What if the germans...

On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 16:30:48 -0000, "Keith Willshaw"
wrote:


"Bernardz" wrote in message
news:MPG.1a6d71e35858d65d989841@news...
In article ,
says...





The critical developments that Germany failed tomake IMHO
are less obvious large scale projects. A reliable proximity
fuse could have made allied aircraft losses much heavier.
Better attention to production factors in weapons design
could have radically improved productivity in the arms
plants.

Instead of sending so much money on V2 it could have been better spent
on air to air missiles or developing SAMs.


Air to air missiles only help if you can put fighters in the air
and given the scale of the task it seems unlikely that
SAM's would have been available in a timely manner or
in sufficient quantities and they would have been vulnerable
to jamming. These are actually the sort of complex
developments the Nazis went in for. Less radical
developments such as improved gyroscopic gunsights,
prosximity fuses and predictors were pursued by the
allies to great efect.


Keith

I get the distinct impression that many german projects were
designed to appeal to higher ups who really had no business making
such decisions. Continued design work on the H series of Battleships,
the V2 projects, etc.
But Keith is right-- imagine what would have happened if they'd had
one directing authority that could say: "Right. Let's pull all the
eggheads off this bloody stupid V2 project and put them on the
proximinty fuse. Those that can't do the fuse, send them to figure
out how to improve our production speed on vital components, etc."

From: (Denyav)

snip

Name of Hans Kammler,who was a devoted Nazi and one of the main architects
of
the "final solution" is still the key to understand what really happened in
closing days of WWII.
But the name Kammler was a taboo in post WWII world and all documents about
him
has been put under lock for 75 years by US gov't.
I think this fact alone tells something.


I didn't realize the U.S. government had control over Nazi documents in 1929.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired

"Denyav" wrote in message
...
difference. If the European war lasts only a
month past mid July 1945 Berlin is nuked sometime in early August.


With a bomb "Assembled in US from German components"?

And what "German components" would those be? The Germans were never close
to building an A bomb.

tim gueguen 101867

"Charles Gray" wrote in message
...

had actually put a U.S. style R&D system in place during WWII,

Then it would have taken them twenty years to commission the aircraft! :^)

Si

On 12 Jan 2004 07:48:59 GMT, (Denyav) wrote:

It implies that the Allies wouldn't have re-taken Europe, nor
occupied Germany if the Germans didn't have a nuclear program.
There's no way that Roosevelt or Churchill would allow the Russians access
to all of Europe.

Nazi Germany was the current challenge and SU was already ID by western allies
as next challenge.
Allies would have retaken Europe later and much more easily and would face a
much more weakened Stalin.
If Eisenhower were alive,I would love to ask him only one question,why he
thinks (in his book "Crusade in Europa") that if they were only a couple
months late,human kind would have possibly faced the greatest disaster of
history?
Lets remember the fate of NaziGermany was sealed in 1942,so,what kind of
disaster could possibly come from Germany in 1945?

Suggest that you get more of your info from the reality channel.

I am sure you mean the "official" channel.

The Soviets. Had they made it to the Channel, all of Europe would have
been under Stalin's heel. THAT would have been a great disaster.

Al Minyard

In article ,
says...

"Bernardz" wrote in message
news:MPG.1a6d71e35858d65d989841@news...
In article ,
says...



The range of WW2 jets wasnt that bad in comparison to most
european fighter aircraft in use at the time

The Meteor Mk III and Me262 had a range of around 1000km which
was about the same as the Spitfire and Me-109

Which is fine for an interceptor. What Hitler needed were long range
fighters such as a P-51 which had a range of 1600km and if a drop tank
was added this was more than doubled.


Only if he had long range bombers to escort, if defence of the
reich was the mission the aircraft range as built was fine.


I can think of several theatre where long range planes with drop tanks
could be a big plus eg the battle of Britain and Russia.





Certainly in hindsight Hitler could have used much earlier eg improved
submarines, better coding equipment and sub-machine guns. Similarly a
V1
would have been very useful in battle of Britain. Note the Allies did
not have them either so one cannot blame his lack of U.S. style R&D.


