No resources spent on the V1 and V2 means more resources for engine development and production.
Yeah, faster would be good. I suppose lower-flying is unlikely... I do think the need for the launch rails is overstated; why not acclerate them from trucks with RATO?Polish Eagle said:
I've wondered if the turbine tech couldn't have been used in Walther U-boats, tho that does require Dönitz to be less technophobic.Polish Eagle said:
Junkers managed to get reasonable performance with Cromadur (12% Chromium, 18% Manganese, 70% Iron), oh nothing like as good as with rarer metals, but the things were usable. No, what really held the jets up was vibration problems with the compressor blades.
Hello wiking, first one nitpick: The V1 was not a rocket, and it was not a ballistic missile either. It was a cruise missile powered by a pulse jet , and as far as I know it was not such a big waste as the V2 rocket. I think the V1 carried a warhead of a size comparable to that of the V2, for one tenth of the costs (although this still might be a bad investment from the Nazi leadership's point of view).
Your question in its existing form can best be answered with: this is anybody's guess. The German leadership might invest in more conventional weapons (for which there might be no additional fuel), into things like repairing fuel factories and railways, or into similarly fantastic but wasteful projects like the V-3 multi-chambered gun or the 54cm long range version of the Dora railway gun.
To narrow down the choice, perhaps the question could be modified: are the V-weapons cancelled because their uselessness is recognized? Then they might indeed be replaced with something more effective. Or are they cancelled for a more irrational reason, like a personal animosity of Hitler against von Braun? Then the projects that replace them are more likely to be irrational, too.
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The waste of the V2 comes up a lot. However we all know that Germany was low on fuel in 1944, so low that pilots weren`t properly trained and tank forces were limited in their movements to conserve fuel. We also know that no matter how many tanks and aircraft Germany built they were outproduced by the UK, USSR and USA in combination. What`s more the Allies used their aircraft to produce an air defence system that was very tight, regular aircraft struggled to penetrate through those Spitfies etc.
So what I want to know is if the V2 wasn`t built and favour of more tanks and aircraft would fuel exist to use them, and would pilots exist to fly them well and if so would they be enough to penetrate Allied air defences?
If Germany wasn`t going to build the V1 and V2 I`d hope they`d put the effort into the Me262 and Arado Blitz instead, these being the only change against the huge numbers of high quality, well flown Allied aircraft.
So what I want to know is if the V2 wasn`t built and favour of more tanks and aircraft would fuel exist to use them, and would pilots exist to fly them well and if so would they be enough to penetrate Allied air defences?
If Germany wasn`t going to build the V1 and V2 I`d hope they`d put the effort into the Me262 and Arado Blitz instead, these being the only change against the huge numbers of high quality, well flown Allied aircraft.
Maybe just kill the V-2 programme and put an equivalent amount of funding/effort into Wasserfall? I'm not sure it'd actually change the ultimate outcome, considering the W Allies' advantages regarding numbers and production, but it'd be interesting - - Mosquitos fitted out as "Wild Weasels" to kill German SAM sites, etc??
use the money and buy danzig and the corridor
Personal cash bribe to Stalin to pack it in?
In hindsight the Germans should of made more me262's and made more 4 engined heavy bombers.Without hindsight who knows what the German heirachy would have funded and diverted funds to.
Fixed that for you. AFAIK the only 4-engined Luftwaffe aircraft that could really be described as bombers were the FW-200s, which were only present in very small numbers, used mainly for maritime reconnaissance, and weren't terribly well-suited to the bomber role.
In any case, I'm going to put on my flame-proof suit here and dispute that more jet fighters and a heavy bomber arm would have made any difference. Germany was so badly outmatched that even having 5 times as many jet's wouldn't have mattered - they still lacked the fuel and pilots to make use of them effectively. And although the heavy bombers might make an interesting PoD for a timeline, the Allies were quite capable of fending off or (if worst comes to it) surviving heavier air raids than the Germans launched IOTL. The Soviets might have had more trouble, but then again they also have a lot more strategic depth to use too. And unless we're talking a Nazi B-36 here (armed with nuclear weapons, to boot) they still can't reach the US or effectively harm it, so the industrial and logistic mismatch remains.
