Reich Ministry commissions surface to air missiles in 1941
- Thread starter Alan
- Start date
And, specifically wrt Schmetterling, there is the matter of fuel.
TEA and xylidine are bad enough, but RFNA is seriously nasty stuff.
In theory Schmetterling was to be launched from a rail system on an old 37mm AA gun mount. It weighed over 600kg and needed significant support to prep.
ETA.
Also it's MCLOS so it'd have been fairly useless against manoeuvring targets crossing it's path. I'd expect a proportion of the bombers would be repurposed as EW platforms and some of the escort fighters armed for SEAD with rockets, cannon at cetera.
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Garrison
Donor
This weapon is typical of German thinking, if the Allies can make 10 times as many tanks, aircraft, submarines etc. then Germany will make ones that are 10 times as good. Even if this thing could have been made to work after a fashion the Reich would have been better off spending the resources in trying to improve their conventional systems to get more performance out of them. The more time and effort the Nazis put into 'wonder weapons' like this the sooner they fall, so yeah by all means lets imagine they decide to build these en masse.
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OK, Schmetterling is MCLOS - not a guidance methodology that is well-regarded (cf. Blowpipe used by both sides in the Falklands) - so it doesn't work at night or in bad weather, and is vulnerable to having the command signal jammed as the Hs.293 was. Note this is not about jamming radar - this is about jamming the radio signal that transmits the operator's control inputs to the missile, so chaff is ineffective, and the ability of radar to "burn through" jamming is inapplicable. Fundamentally, if the missile receiver cannot distinguish between the jamming signal being broadcast by either the target aircraft or an EW escort and the legitimate control inputs from its base station, it will miss. That's why the Hs.293 was ineffective at D-Day - Allied shipping mounted jamming equipment tailored to the specific frequency the weapon used (and in some cases provided false control inputs to deliberately cause it to veer away from the target). Actually, producing Hs117 earlier may impact the availability of Hs293 and thus the recovery by the Allies of a dud weapon and a command unit in a crashed aircraft at Anzio, so it might take longer to get a copy to get the spoofing defences working.
Schmetterling is not a fire-and-forget weapon - it needs active control by an operator, so each site will be guiding a single weapon at a time, and with a slant range of 20 miles tops (less against higher-flying targets) that's going to be about a maximum of two or three launches against any formation that doesn't pass directly over the launching site. Forget any delusions of wiping out whole bomber formations. This is going to attrite them, and not necessarily any more successfully than the 190s did over Schweinfurt in 1943 OTL.
The alternate Wasserfall had a night capability, based on a secondary radar to track both target and missile, but that would have to be adopted early as well, and I'm not sure that it's so trivial to speed up radar advancement. That night capability is vulnerable to chaff, however. This isn't like Wurzburg where approximate information is good enough to guide nightfighters to within a few miles whereupon the radar operator in the aircraft can take control of the intercept; the return picture needs to be accurate for the MCLOS operator at the ground station to guide the missile into contact, and that's much less reliable.
Schmetterling is liquid-fuelled, and the hypergolic binary propellants are... enthusiastic. That suggests that SEAD by rocket-armed Jabos will be excitingly effective once they can be based within range of the SAM sites - both specific attacks by Typhoons and Jugs, and also having a few mediums (A-20/B-26/A-26) accompany the Fortress boxes to attack sites that reveal themselves by launching.
So we kind of have to ask, if the Luftwaffe deploys Schmetterling, what will the impact be? Will it be in Italy before Anzio? If it is, will it substantively affect the outcome (I'd suggest not)?
If it's deployed in Germany, then we escape the single-engine fighter-bomber attention before D-Day, probably, but then equally we are reducing the effective engagment opportunities. I suppose we'll end up learing the same lessons that OTL led to the rings around Hanoi and Haiphong.
But all that gets away from the point I really wanted to make, which is this - relying on Schmetterling in 1943 will probably not dissuade the 8th Air Force from day ops more than the organic fighter component of the Luftwaffe did OTL - unless the resources to build them come from the Heer. In which case they get overrun by the RKKA a year early anyway.
