Moscow or Kiev-- How Germany could have won WW2

Graehame

Banned
XCHEN08
I have evidently overestimated the effects of an FAE of the indicated size. However, your estimate that "near-total destruction within 1.5km represents a 150kt nuke" is also 'way off the mark. Hiroshima was a 12.5kt device with near-total destruction extending to 1.6km from the blast center. Also, your response completely discounts the (admittedly inconclusive) evidence of the use of unconventional explosives of unusual destructive power at Kursk, & possibly at Sevastopol. It is a long-recognized historical fact that the Russians did threaten to retaliate with chemical weapons if the Germans ever repeated whatever it was they did at Sevastopol.
From fas.org : "There are dramatic differences between explosions involving vapor clouds and high explosives... The shock wave from a TNT explosion is of relatively short duration, while the blast wave produced by an explosion of hydrocarbon material displays a relatively long duration. The duration of the positive phase of a shock wave is an important parameter in the response of structures to a blast. Although the detonation combustion mode produces the most severe damage, fast deflagrations of the cloud can result from flame acceleration under confined and congested conditions. Flame propagation speed has a significant influence on the blast parameters both inside and outside the source volume. ...This creates far more severe peak over-pressures and much higher amounts of blast energy."
From everything2.com : "(Conventional) military FAE's are 12 to 16 times more powerful than conventional munitions... Several can also be exploded in near-simultaneous ripples that reinforce each other's blast waves. This makes fuel-air explosives a nearly unparalleled destructive force..."
Contrary to your assertion that FAEs do not "yield orders of magnitude, or even one order of magnitude above...a similar weight of conventional explosives", a device that's 12 to 16 times more powerful than conventional munitions has an approximate yield of 1.5 orders of magnitude higher than conventional explosives.
Furthermore, by exploding several "in near-simultaneous ripples that reinforce each other's blast waves", we gain yields that are 2 or more orders of magnitude higher.
From www.igc.com : "...the nature of FAE explosions makes it virtually impossible for civilians to take shelter..."
From wikia.com : "A...Fuel Air Bomb is designed to produce a massive shockwave. Said to be as powerful as a small nuclear bomb..."
From "Hitler's Suppressed and Still-Secret Weapons", by Henry Stevens : "A second method to extract energy from liquid air (LOX) involves its rapid transformation from a frozen liquid to a gas... Here we encounter the patent of Karl Nowak. Nowak was an Austrian who found that when matter in its cold, liquid state is heated rapidly...it expands with a tremendous rate of force. ...The basics of this liquid air discussion are that the Germans succeeded in finding a simple new source of energy...that has apparently been forgotten today."
Unlike many in this forum, I have no problem postulating that the Nazis developed technology (not magic) that was not only ahead of its time, but has since been lost. The V-2 rocket, jet aircraft, the Walther turbine, & the Type-XXI submarine are just a few examples that were impossible to miss, so they were exhaustively studied post-war. The Fischer-Trobsch process for turning low-grade coal into diesel fuel, on the other hand, was virtually forgotten until resurrected about 20 years ago. There were probably many examples of obscure technology which, when captured, nobody understood. The scientists & techs who worked on it have scattered, the files are missing or else laying all over the floor, & all you've got are some drums filled with coal dust, some cold vats of liquid oxygen that's evaporating, & some boxes of some kind of yellowish waxy stuff. What the hell is it?
I don't expect your concurrence, but my theory is that small, primitive Nazi FAEs were used at Kursk, & possibly at Sevastopol. Despite Russian threats, R&D continued, with the stockpiling of modules for the construction of larger, more advanced bombs. This would allow the Nazis to rapidly assemble bombs to retaliate vs the US-- not, as you say, "from theory & a few tests", but from a 3-year R&D project based on at least 2 different designs which had been operationally used, developing a 3d design which had been fully tested & stockpiled but not yet used operationally.
To deal with your other objections, in contrast to the 50kg devices proposed in my original post, let's double the size, increase the number of bombs per aircraft from 4 to 8, & let's decrease the blast radius per bomb from 1.6km (which seemed a little high to me even when I wrote it) to 200M. By dropping multiple bombs on each city we gain "near-simultaneous ripples that reinforce each other's blast waves", increasing the effect to a radius of about 250-300M per bomb.
As to your point about the Russian FOAB being too large for a modern bomber to employ, I'm not using the FOAB. What I'm using are advanced Nazi FAEs that employ liquid oxygen technology in combination with a wax catalyst whose properties have since been lost.
Regarding the Ju-290, the A-7/A-8/A-9 models had a published combat range of 3843 miles (& the three A-9s had even greater range than that) with a payload of 3000kg of bombs, & 17 of them were built. That's enough range to reach the E Coast (3619 miles) without being stripped down, & plenty of bomb capacity, when all we need is about 800kg. All Ju-290 A-7s/A-8s/A-9s had either bomb bay doors or a drop-ramp that could be used for a similar purpose. (If you want a shorter flight distance, then fly first to Brest, refuel, & then to the E Coast. And BTW, I'm using it as a 1-way weapon, not even trying to fly it all the way back to Europe.)
Let me repeat for the purposes of clarity-- I know that I'm reaching a bit here. Not in my original post concerning the merits of Moscow vs Kiev, but in this offshoot concerning a Nazi response to nuclear attack. What I'm looking for isn't "truth", whatever that is-- but plausibility. In other words, is it conceivable that the Nazis invented a primitive FAE which could have been used to counter a US nuclear attack in roughly the manner I've described?
 
