This would probably only work once and kill quite a few pilots the first time tried but after that no more pilots would be wasted so no, the Germans don't win air superiority.
Germans introduce V1 in 1940
- Thread starter SunilTanna
- Start date
Krummlauf was a reasonable idea.
The order for the Maus was cancelled a few months after it was made.
The Ratte was cancelled early in its designing phase, and a prototype was never built.
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The Krummlauf may have seemed like a reasonable idea, even the Soviets played with the idea but realized it wasn't really a good idea and moved on, the Nazis put theirs into production.
I think were starting to derail this thread, my point was simply that there were large number of Nazi projects that wasted a lot of materials and time and Nazi Germany was a country that could not afford to waste what they had to begin with.
Then the Nazis would have a way to bomb London relatively cheaply that couldn't be stopped and that didn't burn through air crews. No, they would have to try to get the buzz bombs. As the RAF succeeded, the Luftwaffe would have to try something else to get the RAF's pilots.
The krummlauf was very much a specialty gun for use by tank crews. As such, it worked - for a few hundred rounds. Given life expectancies on the Eastern Front, that was a long time.
I agree that the V-1 could've been introduced earlier (how early I'm not sure) and would not have been a waste of resources, my point was that a lot other not so great German weapon projects could've been scrapped in favor of the V-1 but this is with the advantage of hindsight.
The Krummlauf was an interesting idea but not a great one IMO.
David Flin
Gone Fishin'
I confess I've been fascinated by the speculation as to how the widespread early use of the V1 against London would have impacted the morale of Londoners in particular.
As someone who was around and in the East End of London for the period OTL where the V1 was in use, I always find such speculation fascinating, especially when there seems to be no reference to the many, many contemporaneous records kept by the ordinary people who were there.
To be fair, I was very young at the time, and not in a position to record my views, But I certainly grew up with people who went through it all.
As someone who was around and in the East End of London for the period OTL where the V1 was in use, I always find such speculation fascinating, especially when there seems to be no reference to the many, many contemporaneous records kept by the ordinary people who were there.
To be fair, I was very young at the time, and not in a position to record my views, But I certainly grew up with people who went through it all.
TDM
Kicked
Nothing happens in a vacuum
OTL Counter measures fairly quickly reduced the V1's to nuisance . Now the main components of that counter measure system were complicated and had their own development path that wasn't driven solely by teh appearance of the V1. The but the basic reality is the greater teh threat the greater the resources devoted to over coming it.
But there's a bigger issue with all this, the V1 got it chance to be fully developed into a fully fleshed system because the German planes it replaced had failed to effectively do the job. This won't have happened in the 30's which in when you need the POD to make this happen.
In the 30's the wisdom was the bomber would not just get through but get through and do teh job. And all sides were making procurement choices based on that and not flying bombs. So you will have to overcome that wisdom of the time with no operational proof in either direction as well as military procurement inertia.
EDIT: Sorry Questerr you weren't making the point I thought you were!
OTL Counter measures fairly quickly reduced the V1's to nuisance . Now the main components of that counter measure system were complicated and had their own development path that wasn't driven solely by teh appearance of the V1. The but the basic reality is the greater teh threat the greater the resources devoted to over coming it.
But there's a bigger issue with all this, the V1 got it chance to be fully developed into a fully fleshed system because the German planes it replaced had failed to effectively do the job. This won't have happened in the 30's which in when you need the POD to make this happen.
In the 30's the wisdom was the bomber would not just get through but get through and do teh job. And all sides were making procurement choices based on that and not flying bombs. So you will have to overcome that wisdom of the time with no operational proof in either direction as well as military procurement inertia.
EDIT: Sorry Questerr you weren't making the point I thought you were!
I'm very interested to hear what you think.
I suspect ordinary Londoners may have been more stoic than much of the ruling class
David Flin
Gone Fishin'
Remember that I'm coming at this from the East End, which was very definitely not the ruling class part of society. The East End boy also has a line in cynical grumbling that is unparalleled - praise is not common, and scepticism is a way of life. These attitudes certainly continued well beyond WW2, and the West End mob (ie, the rich and wealthy and powerful) didn't regard East Enders as being quite human, and certainly not people to take into consideration when making decisions.
To give an example from later years. In the late 1950s, a young East End girl (aged around 16) was raped and murdered and dumped. On being informed of this, the police regarded this as a big joke, and had no intention of doing anything about it. "It was just a Dagenham girl. It's not important."
So bombs (of whatever variety) dropping on the East End might cause problems for the people who live there, but for them in the West End, it's just a bit of slum clearance. Only important in terms of the impact it has on things like the docks.
Point No 1. "Whitehall/Westminster will bow to German pressure if the East End is being hit repeatedly" is complete and utter hogwash. The problems of the East End would only be important in so far as they affected the West End.
