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#11
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That's the big thing-- there really seems to have been no rhyme or
reason to German R&D-- in the U.S. and England there was some over all coordination, insuring that company A. didn't re-invent the same dead end that B, C, and D did...but I've not been able to find anything like that in Germany. At a first glance it looks like that,many organizations and instutitions,including unassuming ones like Post Office,working indepedently for the same R&D effort,but if you dig a little bit more then you see a different picture,all German S projects are under absolute control of SS,more precisely Kammlers SS Advanced weapons directorate,with their own research and production facilities as well as SS controlled facilities in German universities and factories which were off limits for others. 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. |
#12
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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. |
#13
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On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 01:56:40 GMT, Charles Gray wrote:
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? Hmmm, this looks like this would be appropiate material for soc.history.what-if, rather... -- __________ ____---____ 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 |
#14
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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? There are a number of issues here 1) They couldnt just push on with the initial design it was no more a workable fighter than the original Gloster prototype 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 3) Germany never had a shortage of airframes and their fighters were as good as contemporary western designs and better than most soviet ones. They did however lack pilots and fuel. As a result thousands of aircraft were captured on the goround by the end of the war. The wind tunnel designs and studies didnt 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. Keith |
#15
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"Chad Irby" wrote in message news On what basis do you make this claim? I can think of nothing the Germans could have gotten their hands on with just a couple more months of WW2 that would have made any sort of difference. Well, they *were* starting to ramp up production on the He-162, and a couple of months would have given them a thousand or so more fighters (really - the things were pretty darned cheap and easy to make) with a hundred MPH speed advantage. Not good for Allied bombers. Admittedly, they would have lost a *lot* of them due to pilot inexperience (the Germans were deeply short on experienced pilots by that stage of the war, and the He-162 wasn't exactly a cinch to fly well), and a lot more due to materials problems (they never did quite get the hang of good wood glue for their planes), but it would have been a real issue in getting the war over by the end of 1945. But as you say they had no pilots and precious little fuel. An earlier German introduction of jet fighters would doubtless have resulted in increased priority for the allied jet fighter production and we'd have seen more Meteors, Vampires etc Keith |
#16
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#17
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"Bernardz" wrote in message news:MPG.1a6d20cd1ed6e5fe98983e@news... In article , says... 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. WW2 jets were short range, it was suitable for defence against bombers and V1. Hitler did not need such technology in 1940. 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 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 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. 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. As an example consider the tolerances required to produce a German Panther versus a Soviet T-34 adn you realise why the Soviets could outproduce German tank factories 3-1 Keith |
#18
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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? Do you suppose that, just maybe, he had at least some small concern for those Jews, Slavs, Poles, factory slaves, etc. that were saved from the ovens by VE Day? |
#20
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"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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Keith |
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