Certainly higher priority to submarines would have helped, as for
coding machines the problem was more to do with german
signalling practise than the technology used. As one
Bletchley Park codebreaker pointed out the tendency of
certain groups to end all messages with a Heil Hitler
made it much easier to break their codes. Lazy operators
also tended not to chose truly random start letter combinations
but would instead use their initials, girl friends names etc

In reality it almost always bad habits like this that allow codes to be
broken.


Properly applied procedural rules can largely prevent this,
one reason the Kriegsmarine codes were harder to penetrate
were they largely applied the rules. Another source of weakness
is when the same messages are transmitted in a different code
that has been broken or in clear. For example the Japanese
transmitted weather data both in the naval code JN-25
and the merchant navy code which was weak. Thus by
taking the message in the easily broken merchant code
you got a crib for JN-25

So the Germans too had their share of successes in code breaking for
similar reasons. They had cracked several high level British naval
codes, US military codes and several Soviet ones. During WW2 code
breaking technology could crack most codes.

Taking away nothing from the guys at Bletchley Park, another rotor and
some decent security and frequent changes in rotors would have made it
almost impossible to break.


Depends on the time frame, by 1944 4 rotor codes were
breakable and bby late 45/45 the much more secure
Lorenz codes were being broken regularly on the
Colossus machine. This was of course a programmable
electronic computer.


Obviously some dramatic improvements in coding technology are needed.





As for the V-1 this would hardly have helped win the BOB.
You dont win air superiority by scattering HE across most
of southern England.

I did said help not win.

I find this an absolutely fascinating weapon system. Very cheap. Nothing
the British had during the battle of Britain could deal with them. If
Hitler would have had them earlier the Germans could keep bombing
Britain till late 1944. The Allies would have to spend heaps to defend
against the V1s compared to what the Germans spent building and
launching them. Not a war winner but certainly very effective.






The critical developments that Germany failed tomake IMHO
are less obvious large scale projects. A reliable proximity
fuse could have made allied aircraft losses much heavier.
Better attention to production factors in weapons design
could have radically improved productivity in the arms
plants.

Instead of sending so much money on V2 it could have been better spent
on air to air missiles or developing SAMs.


Air to air missiles only help if you can put fighters in the air

Yep. Although the Germans did use them late in the war and they did
prove to be quite effective effective against bomber streams.

Introduced in mass in 1943 and they could have been devastating against
the bombers.

and given the scale of the task it seems unlikely that
SAM's would have been available in a timely manner or
in sufficient quantities and they would have been vulnerable
to jamming.

They actually built a few Enzian missiles but too late to have an
effect. I doubt that the Allies could have jammed them.


These are actually the sort of complex
developments the Nazis went in for. Less radical
developments such as improved gyroscopic gunsights,
prosximity fuses and predictors were pursued by the
allies to great efect.

All this would help.



Another thing that would have worked well was better German pilot
training by the end of WW2.


Trouble is they lacked the resources to do that. To train 20 pilots
you not only need instructors and planes but virtually the same
level of ground staff as an operational squadron and a
safe flying location. Britain could get its pilots trained
in South Africa, Australia, Canada and the USA, Germany had
no such luxury.

In 1944 I would agree, in 1940 I would disagree.


Keith




--
Should the government be responsible for individual's stupidity?

30th observation of Bernard

On 12 Jan 2004 20:32:40 GMT, (B2431) wrote:

From: (Denyav)

snip

Name of Hans Kammler,who was a devoted Nazi and one of the main architects
of
the "final solution" is still the key to understand what really happened in
closing days of WWII.
But the name Kammler was a taboo in post WWII world and all documents about
him
has been put under lock for 75 years by US gov't.
I think this fact alone tells something.


I didn't realize the U.S. government had control over Nazi documents in 1929.

I guess he means those 75 years aren't over yet...