I too have read about German fuel air explosives (the Russians seemed to have been of the opinion they where fueled by coal dust) and the Russians made the explicit threat that if such weapons where used they would retaliate with WMD's

Now German stocks where superior to Russian stocks, however once the war "goes chemical" the western allies would just anthrax the hell out of Germany and exterminate their entire culture (Churchill was constantly chomping at the bit to do this and end the war immediately, this would be just the excuse he needed)
 
XCHEN08
I have evidently overestimated the effects of an FAE of the indicated size. However, your estimate that "near-total destruction within 1.5km represents a 150kt nuke" is also 'way off the mark. Hiroshima was a 12.5kt device with near-total destruction extending to 1.6km from the blast center. Also, your response completely discounts the (admittedly inconclusive) evidence of the use of unconventional explosives of unusual destructive power at Kursk, & possibly at Sevastopol. It is a long-recognized historical fact that the Russians did threaten to retaliate with chemical weapons if the Germans ever repeated whatever it was they did at Sevastopol.

I am taking near total destruction to mean 20 psi overpressure, not hyperbolic generalities. The Hiroshima bomb could achieve 4-5 psi out to 1.6 km, which would collapse most structures, but would not kill someone standing in the open (and not cooked by the radiation pulse of course), people in basements, etc.

And I'm discounting claims of yields greatly beyond what modern FAEs are capable of because those claims are ridiculous. It's just standard Nazi magitech, no different from Himmler summoning the Norse Gods or flying saucers going to the moon base. Without some damn hard evidence, nobody is going to accept the Nazis had some principle that nobody has replicated since, and if there were such evidence, someone would have used that principle for making bombs instead of resorting to MOABs, FOABs, etc.

I don't expect your concurrence, but my theory is that small, primitive Nazi FAEs were used at Kursk, & possibly at Sevastopol. Despite Russian threats, R&D continued, with the stockpiling of modules for the construction of larger, more advanced bombs. This would allow the Nazis to rapidly assemble bombs to retaliate vs the US-- not, as you say, "from theory & a few tests", but from a 3-year R&D project based on at least 2 different designs which had been operationally used, developing a 3d design which had been fully tested & stockpiled but not yet used operationally.
To deal with your other objections, in contrast to the 50kg devices proposed in my original post, let's double the size, increase the number of bombs per aircraft from 4 to 8, & let's decrease the blast radius per bomb from 1.6km (which seemed a little high to me even when I wrote it) to 200M. By dropping multiple bombs on each city we gain "near-simultaneous ripples that reinforce each other's blast waves", increasing the effect to a radius of about 250-300M per bomb.
As to your point about the Russian FOAB being too large for a modern bomber to employ, I'm not using the FOAB. What I'm using are advanced Nazi FAEs that employ liquid oxygen technology in combination with a wax catalyst whose properties have since been lost.


