WI: Mittersmill Tungsten discovered in 1937

Hello all,

I was reading about Portugal's sales of Tungsten to Germany in WW2, and it came to my attention that Tungsten was discovered in Austria in 1967, but what would have happened if the deposits were discovered in 1937 instead?

Only a minor P.O.D., but what would have been the outcome? More destroyed soviet Tanks due to AP shells? How would the Portugese be affected since their trade of Tungsten was important to the German war effort, less wealth for them post war?

I am not 100 percent sure of the uses of Tungsten, I know it was important for war materials, and it's shortages had an effect on German weapons in WW2.

Thank you in advance for the replies.
 

Nick P

Donor
IIRC Tungsten (aka Wolfram) is used in machinery for hard cutting tools. More of these would mean either more factories or quicker replacement of damaged tooling after bomb raids.

Tungsten was also wanted for use in the jet engines for the Me-262 but it would be found that it melts and breaks too quickly. It wasn't until the 1950s that the tungsten-nickel-cobalt superalloy was developed that we use today.

This impacts on the use of submarines that brought Tungsten in from Japan - these and the cargo ships would be able to carry other goods instead.

Having more Armour Piercing shells would have helped somewhat. All this may be delaying the end of WW2 by a couple of months.
 

think our consensus was the oilfields in Austria much easier to find and exploit, my OP mentioned a 1939 discovery, maybe an even earlier 1937 POD would result in significant wartime production?

not sure where they would spend their stolen gold reserves if not on tungsten? they were short of chrome later? so maybe Turkey reaps even more from their trade.
 
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