--
__________ ____---____ Marco Antonio Checa Funcke
\_________D /-/---_----' Santiago de Surco, Lima, Peru
_H__/_/ http://machf.tripod.com
'-_____|(

remove the "no_me_j." and "sons.of." parts before replying

"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message
...

"Charles Gray" wrote in message
...
had actually put a U.S. style R&D system in place during WWII, and
instead of coming up with (however pretty they look on paper)
dozens
of designs that never made it beyond wind tunnal designs and
focused
on say two or three fighter designs.
For example, if they'd pushed through the first jet fighter
design
in 1940 (I forget what it was called), and focused on incremental
improvmeents instead of always running to the next design.

I don't think the German R & D program was so bad. The Germans had
less resources and had to cull more projects.
Their support of jet engine development was infinitely superior to
what Whittle received. Apart from Heinkels sponsorship of von Ohain
Junkers, BMW, Bramo all had been lead to jet engine development on
the basis of




Would this have had a major impact on WWII, or just drawn it out
by
a few months?

There are a number of issues here

1) They couldn't just push on with the initial design
it was no more a workable fighter than the original
Gloster prototype

True, but the He 280 was far in advance and had two engine choices.

von Ohain says Ernest Heinkel looked like he was going to cry when the
HeS 006 was cancelled. The engine was brilliant but its was further
away from production and Heinkel was told it was his own fault when
the RLM was trying to run a national program.


2) The bottleneck for German (and to an extent allied)
jet fighter production was developing an engine that
could be mass produced and have an accceptable
service life. This problem was exacerbated by the
shortage of high temperature alloying elements such
as chrome, nickel and tungsten. The Germans never really
solved this problem. The Jumo engines had a rated life
of 25 hours, which was rarely achieved, at a time when
Rolls Royce jet engines had exceeded 2000 hours

Actually the Jumo 004B had a mean time between scheduled overhaul of
25 hours. The is different from saying an engine service life of 25
hours.

At 25 hours the engine needed two main tasks: A/ the 6 carbon steel
combustion chambers were replaced. This task could have been avoided
if they were made out of refractory alloys or stainless steel; as it
was they were mad out of mild steel with aluminum oxide coating. B/
The turbine was removed, x rayed and replaced if necessary or refitted
for another 10 hours.

The British engines had plentiful nickel and were made of nimonic
alloy which was 80% nickel and 20% chromium.

The Germans had to make do with Tinadur (15% chrom 14% nickel, 4%
Titanium balance steel) or Cromadur ( 18% Chrome, 10% manganese
balance Steel) and then only on the Blades and Turbine Stator nozzles.

(Both Blades materials were used as neither could be manufactured in
sufficient quantity)

Nickel is essential to limit creep and fatigue in the blades. Without
this material the British engines would not have lasted minutes as
they lacked the German cooling techniques.

The Germans were thus well ahead in blade root cooling, hollow cooled
blades, film cooling and were making progress in ceramics for the
stator blades. (Anthony Kay In his History of German Gas Turbines
estimates early 1946 for ceramic turbine stators)

The BMW003 A/E used on the Ar 234 and He 162 shows what they could
have achieved in service life: The BMWs combustion chamber lasted 200
hours and its turbine could be removed, inspected and replaced in 2
man hours with the engine remaining on the wing.

The final Jumo 004C and Jumo 004D rated at a 60 hour a blade life.
These engines gave 1000kg and 1050kg thrust and a Me 262 in combat
trim was recorded at 578mph with these engines.

In the very firsts pre production jumo 004 engines the blades could
give between 100 to 6 hours service. 25 hours was a very reasonable
engine life but upon manufacture away from skilled trades personnel
the quality dropped (the annealing process and heat treatments had to
be done correctly as did turbine balancing and initially manufacturing
quality was quite poor which meant that the engines were given
overhauls at about 10 hours) Eventual quality drifted up again.

The Jumo 004D would also have benefited greatly from throttle
limiting. If the throttle was moved to fast the inrush of fuel would
increase turbine and combustion chamber temperatures by 200C before
the compressor had a chance to spool up and this lead to premature
failure.

