What bugs me about the Paris Gun is that it had excellent potential for being at least somewhat useful instead of a pointless terror weapon and contemporary German commanders recognized this: change the targets to the British lines of supply. And then they ignored it.
Most wasteful weapons project after 1900
- Thread starter BlairWitch749
- Start date
Davy Crockett: a recoilless rifle at battalion level that fires a .25 KT nuclear warhead-and a "dirty" nuke at that. Even if you're out of the blast radius, you get dusted by fallout from your own weapon!
BlairWitch749
Banned
The Jagdtiger had a harder hitting gun, thicker armor, weighed about the same and was actually longer ranged; plus it was a more compact vehicle, being shorter, less in length and width than the conqueror tank
Gold Medal: V2 project most definitely. How much other weapons could have been made for the cost of a single missile fired towards England, never to be seen again.
Silver Medal: Alfa class Soviet submarine. An accident prone boat with redlined reactor for most of the time. Extremely fast, but also extremely noisy. And Interceptor submarine? Really, comrade Gorshkov?
Bronze Medal: Basically the entire indigenous Yugoslav airplane program during the Cold war years. All they managed to put in the air was junk by any standard, yet they persisted on it.
Silver Medal: Alfa class Soviet submarine. An accident prone boat with redlined reactor for most of the time. Extremely fast, but also extremely noisy. And Interceptor submarine? Really, comrade Gorshkov?
Bronze Medal: Basically the entire indigenous Yugoslav airplane program during the Cold war years. All they managed to put in the air was junk by any standard, yet they persisted on it.
MarshalBraginsky
Banned
The V2 project was the basis for the post-war Space Program for the US and the USSR, even if it was a wasted effort.
In WW2 terms was it needed though? What could a Jagdtiger do that a Jagdpanther couldn't?
Yes the Tiger is a better tank in terms of combat power. Now 90-95% of the time did you need that extra combat power? Is it really necessary to blow the turret right off a T-35/85 or a Sherman Firefly?
Michael
If I may add to this discussion...
... I would certainly put the Hochseeflotte in there for a few reasons. The ruinous cost, the divertion of resources from the army, and the general negative effect on Germany's relations with Britain.
I would also like to nominate the entire Bomber B programme. Millions of Reichmarks, millions of man hours to absolutely no end whatsoever. The only practical use they got out of the project was using one of the prototype Fw191s as a decoy to distract Allied fighter bombers from useful targets.
... I would certainly put the Hochseeflotte in there for a few reasons. The ruinous cost, the divertion of resources from the army, and the general negative effect on Germany's relations with Britain.
I would also like to nominate the entire Bomber B programme. Millions of Reichmarks, millions of man hours to absolutely no end whatsoever. The only practical use they got out of the project was using one of the prototype Fw191s as a decoy to distract Allied fighter bombers from useful targets.
BlairWitch749
Banned
I Jagdtiger could take close range direct hits from IS-2 and IS-3 tanks and keep shooting them up; it could also knock out enemy tanks from 4km (documented kills of shermans from 4km in the fighting for the ruhr pocket) whereas the jagdpanther was limited to kills from 2km
The assumption is that the Germans would have spent more on the army. I don't think they would. They would have had less debt. Also its not like the Germans don't build a navy all together, as a great power they would have to at least match the Russia or French Fleets. The fights over the 1912 and 1913 army bills showed the limits of the expansion that could be done I think. The problem was social / political and not budget exactly.
Michael
I repeat my question. Do the Germans really need a killer tank that do all of that? So what if the jadgpanther could ONLY kill a shermen from 2,000 meters. Again a tank / tank destroyer that can one shot kill the enemy 90 / 95% of the time is more than enough. The Germans desperate desire to gold plate everything and make super solution was a big part of their problem in general. Having twice or more of Panthers which burned less gas, were hugely less of a logistical pain to operation, etc sounds like a bargain to me.
