 1947" because something would have necessitated using B-36s over Germany in 1947.

that's interesting because of how US Lend-Lease aid to the USSR would have been affected if the British Navy was neutral or actively hostile to the US Navy L-L convoys.

Americans tend to believe they defeated Nazi Germany on their own, and forget that 9 out of every 10 casualties in the European theater were on the German-Soviet front.

Not to make light of the US military in the ETO, but the purpose of the D-Day invasion was to (1) tie down German resources that couldn't be used to slow down the Red Army's defeat of the Wehrmact, and (2) seize as much European soil as they could so the Red Army didn't throw out previous pacts and push all the way to the English Channel.

Yeah, with 6 turbo-compound Wasp Major engines, it could get some speed up - eventually in the stratosphere. The problem was that with a full bomb load it took forever to get to flight level 450 and was vulnerable on the way up.  That's why later they had to add jet engines to it to give it any sort of TO and climb performance - where the phrase "six turning and four burning" came from.

In reality the B36 was conceived as a bomber that could launch from a base in the USA and fly over Germany (or the Soviet Union) and return which would give it plenty of time to get to altitude.

But hey - as the last piston powered strategic bomber it made a statement.

B-36s nuking the fuck out of everything.

The thought of this just makes me smile.

1) Hitler salvages things after Stalingrad; we sue for peace, since we were out of money & war sentiment was turning, hard.  Cold War occurs between Nazis & Soviets for like five years as they regroup, until nuclear exchange destroys much of Eastern & Western Europe and Russia.
2) Patton survives his accident/assassination; goes rogue, starts war against Soviets.  We take the place of Germany, stalling out in Eastern Europe during winter to massive casualties.  Likely nuclear exchange doesn't change things much, but destroys anything of value in Russia and/or Eastern Europe.   We withdraw to current EU bounds & sue for peace, right up against a hostile nation that obtains nukes shortly after.  Future conflicts from here on typically involve nuclear exchanges, there is no Cold War.

I don't think any of the sovereign governments involved in WWII would survive either scenario, and would collapse into revolution and a global dark age.  I think events chose the best path possible for mankind.

That is probably the best scenario to discuss what the OP wants.

D-Day fails/never occurs.  Maybe the US decides to let the Russians bleed Germany dry, with continued aid, but no additional fronts created.  After they take Berlin, the rest of the allies watch in astonishment as Russia pushes all the way through France and the Balkans.  They hold at the Italian border.

German prototypes and researchers make hasty retreats to England and treaties with the Allies after Hitler dies.  The Pacific front stagnates as Japan retreats to their home islands and goes internal to defend against the Soviets.  The allies in the Pacific see massive troop and material cuts to support the upcoming effort in Europe.

This allows us to see Russia and the Allies get the same amount of German intel that they did in reality, and allow it to develop their own technology.

So then, we do get B-29s and B-36s in the European theater, so Moscow can be bombed/nuked.

LOL, that thing would be more lethal to German pilots than P80s

Totes stylish, though; even had a designer flight mask by Hugo Boss

Basically anything but straight, level flight at cruise is a challenge (and even then, the nose tends to "figure eight" to the horizon).  If you stall them, you die.

Yes, but were it not for the US, Europe would have been "liberated" by the USSR. Germany, France, Italy and everything in between would be communist shitholes.

RIF, that was exactly my point.

That looks like some crap Ivan threw together in his basement; no way German leadership gives something ugly the go-ahead!

100+ delivered, 200 more complete and awaiting pick up and final inspections. A few of them saw combat and shot down a handful of Allied planes.  The Germans built enormous underground factories for them and were ready to crank them out by the thousands, but they ran out of time.  Like somebody said though, lack of pilots made it pointless.

That's not the impression Eric Brown had of it.

