No/Reduced wonder weapons(Nazi Germany)during WW2

I was thinking that some weapons of the Wunderwaffe could be scrapped and their resources put in the tanks/more resources for infantry,because they would't change the tide of war
Weapons like the Graf Zeppelin,H class battleships,the Maus,the P.1000 and P.1500,the Amerika Bomber,Schwerer Gustav,the V1 etc.were near useless and would only serve to be big targets,instead of true war tide changers like the V2,the Ar 234,the Ta 152 or the Me 262
What do you guys think that would happen had Hitler ordered the scrap of some useless projects to use their resources in more important things?
 
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If the Wunderwaffen aren't being funded and instead the money goes to more practical weapons then the war could last longer.
Strategically the rockets didn't do much, they were mostly employed to break enemy morale.
 
A boost to the overall Axis war effort. V2 was the specially expensive piece of gear, unlike the dirt cheap V1. Some of the weapons listed could be hardly classified as Wudrewaffen, like the GZ carrier.
The Ta-152 will not fly (pun intended) until the 2-stage supercharged Jumo 213E or DB 603L is around - cancelling the Jumo 222 might improve the Jumo 213 timing. Funnily enough, the Jumo 213A was 1st installed on the Ju-188 instead aboard the Fw 190 (= self-inflicted wound), while the DB-603A ended up on the indifferent Me 410 (= another self-inflicted wound) - end result being the wholesale slaughter of the Fw 190 and Me 410 units in 1944 by Mustangs and Thunderbolts.
Another thing that dawned too late on the RLM/LW brass was the 1-engined jet fighter, a spiritual and real succesor of the Bf 109.
 
there is pretty good article on LW http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj03/win03/muller.html

illustrates how useful V-1 was, since it COULD be shot down the Allies devoted a lot of resources to try and do so. in your earlier thread my post was to develop an enhanced flak network, V-1 launch sites provide a target.

that same article points out the Arado AR-234 was useful for recon, in relatively small numbers, probably a better plan than fleet of jet fighters. my scenario is for them to carry the unpowered BV-246 glide bomb (they were trying to develop radar-seeking guidance) or butterfly bomb (they caused a lot of disruption to collect the small bomblets)
 
Another thing that dawned too late on the RLM/LW brass was the 1-engined jet fighter, a spiritual and real succesor of the Bf 109.

my out of left field scenario is to develop HS-132 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henschel_Hs_132 not to try and wrest air superiority from Allies on Western Front but against Soviets.

of course low tech solutions work too and they could have kept building HS-123 biplane, very useful in primitive conditions, until R4M rockets available. a biplane firing rockets at tanks!
 

Deleted member 94680

Maybe if they'd stopped at the V-1 and used it as a battlefield weapon instead of a terror weapon against cities it might have had a better effect?

Other than that, they were all a waste of resources and R&D in the long run.
 

Deleted member 1487

I was thinking that some weapons of the Wunderwaffe could be scrapped and their resources put in the tanks/more resources for infantry,because they would't change the tide of war
Weapons like the Graf Zeppelin,H class battleships,the Maus,the P.1000 and P.1500,the Amerika Bomber,Schwerer Gustav,the V1 etc.were near useless and would only serve to be big targets,instead of true war tide changers like the V2,the Ar 234,the Ta 152 or the Me 262
What do you guys think that would happen had Hitler ordered the scrap of some useless projects to use their resources in more important things?
The V-1 was one of the most cost-effective weapons they produced. The resources the Wallies put into defending against were many times more than what the Germans spent developing, producing, and deploying them. Plus it was a tiny fraction of the cost of the V-2. Even the US had a study commissioned about the effectiveness of the weapon and determined it was as damaging as the 1940-41 Blitz at a fraction of the cost. That's why they copied it and developed a number of post-war developments of it, improving on the core concept. The Soviets did the same.

A boost to the overall Axis war effort. V2 was the specially expensive piece of gear, unlike the dirt cheap V1. Some of the weapons listed could be hardly classified as Wudrewaffen, like the GZ carrier.
The Ta-152 will not fly (pun intended) until the 2-stage supercharged Jumo 213E or DB 603L is around - cancelling the Jumo 222 might improve the Jumo 213 timing. Funnily enough, the Jumo 213A was 1st installed on the Ju-188 instead aboard the Fw 190 (= self-inflicted wound), while the DB-603A ended up on the indifferent Me 410 (= another self-inflicted wound) - end result being the wholesale slaughter of the Fw 190 and Me 410 units in 1944 by Mustangs and Thunderbolts.
Another thing that dawned too late on the RLM/LW brass was the 1-engined jet fighter, a spiritual and real succesor of the Bf 109.
Yeah no V-2 or V-3 allows for a lot more to be produced, the V-2 alone cost more than the Manhattan Project. I'd say if they had put all that effort into making Me-262s and single engine versions of the fighter instead of the V-2 and -3 they'd have had a lot more impact on the war. Hell, just plowing those resources into a solid-fuel Taifun would have yielded insanely better results.
 