Michael
Conqueror
The 120mm and the 128mm are close, but the 120 had better ammo, and a hit by a HESH round would cause major internal damage on a jagdtiger. The Conqueror could move faster than a centurion on bad roads and had excellent cross-country capability. And it had a very advanced commanders station and hunter killer capability. As a long range IS3 killer it was better than the jagdtiger, even if not superior on all data figures. I actually believe the jagdpanher was a better tankkiller than it,s bigger cousin.
But I would never put the tiger family on the wasteful lot. They paid their price in destroyed enemies. Given better odds, and air cover, they would have done even better.
The 120mm and the 128mm are close, but the 120 had better ammo, and a hit by a HESH round would cause major internal damage on a jagdtiger. The Conqueror could move faster than a centurion on bad roads and had excellent cross-country capability. And it had a very advanced commanders station and hunter killer capability. As a long range IS3 killer it was better than the jagdtiger, even if not superior on all data figures. I actually believe the jagdpanher was a better tankkiller than it,s bigger cousin.
But I would never put the tiger family on the wasteful lot. They paid their price in destroyed enemies. Given better odds, and air cover, they would have done even better.
BlairWitch749
Banned
I don't disagree with you that the idea of heavier independent tanks vis a vis main battle tanks was inferior; but keep in mind the concept of main battle tanks wasn't really established till the 50's and in the west not really accomplished till the 60's and later
However, EVERYONE, the French, the Americans, the Russians and the British all thought the concept of making robust heavy vehicles for independent operation was a good idea; so the vehicles have to be looked at in context
The panther in german doctrine was a medium tank
The tiger in german doctrine was a heavy tank
The argument that heavy tanks should have been abandoned in favor of more mediums hits all the major powers as having made that mistake; but in the context of everyone having and wanting heavy tanks, the tiger could hardly be considered wasteful, given that it was generally superior to it's competitors in class
We should also think about the environments in which the vehicle will be used. In Europe, engagement ranges of 4km are going to be vanishingly scarce. Even 2km is probably more than the average distance the first rounds will be fired at. So having a weapon that can get kills at 4km might be nice, but most of the time will be irrelevant. If it has twice the range but you can only have half as many of them, then settling for a 2km range is probably a better bet.
BlairWitch749
Banned
The 120 had ammo developed a decade later; if you put similarly ballistically advanced rounds into the 128 it would have still been a superior weapon... the conqueror and jagdtiger's top speed where close to the same and the jagdtiger had more advanced night sighting than the conqueror as strange as that sounds
The jagdpanther and jagdtiger's gun's had similar penetration capabilities BUT the tiger's gun was much longer ranged, and the weight of it's shot was more capable of putting tanks in the total loss column as opposed to knocked out but possibly repairable column... shermans that got hit by the 128 are said to have been blown to pieces
Deleted member 1487
I really can't agree with this. The shell had something like 12kg of explosives! The propellant was most of the shell, so it would have had at best a very limited effect hitting targets like Calais or Dunkirk.
Snake Featherston
Banned
Not exactly, Speer canceled it so it was never built. Had he not done so the Germans would literally have tried to build this penis-compensation device:
http://www.achtungpanzer.com/p-10001500-pzkpfw-ixx.htm
Very possible, since it put the country deep in debt in OTL. However, if the Germans hadn't invested in the fleet, the actual post 1914 timeline could be very different. During the huge battles of 1916/17 they would have had a much larger pool of manpower to draw on, as well as (at least some of) the heavy industry that was used OTL to support the fleet.
No one has mentioned the Sanger Amerika Bomber yet. I mean, for the sheer comedy of the thing, the "You know we don't have the tech to do this, right?" aspect of it all, it needs to be mentioned. Development was cut short by the Russian invasion; even Goering sobered up long enough to see it needed to be cancelled.
http://www.luft46.com/misc/sanger.html
http://www.luft46.com/misc/sanger.html
Yeah, if I remember correctly the German Army really did not want an influx of middle class officers that would have been required for any further expansion of the army pre-war.