Well, there's the problem. I can accept small, primitive FAEs. I cannot accept FAEs that approach the yield of the FOAB for mass, much less greatly superior yields making use of some principle that "has since been lost." Which means the very upper end blast radius for a 7000 kg bomb is ~300m. Of course, that's with vastly superior technology to what the Nazis could possibly have had, the blast radius is likely subject to some standard Russian exaggeration, and without the dead weight of radioactives.
 

Graehame

Banned
XCHEN08
"I am taking near total destruction to mean 20 psi overpressure..."
From the website http://www.atomicarchive.com/Effects/effects4.shtml :
20 psi Heavily built concrete buildings are severely damaged or demolished. (Approx. wind speed = 502 mph.)
10 psi Reinforced concrete buildings are severely damaged or demolished. Most people are killed. (Approx. wind speed = 294 mph.)
5 psi Most buildings collapse. Injuries are universal, fatalities are widespread. (Approx. wind speed = 163 mph.)
3 psi Residential structures collapse. Serious injuries are common, fatalities may occur.
1 psi Window glass shatters. Light injuries from fragments occur.
"The Hiroshima bomb could achieve 4-5 psi out to 1.6 km, which would collapse most structures, but would not kill someone standing in the open..."
According to the above, an overpressure of 4-5psi would indeed kill many people standing in the open, who would probably die from thermal effects beforehand. Also, the level of destruction to which I alluded, if we were talking about nuclear weapons, would correspond more closely to an overpressure of about 7.5psi than 20. Of course, we weren't talking about nukes-- but to the effects of a series of FAEs, which are primarily related to flame, intense heat, & sucking the air out of buildings & shelters-- in other words, a firestorm. I suspect that 16 even primitive FAEs dropped on NYC within 15-20 minutes would accomplish this.
"...not hyperbolic generalities."
Come on, xchen, let's try to be civil here. My training in the effects of nuclear weapons was 30+ years ago, & I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here that you might be a little more current than I am.
"Without some damn hard evidence, nobody is going to accept the Nazis had some principle that nobody has replicated since..."
I respect your position on this point. Standard scientific skepticism-- but new discoveries are not made by skepticism, but by stating & then testing unproven hypotheses. So let me ask you this... Would you concede that the Nazis, who invented the guided missile, jet aircraft, the Walther turbine, & the Type-XXI U-boat, might have had 1 advanced technology-- just 1-- that got lost in the shuffle, the principles of which are no longer generally understood?
 
Would you concede that the Nazis, who invented the guided missile, jet aircraft, the Walther turbine, & the Type-XXI U-boat, might have had 1 advanced technology-- just 1-- that got lost in the shuffle, the principles of which are no longer generally understood?


No. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. You have no proof whatsoever, unless accounts on the level of Bigfoot sightings somehow count as "proof".

Everyone of those "secret" technologies you mention were either known and duplicated by the Allies during the war or duplicated and improved by the Allies after the war. With efforts like Operation Paperclip being conducted by the US, UK, USSR, and France the idea that some Nazi technological "secret" and/or the technicians involved with it got "lost" in the aftermath of WW2 is nonsense.

The various tinfoil wearing loonies you quote claim the USSR not only saw and suffered from the effects of these weapons but threatened chemical retaliation if Germany used the weapons again.
After all, with only the reports of spies in hand, the USSR had begun a massive effort to build atomic weapons before the Trinity test, so a FAE crash program would be logical. So, assuming for a moment that idiotic claims regarding the weapon and it's use are actually true, why didn't the USSR undertake substantial efforts during and after the war period to recover and duplicate the German research which made the weapons possible? The answer is, of course, that the weapon never existed.

Furthermore, with a Cold War lasting nearly 50 years and the research efforts which took place during that period, so why weren't these alleged weapons "rediscovered"? The answer, again of course, is that the weapons never really existed in the first place.

The coal dust, proto-FAE, "freeze bomb" belongs in the same category as the Nazi nuclear test and the August 1945 Japanese atomic test in Korea and that category is populated with the ideas that sell "Secret History" books to credulous readers and suggest "documentaries" to the shameless hacks running the "Hitler" Channel.

This thread and the claims you've made in it have been spiraling downward from the first. Your ideas have been repeatedly refuted and you've responded by making more and more desperate suggestions. This last round of nonsense regarding secret Nazi FAEs and trans-Atlantic suicide missions is sadly indicative of the thread as a whole.

