Then there were the Siemens T52d and moreso the Siemens T43 machines...makes for interesting reading...
Pragmatic Wunderwaffe
- Thread starter ArmchairSamurai
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- world war ii wunderwaffe
Then there were the Siemens T52d and moreso the Siemens T43 machines...makes for interesting reading...
Huh, no. That's the key misunderstanding of the Wunderwaffen.
Inventing a new concept isn't achieving anything even remotely practical. If it were, then after Leonardo da Vinci we would already have had the tank and the parachute and the helicopter.
Building the first prototype incarnating the new concept also isn't practical. Otherwise, we would have had practical jet aircraft with the He 178.
Fielding the first mass-produced model of the new concept might be practical - if you have taken the time to do all the extensive delevopment, extensively tested the prototypes, solved the teething problems, corrected the glaring mistakes, and made sure the damn thing does work halfway as good as the designers promised, once it's in the field. If you don't, then you haven't done anything actually practical. Think of the Typ XXI submarine, widely acclaimed as a Wunderwaffe. It was a good invention, yes - the first really "electrical boat". It was built. It was fielded - only to discover that the damn things leaked all the time due to manufacturing issues, that they underperformed both in terms of range and of depth, and that key vulnerable parts were placed outside the pressure hull. And those are only the most evident faults, I'm sure lots of minor foolishness would also be present.
McPherson
Banned
(^^^) Horton, the Walther brothers and Lippisch. "We have neat ideas!" Try them out. They don't work. "How much did we waste on those ideas, Ernst?" "10% of available German time and engineering resources, Fatso?" "Himmel! (Heaven) we could have used that time and talent to improve our current tanks and planes to make our short war goals possible, because we were so close to making Stalin crack in late 1942!" "Keep smoking your opium, Fatso. Stalin would never quit as long as his chances were good, and his allies made sure of that one!"
So many times this. And so many people fail to grasp these diferences!! And sometimes the process is made even slower because people who come up with a new concept either don't know how to deploy it, or go about it the wrong way
Take something seemingly simple ("hey, it's just a big pipe, right?") and "obviously" usefull as the sub-snorkel. Basic model developed by the dutch in 1938, captured by the germans in 1940... and yet, despite a massive sub campaign, it's deployment en mass only happened in 1944. Because the Kriegsmarine did not see a need to recharge bateries underwater before 1943...
McPherson
Banned
Read "Those Marvelous Tin Fish". Snorting is neither simple, nor easy. It comes with SEVERE operational crew health issues with the first attempts and its use in blue water operations is still a will o the wisp that has never been satisfactorily solved. Diesels underwater? Three sonar (hydrophone) convergence zones away; "Here I am, send aircraft and come kill me; NOW!" You need to hide, to recharge batteries using a snort, preferably someplace with a soft sound absorbing bottom with sea mounts that jut up that reverberates echoes, full of sea life (mating shrimp for example) and that is noisier than you are.
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This is irrelevant. The Germans didn't need wunderwaffen. The Germans needed modern mass production techniques, a lack of infighting for resources for pet projects, and generals / general staff that understood logistics.
EVen thenm they lose badly.
Picking a fight with every major industrialized nation in the world at the same time but your end tends to not be a winning strategy...
EVen thenm they lose badly.
Picking a fight with every major industrialized nation in the world at the same time but your end tends to not be a winning strategy...
Kaze
Banned
What about the V-1 and V-2? They did work and with the right circumstances could have worked better. It is known the dozens that rained on London and the local area, but lesser known is that that the Germans also sent some to rain down on Moscow and Leningrad - unfortunately they did not do the damage / or make it (they were in the range).
What if a V-2 by mistake takes out Stalin?
What if a V-2 by mistake takes out Stalin?
So, maybe I'm mistaken but the V-2 never was used against the Russian forces, and if it was I'd love to see the source that says so.
Secondly, the V-2 has a range of 320km which means you have to be just past Smolensk to even get in range of Moscow.
Thirdly, you have to actually hit the city which with a CEP of 12,000m you may aswell just not. (Perhaps Missilemap has the wrong values maybe?)
Now I ran a 14 minute test in missilemap to see what you could expect from damage and basically you're shotgunning the city but with out pinpoint accuracy. Congrats though, you've blown up the Moscow Zoo.
This is close as I got in 60 minutes. If you drop the CEP to 1000m you get better results in the long run.
edit: 12000m was the CEP with British Intelligence's misinformation. Supposedly with proper reporting they'd get it down to 6km.
Gonna run it again with 6km and see what changes
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Proper reporting (though you're reminding me that I should repot ;-) a plant) requires German spies in Moscow or German aerial recon over Moscow. The latter is iffy in late 1944, the former would picture me as surprised.
I know (note the "" I placed) but normal people (ie, not people who study this stuf!
) seem to think so; actually heard this line once... And you forgot the center of mass problems caused by the big-ass pipe, the extra noise and drag it causes...
