I think late War Nazi kit and ideas could best be summed up with the famous phrase.
"Ambitious! But rubbish!"
Reich Ministry commissions surface to air missiles in 1941
- Thread starter Alan
- Start date
I think late War Nazi kit and ideas could best be summed up with the famous phrase.
"Ambitious! But rubbish!"
Many people deride British Radar of chain home as being technically obsolete, inefficient and generally second best.
What these critics fail to understand is that the British made a deliberate decision to 'go now' with what could be achieved in the shortest time rather than wait for the best technical solution.
That was why in 1939 Britain had a working Radar based air defence system which by the summer of 1940 was mature enough to be crucial to the outcome of the Battle of Britain.
The Germans never caught up with the allies application of radar technology.
Whilst Britain fielded new technologies that worked the Nazis chased technological rainbows and never found their pot of gold, just spending it instead.
What these critics fail to understand is that the British made a deliberate decision to 'go now' with what could be achieved in the shortest time rather than wait for the best technical solution.
That was why in 1939 Britain had a working Radar based air defence system which by the summer of 1940 was mature enough to be crucial to the outcome of the Battle of Britain.
The Germans never caught up with the allies application of radar technology.
Whilst Britain fielded new technologies that worked the Nazis chased technological rainbows and never found their pot of gold, just spending it instead.
The Allies very quickly figure out the frequencies the radio controls use and then start jamming the shit out of them.
"Give me the third best technology. The second best won't be ready in time. The best will never be ready." Sir Robert Watson-Watt
Edit: I can't help wondering how much longer the war could have lasted if the RLM had been organised on those lines
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And that's not all they copied this (MP3008) - making at least 10,000 of themOh and the Germans did try to copy at least one Allied design:
Focke-Wulf Ta 154 Moskito - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
And they copied the 37 pattern uniform - the M44 - getting ready for post war life I suspect
Garrison
Donor
I would say the only place that attitude backfired for the British was the Nuffield Liberty engine, that thing should have been retired much, much sooner.
Garrison
Donor
Back on the Mosquito because it demonstrates the strengths of British development vis-a-vis the Germans. The Luftwaffe spent years pursuing ever more technical advancement to produce their idealized 'schnellbomber', all while struggling with supplies of Aluminium and Steel. Do they ever come up with one? Nope the Ju-88 was supposed to fill the role and falls flat because by the time it enters service its facing Hurricanes and Spitfires which can easily run it down. Every succeeding attempt to push the technological envelope is an equal failure, all while the German aero industry struggles to produce enough planes to fill Luftwaffe ranks. Meanwhile de Havilland decides to explore the limits of more traditional non strategic materials and gives the RAF the schnellbomber it never knew it wanted.
Indeed. Imagine that instead of wasting all that time, effort and material on the Bomber B programme, they had actually developed something useful.
To begin with the Germans lacked the technical means of making such a system work, let alone the resources for the program. Their radar systems lacked the level of accuracy needed for effective fire control, which is why they never had naval fire control radar. Their radar was only good enough for improved ranging data to aid optical systems. Ground based optical sighting is limited against high altitude targets, under all but perfect weather conditions. Radio controlled systems are venerable to jamming. And finally, the Germans didn't have proximity fuses. That means they'd have to make a best guess on altitude and set the fuses like their AA shells.
You're assuming that the Germans in 1943 could make something work that the rest of the world couldn't do for over 10 years after the war. It's like the predictions of German jet powered flying wings in 1946. They look cool in movies, or animations, but could never work in the real world until fly by wire technology in the 1970's.
You're assuming that the Germans in 1943 could make something work that the rest of the world couldn't do for over 10 years after the war. It's like the predictions of German jet powered flying wings in 1946. They look cool in movies, or animations, but could never work in the real world until fly by wire technology in the 1970's.