A simple search through the archives has shown me, as it would have shown you if you'd even bothered, that this topic is one that has been repeatedly discussed. Many of the members responding to your posts have been examining this problem for years. You've suggested nothing that is new, nothing that hasn't already been broached, examined, and found lacking several times over. Even your desperate attempt to rope in secret weapons has been done before, done before and repeatedly failed.

It's time to acknowledge that failure and move on to something else.
 
I suspect that 16 even primitive FAEs dropped on NYC within 15-20 minutes would accomplish this.

Sure, 16 weapons approximating the yield of the FOAB. 16 900 kg BLU-96 s certainly won't do the trick, though it'll certainly kill a lot of people if during the middle of the work day, probably wipe out a few blocks
And the Germans most certainly will not have weapons anywhere near as efficient as modern FAEs with their carefully designed dispersal patterns and computer modeled multiple electrical ignition.

I respect your position on this point. Standard scientific skepticism-- but new discoveries are not made by skepticism, but by stating & then testing unproven hypotheses. So let me ask you this... Would you concede that the Nazis, who invented the guided missile, jet aircraft, the Walther turbine, & the Type-XXI U-boat, might have had 1 advanced technology-- just 1-- that got lost in the shuffle, the principles of which are no longer generally understood?

Quite simply no. Of all your listed examples, only 1, high speed jet aircraft aerodynamics, was not a straight forward application of existing principles and technology well known to the Allies (and for the most part, developed as well) before and during the war. There is not a single aspect of any German wunderwaffen that was not replicated and improved within a decade of war's end. (or thoroughly studied and determined to be useless, often at great cost, like Walther boats) If there was any evidence at all of a new principle discovered by the Germans, even if the actual specifics were lost, either the U.S. or the Soviets would have replicated it in the decades since. It's too useful to leave ignored.

And once again, I need to stress that FAEs are not magic. They work by easily modeled principles. The equation D = 0.15 x (0.1 x mass x hc)1/3 gives the distance (m) out to 1 psi for a FAE (from fas.org, with hc being heat of combustion in J/kg). There is no magic with which it can be changed. If the Nazis are able to achieve higher yields than what modern FAEs with computer modelling are able to achieve, it would have to be that they were able to break chemistry by coming up with a fuel of vastly higher heat of combustion than anything modern chemists can think of. Which is why I describe this as similar to flying saucers. Just as I refuse to believe the Nazis were able to break physics since there are reports of flying saucers, I refuse to believe they were able to break chemistry with unobtanium fuel due to a few rumors of super powerful FAEs.
 
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Graehame

Banned
DON LARDO
I haven't been trying trying to "prove" anything. I've been looking for plausible-- not provable-- solutions, & soliciting input from people like xchen08, who are able to offer their views without being excessively condescending or offensive. The fact that you disagree with my proposals does not make me an idiot or you God's gift to the rest of us. My proposal that Moscow rather than Kiev should have been the decisive objective of Operation Barbarossa is grounded in sound military strategy & the majority opinion of Wehrmacht generals, as well as postwar Allied generals, & has not been "refuted" by anyone. My suggestion about Nazi FAEs, as I've been the first to admit, are considerably more speculative. So if you find this thread-- which at 8 pages & counting has outlasted 90% of the threads on this site-- to be so nonsensical, then I suggest that you don't read it.
XCHEN08
Point taken.
 
A scientifically impossible series of FAE weapons which never existed and an equally imaginary delivery system capable of crossing the Atlantic which again no one knows exists.

Between that and the demand that Don Lardo pointing out these errors should instead not read the thread, let alone challenge mistakes, Graehame's credibility just tanked.

And then there was the 'forgotten' coal to oil process which was used so widely by South Africa fifty years back and, far from being forgotten, had been heard of even by myself back in the 1970s.


To be blunt, it is not remotely plausible that a derivative of napalm on several city blocks, at best, could be a counter to the atomic bomb.
 

