https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter#Birth_of_an_industry
What if Nazi Germany has plenty of helicopters and sooner?
What if Nazi Germany has plenty of helicopters and sooner?
Nazi Germany has plenty of helicopters and sooner
- Thread starter Anthony Appleyard
- Start date
And the Nazis lose quicker due to wasting resources on easily shot down helicopters.
Deleted member 1487
Depends on what you mean by a lot. Having a decent model with early 1940s technology limits them to rescue missions in the English Channel and in rough terrain in mountains or hills. Ultimately no combat role, just some helpful rescues, which is why there wasn't many built in WW2.
BTW: helicopters are too slow, especially in WW2, to get taken out by aircraft; slower biplanes like the Hs123 were pretty much too hard to line up for a shot by a high performance fighter, so don't expect major kills to be happening from that.
BTW: helicopters are too slow, especially in WW2, to get taken out by aircraft; slower biplanes like the Hs123 were pretty much too hard to line up for a shot by a high performance fighter, so don't expect major kills to be happening from that.
If need be use slower fighters to do so while you use high performance fighters to protect the slower ones. It isn't like the allies didn't have a surplus of planes.
i think SPAAGs would be more useful in dealing with helicopters of this era.
Deleted member 1487
Yep. Helicopters are too weak to do any combat roles, just rescue operations, so you'd need pre-war gas turbine development to have combat type helicopters ready...then you have the problem of AAA.
Building a bunch of these,even with high performance turbine engines, runs into the same problems as building interceptors and bombers with high [erformance engines. First the Germans had limits on the petrol available that were far below requirements. shorting heliocopter pilots on training hours would occur just the same as shorting fighter or bomber pilots on training. Second the fuel limits means these can be used for all the missions demanded. last there was the problem of building high performance advanced designs with a few to many poorly motivated and semi skilled laborers. After that there is the raw material problem. As with jet engines high powered turbines work best with a lot of rare alloys. So, there will be more tough choices allocating tungsten, chrome, nickle, ect...
As many other people have said, helicopters at this time were not the beast that we know. If you've ever seen MASH, the rescue helicopters you see there are closer to what you'd expect. Lightly armed, not very fast (in terms of flying) and with limited carrying capacity. They are probably only going to be used for light reconnaissance, rescue and evacuation of wounded. It probably wont affect the outcome of the war, but the Germans may very well have a good way to evacuate wounded soldiers to aid stations faster, so more men may have very well survived the war and a reduction in casualties. Probably a better use of resources than some of Germany's other gimmicks, I mean at least helicopters are practical for something. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't attach screamers to them or something...
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thaddeus
Donor
could see how they would be useful on auxiliary cruisers and u-boats.
also if the R4M rockets came along a bit earlier, they might be light enough to be carried on board (?)
not sure what a Soviet tank crew would make of a prehistoric helicopter buzzing around followed by a (barely) armored Nashorn?
also if the R4M rockets came along a bit earlier, they might be light enough to be carried on board (?)
not sure what a Soviet tank crew would make of a prehistoric helicopter buzzing around followed by a (barely) armored Nashorn?
Just doing a little bit of reading, apparently the Nazi's commissioned for helicopters to be pressed into service in 1944 but the factory got bombed.
Are you kidding me?
If a typhoon can take out a tank on the ground, I think it would be able to take out a slighty faster moving helicopter.
Besides which (from first hand experience) a grunt on the ground would have a happy time against a (WWII) helicopter. If you don't believe me, ask the Taliban.
The Germans had helicopters from about 1936, their engines limited their usefulness. There's newsreel on 'youtube' that shows a twin rotor machine that was supposed to have been used on the eastern front mostly to rescue downed pilots.
Deleted member 1487
Except that fighter-bombers rarely hit their targets; US after action studies in France indicated that something like 1-2% of fighter-bomber kill claims could be substantiated. Even Stuka kills have been called into question, including Rudel's claims of 500+ Soviet AFVs and it was much slower and accurate.