View Full Version : What If Hitler Utilized Technologies
sonar732
10-08-07, 07:46 PM
Ok. In continuation from the Japanese Pearl Harbor thread...
What if Hitler would've utilized his early technology even earlier? For instance, committing resources to build and deploy the Graf Zeppelin in the Atlantic, his early aircraft designs "flying wing", or finally the V rockets early in the war.
Graf Zeppelin would have helped for some time, but eventually it would have become the main target. Possibly having to suffer the same fate as Bismarck. :hmm:
The V-weapons, I think, were more of a moral weapons, sure they were lethal, but they lacked the accuracy to be used to anything more than big targets e.g. cities.
Any kind of jet fighter/bomber early in the war would have been an huge advantage for the germans. "Speed is life". If they would've have had them during BoB, it might very well be that the outcome would have been different, a more favourable one for the germans.
Spruence M
10-08-07, 08:04 PM
Bottom line is: *IMO*
Germany had to invade England. I think in the 1940s England had the balls to go tell Hitler what to do with himself.
I really dont think the Graf Zeppelin would have helped much.. still the same problem...
guess who had the biggest dam navy in the world!? The Brits would have just taken that one out too..
Now on the other hand.. if hitler had devoted the resources to expand and develop the ubootswaffe.. that could have made a big impact. Instead of starting the war with roughly 30 operational U-boats.. imagin if he had several hundred.. and then what if the Germans actually developed the Walther U-Boat?
As for the luftwaffe developments.. who knows.. the Germans had developed a jet fighter (Me262) that could have made a big difference in slowing/stopping the allied invasion.. but hitler insisted that it be a bomber instead of a fighter and thus delayed its deployment until it was "WAY" too late.
bookworm_020
10-08-07, 08:36 PM
The V rockets would have made little diffreence and they would have taken around the same time to build, even with more funding.
The Graf Zeppelin would have made little difference overall, but it could have done some serios damage, and if sorted with the Bismark it may have kept the swordfish away and allow them into the south atlantic.
If they had pushed on with jet fighters, a mass produced U boat and more armed merchant cruisers earlier in the war, they may have just turned the tide.
antikristuseke
10-08-07, 09:04 PM
Adopting technology earlyer might have helped, but not to a very high degree. One of the biggest reasons the nazis lost the war were bad leadership descisions and the war starting too early. Good that it ended up like this aswell.
Ducimus
10-08-07, 09:10 PM
Bottom line is: *IMO*
In my opinion, all "what if's are a moot point. Nazi Germany lost the war the instant the little corporal thought he was a General.
Camaero
10-08-07, 11:32 PM
A better question is what if he waited to invade Poland in 1945 when the Kreigsmarine and the Luftwaffe would have been way, way more prepared? Another question is what if he never turned on Stalin? Stalin liked Hitler and would have enjoyed steamrolling the Brits together.
I do love the tactical side of war. I can see many ways the Germans could have walked away with all of Europe. Then, as stated in Hitler's second book, America would come next. By the Hitler would probably have had nukes and America might not have.... Or maybe both would get nukes at about the same time...
Oh well, speculation is kind of a waste of time!
As for the luftwaffe developments.. who knows.. the Germans had developed a jet fighter (Me262) that could have made a big difference in slowing/stopping the allied invasion.. but hitler insisted that it be a bomber instead of a fighter and thus delayed its deployment until it was "WAY" too late.
Just to clear this one up, it's a myth that Hitler's insistance the Me262 be used as a bomber being the cause of its delay. It was in fact Willi Messerschmitt who suggested to Hitler (among others) that the 262 could be a bomber, and that was because it was designed to be a multi-role aircraft from the outset. You have to look at the entire situation in the German arms industry at that time to understand the reasons behind this:
The Bayerische Flugzeugwerke (bf) factory where Messerschmitt was employed, had supplied aircraft to several Balkan countries and done collaborative development work with them too (principally Romania) against the wishes of Erhard Milch (the German Secretary of State for Aircraft). Thus Messerschmitt and bf were not popular with the Nazis and Messerschmitt himself was officially reprimanded by the Nazis for this. Couple that with the fact that several of Messerschmitt's early designs for the German aviation industry had crashed and killed several important figures and you have at least some of the reasons for Messerschmitt's unpopularity. In fact he had been offered a professorship at Danzig as a way to get rid of him and told in no uncertain terms that he should take it, as bf would never get a government contract.