Graehame

Banned
GRIMM REAPER
It isn't the fact that he disagreed with me, it was the condescending & insulting way in which he expressed himself.
For the record, at the moment out of the 120 threads on the first 4 pages of this site, this thread has 5764 views. There are only 19 threads out of those 120 with more.
This thread also has 147 replies. Out of those same 120 threads, only 17 have more. The 1 thread started by Don Lardo isn't 1 of them. And this thread has been active for only a little over 3 weeks.
And for the record, how can you call the Ju-290 a delivery system that no one has ever heard of? It first flew on 16 July 1942, took part in the Stalingrad airlift, & was an operational aircraft with the Luftwaffe for 2 & a half years.
 
You were the one who had it used as a squadron level delivery system against the US with the US somehow completely unaware that it existed, let alone having any kind of defense planned or deployed.
 
Graehame, YOU had the aircraft used against the US and the US unaware it existed or there would have been some defenses, especially given the scenario has the US first using atomic weapons on Germany, a situation where either Germany must strike back or surrenders.
 
If we get into PODs, we can get someone in the Luftwaffe consider mid air refueling - which was theorized and possible in those days - as a cheaper way to get an Amerika Bomber. And such a bomber, if approaching below radar might had reached NY. Or then again, it might have been spotted by the old Mark I eyeball and shot down. Such is war, no plan is guaranteed.

However, that doesn't mean a Ju290 or any other aircraft could carry a weapon so destructive, except maybe gas, to counter an atomic bomb. And if the Germans use gas against American cities, they stop existing.
 
I've been thinking this scenario through, and I think there are some points which haven't been brought up regarding the original concept of this thread.

Lets assume Germany doesn't redeploy to help AGS take Kiev, and instead goes for Moscow, and Stalin decides to attack their flank. While such an attack could be fairly successful, it would also strip Kiev of the forces protecting it. It would also take time and space to assemble and reposition their forces. That should let AGS advance and take the city. Meanwhile, Russia now has 400,000 men in an exposed position, with AGS on their tail. They are the only thing standing between AGS and Stalingrad/Caucasas. Hobsen's choice for Stalin.
 
"...you seem to forget just how dire conditions were in Nazi POW camps...Slavic prisoners were literally starved to death..."
Where is your documentation of this alleged "fact"?
"...all Russians knew by 1941 the Nazi’s viewed them as helots for the 'Master Race' at best."
Vlasov addressed & rebutted this point to an audience of Russian POWs in 1943! He recruited his 2 Russian divisions from POWs who-- according to you-- 'knew' about the Nazi subhuman helot policy-- in 1944! While I agree with the truth of what you say-- the Nazis did indeed view Easterners in that way; & while I agree that by 1943-- not 1941-- they'd begun to suspect this, they did not 'know' it & few of them could believe it.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007183
There's a good link about Nazi mis-treatment of Soviet POWs.
IIRC there was one incident where a group of several hundred thousand were just left on a plain surrounded by barbed wire and guards and allowed to starve.

In 1941, Soviet citizens in the unconquered areas didn't have first-hand accounts of any of this at all. They were just fed propaganda that happened to true.
 

Graehame

Banned
ADAM
"30+ years ago? And you helped planned Desert Storm? This just sounds so familiar..."
I received my training in the effects of nuclear weapons at the Artillery Officer's Advanced Course in 1980 (& the Basic Course in '78). That's 30+ years ago. And planning to invade the PG region didn't just begin yesterday. I was involved in contingency planning-- selecting landing sites & planning logistics-- in the early 1980s.
Sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you, I was out of town. But to answer your question, Adam, yes. I was & I did.
 

Graehame

Banned
GRIMM REAPER
"You were the one who had it used as a squadron level delivery system against the US with the US somehow completely unaware that it existed..."
The Ju-290 was designed & developed as a transport with a secondary bombing capability. The US was aware of its existence as a transport, but not as a bomber.
"...let alone having any kind of defense planned or deployed."
It was a well-known "fact" to the defense planners of the time, just as it apparently is to you, that Germany had no long-range bombers capable of reaching targets in the US, so such defenses as existed were ill-prepared. The best radar operators, for example, served on capital ships, for example, or at forward-deployed bases-- not in New York. The best pilots flew with the 8th AF in Britain, or they flew B-36s against Japan-- not routine patrols of the Eastern Seaboard. So yeah, there were defenses, but they were more geared to spotting U-boats than 4-engine trans-Atlantic bombers.
 
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