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illustrates how useful V-1 was, since it COULD be shot down the Allies devoted a lot of resources to try and do so. ...

They also diverted a huge number of bomber sorties, Operation CROSSBOW, to attack the launch sites. The 9th AF greatly reduced the transportation bombing campaign over NW France in January-Februay 1944 to participate in CROSSBOW. How much that reduced damage to the German ability to supply and reinforce Normandy I can't say for certain. Some 9th AF leaders felt it was significant.
 
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A boost to the overall Axis war effort. V2 was the specially expensive piece of gear, unlike the dirt cheap V1. Some of the weapons listed could be hardly classified as Wudrewaffen, like the GZ carrier.
The Ta-152 will not fly (pun intended) until the 2-stage supercharged Jumo 213E or DB 603L is around - cancelling the Jumo 222 might improve the Jumo 213 timing. Funnily enough, the Jumo 213A was 1st installed on the Ju-188 instead aboard the Fw 190 (= self-inflicted wound), while the DB-603A ended up on the indifferent Me 410 (= another self-inflicted wound) - end result being the wholesale slaughter of the Fw 190 and Me 410 units in 1944 by Mustangs and Thunderbolts.
Another thing that dawned too late on the RLM/LW brass was the 1-engined jet fighter, a spiritual and real succesor of the Bf 109.


So how was this so called miracle supposed to happen? You cant just halt all warplane production and reroll the dice? There is a reason planes like HE-111, ME-110 & STUKA continued production to the end. First gen jet was always going to be twin engine due to the unreliability of the jet engines.
 
So how was this so called miracle supposed to happen? You cant just halt all warplane production and reroll the dice? There is a reason planes like HE-111, ME-110 & STUKA continued production to the end. First gen jet was always going to be twin engine due to the unreliability of the jet engines.

I'm not sure what's the fuss about rerolling the dice - after all, this is an alternate history web place. In other words, for a fiction, it is hardly a miracle to suggest an earlier installation of big V12 engines on the Fw 190 at least a year earlier than in OTL, since that was actually flown in 1943.
The 1st gen jet aircraft were 1-engined jobs.
 
The V1 was a serious nuisance, but too erratic to be a war-winner. Given the Allies' air-superiority, stripped-down chase-planes could intercept them, and prox-fused AAA culled many more...

V2 was not going to be cost-effective without CBW or nuclear warheads. The former didn't happen due the prospect of reprisals in kind against Berlin etc. The latter was improbable because they began late, after they'd managed to exile, alienate or imprison most of the scientists they needed. IIRC, too few 'senior' physicists stayed to be able to correct their comrades' theoretical errors. IIRC, building the V2 killed more 'slave labour' than the civilians it fell on...

I'll NOT venture into 'BELL' country because #1, given the multiple strata of 'urban legend' intercalated by oft-wild conspiracy theories, I do not know what it really was, and #2, I've a suspicion it might have been a clunky 'Calutron' aka Electro Magnetic Isotope Separation (EMIS.) "EMIS enrichment is an inefficient process: It would cost $81,000 to enrich a single pound of uranium". IIRC, the Manhattan Project used such for 'Proof of Principle', then went to 'gas diffusion', which was scalable...

IMHO, building a few 'super tanks' was a bad, bad move. Building too few was worse. Building otherwise nice tanks with overlapping road-wheels that made minor field repairs hideously difficult was seriously stupid.

IIRC, although some early jet-engines were *cheap* compared to piston engines, they had a very short life plus a distressing habit of shedding blades. The robust versions needed high-temperature alloys which were in very short supply...

Let's not go near the ME 163 with its infamous, pilot-eating T & S Stuff...

IMHO, the biggest blunder among the Vs was the V3. It didn't work, it swallowed vast resource, it diverted precious tooling and 'slave labour', and the site was unable to re-locate when the heavy bombers came hunting. Urban legend holds that, post-Normandy, when De Gaulle reckoned the captured site *could* be cleaned up and made to work, Churchill sent Sappers to collapse the hill...

Biggest blunder of all ? Surely, the Holocaust. Not only was it a ghastly, unspeakable waste of people but, IIRC, it was given rail and materiel priority over Eastern Front logistics...

Exterminate harmless civilians rather than supply an existential battle-front ??
Yeah, right...
 
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