When the RLM (German Air Ministry) issued the specifications for a new fighter aircraft to replace the Heinkel 59 biplane fighter, Messerschmitt and bf were in fact not sent a copy of the requirement at first, but since Messerschmitt insisted on getting a shot at it, Milch allowed bf to enter the contest, in his arrogance, Milch was convinced that Messerschmitt could only design gliders and had no experience of designing high speed aircraft. Milch was therefore happy to see the designer be the author of his own demise. Unfortunately Milch (like a lot of Nazis) was too busy playing favourites to notice that bf had just produced the bf108 Taifun four seater touring aircraft which was a masterpiece of sleek design.
When the four aircraft in the fighter contest showed up for the fly offs, Messerschmitt and bf turned up with the bf109, Heinkel with the He112, Arado with the Ar-80 and Focke-Wulf with the Fw-159. Of these, only the He112 offered any serious competition to the bf109, but it suffered from handling problems, was not optimised for mass production and had an overly complex cooling system, and so following testing of this and the bf109 in the Spanish civil war, Messerschmitt's bf109 proved the ultimate winner and eventually saw over 30,000 produced.
Against this background, Heinkel and Messerschmitt were stern rivals in the race to produce the first operational jet combat aircraft. Heinkel took first honours with the He178, the first ever jet aircraft to fly (August 27 1939), and in fact Heinkel had a prototype jet combat aircraft very similar to the Me262 in the air before the 262's first flight (the He280, first flown April 2 1941 - two weeks later, the prototype Me262 took to the air with a propeller engine installed in the nose to test its aerodynamic handling).
But, having turned things around with the bf109, Messerschmitt was now adept at playing the Nazi's own personaily culture games (notably with Hermann Goering and Ernst Udet), and he was better at this than Enrst Heinkel, who had overstretched the Heinkel company by getting a controlling interest in engine manufacture as well as airframes. Thus the promising He280 was dropped and the Nazis went with the Me262.
Now, here is the important part. Because Willi Messerschmitt knew that in Nazi Germany, winning contracts was as much about who you knew, as what you knew, he had touted the Me262 as capable of handling all three major combat roles, fighter, bomber and reconnaissance. Thus he knew that whichever camp held favour, his aircraft would still be a valid choice. In a personal audience with Hitler, Messerschmitt had said as much too, and Hitler is in fact on record as having cautioned that the aircraft should primarily be a fighter.
Later in the war, when Hitler was very much in decline health-wise (not to mention addicted to drugs), he was prone to rant about aircraft being used as bombers for reprisals, and this is where the myth of the Hitler insistence on the Me262 being a bomber stems from. But the simple truth is that it was largely problems with the Me262 Junkers Jumo 004 engines which delayed the programme.
The Jumo 004 was an axial flow engine (where the air is compressed through many stages before it reaches combustion, thus providing more thrust). British and American jet engines were of the far simpler centrifugal flow type, where no such compressor stages are utilised, thus they produce less thrust, but are also far less sophisticated and therefore more easily manufactured and less prone to go wrong (as the Jumo 004 did, a lot).
So, delays in engine manufacture and difficulties in finding skilled labour at both the bf factory and the Junkers factory to make the airframes and engines, plus the fact that the main Me262 production line was severely damaged by the USAAF, forcing the dispersal of Me262 production were the real causes of its delays. Willi Messerschmitt did some time in prison after the war for using forced labour at his factories incidentally.
The Me262 story is almost a microcosm of most of the other 'Nazi Wonder Weapons' stories, with personal fueds, greed and over-reaching technology being as much to blame as anything else, for their delayed introduction. And as cool as these things were, I think we can all be glad that this was the case. You can blame Hitler for a lot of things, but the Me262's delay aint one of them.
:D Chock
The Graf Zeppelin would be useless with out the bat6tleships to protect it. Germany had
no battleships that could compete with the British Atlantic fleet, never mind the rest of the
British fleet and the Commonwealth/American Navies.
Skybird
10-09-07, 05:35 AM
New technologies being used earlier by the germans, so the assumption of this thread. This would in general show in many relevant aspects and fields.