Point No 2. The East End took the brunt of the Blitz, it took the brunt of OTL V1 bombs. It adapted to life (and death) and the circumstances it was in. Not without cynical black humour, it has to be said. A fair amount of the ordnance that fell and failed to explode was recovered locally and repurposed. There wasn't a bank safe that was secure in the immediate post-war environment. Stoic isn't quite the right word to use to describe an East End boy - stoic implies uncomplaining, and until you've heard an East End boy, you haven't heard complaining. But adaptable, yeah, that's a good word. The situation is what it is, and you make the best of what you've got to hand. If that involves stepping on the wrong side of strict legality, well, them as upholds the law weren't on our side, so there weren't no reason for us to pay heed to laws that weren't to protect the likes of us. This, remember, is the background from which the Krays came (truly nasty pieces of work lionised by the Powers That Be).
Point No 3. Tunnels. You wouldn't believe how much stuff is underground in the East End. Not just the Underground (which in the true East End is largely on the surface anyway, though it's still called the Underground), but any number of tunnels. There's a whole ecology there, and if houses on the surface are being destroyed, life will go on anyway. It'll change and adapt. That's what Londoners bleeding well do. Adapt.
Point No 4. Payback. Traditionally, we have long memories and retain grudges for long periods and "Payback" is part of the culture. We hold grudges, and we'll look for payback, big time. If London gets bombed like that, well, things like what happened to Dresden are on the cards. Incidentally, the East End response to what happened at Dresden can be summarised in one word. "Good." The local intellectuals might follow it up with: "Shame it was just Dresden." Bomb us, expect to get it back in spades. And you can expect that attitude to feed upwards.
Point No 5. Militarily, bombing London is a bit pointless. It doesn't have airfields in any great number, the ports and industry and so on is all replicated elsewhere. Bombing London is a purely political attack and will achieve zilch militarily. One is expended whatever resources are spent in lobbing exploding bricks into the area in order to knock down houses that the Powers That Be simply don't care about. It's a waste of effort.
Point No 6. Read the memoirs and diaries and stuff of the people that went through it OTL. There's enough of the stuff. Mass Observations is a good place to start, where ordinary people recorded their thoughts at the time. There are tons and tons - literally - of books on the subject. Writing about such things as this without going through such records is like trying to write about life in the WWI trenches without going through the Trench Newspapers. I have been greatly amused by some of the pontification about what people of the time thought without any apparent research into what the people of the time said at the time. That's not how history is done. If you want analysis of comparative weapon systems and balance of economic resources and forgone costs, that's fine. That's a valid line to take. However, if one talks about the views of the people at the time, it is incumbent upon the historian to find out what the views of the people at the time were, not what they imagine they were.
Some of my family (well outside London) had houses damaged by bombing and the city centre was effectively destroyed. They generally didn't talk about it and those that did spoke of it as if it wasn't a big deal because it happened to lots of other people and because it could have been worse (no immediate family was hurt). Bear in mind I was hearing this 30 years or more after the event, which is long enough to take a lot of the edge off.
Ordinary people can be very resilient when everyone's in the same boat.
Ordinary people can be very resilient when everyone's in the same boat.
TDM
Kicked
As an aside do you know what's in the big black bit in the SE (I want to say roughly around the area that becomes Lewisham) on this map of bomb damage?
Can you think of a particular target that's getting hit there, or maybe because it's the bombers turning?
cheers from a interested Ladbroke Grove, boy
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I found your comments very interesting. Thank you.
Regarding this thread's scenario, while the blitz focused on the East End, the V1s would hit all over London. So Whitehall, the West End and other parts of London would be hit hard too. That's why I'm suggesting the ruling class might not be quite as stoic.
What is the cost of a V1 in comparison to a Me 109 and a Stuka ?
If I have the costs, it will be easy to prove how economically it is impossible for German economy to produce V1 in great numbers ?
I know that the V1's actually used were produced very cheaply, but that was late war and used almost exclusively slave labour, an option not available to the Germans in the run up to the war. Any costing would have to take this into account.
Actually, the proper comparison would need to involve "lifetime" operating costs and some measure of effectiveness. A Stuka would be more expensive to make, require trained aircrew, ground crew and infrastructure. The V1 would be cheaper to make but require an operational crew and infrastructure of its own. The Stuka has an expected use of X operations against a range of targets and is more accurate in its delivery of a smaller bombload per mission. while the V1 is single use and inaccurate.
So which delivers more (on target) bangs per RM invested? A pretty complex calculation though I'm sure somebody has done it.
marathag
Banned
Wiki lists
Almost 30,000 V-1s were made; by March 1944, they were each produced in 350 hours (including 120 for the autopilot), at a cost of just 4% of a V-2
...
Blitz | V-1 | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Cost to Germany | ||
| Sorties | 90,000 | 8,025 |
| Weight of bombs tons | 61,149 | 14,600 |
| Fuel consumed tons | 71,700 | 4,681 |
| Aircraft lost | 3,075 | 0 |
| Personnel lost | 7,690 | 0 |
| 2. Results | ||
| Structures damaged/destroyed | 1,150,000 | 1,127,000 |
| Casualties | 92,566 | 22,892 |
| Rate casualties/bombs tons | 1.6 | 1.6 |