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Mmmn. No. The Ta 154 wasn't a copy as such, more an attempt to build a bomber along similar lines. Tank had the design ready as the Fw 211, but then the RLM decided they wanted a fighter instead, so it got redesigned.Oh and the Germans did try to copy at least one Allied design:
Focke-Wulf Ta 154 Moskito - Wikipedia
Badly. The guy in the rear seat had no view, the pilot had poor lateral view, handling was poor too, the tail having to increased in size several times. Test pilot Hans Sander thought it needed dihedral proper, not just upturned wingtips.
The fuselage was weak and with the tail hitting the ground on landing, it really needed a keel. More importantly, it kept falling apart in the air as the glue was too acidic and ate the wood - the original glue had to be replaced thanks to the factory producing it being bombed.
They called it the Moskito for psychological reasons, but really Weiss Elefant would have been more apt.
The Finns did have plans for their own Mosquito clone, the Vihuri, from plans of crashed ones obtained from Germany, to be powered by Daimler-Benz DB 605 engines and with Blenheim undercarriage, but I doubt it got to the mock up stage.
I have to disagree; they were not ahead in most of these areas. In aviation engines there was rough equality, with fuel injection having some advantages. The Allies generally had more powerful engines. Avionics was also a wash, with the Allies having advantages in airborne radar, navigation, and blind bombing capabilities. Allied bombers were more rugged, with higher payloads, and ranges. In computing the Allies were way ahead with electronic computers, giving them a decisive advantage in code breaking. German electromechanically computers were very good. The Allied chemical industry was in general superior, giving them better fuels, lubricants, and synthetic materials.
Allied coding systems were were far superior, giving them more secure communications. Allied radio tech was superior, with more powerful, and available battlefield radios, allowing better coordination between infantry, armor, air, and artillery. The Americans used frequency skipping for better security. American tanks had more powerful FM radios then the less effective German AM radios in their tanks. The biggest technological advantage the Allies had was in industrial mass production, which enabled them to overwhelm the axis.
The Germans had the advantage in jet propulsion, but their engines were unreliable, because of a lack of strategic materials, and immature technology. Everything was rushed, because of the desperate situation they were in. They were ahead in strategic rockets like the V-2, but not in tactical rockets used on the battlefield. The Germans were ahead in infrared tech, but they couldn't gain any advantage with it, because they couldn't mass produce systems. The Germans lacked any practical proximity fuses, while the Allies were able to field them effectively, and in numbers. The Germans did have nerve gas, but Allied chemical weapons would've been equally deadly.
Other than being able to dive deeper, and having a computer that could track, and target multiple targets U-Boats were not better then American Fleet Boats. The F Boats were more rugged, had better range, carried more torpedoes, and from 1943 on had a radar periscope. This let them target ships at night, or in bad weather, when visual targeting was impossible. They also had air conditioning, which was important for both crew comfort, and health, as well as protecting electronic equipment from damage from condensation. The Electro Boats were more advanced, and pointed the way to the future, but they were even later then the jets, and had no impact on the war.
The biggest practical advantage they had was in machinegun superiority, which went a long way in compensation for other tactical deficiencies. The Allies, particularly the Americans had far better artillery doctrine, and equipment. Greater availability of computing equipment made time on target fire missions possible. So no the Germans were actually behind in most technological areas, and the ones that they were ahead in weren't able to make up for the deficits in the others. German technological superiority is really just another myth of WWII, made popular by the fact that German Rocket Scientists helped get the Americans to the Moon.
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I agree with you, but the MP-44 Sturmgewehr was going in the right direction. What they needed were more advanced, but conventional weapons, they could mass produce. The Panzerfaust, Panzerschreck, and the V-1 were worthwhile efforts.
You know, I got to thinking about one of those points, and I actually kinda agree with it... but there's a nuance that has been missed.
By the late war, the KM might well have been ahead of the allied navies in submarine design.
BUT
This is not the Cold War of Cowboys & Cossacks and hunts for Red October. Sub vs sub duels are extremely rare, and comparing submarine types is a fool's errand.