Better production methods. Better prototypes earlier in regular production. due to that: modern types in greater numbers. chnages in the way of production,Better production ergonomy, different use of ressources.
It could translate into details like this:
A greater number of Type XXI, earlier in the war. the only thing churchill was really worried about was the Uboat war, it was close to strangling Britain. go figure.
The Me-212 in serial production earlier. go figure what that would mean for the intended mass bomimng of German cities and key industrial facilities, and what it would have meant for the 8th airforce.
More Focke-Wulfs, more fighters in egenral. No allied air superiority.
Eventually more than just the Bismarck on german heavy cruiser and battleship display. mind you the Bismarck is considered by many to have been the most modern battleship of it's time, technically superior to the Britsh battleships. The Brits took very heavy damage and quite some losses to sink the several German heavy ships during the war. If there were more, and operating while mutually supporting each other, maybe even under cover by an enlarged german airforce and submarine shield (Me212, Type IX, XXI), then... who knows.
More advanced types of the Tiger IV, higher numbers of Panthers.
Improvements in already superior artillery pieces, and infantry weapons.
Radar. Sonar.
German heavy bombers (there weren't any).
Better torpedoes.
Acess to new ressources, production sites, pools of employees.
Nukes.
Many german weapons showed up in the war too late and then in too small numbers as if they were able to make a real chnage anymore, too late is too late. If some of these would have shown up 3 or 5 years earlier, it could have made a very tremednous difference.
The great equalizer, the potential industrial capacity of the US, nevcertheless would have remained to be a variable hard to calculate in it's efficiency to influence events that led to the creating of hard facts by the Germans. On the other hand, the greater superiority due to earlier implementation of technology would have allowed the Germans to boost up their supplies with ressources ba capturing the according ground, and massively imporve their own industrial stand, too, while making their industry much tougher to be hit (if any vuolnarable at all) .
So on the thread's topic, I think it would have led to a massive improvements of Germany's strategic position in europe, the destruction of Britain, and would have led to a much longer war with Amercia that eventually would have been ended by mutual thermonuclear exchange. Harder than imaging all this, I find it to calculate what it would have meant for the war with Russia.
German heavy bombers (there weren't any).
I'm not sure about that.
Strategical bombing with normal explosives does not make for fast victories.
If the invasion of England happened after a successful air war as was planned then
the bombing of British cities would not have started. The targets for the Luftwaffe
would still be airfields, bridges, stations, troop concentrations and factories. These
are all best tackled by fighter, medium and light bombers.
Heavy bomber targets such as ports, factory district, railway yards, refineries or
cities where not high on the target list and would be even less likely targets
post-invasion.
In Russia, I suspect the heavy bomber would be even less useful.
What Germany could have used is a good ground attack plane.
The stuka was limited in it's armament, slow, inaccurate with out well trained pilots
and poorly armored.
The 110 was complex, inaccurate, expensive and somewhat poorly armored.
The German fighter bombers where excellent, but not a ideal solution.
What they needed was something like the IL-2 or P-47 and advances in air-to-ground rockets.
Skybird
10-09-07, 06:27 AM
If there was a need for heavy bombers for Germany is constantly debated in docus on TV, and apparently also in books. I take from these sources that many seem to agree that the lack of these really made a negative difference for the germans during their attack on England. while the famous StuKas due to their sirens are massively overestimated in their military efficiency and destructive potential. The 110 after some time simply had no realistic chances to survive anymore. And the medium bomber the germans used as the greatest flying callibre they had, the He111, did not deliver the massive blows like for example the American bombers. that a greater bomb load, if delivered with equal precision, translates into greater damage on the target, must not be explained i think. The cities the Germans obliterated in Poland and Russia for the main were destroyed by heavy use of artillery. The LW alone would not have been able to acchieve that, at least not in the given ammount of time, and without greater losses to AAA especially in russia, whereas Warsaw was left almost defenseless to the air raids during the Poland war.