The British Engines suffered from this as well.

Note also that the dull performing Mk 1 Meteor suffered protracted
development because its engines had such a large diameter that
integrating them in the airframe was a huge head ache. The Germans
purposefully avoided this issue by choosing axial.



3) Germany never had a shortage of airframes and their
fighters were as good as contemporary western designs and
better than most soviet ones.

I believe the Germans were forbidden to engage La 5 and Yak 9s below
4000 meters because the Russians at that altitude were unbeatable by
anyone German or Allied.

They did however lack
pilots and fuel. As a result thousands of aircraft were
captured on the ground by the end of the war.

Also good materials: 30% of Me 262 losses were to collapsing nose
wheels caused by faulty materials.

The syn Fuel was always of slightly lower grade necessitating heavier
engines. The Me 109 was a tiring airframe that was kept on because
the Jets were expected in 1943 not 1944 and because disruption to
production was not possible. Nevertheless It was still capable of
suprises; eg the Me109K extraordinary climb rate.

The Jets would have solved the German fuel crisis as they are
indifferent to octane number. At wars end me 262s were operated on
centrifuge refined crude oil that was simply heated and pumped in.
The Jumo 004 was designed to run on diesel so this was not too
difficult.


The wind tunnel designs and studies didn't really tie up
much in the way of resources. The really wasteful
project was the V-2/A4 which used colossal amounts
of strategic material, manpower and industrial resources
to produce a weapon that had essentially zero military
usefulness.

Within 12 months the LEV-3 strap down single axis guidance system
would have been replaced with the more accurate 3 axis gimbaled SC-66.

The accuracy while still not stunning would have meant that an attack
by a dozen of these missiles on a bridgehead or airfield would be
quite damaging.

Additionally the beacon controlled guidance system might have improved
as well. The weapon had potential.






Keith

"The Enlightenment" wrote in message
...

"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message
...

"Charles Gray" wrote in message
...
had actually put a U.S. style R&D system in place during WWII, and
instead of coming up with (however pretty they look on paper)
dozens
of designs that never made it beyond wind tunnal designs and
focused
on say two or three fighter designs.
For example, if they'd pushed through the first jet fighter
design
in 1940 (I forget what it was called), and focused on incremental
improvmeents instead of always running to the next design.

I don't think the German R & D program was so bad. The Germans had
less resources and had to cull more projects.

But they used their resources extremely inefficiently on occasion
and simply didnt cull enough projects or rationalise the ones
they were running.

The classic example was their nuclear research project. There was
a period in late 44 when both Heisenberg and Diebner were
running parallel programs and both required heavy water.
There was only enough for one or the other but the German
reaction was to give each a portion of the water available.

This ensured that neither could succeed.

Their support of jet engine development was infinitely superior to
what Whittle received. Apart from Heinkels sponsorship of von Ohain
Junkers, BMW, Bramo all had been lead to jet engine development on
the basis of


Which is a classic example of the German approach, you have
BMW, Daimler Benz, Focke-Wulf, Henkel, Junkers and Sanger
running competing programs in an environment where a combined
development was much more likely to succeed.

In Britain the government realised the limitations of Whittle
small team and rather ruthlessly handed the whole shebang
over to Rolls-Royce with an instruction to make this thing
suitable for mass production





Would this have had a major impact on WWII, or just drawn it out
by
a few months?

There are a number of issues here

1) They couldn't just push on with the initial design
it was no more a workable fighter than the original
Gloster prototype

True, but the He 280 was far in advance and had two engine choices.

von Ohain says Ernest Heinkel looked like he was going to cry when the
HeS 006 was cancelled. The engine was brilliant but its was further
away from production and Heinkel was told it was his own fault when
the RLM was trying to run a national program.


