What if the germans...

"Keith Willshaw" wrote in message
...

"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.

At one point they culled too effectively: an order given (I don't know
when) was to cull all projects which could not come to fruition in 2
years or less with exceptions granted only by Hitler. It seems that
unofficially some of these projects continued but they seem to have
crushed some promising projects: (perhaps even their microwave team.)



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.

I'm not an expert on the nuclear effort. I don't think the full story
is out yet as many of the people ended up in the USSR


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.




The German programs started privately at airframe and engine
manufacturers. They were trying to get more jet thrust. Junkers had
excellent expertise in diesels that worked well with trubos. Bramo
(latter absorbed into BMW) made excellent reliable turbo chargers that
operated at 850C. (unfortunately scaling up turbines doesn't work)
Focke Wulf had their own ducted reheated fan concepts.

A Merlin provided 140kg Jet thrust: so I think at least 30% additional
thrust of an engine would be coming from the exhaust not the propeller
at speeds of 440mph Increasing this jet thrust is what everyone was
after.

They all concluded independently that the pure gas turbine was the way
to go just as Whittle did.

The ambitious airframe maker Ernest Heinkel got an early jump in and
as a private venture got von Ohains engines running and in the air.

By this time the RLM and Techniches Amt of the Luftwaffe were already
interested. Heinkel demonstration simply accelerated the Germans
effort and they set up a national program to run over 10 years to get
things moving faster. I think it had 4 stages labeled type I (BMW
003A/E, Jumo 004B), Type II ( HeS11, Jumo 004G/H), Type III and Type
IV which lead to Daimler Benz designing The Rolls Royce Olympus thrust
009-016.

The Technocrat Helmuth Schelp mapped out an ambitious 10 year program.
They sought to exclude airfram manufacturers as a waste of resources
and this placed Heinkel in a bad position. Heinkel's solution was the
buy the Hirth Motoren works when Hirth died at twice market price to
legitimise himself and gain access to the engineers some of whom were
turbo experts.

Heinkel continued to be a maverick and his 006 (centrifugal compressor
and turbine) and 030 engines (Ex Junkers Engineer Muellers axial
engine with axial variable startor engine) all worked though the 006
was too small and the 030 needed to be reengineered with less nickel.
The 030s performance was not exceded till 1947 anywhere.



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

More or less correct however you forgot to mention "rover" and the
fact that by this time Rolls Royce had seen the error of their ways.

Power Jets - Rover - Rolls Royce. Compared the Helmuth Schelps
program the British program was belated and initially pathetic with
much energy exhausted at the ill equipped Rover.

I admire Whittles will power but British Infustry: eg Rolls Royce and
the RAF and Defence Ministry let him languish to long.

By comparison the German industry was receptive and able to give an
upstart like von Ohain a go.




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

These 19 engines were bench testing at somewhat 1100 kg thrust which
is bellow the target of 1300kg but enough for prototypes.

This engine was Brilliant. Heinkel had been given the engine by
Schelp who wanted Heinkel to work on centrifugal compressors while
everyone else worked on axials. von Ohain thought that axials were
the way to go by this stage but Heinkel took on the engine because he
wanted the work and had to conform to the National program.

It could handle extremely turbulent airflow just like the british
centrufugal engines however unlike the British engines the He S11 was
of a small axial like diameter. Thus it could not only be fitted
inside a wing with a minimal bulge (unlike the big diameter British
engines) but it could draw in air via intakes that were simply slits
along the leading edges of the wing (unlike the axial engines which
needed circular intakes).

The secret was the diagonal compressor. First stage was an inductor
fan without a stator, then a smoothing gap, then a diagonal compressor
and then a 3 stage axial unit, then an anular combustion chamber and
then a 2 stage zero strategic material turbine.

The diagonal compressor looks like a single sided centrifugal
compressor however unlike the centrifugal compressor the air exits
axialy (hence the name diagonal flow). The exiting air is impinged
upon a stator thus both centrifugal effects and axial compression
effects.

Its efficency was 0.80 which was better than the 0.79 of the BMW003A/E
and jumo 004B which operated at 0.79 at somewhat lower pressure
ratios.

Its efficiency was however less than the 0.85 that the HERMESO II
compressor of the planed 1100kg BMW003D was achieving at a very high
pressure ratio of 5.5: 1. By this time the Germans were converting
from impulse type axial compressors to the more efficient reaction
type axial compressors. About 13% more efficient for the same
pressure ratio (0.91 versus 0.79) and required 25% less stages.




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.

Not in sufficient quantity anyway. About 5kg of chromium per engine
and either the same of less of the more scarce Nickel (depending on
cromadur or tinadur) was allowed for.)


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


Indeed. Had they not have had it the belated British program would
have been delayed enormously by the need to develop low nickel alloys
and cooling systems.

The British Metallurgist DO deserved credit however. The alloys they
came up with were excellent despite the fact they had the advantge of
devote their energies to producing super alloys rather than overcoming
shortages.

However lack of nickel and chormium tide one of the hands of the
German development program.


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


In real life with combat usage, a tense pilot and engine serviced and
made to mass production standards that would drop I expect.

Much British development of post war jet engines was done at German
Jet engine chambers. Von Ohain had selected centrifugal compressors
and turbines because they by nature match characteristics. The German
engine program however needed large scale benches and refrigerated
high altitude test chambers to match axial compressor to turbines.
After the war the UK/US used these excellent and massive facilities.