Schmetterling is not a fire-and-forget weapon - it needs active control by an operator, so each site will be guiding a single weapon at a time, and with a slant range of 20 miles tops (less against higher-flying targets) that's going to be about a maximum of two or three launches against any formation that doesn't pass directly over the launching site. Forget any delusions of wiping out whole bomber formations. This is going to attrite them, and not necessarily any more successfully than the 190s did over Schweinfurt in 1943 OTL.
The alternate Wasserfall had a night capability, based on a secondary radar to track both target and missile, but that would have to be adopted early as well, and I'm not sure that it's so trivial to speed up radar advancement. That night capability is vulnerable to chaff, however. This isn't like Wurzburg where approximate information is good enough to guide nightfighters to within a few miles whereupon the radar operator in the aircraft can take control of the intercept; the return picture needs to be accurate for the MCLOS operator at the ground station to guide the missile into contact, and that's much less reliable.
Schmetterling is liquid-fuelled, and the hypergolic binary propellants are... enthusiastic. That suggests that SEAD by rocket-armed Jabos will be excitingly effective once they can be based within range of the SAM sites - both specific attacks by Typhoons and Jugs, and also having a few mediums (A-20/B-26/A-26) accompany the Fortress boxes to attack sites that reveal themselves by launching.
So we kind of have to ask, if the Luftwaffe deploys Schmetterling, what will the impact be? Will it be in Italy before Anzio? If it is, will it substantively affect the outcome (I'd suggest not)?
If it's deployed in Germany, then we escape the single-engine fighter-bomber attention before D-Day, probably, but then equally we are reducing the effective engagment opportunities. I suppose we'll end up learing the same lessons that OTL led to the rings around Hanoi and Haiphong.
But all that gets away from the point I really wanted to make, which is this - relying on Schmetterling in 1943 will probably not dissuade the 8th Air Force from day ops more than the organic fighter component of the Luftwaffe did OTL - unless the resources to build them come from the Heer. In which case they get overrun by the RKKA a year early anyway.
The war would end sooner in an Allied victory
The Allies were ahead in radar and ECM
Surface-to-air missiles would have become a money sink with little return
Money and resources sunk into surface-to-air missiles would have been better spent elsewhere
The Allies were ahead in radar and ECM
Surface-to-air missiles would have become a money sink with little return
Money and resources sunk into surface-to-air missiles would have been better spent elsewhere
Actually it wouldn't.
It was, as was so very often the case, too immature a a technology, and far too poorly executed to make a difference. It was also exceptionally vulnerable to countermeasure and the Reich would have found it close to impossible to manufacture in the quantity required. Even, if by some collection of near miracles these issue were somhow addressed without it leading to a collapse of some other segment of the Wehrmacht's supply chain, the absolute best case is that the Luftwaffe nightfighter now get to deal with RAF Lancasers flying as singleton at night and Bomber Boxes of B-17 and B-24 showing up at AM Nautical Twilight before the visual guidance of the system is effective (likely a combination of EW and this sort of arrival profile).
Might it by the Reich a few months? Perhaps, more like some weeks. The Red Army was coming from the West, The Anglo-Americans were coming from the East. Germany was in the middle.
Game over.
The Youtube channel Military History Visualized did a fine video on the effectiveness of Germans surface to air missiless in WWII. The video's conclusion was that the missiles wouldn't be efficient.
Military Aviation History also has a good video on Germans SAMs.
Military Aviation History also has a good video on Germans SAMs.
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I suggest the resources could have come from the V2 rocket programme, which consumed vast resources and manpower. While the V2 programme did cause panic and demoralisation in London, it was on far too small a scale to affect the outcome of the war. For anybody who doubts the fact that Germany possessed thousands of world-class scientists I suggest the following article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip.
No one doubts that Germany had smart scientists and engineers - paperclip was more about ensuring that those few areas where Germany was ahead such as rockets (which was just about the only area where they were ahead) was kept from the Soviet Union
Its just that the Allies had more and better ones in the majority of disciplines
Germany drained their pool of brainy people in the 30s by militarising its education syllabus, de liberalising and de jewish-ising its higher education facilities - often gutting entire university depts in the process and by 1938 had effectively denied higher education from women and massively reducing the number of university level students.