What you have to compare instead, is each side's submarine technology against its counters.
The KM subs are behind Allied ASW from when, spring '41? Barring a blip in the Second Happy Time which is less about technology than doctrine.
Western Allied subs are ahead of Axis ASW and aren't facing the same survival pressures. U-boats are fighting (and losing) in an environment of Allied air supremacy with regular radar-equipped patrols with all sorts of gizmos - Leigh lights, HF/DF, rockets, FIDO, Squid/Hedgehog, all that jazz - which the Allied submariners just don't have to contend with in the main. The Med is at least contested air- and seaspace (and then Italy changes sides) and the Japanese approach to ASW is desultory.
So while it's not wrong IMHO to give the nod to German submarine design over Allied submarine design... it is just looking at the wrong comparison to do so.
The Baltic is a more serious issue, actually. Littorals are hard for everybody - sonar doesn't work well, but defenders can lay minefields with enthusiastic abandon.
But that made me think - gosh this living in the decadent West really does blunt the brain - what happens if the LW focuses on Schmetterling for air defence... on the Ostfront?
I think there's a big problem here.
The Henschel SAM needs a pretty fixed emplacement for its liquid fuels - red fuming nitric acid is not forgiving of being chucked about in jerrycans out in the field. Conversely, the eastern front didn't see a lot of strategic bombing of deep industrial targets - it wasn't unknown, but the heavy majority of missions are close support - that's what the 36,000 Il-2s are for, and VVS is translated as Frontal Aviation - the clue is, as they say, in the name.
So if you want to defend things on the ground, your not-very-mobile missiles need to be deployed forwards so that their 20m range can cover the things they are meant to protect.
Yikes. The further forward you are, the easier it is to do "suppression of enemy air defences" with T-34s or Katyushas instead of Sturmoviks.
But the real kicker is the numbers game. The Soviet Air Forces are huge (and their OTL casualties were huge too). If a missile-based defence doctrine can't equal those numbers then its going to fail even harder than the Nazi performance failed OTL.
The frankly terrifying OTL losses to the Soviet Air Forces aren't going to be happening from low-volume high-complexity missile systems. You want asymmetric combat to produce large kill ratios - where fighter squadrons engage unescorted slow heavily-laden attack aircraft and massacre them in wholesale lots, not have low-fire-rate SAM systems attrite them on the way in and way out. This area defence strategy is really only going to work against high-value bombers - four-engine multiple-crewmember platforms like the B-17. Missiles will have a lower hit rate against a smaller target like an Il-2 and then you have to get four or five of them to equal the materiel and crew of the Fortress.
The Soviets were also capable of evolving doctrine to meet the situation, and I suspect the VVS force would be pretty good at striking at SAM sites too in the same way as Western medium- or fighter-bombers would be after D-Day gets them fields in range of the SAM sites.
That's ignoring that you've got to truck your missiles and their crew and exploding corrosive fuel mixtures fifty miles closer to the forward edge of battle area than you could base a fighter squadron, and you've got to spread them out along the front lines away from main supply routes so as not to have areas of your army without air defence, and then you get the Kammhuber problem - wherever the VVS wants to strike gets the attention of division of air assets that absorb the local missile stocks while the rest of the front has its SAM operators twiddling their thumbs because they aren't at today's schwerpunkt. Fighters are better at reactive air defence because you can concentrated them where they are needed (cf. Dowding, Park et al, 1940) whereas SAMs work better when you can site them around high-value targets that will draw the enemy to them.
And that assumes the Soviets don't just park some jamming trucks a mile or so back from the frontline and watch all those expensive missiles do pretty loop-the-loops while the VVS boys and girls fly grimly past to smite the invaders of the Motherland.
Anyway, we're saying that a SAM-based approach to air defence needs to add more logistical load to the German transport network to the east, and then provides a more brittle air defence that is less responsive to Soviet massed attacks and more vulnerable to deep operations by ground forces. Boy it's a good thing the Soviets aren't too enamoured of deep operations. /s
So... overall a big no for forward air defence in the east. Stick to fighters.
