In 1941, the Reich Ministry of Air was shown the design for the Schmetterling surface to air missile. It rejected it, but recommissioned in 1943 as the Germany was subjected to heavy bombing. By 1945, they had a working prototype ready for mass-production. It was radio-controlled and had a warhead activated by a proximity fuse. If they had accepted the design in 1941, the Germans would have been able to use it to defend their air-space by 1943. This would have transformed the defence of the Reich, and prolonged the war by months if not years. How would the Allies have coped with such technology,?
Reich Ministry commissions surface to air missiles in 1941
- Thread starter Alan
- Start date
What kind of numbers of Schmetterlings would have they needed to produce to make a difference, and how much resources would have it taken up to build them? What weapons and gear would they have not produced when those resources were poured into the AA missiles?
The bolded is a good point. The Schmetterlings will not be very effective in comparison to modern AA missiles, and that means that bigger numbers would need to be produced to create a big enough effect with them. Which then, again, means more resources used.
A radio controlled AA-missile in 1943, would have been largely negated by jamming the control frequencies.
All promise and no bang IMVHO.
All promise and no bang IMVHO.
The other guided weapons that actually were produced and entered combat use such as the G7esT5 torpedo and guided bombs such as the Fritz X were very quickly degraded by the use of counter measures.
Foxers in the case of the T5 homing torpedo and radio jamming in the case of Fritz X.
The allies were quite simply possessed of a far more effective and larger group of boffins, intelligence gathering apparatus and very capable of coming up with counter measures and or strategies that defeated or degraded such wunder weapons.
So I can only conclude that after an initial success the allies would rapidly deploy counter measures that would degrade said weapon system.
Foxers in the case of the T5 homing torpedo and radio jamming in the case of Fritz X.
The allies were quite simply possessed of a far more effective and larger group of boffins, intelligence gathering apparatus and very capable of coming up with counter measures and or strategies that defeated or degraded such wunder weapons.
So I can only conclude that after an initial success the allies would rapidly deploy counter measures that would degrade said weapon system.
To put that into context Germany made about 70,000 torpedos in WW2 with a total cost of about 2 billion RM.
So napkin maths = 285,000 RM per fish.
Cost of an individual V2 rocket was 100,000 RM but obviously this does not cover the cost of the program which was suspected to be the equivalent of $2billion ( greater than the cost of the Manhattan project) so again quick napkin math if we assume 2.5 RM to $ then 5 billion RM
With that established and 3000 rockets built that means they actually cost Germany about 1.5 million RM per V2.
So how expensive would this SAM project cost?
Tiger II tank cost 800.000 RM each
Stug ‘unit cost’ was 80000 RM each not sure of total program cost.
So what has to give for SAM development?
So napkin maths = 285,000 RM per fish.
Cost of an individual V2 rocket was 100,000 RM but obviously this does not cover the cost of the program which was suspected to be the equivalent of $2billion ( greater than the cost of the Manhattan project) so again quick napkin math if we assume 2.5 RM to $ then 5 billion RM
With that established and 3000 rockets built that means they actually cost Germany about 1.5 million RM per V2.
So how expensive would this SAM project cost?
Tiger II tank cost 800.000 RM each
Stug ‘unit cost’ was 80000 RM each not sure of total program cost.
So what has to give for SAM development?
Well by pretty much any benchmark you could use that would be very difficult for you to prove!
"Ready for mass production" can mean very different things to different people. The broader issue for this is the same as the Wasserfall SAM, which incidentally was a much better system and the reason why Schmetterling was cancelled before the end of the war which is that it's vulnerable to jamming and a very complicated piece of machinery.
The key metric will be it's hit rate 6 months after introduction, after the Allies have had time to come up with countermeasures both technological and training. If it's 100% (essentially impossible with modern technology never mind 1940's) even the Allies can't afford to keep sending bombers above areas protected by SAM's. But more realistically it will have a performance slightly worse than first generation SAM's or in other words 5-10%. So then it becomes a question of production capacity. Is it less than 10% of the total cost of a B-17 (both the plane and the training price of the crew) and more importantly is it enough cheaper than a B-17 that the vastly larger US economy can't sustain attrition against it.
More broadly this is a ground guided system so will have zero impact on the RAF Bomber Offensive so even in the best case scenario it only limits the USAAF's behaviour.
That sounds like wehraboo talk. The Western Allies had a significant technological edge because they had all of their own technical talent plus, thanks to the Nazi's policies, a considerable chunk of German and the German occupied zones technological talent, people like Bohr, Szilard and Teller. That's why the Allies had Colossus, the Cavity Magnetron and Nukes and the Germans didn't even realise they were possible.
Wurzlau's was a modification to wurzburg radar's that can differentiate between fast moving aircraft's and relatively motionles's chaff,
Wurzlau's was mass deployed in july (august) 1943,
Added with wurzburg radar's burn through of electronic jamming at medium close range's can get the target's (bearing angle) (course) (speed) (height) that can be fed in to fire control system's firing track solution,
The henschel hs 117 schmetterling was one of the (sam's) that was designed that could use mario zippermayr's first generation of vacuum weapon's,
If the henschel hs 117 had not been cancelled in 1941 it would most likely be destroying entire group's of bomber combat boxe's stopping the combined strategic bomber offensive in 1943,
Cancel the design's of (heavy tank's) (super heavy tank's) (v1 flying bomb's) (v3 cannon's) (v bunker's) (rocket powered aircraft) (nuclear weapon's program) (schwerer gustav railway artillery) (flak tower's) with the resource's used by henschel hs 117.
Wurzlau's was mass deployed in july (august) 1943,
Added with wurzburg radar's burn through of electronic jamming at medium close range's can get the target's (bearing angle) (course) (speed) (height) that can be fed in to fire control system's firing track solution,
The henschel hs 117 schmetterling was one of the (sam's) that was designed that could use mario zippermayr's first generation of vacuum weapon's,
If the henschel hs 117 had not been cancelled in 1941 it would most likely be destroying entire group's of bomber combat boxe's stopping the combined strategic bomber offensive in 1943,
Cancel the design's of (heavy tank's) (super heavy tank's) (v1 flying bomb's) (v3 cannon's) (v bunker's) (rocket powered aircraft) (nuclear weapon's program) (schwerer gustav railway artillery) (flak tower's) with the resource's used by henschel hs 117.
1. Let's see some citations for that claim.
2. Bollocks.
marathag
Banned
So where does the Nitric Acid production go, missile propellant or gunpowder and explosives?
The Nazis gave up on recoilless rifles from the high usage of smokeless powder for each round compared to cannons, and looked into the High/Low Pressure system, that was very efficient, even more so than conventional cannons
marathag
Banned
Doppler Radar was known about in the '40s, but took the electronics of the 1950s to get it fielded
Exactly, hence I'm extremely dubious about the claim of a possible Nazi deployment.
marathag
Banned
Yeah, the UK or British could have done it, but not by wars end.
And the Germans were far worse at electronics than either.
10/10 Wehraboo , 0/10 logic. As its radio guided , optically aimed , not much good vs night bombers and in the daytime low cloud , smoke ( generated normally by the Germans to hide the bombers target would get in the way ( air launched would be dogmeat for escorting fighters as the controlling planes would have to fly effectively straight and level for the controller to have a chance of a hit and level )
Wasserfall would it have run into difficulties had it gone into mass production as it used the same graphite rudders as the V2 and that had far higher priority.