Never hear of the HeS 006, the HE-280 was initilaly powered by
an HeS008 which was dropped in favours of the He S011 due
to its design limitations which meant it could only produce
around 1100lbs. Similarly the HeS30 was suspended in 1942 to
free resources to develop the HeS 011

The most advanced Heinkel engine was the HeS 011 which
was rated at 3,500 lbs thrust, only 19 were ever complete and
the first air test was 1945


2) The bottleneck for German (and to an extent allied)
jet fighter production was developing an engine that
could be mass produced and have an accceptable
service life. This problem was exacerbated by the
shortage of high temperature alloying elements such
as chrome, nickel and tungsten. The Germans never really
solved this problem. The Jumo engines had a rated life
of 25 hours, which was rarely achieved, at a time when
Rolls Royce jet engines had exceeded 2000 hours

Actually the Jumo 004B had a mean time between scheduled overhaul of
25 hours. The is different from saying an engine service life of 25
hours.

At 25 hours the engine needed two main tasks: A/ the 6 carbon steel
combustion chambers were replaced. This task could have been avoided
if they were made out of refractory alloys or stainless steel; as it
was they were mad out of mild steel with aluminum oxide coating. B/
The turbine was removed, x rayed and replaced if necessary or refitted
for another 10 hours.


They had to be made from CS as the Germans didnt have the alloys available.

The British engines had plentiful nickel and were made of nimonic
alloy which was 80% nickel and 20% chromium.

The Germans had to make do with Tinadur (15% chrom 14% nickel, 4%
Titanium balance steel) or Cromadur ( 18% Chrome, 10% manganese
balance Steel) and then only on the Blades and Turbine Stator nozzles.

(Both Blades materials were used as neither could be manufactured in
sufficient quantity)

Nickel is essential to limit creep and fatigue in the blades. Without
this material the British engines would not have lasted minutes as
they lacked the German cooling techniques.


The point is moot as they had the nickel

The Germans were thus well ahead in blade root cooling, hollow cooled
blades, film cooling and were making progress in ceramics for the
stator blades. (Anthony Kay In his History of German Gas Turbines
estimates early 1946 for ceramic turbine stators)

The BMW003 A/E used on the Ar 234 and He 162 shows what they could
have achieved in service life: The BMWs combustion chamber lasted 200
hours and its turbine could be removed, inspected and replaced in 2
man hours with the engine remaining on the wing.


The initialWelland's were rated at a conservative 180 hours between
overhauls,
Wellands ran for 2000 hours continuously on the testbed in 1944

The final Jumo 004C and Jumo 004D rated at a 60 hour a blade life.
These engines gave 1000kg and 1050kg thrust and a Me 262 in combat
trim was recorded at 578mph with these engines.

In the very firsts pre production jumo 004 engines the blades could
give between 100 to 6 hours service. 25 hours was a very reasonable
engine life but upon manufacture away from skilled trades personnel
the quality dropped (the annealing process and heat treatments had to
be done correctly as did turbine balancing and initially manufacturing
quality was quite poor which meant that the engines were given
overhauls at about 10 hours) Eventual quality drifted up again.

The Jumo 004D would also have benefited greatly from throttle
limiting. If the throttle was moved to fast the inrush of fuel would
increase turbine and combustion chamber temperatures by 200C before
the compressor had a chance to spool up and this lead to premature
failure.

The British Engines suffered from this as well.


They were slow in throttle response and could flame out but
would rarely catastropically fail as did the German engines.

Note also that the dull performing Mk 1 Meteor suffered protracted
development because its engines had such a large diameter that
integrating them in the airframe was a huge head ache. The Germans
purposefully avoided this issue by choosing axial.


The Meteor actually entered squadron service a week before the Me-262
and the Meteor III which entered service in jan 1945 had many
of the problems that plagued the Mk 1 fixed and was capable of
speeds of around 560 mph



3) Germany never had a shortage of airframes and their
fighters were as good as contemporary western designs and
better than most soviet ones.

I believe the Germans were forbidden to engage La 5 and Yak 9s below
4000 meters because the Russians at that altitude were unbeatable by
anyone German or Allied.