The German technicians helping out on the Goblin were quite surprised
when they inquired whether they should open the test chamber to
service the engine after about 30 hours running they were told that
this wouldn't be necessary: they had never seen such a thing.






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


It would seem then that the aircraft were fairly well matched at that
time of the Meteor III thought the Meteor I didn't exceed piston
engined aircraft.

The He S11 was also have been installed in the Me 262 either in the
traditional area or mounted in the 'armpit' position because of its
turbulence tolerance.

The BMW003D engine with 1100kg thrust would have pushed the aircraft
to over 600mph and increase range about 15% to 20%.







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.


Takeoff was less of an issue than landing when the Luftwaffe Pilots
could seen the *******s coming but because of the slow response of
their engine were commited to land and thereby shot up.






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.

They could run on just about anything.

There are several reports of Me 262s with fuel and arms not flying
simply because of the failure to be given the order to intercept. The
command structure had broken down completely by this time and personal
initiative was gone because of fears of recriminations.







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.

A V2 has only niche uses but consider an absolute maximum error of
+/-2km (4km) diameter with say a Gausian distribution about target
dead center. A dozen missiles that made (200 ft craters I think)
would tend to cluster around the target and make things messy at an
airfield or Bridge Head and might even get a direct hit.

( A true Russian SCUD as opposed to the the non Genuine derivatives
also has much higher accuracy incidently. Some had electronic sytems
some had imaging systems for enhanced accuracy. The gyroscope/PIGA
system developed for the MX had less than 30cm error over its
intercontinental flight due to the instruments themselves: the 100ft
error came from gravitation variation. )



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


Beacon guidance systems were jammed from early 1941 onwards.


Not all equally well and hard enough to do with a horizontal flying
aircraft but in an upward arcing missile a much harder thing. A
sufficiently focused beam with even without much encoding would be
hard to jam or mislead.

X-Gerate was jammed but Y-Gerate was never really jammed effectively
those bombing raids that Churchill had advanced warning of from Enigma
decrypts simply couldn't be misdirected since jamming simply was
marginally effective.




Keith

"The Enlightenment" wrote in message
...



I'm not an expert on the nuclear effort. I don't think the full story
is out yet as many of the people ended up in the USSR


Nope must ended up at Farm Hall in England, their conversations were bugged
and their reactions on hearing of the Hiroshima bomb reveal
just how far behind they were

http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/19....goldberg.html

snip



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


In real life with combat usage, a tense pilot and engine serviced and
made to mass production standards that would drop I expect.


Actually the maintenance interval rose from the initial figure
as the reliability of the engines was proved.

snip



Beacon guidance systems were jammed from early 1941 onwards.


Not all equally well and hard enough to do with a horizontal flying
aircraft but in an upward arcing missile a much harder thing. A
sufficiently focused beam with even without much encoding would be
hard to jam or mislead.

X-Gerate was jammed but Y-Gerate was never really jammed effectively
those bombing raids that Churchill had advanced warning of from Enigma
decrypts simply couldn't be misdirected since jamming simply was
marginally effective.



The contrary is true, Y-Gerat turned out to be on virtually the same
frequency as the BBC pre-war TV system and was jammed on
its very first combat use in Feb 1941.

http://www.vectorsite.net/ttwiz7.html#m3

Keith




----== Posted via Newsfeed.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeed.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 100,000 Newsgroups
---= 19 East/West-Coast Specialized Servers - Total Privacy via Encryption =---

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

Diebner did not require any heavy water in late 44,that the reason why he
succeded and why British troops seized more than 10t heavy water in a warehouse
in Hamburg.
You also forgat to mention Houtermans and von Ardenne.

On Thu, 15 Jan 2004 22:41:43 +0000, Denyav wrote:

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

Diebner did not require any heavy water in late 44,that the reason why he
succeded and why British troops seized more than 10t heavy water in a
warehouse in Hamburg.
You also forgat to mention Houtermans and von Ardenne.
Not to mention that the German nuclear program was crippled severely by
the lack of heavy water, thanks to sabotage efforts of Thor Heyerdahl
(later famous for his Kon-Tiki raft showing the Egyptians could have
sailed to the Americas)

"Denyav" wrote in message
...
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

Diebner did not require any heavy water in late 44

Yes he did. His experimental reactor at Stadtilm was a
heavy water moderated design and his job tiltles included
Commissioner for Norwegian HeavyWater Production

,that the reason why he
succeded

He failed, the reactor never achieved criticallity, ironically
however they did accidentally discover that they got
greater neutron miltiplication amongst the graphite blocks
sourrounding the reactor than with the uranium assembly
in the reactor itself. At last in March 1945 they had
stumbled on the fact that graphite could be used as a
moderator, far too late to use that fact since US troops
arrived only days later.

And why British troops seized more than 10t heavy water in a warehouse
in Hamburg.

No such seizure was made and the maximum production during the
war was around 140 kg per month

You also forgat to mention Houtermans and von Ardenne.

No their period of original work came after the war when they
worked in the Soviet nuclear program.

Actually the only German researcher who could have produced
a bomb was Paul Harteck who attempted to develop the
centrifuge enrichment process with virtually no official
backing.

Keith




----== Posted via Newsfeed.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.newsfeed.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 100,000 Newsgroups
---= 19 East/West-Coast Specialized Servers - Total Privacy via Encryption =---

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

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

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."