With regard to bombers, once again, the desire to produce an overly complex technological solution to matters, which took too long to develop, was where the German bomber force was let down. The Luftwaffe's only real attempt at a heavy bomber - the He177 - was powered by four engines, these being linked in pairs to drive just two propeller rigs, in an attempt to make something aerodynamically clean, but instead making for something that was prone to fires and nicknamed 'the flaming coffin' amongst other things. Another problem being the complex DB601 engine which it used containing many more over-engineered parts than the Rolls Royce (and Packard) Merlin, its Allied counterpart, thus taking longer to build.
The Germans had gambled on a quick conclusion to the war in the west, of course Churchill threw a spanner in the works for them with that one (see the quote at the bottom of my posts). As a result, the Nazis imagined no need for a large extremely longe-range bomber. Of course another reason was that Goering and Milch sought to please Hitler by saying 'We have X amount of bombers', therefore they favoured larger numbers of twin engined medium aircraft than a lesser number of four-engined types.
In any long term war, you need to be able to churn out something which does the job and is not too complex, the Tiger versus the T-34 is a good basically analogy for this and in modern terms, the AK-47 in comparison to the M16 is a fairly decent comparison. The M16 will jam at the drop of a hat, the AK is so loose on tolerances, you can chuck it in muddy puddle and it will still fire, and you can knock it up in a basic factory.
With the only other Luftwaffe heavy bomber possibility being the Fw-200 Condor, which was originally conceived to rival the DC-3 as a European airliner, at which it was excelled, the Luftwaffe were basically screwed for a long war. It was completely unsuitable as a bomber and only barely adequate as a maritime patrol aircraft, being structurally too weak (many simply broke their backs upon landing). The Condor only having been used in the maritime role for want of any other suitably long-ranged aircraft.
Ironically enough, on the Allied strategic bombing side, the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was originally conceived as a maritime patrol aircraft and born out of knowledge gained from making the aircraft which inspired the DC-3, i.e. the Boeing Model 247. The B-17 ended up as a strategic formation bomber of course, and even though it was vulnerable to the latecoming Me262 Schwalbe and Me163 Komet, it has to be said that (along with the B24 Liberator) it still defeated the Me262, simply by strategic means, with raids on the Me262 production lines at Regensburg and the ball-bearing factories at Schweinfurt.
:D Chock
You must excuse me if I am going over well trodden ground. I don't generally read or
take part in discussion about "what-if" scenarios.
I don't doubt that heavy bombers are better at strategical bombing than
medium/light bombers.
I just don't see where strategical bombing would be useful if England was invaded
and London was captured within a few months.
Pre-invasion the targets of LW bombing where small and/or scattered. Air bases,
stations specific factories, radar stations, etc.
Such targets can be destroyed just as well with medium bombers as heavy.
Generally the American and British AF did not use heavy bombers against such
targets.
Post-invasion the targets would be just as small and/or scattered. bridges, troop
concentrations, defenses, etc.
Again, not prime targets for heavy bombers.
Skybird
10-09-07, 08:03 AM
I just don't see where strategical bombing would be useful if England was invaded
and London was captured within a few months.
IF such a ground invasion would have been conducted, and no intention was given to just put the British industry and harbours into rubble. we talk of a what if-scenario here, so we cannot take it for granted that they really would have tried to follow their original plan to invade Britain. Neutralizing it as a fighting war faction by destroying it's industrial capacity would do the job as well, and preventing it from becoming a platform for America to stage it's troops and airforce would have been enforced by controlling the airspace and interrupting the sealanes with much lesser risk of high losses and constant partisan war. Chop off their hands, and leave them bleeding while making sure nobody can reach them - that would have been my strategy if I were Germany. Don't see much benefit from the investement of occupying Britain and it's stubbornly resisting islanders :D that goes beyond neutralizing their interfering with my other continental and maritime war efforts.
I just don't see where strategical bombing would be useful if England was invaded
and London was captured within a few months.
IF such a ground invasion would have been conducted, and no intention was given to just put the British industry and harbours into rubble. we talk of a what if-scenario here, so we cannot take it for granted that they really would have tried to follow their original plan to invade Britain. Neutralizing it as a fighting war faction by destroying it's industrial capacity would do the job as well, and preventing it from becoming a platform for America to stage it's troops and airforce would have been enforced by controlling the airspace and interrupting the sealanes with much lesser risk of high losses and constant partisan war. Chop off their hands, and leave them bleeding while making sure nobody can reach them - that would have been my strategy if I were Germany. Don't see much benefit from the investement of occupying Britain and it's stubbornly resisting islanders :D that goes beyond neutralizing their interfering with my other continental and maritime war efforts.