Allied test pilots such as Eric Winkle Brown who flew
the La-5 and Yak-9 didnt rate them that highly. They were
agile but lightly armed and built in comparison to the
contemporary British and American aircraft. Its performance
was rather better than the Me-109G at low altutude by poorer
above 3500m IRC



They did however lack
pilots and fuel. As a result thousands of aircraft were
captured on the ground by the end of the war.

Also good materials: 30% of Me 262 losses were to collapsing nose
wheels caused by faulty materials.


And opeerating from rough strips since the Luftwaffe airfields had
P-51's orbiting them by day and Mosquito NF's after dark
ready to knock down any pilot foolish enough to try to fly.

The syn Fuel was always of slightly lower grade necessitating heavier
engines. The Me 109 was a tiring airframe that was kept on because
the Jets were expected in 1943 not 1944 and because disruption to
production was not possible. Nevertheless It was still capable of
suprises; eg the Me109K extraordinary climb rate.

The Jets would have solved the German fuel crisis as they are
indifferent to octane number. At wars end me 262s were operated on
centrifuge refined crude oil that was simply heated and pumped in.
The Jumo 004 was designed to run on diesel so this was not too
difficult.


Hardly, they surely could run on lower grade fuel but by 1944
even that was in short supply. By early 1945 Me-262's were
ordered not to taxi around the fields but were hauled into
position by draft animals.


The wind tunnel designs and studies didn't really tie up
much in the way of resources. The really wasteful
project was the V-2/A4 which used colossal amounts
of strategic material, manpower and industrial resources
to produce a weapon that had essentially zero military
usefulness.

Within 12 months the LEV-3 strap down single axis guidance system
would have been replaced with the more accurate 3 axis gimbaled SC-66.

The accuracy while still not stunning would have meant that an attack
by a dozen of these missiles on a bridgehead or airfield would be
quite damaging.


No sir, the explosion of 12 warheads in an area the size of the
Normandy bridghead is insignificant militarily, the post war Scud
is about as accurate as an upgraded V-2 and was essentially
useless except as a terror weapon aimed at cities.

Additionally the beacon controlled guidance system might have improved
as well. The weapon had potential.


Beacon guidance systems were jammed from early 1941 onwards.

Keith

In article ,
Charles Gray writes:
had actually put a U.S. style R&D system in place during WWII, and
instead of coming up with (however pretty they look on paper) dozens
of designs that never made it beyond wind tunnal designs and focused
on say two or three fighter designs.
For example, if they'd pushed through the first jet fighter design
in 1940 (I forget what it was called), and focused on incremental
improvmeents instead of always running to the next design.

Would this have had a major impact on WWII, or just drawn it out by
a few months?

They may have ended up with fewer prototypes - but it wouldn't have
made much difference.
From about 1936 on, teh German arms buildup was curtailed by a lack of
raw meteriels. The Luftwaffe decision to concentrate on Medium
Bombers and Short-range fighters was much more heavily influenced by a
lack of Aluminum, Rubber, and Steel than a cocentration on Tactical
vs. Strategic airpower. The Kreigsmaraine was never able to get
U-Boat production up to the levels that they knew they needed for the
same reason. (Well, that, and their foolishness of fiddling around
with a Surface Navy that would never be more than a small Task Force,
adn which made no materiel contribution to the war effort.)
The Heer wasn't able to build the tanks it really needed, and went to
war with the Panzer Divisions equipped not with the preferred Pz IIIs,
woth a useful level of armor and firepower, but with light tanks
barely suitable for use in training.

Germany produced either none, of very little, of the raw materiels
needed for large-scale production. They needed to be able to import
materiel from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

This situation didn't get any better in 1939. When the war broke
out, the Royal Navy interdicted all sea traffic going into Germany.
This was fairly easy - The German seaports are fairly easily
bottlenecked, and they didn't have much of a merchant fleet to begin
with. So, really, the question's an interesting one, but, in the long
run, irrelevant. They wouldn't have been able to do much with a
U.S. style R&D effort, since they couldn't back it up with a U.S
style production effort.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster