Nazi Germany wastes resources on Wunderwaffe
- Thread starter Bountifulauto82
- Start date
Effort put into most of the wonder weapons would have come directly at a equal cost to the more practical, and often very effective, weapons in use. The V3 is a perfect example, followed by the V2.
The V3 was one of those really great idea that show up after the third beer with your coworkers and is sketched out on a napkin by the time the rounds of shots and second plate of nachos get ordered. The concept is brilliant, could have beeen if not decisive, at least pivotal as late as WW I, but reality is always there to spoil all the fun. By the start of WW II aircraft had the range and bomb load to make the effort impractical, by 1942, when the Reich got the bug in their ear about the system very heavy bombing, by large numbers of aircraft, was easily assembled to bomb construction sites that looked "suspicious". By the hoped for completion date in spring of 1944 the WAllies could throw THREE THOUSAND bombers, once medium and attack bombers were included, at a site five kilometers from the English Channel and supplement that with at least as many fighter bombers Even if the bombs can't penetrate the bunkers (which wasn't really the case, just needed a bigger bomb the entire transport network need to bring in food and munitions to the artillery personnel IS quite vulnerable. You can also send in heavy warships to pound the site with 14", 15", and 16" AP shells day after day. Might take 20 hits from a 2,700 pound super-heavy AP to chip through the reinforced concrete, but the site isn't going to move and battleship guns are almost shockingly accurate even at 22,000 meters.
The V-2 cost ~$2.9B (1945 USD) , or 50% more than Manhattan and was stunning technical achievement. It was also a $3 billion dollar cost and resource sink that managed add about 40 miles in range to that of the the vastly cheaper V1 (RM 5,000/$1,200 vs. RM 100,000/$24,000). Even more than the pure economics was the amount of raw effort in terms of labor, raw materials, and transport sunk into the effort.
Same goes for most of the other wonder weapons, Except the "wonder" doesn't mean wonderful, it means "wonder how drunk they were when they came up with this one".
Overall they are terrific example of what can happen when your leadership had a terminal case of "Ooo shiny!"
Just a nitpick, but I believe that the Ratte was to have had an electric transmission.
Would the amount of waste make the allies view these projects as a waste of time after the war?
We do now, so I'd say yes.
The V-1 was actually a very good idea and fairly well executed. Cheap, fairly easy to built from non strategic materials and versatile in that you could launch them from fixed, mobile and air platforms.
V-2 (A-4) was a spectacular bit of science, changed the world, but did it in a world where the Reich had ceased to exist more than a decade earlier.
Rest of the were a waste of materials.
Why did the Reich bother to build the V2 if the V1 was already a good weapon?
Were there any late war German wonderwaffen that weren’t built or were built in very small numbers that were actually feasible designs if they had the necessary time and resources?
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Because the V-2 more or less defined "Oooo SHINY!" On paper it is a spectacular weapon, utterly unstoppable, the problem of course is that no country (outside of the U.S. which was able to literally build anything it could conceptualize without going broke, and in useful quantities SEE: B-29 and Manhattan) could build enough to matter. A V-1 cost 1/20th of a V-2 and actually did vastly more damage by tonnage delivered than the V-2.
As far as the other weapon systems the late U-boat designs, both the streamlined snorkel designs and the AIP propulsion were very promising and were eagerly copied and perfected by the "Big Three" after the war. The Wasserfall SAM was interesting as a concept, but the lack of a radar guidance system rather crippled it and the high cost (it was effectively a 1/4 scale V-2 with movable fins and TV camera) made it impractical in the extreme.
V2 did scare the British to the point they considered it necessary to go after the test facility on the Baltic in mid-1943. (Operation Crossbow I think?)
I agree with the V-2 program was a waste, but the V-1 was cost effective, and well worth the cost. Respectfully I have to disagree on the jet program. The Me-262, and the HE-162 were highly effective, and pointed to the future. True they weren't without cost, but they could have been game changers. Their development programs were cut short, and a lack of strategic materials dogged them throughout the war. The general collapse of the German economy, and the suppression of the Luftwaffe prevented them from changing the course of the war. They just got into service too late to make a real difference. Another couple thousand Bf-109's, or FW-190's wouldn't have made any difference.
So, instead of "brrrt clank *spilt oil smell" we'd get "zzzzzzzt pop *burn smell*"
I seem to recall reading a similar one at some point about the Maus, but can't for the life of me remember where.
The OP does not work, honestly. Germany did waste money on wonder weapons. The question is how much more money=OP. If they did not spend a single penny on anything other than wonder weapons, they would lose the war in a few weeks. If they spent no money on wonder weapons, the war might last a few more months.
thaddeus
Donor
was trying to make the point they could not field 1,000's of jet aircraft. that post-war studies did show the value of recon jets, thus it would have been more useful to build a small force of Arado AR-234 (or similar) with their limited resources.
there were plans to build V-1s with small jet engines (in addition to pulse jet V-1s), that actually might have been a sensible platform for them to develop a manned aircraft from? (during wartime), a replacement if you will for the Stuka? (they were trying to develop a pulse jet for that purpose but it was beyond the capabilities of that type of engine)
I've seen it but I think their definition of "Wunderwaffe" is too broad. The carriers were perfectly reasonable ships (even if they had design problems) who fell victim of nazi interfighting, shortages of vision and shortage of pre-war industrial capability. The U-boats were good ideas, who suffered from being started too late and of being trulu revolutionary... just not the rocket & cruiser ones, please! And the flakpanzer was just the normal evolution of that vehicle...
I would like to add a quick 'thought exercise'
A lot of the "Wunderwaffe" didn't just suddenly turn up in 1944 - all those projects had their genesis either very early in the war if not before it started.
I mean Britain and the USA both built super heavy tanks (TOG1/TOG2/Tortoise and T28/T95) and the Russians and French had been planning them as well but in both cases stopped production and development due to invasion.
The Amerika Bomber makes a lot of sense - US production was unassailable and the Battle of the Atlantic was the most important battle of the war - such an aircraft might have played a role in both.
After all the B29 was a similar project for the USA (and was more costly in terms of manpower and hard $ than the Manhattan project) and the Convair B36.
Had Germany not been badly losing by 1944 / 45 these weapon systems would not be seen historically so much as "Wunderwaffe" but normal progression - that they were losing allows us to shake our heads and question why they persisted.
But this ignores the fact that projects such as these take on a Kinetic energy (for want of a better term) of their own as the development of these projects grows and gathers strength - like all such projects they take on a life of there own and when you consider the twin massive defeats of Normandy and Bagration in August 44 are only 8 months from the total defeat of Germany - its not like the resources, manpower and treasure spent on those projects can suddenly be turned into extra STG44s, Panther tanks and ME 262s at the drop of a hat.
What did not help these projects in Nazi Germany was the lack of any centralised control unlike those displayed by the UK and USA and by necessity the USSR
What very probably happened was that resources were gradually shifted or were no longer available and these projects ground to a halt during the last 8 months of the war and quite frankly it didn't really matter what they did, developed or built in those last months - as it would have had very little impact on the subsequent course of the war.
We’ve had discussions before about the V-1 being introduced early in the war, as the science/technology needed to build them wasn’t significant. Here‘s one I started - https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-german-v-1-ready-in-1940.403890/
What I think is also intriguing is what if the V-2 wasn’t built, or even designed, at all? How would this have impacted future rocket development and the “space race”? How much of US, Russian, (and British) rocket development had origins in the V-2?
ric350
What I think is also intriguing is what if the V-2 wasn’t built, or even designed, at all? How would this have impacted future rocket development and the “space race”? How much of US, Russian, (and British) rocket development had origins in the V-2?
ric350