Now, a better-resourced jet program in general might have some interesting consequences - nothing war-changing, but jets with better characteristics (endurance, MTBF, etc) could be useful.
Issues to consider.
Would shifting the effort and funds from the V-weapons to more conventional aircraft (fighters, mostly) really have made much difference considering that by early 1945 Germany was running out of fuel and trained pilots for the airplanes they could produce?
Rockets, airplanes, tanks, and ships are very different (duh) and require differenet research and production facilities. Do we really know if the funds not spent on missiles could have meaningfully added to the numbers of conventional weapons available to Germany in the last 12 months of the war?
I suspect that no amount of juggling resources would have made much difference in the long term, but arguably what Germany really needed more than fancy weapons was effective motorized transport, improved logistics, better communications, and better intelligence and counter-intelligence, and better air transport. Dull stuff, but it it's well-supplied and well-fed warriors with abumdant ammunition who actually wins wars, not Me-262's and V-2s
Would shifting the effort and funds from the V-weapons to more conventional aircraft (fighters, mostly) really have made much difference considering that by early 1945 Germany was running out of fuel and trained pilots for the airplanes they could produce?
Rockets, airplanes, tanks, and ships are very different (duh) and require differenet research and production facilities. Do we really know if the funds not spent on missiles could have meaningfully added to the numbers of conventional weapons available to Germany in the last 12 months of the war?
I suspect that no amount of juggling resources would have made much difference in the long term, but arguably what Germany really needed more than fancy weapons was effective motorized transport, improved logistics, better communications, and better intelligence and counter-intelligence, and better air transport. Dull stuff, but it it's well-supplied and well-fed warriors with abumdant ammunition who actually wins wars, not Me-262's and V-2s
+1
No amount of high quality, low quantity weapons (outside of a nuclear bomb) is going to stop the allies. And no amount of low quality, high quantity weaponry (like more trucks or Panzer IV's) are going to help against the allied arsenal.
Only two possibilities remain IMO: the Germans build a better communciations system so the allies can't read their mail anymore or they manage to improve their synthetic fuel programme so they have enough fuel to properly fight the war.
Neither of which would necessarily lead to a German victory but it would certainly make an allied victory much more expensive or even offer an outside chance of a stalemate.
Exactly my thinking.BlairWitch749 said:
Either for FW200s or U-boats (per Loon; hull-mounted, per Regulus, is a bit much IMO).Something else would be useful: fitting something like X-4 to U-boats for defense against aircraft.
What about fitting them with nose-mounted packs of R4Ms or Foehn, like the F-94?MattII said:
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deathscompanion1
Banned
They had the stuff they just did not have the logistics to get them where they needed.
The German Logistics system was a joke and was made worse by the awful rail (with different gauges) and road network in the USSR.
Giving the 2,000,000,000 to Stalin to invest in a decent road network would probably beat any fancy weapon the Germans could reasonably make in improving their odds.
Throwing some of the saved cash into synthetic fuel production might have helped, giving the existing kit more flexibility. However, as already pointed out, Hitler wasn't bothered by 'trivial' needs - he liked his bling toys.
Unnecessary; they already had a working cruise missile:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henschel_Hs_293
with an impressive record of ships damaged and sunk to its credit. The difficulty was getting it near the target in the face of Allied air superiority.
The attack on HMT Rohna is a fair example of its effectiveness. The ship was struck on the port side of the engine space by a single Hs293 which knocked a forty foot diameter hole in it, then detonated in the engine space, completely wrecking it and several decks above and blowing an equally large hole in the starboard side. The Rohna sank a few minutes later. In spite of the fact that the other vessels of the convoy promptly came to their aid and that they were only a mile or so from the North African coast of the more than 4,000 aboard nearly 1,000 were killed and an equal number injured.