The thing is,it likely would not have even been designed or constructed as it were if the war situation was such that it was leading into 1947. It's rather like "what if they had built He-162s in 1943?",well they could have didn't want/feel the need to rush such a program so it leads to questions like "why would they have built it with the proper glue in 1943 when they weren't into wanting to build such a cheap fighter at all". The same is true of small arms. If the war dragged out another couple years then   yes it's possible that things like night vision on assault rifles,RPGs and air to air missiles and ATGMs would have been common or it's possible that Germany would have kept on turning out Panzer IV based things and Messerschmitts at 1943 production rates,depending upon why.

There was a guy in here a couple weeks ago attempting to make fun of me,asking what the hell Operation Bagration was. The largest Allied offensive of WWII and he had legitimately no idea what it was.

The war with Japan was essentially over.  The choice was developing to destroy from the air or starve out the home islands.  A hot war continuing in Europe would likely have meant resources would not be available for an invasion (and still likely unnecessary).   All the outlying areas were being mopped up.  The allies were quickly establishing full air and sea control.  The USSR would have had the decision to continue in western Europe or clear up their ambitions in the East.  Japan was not an existential threat to the Russians - but the stain of the Russo-Japanese War ate at the Russian psyche (yes, they were the USSR but Russian Imperial inadequacies, then as now, were on their minds).  They were poised to sweep into the home islands from the north.  Hokkaido, at least would have been invaded - at some great cost.  I'd expect they'd have reinforced "Outer Manchuria" (so to speak) and swept into "Inner Manchuria" and ended up with taking the Korean Peninsula, etc.  That's assuming, like with the US, etc., that resources were available as opposed to being tied up in Europe.

The USSR moving on Japan in China would have brought them in conflict with the Chinese.  Another traditional enemy.  That might have allowed them to exploit the conflict between the Nationalist and Communist Chinese in some ways or chewed them up in a "land war in Asia."  The war in Europe sucked up most of the attention and resources from the "Empires" in Asia.  Russia and China at war might have taken away some of the resources the "communist" revolutionaries had but the Empires were done.

Air power had settled the battleship question.  Just as jets were replacing prop fighters, etc, the vulnerability of ships to aircraft was becoming pretty obvious.  Carriers were needed in the Pacific, the Atlantic was a chokepoint.  Dumb bombs were still in use but direct attack  was becoming extremely costly.  Radar controlled AA and escort aircraft were making it difficult to get to high value targets.  Stand-off weapons, like torpedoes and especially guided bombs/powered missiles, air to surface and surface to surface were on the technological horizon.  Kamikaze attacks showed that.

I did not know the earlier versions had that gun/cannon configuration.   Always thought they had the 20mm retractable gun pods.

I think the luft’46 scenario assumes a lot of events after the winter of 1944 went differently in order to allow the war to continue into ‘46-47
USSR drops out or defeated in the east.   Battle in the Ardennes ends differently
Just an alternate universe exercise.

both the Allies and Axis would have developed better tanks, aircraft, etc..

....but the bottom line is, the US had them beat in manufacturing and logistics

Think about the supply train to get  shermans and gasoline to France, vs Germany getting panzers to the same battlefield

they brought it across a border......we brought it across the world.

....even more so in the pacific

TL;DR - we win anyway

ETA:  Pretty much already been covered but anyway......

Except that German and Japanese aircraft wouldn't have been able to reach it and if they could, the B36 would have been able to out-maneuver them.  Russians found that out after the war when they tried to shoot down our RB-36's.  The B-36 had a much higher service ceiling than fighters of the same era and those that could reach it couldn't maneuver worth a darn.  B-36 could out-maneuver them because of it's large wingspan.  Or so I read.....

The amount of ignorance in this country about the Russian Front is staggering.

Maybe.  There are rumors he suck-started a pistol.

Not really, no.  Up north of 50,000 feet, it could easily out-maneuver fighters.

There is no way Germany gets nukes.

Even if they did, if you delivered a complete working Nagasaki bomb to Germany along with detailed drawings and technical manuals translated to German - they had NO means to deliver the thing to a target.

Germany did not have a production bomber capable of reaching CONUS in operational use - EVER.

I don't see that happening.  Basically for every Montana class you build, you would lose a Midway class carrier.