I guess we could say, our Schmetterling programme will replace what - the Me-163, the Me-262, the He-162 Volksjager, the V-2 programme... what else? All the high-altitude AAA and flak towers? But the key is that it cannot and must not replace any of the conventional fighter production - nor the conventional tank and artillery production.
And if it does replace those, will it actually be in service by say 1943 to make any impact on Spaatz's daylight operations at all?
By the late war, the KM might well have been ahead of the allied navies in submarine design.
BUT
This is not the Cold War of Cowboys & Cossacks and hunts for Red October. Sub vs sub duels are extremely rare, and comparing submarine types is a fool's errand.
What you have to compare instead, is each side's submarine technology against its counters.
The KM subs are behind Allied ASW from when, spring '41? Barring a blip in the Second Happy Time which is less about technology than doctrine.
Western Allied subs are ahead of Axis ASW and aren't facing the same survival pressures. U-boats are fighting (and losing) in an environment of Allied air supremacy with regular radar-equipped patrols with all sorts of gizmos - Leigh lights, HF/DF, rockets, FIDO, Squid/Hedgehog, all that jazz - which the Allied submariners just don't have to contend with in the main. The Med is at least contested air- and seaspace (and then Italy changes sides) and the Japanese approach to ASW is desultory.
So while it's not wrong IMHO to give the nod to German submarine design over Allied submarine design... it is just looking at the wrong comparison to do so.
The Baltic is a more serious issue, actually. Littorals are hard for everybody - sonar doesn't work well, but defenders can lay minefields with enthusiastic abandon.
But that made me think - gosh this living in the decadent West really does blunt the brain - what happens if the LW focuses on Schmetterling for air defence... on the Ostfront?
I think there's a big problem here.
The Henschel SAM needs a pretty fixed emplacement for its liquid fuels - red fuming nitric acid is not forgiving of being chucked about in jerrycans out in the field. Conversely, the eastern front didn't see a lot of strategic bombing of deep industrial targets - it wasn't unknown, but the heavy majority of missions are close support - that's what the 36,000 Il-2s are for, and VVS is translated as Frontal Aviation - the clue is, as they say, in the name.
So if you want to defend things on the ground, your not-very-mobile missiles need to be deployed forwards so that their 20m range can cover the things they are meant to protect.
Yikes. The further forward you are, the easier it is to do "suppression of enemy air defences" with T-34s or Katyushas instead of Sturmoviks.
But the real kicker is the numbers game. The Soviet Air Forces are huge (and their OTL casualties were huge too). If a missile-based defence doctrine can't equal those numbers then its going to fail even harder than the Nazi performance failed OTL.
The frankly terrifying OTL losses to the Soviet Air Forces aren't going to be happening from low-volume high-complexity missile systems. You want asymmetric combat to produce large kill ratios - where fighter squadrons engage unescorted slow heavily-laden attack aircraft and massacre them in wholesale lots, not have low-fire-rate SAM systems attrite them on the way in and way out. This area defence strategy is really only going to work against high-value bombers - four-engine multiple-crewmember platforms like the B-17. Missiles will have a lower hit rate against a smaller target like an Il-2 and then you have to get four or five of them to equal the materiel and crew of the Fortress.
The Soviets were also capable of evolving doctrine to meet the situation, and I suspect the VVS force would be pretty good at striking at SAM sites too in the same way as Western medium- or fighter-bombers would be after D-Day gets them fields in range of the SAM sites.