Still, if there's one upgrade I'd select that could have made a real diference if the germans started working on it, right in 1940 when they grabbed it, this would be it... anything else requires far too much time and resources, afaik.
Kahn style modern factory is what they needed - with lots of single use machine tools for the life time of that production run
This allowed places like for example Detroit, Castle Bromwich Assembly and many Russian 'Tractor Factory's' to use relatively unskilled workers (who had one job on said production line) to build lots of quality products that were good enough for the job
I recall reading about a German tank factory that was over run and the incomplete tanks all had chalk marks and notes all over them and the machine tools were being used for multiple tasks meaning that the tool had to be recalibrated for each job and the operator had to be much more skilled than their Western and Russian counterpart and as a result the output was far lower.
I know (note the "" I placed) but normal people (ie, not people who study this stuf!
And you forgot the center of mass problems caused by the big-ass pipe, the extra noise and drag it causes...
Still, if there's one upgrade I'd select that could have made a real diference if the germans started working on it, right in 1940 when they grabbed it, this would be it... anything else requires far too much time and resources, afaik.
Also if deployed the speed of the boat is <5 knots as it would deform and break at speeds higher than that. So while it did allow the boat to remain submerged it still robbed the boat of its surfaced speed
And anyway the Germans were doing okay without it right up to the point when they suddenly were not
Yeah, I know, it would require a little foresight and less arrogance from the germans. The leadership would have to, in 1940, believe they were really going into a long hard war, instead of the "we got this" attitude that lasted for far too long.
Kaze
Banned
In 2005 in southern Poland two big fundaments of concrete buildings were discovered. They are said to have been built for V1, V2 rocket. Fundaments were started to build in 1944 and Germans did not finish them.
That means that Germans planned to use V1 and V2 rockets on Eastern Front.
From Poland to Russia is within range - if you go with the longest range.
That means that Germans planned to use V1 and V2 rockets on Eastern Front.
From Poland to Russia is within range - if you go with the longest range.
thaddeus
Donor
always think that BV-246 could have been crudely effective, a glide bomb with huge range, they could have served the same purpose of earlier JU-86 and launched them to cruise thru several radar zones?
they later schemed a radar seeking version which would have really made them useful.
they later schemed a radar seeking version which would have really made them useful.
That's pretty much all the V2 was good for anyways. Launched over 1600 of them at Antwerp, killing about 1700 people with 4500 more injured (and of those killed, nearly 600 were from one hit on a crowded movie theatre). The Brits pulled an ingenious trick too, consistently reporting that the incoming V2s were overshooting London by 10-20 miles so the German missile crews would recalibrate and rain rockets on Kent instead of the London urban area. While the public were very worried by them, the V2s were for the most part a huge resource drain for little to no effect, you're just not doing much of anything useful with a 2000lb warhead on an unguided primitive rocket like that. There's a reason unguided rocket artillery in the postwar period was for either saturation fire (BM-14s, BM-21s, and the M270 MLRS) or packed a nuclear/chemical warhead (MGR-1 Honest John, 2K6 Luna and the uniquely unpleasant M55 chemical rocket).
McPherson
Banned
I think I covered a lot of what the early snort history was when I introduced the Mackerel Class. (See further.)
I know (note the "" I placed) but normal people (ie, not people who study this stuf!
And you forgot the center of mass problems caused by the big-ass pipe, the extra noise and drag it causes...
Still, if there's one upgrade I'd select that could have made a real diference if the germans started working on it, right in 1940 when they grabbed it, this would be it... anything else requires far too much time and resources, afaik.
I gave the USN a 5 year jump using the Ferretti Snort which the Americans steal in 1935 in an ATL. But you know how "realistic AHTLs" have to be. Follow the USS Moondragon as she has nothing but trouble with her engine plant, her torpedoes and her snort. Nothing comes easy!
As Cryhavoc who has read of LTCDR Oscar Moosbregger's ATL desperate attempts to save USS Moondragon when she was stuck aft end up in midair, props out of the water, nose down in mud after she sank a Japanese troop ferry entirely by accident and went out of trim control, while she performed one of MacArthur's insane Filipino guerrilla supply/spy missions, can attest; the correct use of the snort is close inshore where noise is loudest and radar is at its worst. The Mackerels, in the fiction, are intended to be used as ambush weapons against shipping in the littorals, not as blue water boats. The Western Pacific and Eastern Asian (and the Mediterranean) coastal shelfs and shallow seas are ideal for these kinds of boats. Not so much is the North Atlantic which is where a deep diver that can operate air independent to recharge batteries is extremely deadly. BTW I cheat a bit. It is not a "a big round pipe" I have the Ferretti snort written somewhat built as a retractable hydro-flow fared mast into the sail so a sub can do 5 m/s if the sail is not too deeply submerged. That allows "some" tactical speed, which is fairly realistic as of ~ 1985.
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