There've been a variety of weapons thruout hist which were on the drawing-board, but never saw full development or production, such as Nazi Germany's V-Weapons program, the B-36 Dominator, HMS HABBAKUK- the 'Pykrete' aircraft carrier- the B70 Valkyrie supersonic bomber, and F20 Tigershark interceptor (basically a more advanced F5 Tiger IIe). How would hist have been affected had tehse wonder gadgets been fully designed and produced and where necessary seen action ?
New weapons never fully developed/used
- Thread starter Melvin Loh
- Start date
It depends on whether they were trully revolutionary or just "cool stuff to have". German V-weapons are controversial. If Germany develops them as in OTL it only means Germans fire more of them before the war ends. If Germany wins there isn't much need for them and develop along OTL BMs, altough sooner. B-70 would, IMO, go down B-58 path. Great plane with excelelnt capabilities but difficult to operate (maintainance wise) and expensive. With F-20 you get less F-16s as it was more expensive but you still have gap which F-16 fills (single engine plane, simple to operate, cheap but with decent punch and multirole capability). The problem is there isn't Western plane that would fill that gap.
Habakkuk was planned to be an artificial ice floe made from frozen seawater reinforced with wood-pulp and kept frozen by freezer coils like in a freezer. It would likely have had motors. See
http://www.4reference.net/encyclopedias/wikipedia/Habakkuk.html
http://www.4reference.net/encyclopedias/wikipedia/Habakkuk.html
A4b
True. There was a multi-stage project, called A9 but Hitler stopped any weapons R&D that would not give results in unrealistically short time (I forgot if it was a year or 6 months). However, von Braun secretly continued the development naming the new rocket A4b, as if it is just a modification of the A4 whose development was allowed. A4b was more or less a V2 with wings. There was one trial some time during the Winter of 1944/45, and it is partially succesful - one of the wing tips broke of but the rocket flew for about 750 km. Not enough to bomb New York but impressive for the time. And as you say - this would have been only the final stage of a multi-stage rocket. Then the situation in Germany deteriorated too fast to take advantage of this success.
FYI, there is more info on the Nazi rockets in astronautix.com
Kuralyov said:
True. There was a multi-stage project, called A9 but Hitler stopped any weapons R&D that would not give results in unrealistically short time (I forgot if it was a year or 6 months). However, von Braun secretly continued the development naming the new rocket A4b, as if it is just a modification of the A4 whose development was allowed. A4b was more or less a V2 with wings. There was one trial some time during the Winter of 1944/45, and it is partially succesful - one of the wing tips broke of but the rocket flew for about 750 km. Not enough to bomb New York but impressive for the time. And as you say - this would have been only the final stage of a multi-stage rocket. Then the situation in Germany deteriorated too fast to take advantage of this success.
FYI, there is more info on the Nazi rockets in astronautix.com
delay
To make those matter they have to be turned into practical mass-prodiced weapons.
May be we should consider wither an earlier "wonder weapons" (to make asure enough time for development) or postpone the moment of application, say the WWII does not start until 1942-1944.
Something else that could have hed an effect (I think it has been discussed) - Me163 was essentially ready in 1941 as a fighter but Hitler wanter it turned into a fighter/dive-bomber which delayed the production by a few years. Or I mis-remember...
Melvin Loh said:
To make those matter they have to be turned into practical mass-prodiced weapons.
May be we should consider wither an earlier "wonder weapons" (to make asure enough time for development) or postpone the moment of application, say the WWII does not start until 1942-1944.
Something else that could have hed an effect (I think it has been discussed) - Me163 was essentially ready in 1941 as a fighter but Hitler wanter it turned into a fighter/dive-bomber which delayed the production by a few years. Or I mis-remember...
Melvin, you are thinking about the Me262, the 163 was the rocket interceptor.
The problem with many of the 'wonder weapons' was that Germany lacked most of the critical natural resources necessary to mass-produce them. The Jumo004 engines for the Me262 (and Arado 234 bomber, for that matter) suffered from serious defects due in part to a lack of tungsten and tantalum for turbine blades, while the rocket programs all suffered from shortages of exotic minerals for various steels. Even simple weapons such as squeeze-bore AT guns (which would have substantially improved German AT capability with almost no extra development) were crippled by a lack of tungsten for shot.
The German weapons development programs were also hampered by their incredible duplication and inefficiency, something it seems that only the US could truly afford. The cost of building even a few of these weapons was astronomical (a single V-2, which could deliver a single ton of low-explosive inaccurately cost the same amount as a Ju-88, one of the better German aircraft in the war), and tended to usurp personnel, resources, and attention from other, more practical projects...
If the the Germans had gotten more of their wonder weapons into production earlier, the war might have been much shorter...
I am reminded of a story by Arthur Clarke called "Superiority", do you know it?
The problem with many of the 'wonder weapons' was that Germany lacked most of the critical natural resources necessary to mass-produce them. The Jumo004 engines for the Me262 (and Arado 234 bomber, for that matter) suffered from serious defects due in part to a lack of tungsten and tantalum for turbine blades, while the rocket programs all suffered from shortages of exotic minerals for various steels. Even simple weapons such as squeeze-bore AT guns (which would have substantially improved German AT capability with almost no extra development) were crippled by a lack of tungsten for shot.
The German weapons development programs were also hampered by their incredible duplication and inefficiency, something it seems that only the US could truly afford. The cost of building even a few of these weapons was astronomical (a single V-2, which could deliver a single ton of low-explosive inaccurately cost the same amount as a Ju-88, one of the better German aircraft in the war), and tended to usurp personnel, resources, and attention from other, more practical projects...
If the the Germans had gotten more of their wonder weapons into production earlier, the war might have been much shorter...
I am reminded of a story by Arthur Clarke called "Superiority", do you know it?
David S Poepoe
Banned
I've always been disappointed that the Zalinski pneumatic dynamite gun never quite came into its own.