That's ignoring that you've got to truck your missiles and their crew and exploding corrosive fuel mixtures fifty miles closer to the forward edge of battle area than you could base a fighter squadron, and you've got to spread them out along the front lines away from main supply routes so as not to have areas of your army without air defence, and then you get the Kammhuber problem - wherever the VVS wants to strike gets the attention of division of air assets that absorb the local missile stocks while the rest of the front has its SAM operators twiddling their thumbs because they aren't at today's schwerpunkt. Fighters are better at reactive air defence because you can concentrated them where they are needed (cf. Dowding, Park et al, 1940) whereas SAMs work better when you can site them around high-value targets that will draw the enemy to them.
And that assumes the Soviets don't just park some jamming trucks a mile or so back from the frontline and watch all those expensive missiles do pretty loop-the-loops while the VVS boys and girls fly grimly past to smite the invaders of the Motherland.
Anyway, we're saying that a SAM-based approach to air defence needs to add more logistical load to the German transport network to the east, and then provides a more brittle air defence that is less responsive to Soviet massed attacks and more vulnerable to deep operations by ground forces. Boy it's a good thing the Soviets aren't too enamoured of deep operations. /s
So... overall a big no for forward air defence in the east. Stick to fighters.
I guess we could say, our Schmetterling programme will replace what - the Me-163, the Me-262, the He-162 Volksjager, the V-2 programme... what else? All the high-altitude AAA and flak towers? But the key is that it cannot and must not replace any of the conventional fighter production - nor the conventional tank and artillery production.
And if it does replace those, will it actually be in service by say 1943 to make any impact on Spaatz's daylight operations at all?
IIRC the Argentine's also built a radial-engined copy postwar but it wasn't built in any numbers...
Oh and the Germans did try to copy at least one Allied design:
Focke-Wulf Ta 154 Moskito - Wikipedia
Wasn't the TA-154 also an aircraft that would have hacked any pilots bailing out to bits with the props?
Garrison
Donor
Of course given the performance of the German aeroengine industry almost any late war design was bound to be plagued with problems.
I don't think that needed to be the case. If you put cool, pragmatic and disciplined heads in charge of the RLM (so, not you General Udet), the German aircraft industry would have been getting, realistic, achievable specifications, rather than fanciful wish lists drawn up by a pubescent boy.
As it was, the specification issued in 1936 that led to the Heinkel 177 (so called Bomber A) called for an aircraft that could carry a bomb-load of at least 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) over a range of 5,000 km (3,100 mi), with a maximum speed of not less than 500 km/h (311 mph) at altitude (figures borrowed from Wikipedia). This was wildly over ambitious. The Avro Lincoln (the result of nearly a decade of developing the original Manchester concept) could just about fulfill these figures in 1945.
If you had given German aircraft manufacturers the metric equivalent of Specification P.13/36 (that led to the Manchester and Halifax) , they would have produced a less advanced but more useful bomber than the Heinkel 177 of OTL.
The same is true of the Bomber B programme. Wildly optimistic performance targets that led to designs that were totally reliant on a ground breaking new engine. Even when Junkers had a Ju288 A flying on two BMW 801s, the RLM demanded a total redesign with another crew member. Given a reasonable specification, I beleive that the people at Junkers (and maybe also Focke Wulf) would have come up with something significantly better than a Ju 88 (or 188) but that wouldn't have been the total resource pit that the OTL 288 was.
Of course, we should all be grateful that they didn't.
Okay,.
Let me be crystal clear here.
You WILL, immediately, stop attacking each other.
Debate facts/opinions. This is not a catfight.
If someone posts something that you believe is in error, demonstrate that they were in error. DO NOT insult them. Do not go back through the better part of someone posting history in the hope of scoring some half assed "proof". Just don't.
If someone rebuts a claim with a number of what appear to be demonstrable facts the options are:
1. Counter with other demonstrable facts
2. Acknowledge that you may have painted with too broad a brush, but in area "X, Y, Z" the demonstrable facts support the earlier stated position.
3. accept that you were wrong and don't try to defend your hill unless you are ready to die on it.
Do NOT push on this. You will not be happy with the outcome.
BTW: This goes for everyone else.
Play the ball or don't play a'tall.