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#21
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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." |
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#23
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"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 |
#24
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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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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 |
#28
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"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 |
#29
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"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 |
#30
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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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