What if the germans...

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.

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.

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...

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__________ ____---____ 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

"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

"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

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.

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.




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


A few months, the Allies would be dropping hundreds of nuclear bombs.


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

30th observation of Bernard

"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

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?

In article ,
says...

"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

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.



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.

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.



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.

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


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




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

30th observation of Bernard

"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