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"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 |
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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 |
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German fighter endurance was a sore spot, jet or piston-engined. I
remember seeing Guntar Rall on TV ruefully stating that the LW fighters had ninety minutes fuel whereas the Mustangs had eight hours worth. (At least he still had a sens of humor.) When the red light comes on you head for home or prepare to bail out. If Mustangs or Tbolts are camping over your home drome and you have ten minutes fuel left - gentlemen, that is a problem. So are the 1000 fighters the Allies could put in the air at once - a target-rich environment is not a good thing, especially if the targets are looking for you so they can another coup. Walt BJ |
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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. Would this have had a major impact on WWII, or just drawn it out by a few months? what if the British Air Ministry had listened to Frank Whittle's proposal for the jet engine when he presented it to them before 1932 |
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