Ahh, yes, then the heavys would be much more useful.
however, even with the RAF at night and the 8th in the day, the allies didn't manage to
neutralise Germany as a fighting nation.
Even if the war lasted another year, it is unlikely that conventional strategic bombing
could have destroyed the German fighting ability without the pressure of a second
front.
You think that Germany could have succeeded where the RAF and USAAF failed with
only a fraction of the numbers?
It would take Nukes to force England to surrender without a invasion.
You think that Germany could have succeeded where the RAF and USAAF failed with
only a fraction of the numbers?
I think it is perhaps a little unfair to describe the bombing campaigns of the RAF and the USAAF as failures. The fact that they were somewhat overshadowed by the rapid progress made following the Allied landings on mainland Europe is largely a function of those landings being able to be made and sustained by the logistical problems the German forces were suffering as a result of the bombing campaigns.
With the possible exception of Unternehmen Bodenplatte (or the Battle of the Bulge if you prefer), the German forces were never able to mount any sustained or effective holding actions against the Allied forces following the Normandy landings, and this, as a result of the cumulative effects of the bombing campaigns on Germany begun in 1943. Even Bodenplatte stalled because of a lack of fuel and poor pilot training. Both of which can be attributed to the USAAF's bombing of the Ploesti oilfields by the Eighth Air Force, making fuel largely unavailable for operations or training flights for that matter.
Without any kind of local air superiority, let alone air supremacy, there was nothing the Germans could do to stop the Allied war machine rolling right into Berlin, and the seeds of that capability were sewn with the bombing campaign begun two years earlier.
:D Chock
Zayphod
10-09-07, 02:35 PM
Ok. In continuation from the Japanese Pearl Harbor thread...
What if Hitler would've utilized his early technology even earlier? For instance, committing resources to build and deploy the Graf Zeppelin in the Atlantic, his early aircraft designs "flying wing", or finally the V rockets early in the war.
I'd say that if he waited until he had tons more planes and the V2 rockets were set up and running before invading Poland, things would have gone more more in his favor. Perhaps if he had waited 2-3 more years while those heavy water experiments were completed, we'd all be going to schools named after him.
Of course, having a war going on in two different directions at the same time is still a good way to lose no matter what you did.
TLAM Strike
10-09-07, 02:42 PM
The Graf Zeppelin would be useless with out the bat6tleships to protect it. Germany had
no battleships that could compete with the British Atlantic fleet, never mind the rest of the
British fleet and the Commonwealth/American Navies. I think the US Navy's experince in 42 and 43 proves that wrong. A BB probaly would have just slowed a German Carrier group down. The GZ could have just turned tail the moment its scouts spotted a group of Allied Battleships and gotten away due to their higher speed or launched some Navalized FWs with torpedoes to deal with them.
Jimbuna
10-09-07, 02:55 PM
In answer to the original post.......I doubt the earlier introduction of newer technologies would have made that much difference, considering the manufacturing capacity of the Allies.
Skybird
10-09-07, 03:10 PM
You think that Germany could have succeeded where the RAF and USAAF failed with
only a fraction of the numbers?
Germans caused the Russians heaviest casualties even while retreating, and while being outnumbered, sometimes very seriously.
However, the thread is a what if-scenario, assuming that Germany would have had a technological advantage. the way the war would have been fought by Germany would have been different, taking advantage of these new technologies. Just look how substantially the balance shifted in the north Atlantic submarine war, due to new technologies being used by the Allied, namely sonar, surface radar, and tactics that made use of these.
Yes, i thinik it would have made a difference, and very much so. Also, German loss ratios would have been different - and not for the worse.
On the other hand, a single successful spionage coups by the Allies could have neutralized such advantages in no time. war would have remained a risky business.
but of course, in general, technology as well as superior tactics can compensate numerical inferiority only to this ratio, and not more. If the German advantage in this what-if-scenario would have translated into a sufficient raise of losses for the Allied that it would have neutralized america'S industrial potential and damage it so much that it would not have been able to to come to full swing (the deciding variable in the real WWII), we can speculate about, but cannot know. I think it would have been a very close call, and maybe an enforced seize firing. As I summarized in my first posting here, technological advantages translate into so many different aspects.
Ok. In continuation from the Japanese Pearl Harbor thread...
What if Hitler would've utilized his early technology even earlier? For instance, committing resources to build and deploy the Graf Zeppelin in the Atlantic, his early aircraft designs "flying wing", or finally the V rockets early in the war.
The Graf Zeppelin was a pile of junk when you look at IJN & USN carriers, as for the V-Weapons they had no military value what so ever. If the flying wing was looked at in 1940 it would take until 1943 or 1944 to finally sort all the problems out.
Hakahura
10-09-07, 03:47 PM
What if Hitler Utilized Technologies.....
Sooner ect?
IMHO he would have prolonged everyones suffering a bit longer, and then...
Still used his Walther PPK.
Hakahura
10-09-07, 03:50 PM
I'm glad that the PPK was reliable and accurate.
Pity he didn't try it out sooner.
Tchocky
10-10-07, 05:28 AM
The Graf Zeppelin was a pile of junk when you look at IJN & USN carriers, as for the V-Weapons they had no military value what so ever. If the flying was looked at in 1940 it would take until 1943 or 1944 to finally sort all the problems out.
Just thought...if the V-1 was flying around in 1940, the RAF would have had nothing fast enough to catch it :-?
As for being militarily useless, true enough, but they were political gold. Someone who's mopre up on their WW2 history could tell us how many operations/resources were devoted to captruring V-weapon launch sites..
Actually, there was one target that the V-weapons could have been used against. The Overlord fleet as it lay off the beaches. A still, unmoving target, easy to saturate with bombs. And if a crippling blow could be struck, absolutely devastating to the Allied war effort.
ah, hypotheticals, where we're all generals :)
NiclDoe
10-10-07, 06:23 AM
M opinion is that if Force Z was made early it would have some effect on the Brititsh Navy due to big guns = more fire power. The Graf CV is just a waste of materials and could have been made for more u-boats or cruisers. Now if the Germans put 20 inch guns on their battleships thats just kill for the Brits becuase the germans can shoot at them without warning. the V-1 and 2 rockets were a waste of money. I swear i think Hitler made it out of money becuase i think i saw $100 bills for the jet trail :lol:
M opinion is that if Force Z was made early it would have some effect on the Brititsh Navy due to big guns = more fire power. The Graf CV is just a waste of materials and could have been made for more u-boats or cruisers. Now if the Germans put 20 inch guns on their battleships thats just kill for the Brits becuase the germans can shoot at them without warning. the V-1 and 2 rockets were a waste of money. I swear i think Hitler made it out of money becuase i think i saw $100 bills for the jet trail :lol:
The V1s where very cheep, even compared to conventional bombing.
AntEater
10-10-07, 07:50 AM
As Letum said, the Fieseler 103 was amazingly simple and cheap to produce. It used sheet metal instead of aluminium and the pulse jet engine had almost no moving parts.
I think the most expensive part of the whole thing as the gyroscope and autopilot.
All in all, it cost only a fraction of a 109 or 190 and still delivered a ton of explosives.
The V2 is another story. These missiles were extremely expensive and the whole program cost a lot of resources that could have been used elsewhere. Not to mention that there was a workable SAM (Wasserfall) that could have been produced instead.
Regarding the advanced planes, the Ho 229 couldnt have been put into service earlier simply because the Horten Brothers were still serving as fighter pilots on the Channel in 1940.
Regarding the 262, the basic airfram design was ready by early 1941, but the engines took just about forever.
And as the engines were ready for at least test flying, the real trouble began ironing out the aircraft.
Problem with both engines and aircraft was that the speeds and performances they attained had never before been reached. Today, as every passenger aircraft flies as fast as a 262 this sounds strange but in 1942, the only time a plane reached 900 km/h was during a power dive. Getting the plane to simply fly the most basic maneuvers at these speeds with an average pilot on the controls required almost a year. It is one thing to have a jet aircraft, another thing is to have a jet aircraft capable of combat operations.
The real problem with the Luftwaffe was the failure of the entire 3rd Generation of aircraft. First generation were the Biplanes, second generation the famous planes the Luftwaffe started the war with, like the Me 109 or the Stuka.
There were some successful "in betweens" like the Ju 88 or the Fw 190, but the entire official replacement programme for the 1939 service types produced mostly junk, hence planes like the 109 or the Ju 88 had to soldier on until 1945, while the allies produced advanced prop fighters and bombers like the Mustang or the Typhoon/Tempest.
Fighters: Messerschmitt failed totally to produce any worthwhile successor to the 109, both the 209 and 309 failing to live up to their expectations.
Fortunately the Luftwaffe had the 190.
Me 210..... The Me 210 was supposed to be a "Kampfzerstörer", replacing the Me 110, the Ju 87 Stuka, pretty much half of the light bombers and all reconaissance aircraft. An advanced concept, a true multirole attack aircraft, only that the resulting plane was a deathtrap due to last minute design changes which were to simplify production. Both the enlarged Me 410 and the Hungarian 210 Ca-1 (build to the original design specifications) turned out to be reliable, fast and versatile aircraft, only at the time they were ready, the Luftwaffe needed single engined fighters more than attack planes and due to the fuselage design, the 410 could not carry radar, so the plane was pretty much restricted to reconaissance work, some intruder missions over the UK and daylight bomber interceptions.
Bombers: The Do 217 was a fine aircraft, only it was delayed too long. Basically the only really good 3rd generation aircraft
The He 177 was the "Reichsfeuerzeug", a bomber every bit as expensive and complicated as the B-29, build by an economy that could not waste the billions necessary to make it perform. Not to mention the twin engines.
The Hs 129 ground attack plane was a failure saved by the fact that the right engines for it had been captured in France. With its original Argus engines it could barely fly.
Problem was until 1944 Germany's war economy was basically a peacetime economy, with contracts awarded and competition between manufacturers.
The "total war" measures instituted by Speer were similar to measures taken by Britain in early 1940!
Regarding the Graf Zeppelin, I recently read a book on the ship:
Compared to the "real" WW2 carriers like the japanese or the US ones, the GZ was an overcomplicated failure. It really showed that the Kriegsmarine had zero experience in carrier operations, most of the technology being borrowed from Heinkel's experience working with the IJN in the 1920s when Akagi was first commissioned. Problem was, at the same time the IJN had finally sent Akagi and Kaga into refit and converted them to really useful flattops, the Kriegsmarine was making the same mistakes all over again!
Some of the more awkward solutions wouldnt have lasted long in real operation, I suppose. For example the starter cart solution: Fighters and Stukas were catapulted, "multi-purpose torpedo planes" (Fi 167s) were launched normally. The catapulted planes were mounted on starter carts which were moved around on rails. The starter cart was recovered below the bow after launch and reused again. The catapults used in the GZ were originally developed for flying boats, so there the starter cart came from. Why nobody bothered to adapt a catapult to a normal landing gear I don't know.
This whole arrangement made spotting a bit awkward and most likely the whole cart recovery system would have broken down after a few days in rough weather. The two level flight deck was comparable to british and IJN carriers.
The most pointless thing were the casemated 15 cm guns, which took up a lot of weight and a carrier was dead anyway when caught by surface forces. These too were carbon copied from the japanese (:D) as Akagi and Kaga as well had casemated 20 cm guns. Another minus was the diminutive bridge which lacked real command and control facilities.
The ship had of course some really german advantages as well, such as dense compartmentization and a fire fighting and damage control system the IJN could only dream of and would've saved the day at Midway, as well as a huge flak armament with a good fire control system.
Regarding the air group, the ship was to have 8 Fighters (first Arado 197s, later Bf 109Ts), 8 Stukas and 24 "multi-purpose torpedo planes", which is about equivalent to the air group of a RN carrier in 1939, except that the RN had nothing near close to a naval 109, and even the Ar 197 as a biplane was superior to the Sea Gladiator, while the Skua and the Ju 87 were roughly equal.
The Fi 167 was similar to the Farey Albacore.
I suppose in operation, the cart launch system and maybe the whole catapult system would have been abandoned in favor of normal take off.
But as a whole, the Graf Zeppelin was a proof of concept, and well in line with the goal of a having the navy ready for war in 1944 which Hitler had set out in 1934. With 4 years of carrier experience and "carrier B" build with lessons learned, the Kriegsmarine would have been in the position to enter naval aviation in earnest.