No, he was right.

Ike and Truman let Stalin get away with inhumane shit after the war.

And maintaining that beast would be bad news for the Germans

But they did have nice pictures.  The Germans were very good at drawing nice pictures.

Russia isn't fighting SHIT without food, fuel, av gas, ammunition, trucks, railroad car and locomotives, and 40% of their armored vehicles.  All that is coming in via Lend-Lease, and I'm pretty sure if we are fighting them, we aren't still shipping all of that to them.

Definitely would have seen MIDWAY's in service.  MIDWAY commissioned right before the war ended and she and possibly FDR would have seen service.  Would have seem more ESSEX's complete and commission as well.  DES MOINES class cruisers might have entered service and seen combat as well.  Lots of cool stuff would have been used.  More use of radio guided bombs as well.

There weren't any conventional aircraft that could do much maneuvering at flight level 500 or above either way because of how thin the air is and the fact that airplanes can only fly and maneuver based on pressure differences above and below wing and flight control surfaces.

No Montanas, but Bunker Hill and Franklin would have been put back to use, and Reprisal would have been completed.

Well, port cities.  U-boat delivers a bomb with a midget sub built around it, or sacrifice the u-boat if necessary.  There was a thread the other day about an Italian plan to run a midget sub up into New York harbor so that frogmen could attach limpet mines to shipping.  They had the midget subs built and were training, sounds like it had a chance, but it got derailed when the carrier sub was sunk.

AK-47?  I would bet a simpler and cheaper version called the AK-46.

Try and explain to the American people, indeed the entire world, how we decided to fight the Soviets in 1945.

Stalin had been doing inhumane shit for about as long as he was Stalin.

RADAR.
We had managed to miniaturize it enough to put
it on planes by the end of the war with Japan.

It was an incredible advantage.
Klystron in 1937 and perfected for airborne use before the end of the war.

No one forgets.

1.  If Stalin wasn't playing footsie with Hitler, there would not have BEEN a WWII.
2.  Almost as many Russians were killed by Stalin's own men in WWII as by the Germans - roughly 18 million vs. 20 million.
3.  Hard to play the victim while you are trying to seize Finland.
4.  Purge all your experienced officers in 1937-38?   Your army is gonna suck and take losses in following decade.
5.  Stalin refused, with a few exceptions, to allow Allied air to operate from Russian territory.  [Airplane] Ruskie don't want no help?  Ruskie don't GET no help ...[/Airplane]
6.  Land combat phase, Russian Front - 22 June 1941 - 4 May, 1945.  Roughly 46 months.

Land combat phase, D-Day to surrender 6 June 1944 - 4 May, 1945.  Roughly 11 months.

Russians SHOULD HAVE killed a lot more Germans - they were at it 4 times as long, and they were coming to them, so they were in defense.  In contrast - ALL American land operations against the Germans were offensive operations, excepting the Bulge and some other counter-attacks.

Except - you are wrong.  Featherwieght B-36s operated above 55,000 feet sometimes.  Look at the wing - its huge.  Fighters trying to maneuver with it would stall out.  We know these because they tried.

Its actually well know that Ike wrote two speeches.

See the bold?  That's the flaw in your plan.

I grant you it would be a tough sell after the communists in our government spent the previous 4 years talking up how swell Uncle Joe was.  A few movie news reals showing the people being forcedinto trucks to go back to Russia and be killed might do it, but we had fake news back then, too.

I seem to recall an interview with a B36 crewman who said that they regularly beat F100 Super Sabers in simulated high altitude dogfights. He talked about it like, "you know if I hadn't been there I wouldn't believe it."

Avro Vulcan pilots also did well against F15s later on in history in similar exercises.

T20 Garand

The development of CAS??

Ummm...

No need to maneuver. Just get in behind it - out of .50 caliber ranger - and fire a missile.

Look, bottom line is that a massive slow target like the the B36 is impractical at any altitude and that may be why it was never used in actual combat.

The B52 was a deal breaker though and did everything the B36 tried to do.