Many of those people hounded from those universities and industry ended up in the West after fleeing Germany and more such from those nations subsequently invaded and occupied by the Nazis
Famously Einstein for example fled to England in the 30s and for a year he and his wife were hidden by a British Lord in a hunters cabin on the Norfolk broads guarded around the clock by armed games keepers before permission was gained for him to travel to the USA.
The Allies particulalrly the Western Allies had a far larger pool of 'boffins' than the Nazis and were ahead in most of the important disciplines
Lets take this very subject - anti aircraft defence
The Allies were by wars end deploying anti aircraft systems that were using Radar directed and computerised fire control aided AAA firing proximity fused ammunition
The Germans were not even close!
The Germans were ahead in avionics and aviation, submarine design, computing, jet engines, rocket technology, virtually every category of weapons technology including chemical warfare, radio navigation, radar countermeasures, and infrared night-fighting technology. The Germans had several proximity fuses, some of them more advanced than the Allied ones, but they remained as prototypes. The Allies were ahead in terms of nuclear weapons and radar, because of the cavity magnetron, and that was about it.
marathag
Banned
Unless you can mass produce them, you won't win a war with them.
The US always had the intention that the Atomic Bombs were to be mass produced.
The Japanese had the sense to quit before things got rolling out of Hanford and Oak Ridge
I disagree
In all those areas except rocket tech (the allies did not need it what with them having other methods of delivering HE far more accurately to Germany and Japan in the form of 1000s of 2 and 4 engine bombers) - in practical purposes and ignoring unproven napkin waffe designs the allies were far ahead - they might have had the ME 262 which was placed into combat in a prototype state with the majority built never leaving the ground.
I am sure if the allies were as desperate they would have spammed out 1000s of Jet fighters but they were not!
In terms of technology that worked and was deployed the allies were far ahead.
Night vision the Germans managed to equip a few dozen tanks with them by the end of the war that were never used in combat, and a few hundred Vampir night vision kits where issued by wars end with virtually no evidence that it was used in combat either.
M3 carbines however (M2 Carbine with a night vision device) were used very effectively during the Battle of Okinawa - so the USA placed theirs into combat units in time and in numbers to make a difference the Germans did not.
Ill give Nazi Germany the better looking uniforms - even if they were ultimately shit (they ended up copying the British 37 pattern like virtually everyone else)
thaddeus
Donor
they were grasping at straws because they were being outproduced and overwhelmed in every regard. the two areas you credit the Allies as being ahead in, were exactly the areas Germany needed, (vastly) improved radar for their AA flak defences to function better and nuclear weapons to have had any chance to survive.
they made few evolutionary changes, with the result many of their weapons became outdated but still in service. "perfect is the enemy of good" some "cruder" simpler weapons such as Puppchen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8.8_cm_Raketenwerfer_43 and Panzerschreck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzerschreck were needed
for AA defence some type of tracer shell and/or subcaliber shell would have allowed continued use of their huge number of guns?
Garrison
Donor
This is just wrong. Germany ahead in computing? I suspect Bletchley park would dispute that assertion. As for the other areas well the Me 262 may have had better aerodynamics, more by accident than design, but its engines were in no way more effective than those of the Allies. Their tanks looked cool, but were either matched by Allies designs early in the war or hopelessly overdesigned and unreliable later in the war. The Germans built the complicated Tiger than ate up resources and limited production, the Allies could counter it by putting a 17pdr in a Sherman. The Luftwaffe continued to depend on obsolescent designs like the Bf 109 throughout the war, and it had reached its optimal performance back in 1940 while the Allies kept iteratively improving aircraft like the Spitfire and introducing new and more effective models like the P-51, which was also iteratively improved. The USAAF and the RAF were mounting strategic bombing raids with four-engine bombers while the Germans were still trying to stop the He 177 catching fire and the Me 210 was a death trap that they had to cancel in favour of the ineffective Bf 110 it was supposed to replace. The US submarines that saw service in the Pacific outmatched the U-Boats and were far more successful overall.
Was there any late war Wonderwaffe that actually worked properly?
Or, put it another way, was there any late war German weapon that the Allies would have swapped for one of their own?
Or, put it another way, was there any late war German weapon that the Allies would have swapped for one of their own?
It a good question.
I cannot think of anything really
Maybe the STG44?
But it does not much more than an M2 select fire carbine for more than twice the weight with significantly heavier ammo