With WW2 coming up 5 years too early for the Kriegsmarine, the decision not to complete her was maybe for the best.
NiclDoe
10-10-07, 02:52 PM
Hitler made a convintional fuel source that would stop globle warming and that was: Money.
http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/I/51S%2B8K0A54L._SS500_.jpg
This is an interesting read about the economy before and during the war I'm 200 odd pages in and it's fascinating.
HunterICX
10-10-07, 03:42 PM
Hitler? or
Mr. Hilter?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_D7WtOHZd0
:rotfl:one of my favorite hitler spoofs, sorry couldnt resist
NiclDoe
10-12-07, 06:13 AM
If he did do all the techologies early this would have never hapened. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYvZnTFpip0&mode=related&search
:rotfl: :rotfl: Its the only version i found becuase i was in a rush. Enjoy.:D
The trouble with the Fieseler Fi 103, flying bomb was that it wasn't really very accurate, and thus only really any use against large cities, where it had a fair chance of hitting something. I know this because some of them landed on my home town of Stockport when they were in fact aimed at Manchester very many miles away, and one or two of them came down in the forest near Macclesfield (well south of me) which puts them at least 25 miles off target, and some bombs from this raid were over 80 miles off-target! Although this raid did kill over fifty people, it was certainly no more effective than a conventional raid would have been. Here is a map of where some air-launched V-1s aimed at Manchester in 1944 actually came down:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/FlyingbombsinNW.jpg
The main problem was the tailpipe of the pulse engine, which was only sheet metal; the engine flame would burn holes through it and then the thrust would effectively be vectored to the side, knocking them off course and overcoming the autopilot's ability to correct things. See the picture below for evidence of this:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/V-1tailpipe.jpg
The V-1 was fairly simple and cheap in comparison to a manned aircraft, but it did nevertheless have quite a few complex components, and the Germans were suffering from a shortage of skilled workers at the time they really needed them to build all the wonder weapons they had. Here is a rough diagram of the Fi 103's layout:
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j105/AlanBradbury/V-1diagram.jpg
Air launching V-1s from Heinkel He111s flown across the North Sea (as the ones aimed at Manchester were), was not without its problems, the Luftwaffe would use the knickbein radio navigation system to get to the launch point (this was a system of twin radio beams aimed to intersect at a predetermined point, which the aircraft would fly to and thus know where it was when it had both beams detected on specific bearings from its DF gear (not dissimilar to VOR navigation these days in fact). Unfortunately, this method required the radio beacons to be set up earlier in the day and tested, and this test was often detected in the UK, thus the RAF would have a fair idea as to where an attack was coming that evening, and could have its nightfighters ready to go.
Additionally, sometimes the engine on the V-1 would be started and then the V-1 would refuse to release, which would invariably be disastrous for the host aircraft. Several nightfighter pilots reported seeing this occur, which although unfortunate for the Luftwaffe crew, must have been hilarious to watch if you were an Allied fighter pilot!
Here's one for you fact fans: It's not generally realised that V-1s often dropped propaganda leaflets too. Later models of the Fi 103 had a modified tailcone which would jettison leaflets. It was triggered by the robot device on the autopilot's airlog, which also operated the dive spoilers that would put the V-1 into its attack dive. The first time these leaflets were used was August 29, 1944. The leaflets came in several different varieties. One type was 11x7 inches and had a quote, supposedly from Winston Churchill: 'This is an experiment - let's try it' accompanied by a picture of a woman looking at a row of dead bodies at a temporary morgue. The other type was about 2x4 inches and carried the words 'Do you like this? You do? You may not in a few months' time'.
In November 1944, two other types of leaflets were used, one was a small folded newspaper with the words 'A splendid decision' - referring to Hitler's supposed decision to bomb British cities only after the RAF had started bombing German civilian targets (which is of course not true and kind of glosses over the Blitz and the Battle of Britain a bit). Another leaflet also appeared in psuedo-newspaper form and was headed 'The other side'. This one attempted to put over the German viewpoint of the war.
:D Chock
Jimbuna
10-12-07, 02:52 PM
A mine of information...as always :up:
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