A Victorious Luftstreitkräfte-Imperial German Aviation Development After WW1

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SpicyJuan11

Senior Airman
335
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May 29, 2015
Luxemburg
Hello, I am currently helping in developing Kaiserreich, an alternate history mod for Hearts of Iron 4. I am currently working on the creating color profiles for the aviation tech tree for the German Empire which has won WW1 and is a superpower in decline. I was wondering how everyone thinks a Kaiserliche Luftstreitkräfte would have developed after WW1, especially compared the the Luftwaffe of our world. Would aircraft development looked similar to that of OTL America, or would imperial beauracracy encounter the same problems as the Nazi RLM? How would the aircraft themselves looked like? Would a focus on heavier tactical bombers and long ranged fighters have developed? Or what of jet fighters? Would they have progressed as fast as in OTL or would they have been deemed too radical in design? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
I'm going to offer a thought, a completely unqualified opinion. When one deigns to change a portion of history, even a slight detail as often history turns on the slightest outcome of events (like what if Hitler did not survive an early assassination attempt or even if Valkyrie was successful) changes so many other things. These are the things we cannot possibly know and only speculate about.

My thought is this: Hitler had a single minded drive to develop so many things that a traditional government as you suggest may not even consider, or even have the ability, to throw that type of resources at. Progress yes, but I'd bet you'd never see the V2 and how much other of world history (space flight) gets affected by that? I believe that yes, the same issues that RLM encountered would remain. Because it is no longer a Nazi govt doesn't mean that bureaucratic nonsense ceases. Look at US or UK and what messes they created.

So, the question that cannot be answered is what would they have? I would surmise that jets would certainly be there. Maybe even better engines due to access to certain metals unhindered. Side question, what about other arms like tanks for instance? Frankly, with a different govt, there is likely not to be WWII and all of the different planes produced would not happen either.
 

In regards to the bolded part. In this alternate universe does Poland not exist? Has France moved further away from Rhine or where is the German/French border. Has England moved?
Ranges of fighters and bombers are often dependent on Geography. European fighters had short range because potential enemies really were not all that far away and range was sacrificed for performance.
Japan developed long range fighters for several reasons. For one it is over 1100 miles from the tip of the South Island to the tip of the North Island or greater than the distance from Copenhagen to Naples or about the Distance from Bristol to Brest-Belarus.
Throw in the Japanese possessions in the Pacific (granted some ex German Islands) and the distances involved in China and Manchuria and it is little wonder that the Japanese were designing for long range and sacrificing some other things to get it.

A lot of development was based on what did expected opponents have or were developing. Sort of keeping up with the Jones's.
The twin engine multi place "fighter" was popular in a number of countries for a few years in the 1930s. Turns out none of them would perform as claimed/hoped against singe engine fighters.

It doesn't matter what kind of bureaucracy is involved, weapons requirements (aircraft, artillery, ships) are driven by real needs. They may be shaded by ideology a bit.
 
I think the suppositions underpinning the scenario need a little more thought.

if the germans win WWI their military is likely to stagnate in a similar way to the French. For the French, having "won" the war, they were reluctant to change any thing about their military, but in particular the aircraft they were flying. the first real money for the Navy didn't become available until 1923, the air force plodded with 1918 equipment until 1924. The army made some very minor changes but nothing really significant until the 1930's.

I think a victorious German army in 1918 is going to be beset by the same reluctance to change things. Similar things happened to the victorious allies after waterloo.

If anyone is going to innovate it would be the british. faced with a Europe dominated by just one hostile power, and having not lived through the horror of the war, the british are going to be cashed up and eager to develop their military capabilities.

There is no way of knowing the precise form of the procurement results, but some of the assumptions should assume very little change for the germans from 1918, and an accelerated rate of change for the british. If the war is assumed to break out in 1924, German technologies should be languishing around 1918, whilst the british development should be powering on to about 1930-31.
 
Perhaps if Germany won WWI, the Schneider Cup races would never have taken place. If not, the radical aircraft and engine developments would not have happened at anywhere NEAR the speed with which they did in real life. There might not be a Merlin at all, and I doubt if a satisfied Germany would pursue the DB600-series engines at the rate of development that happened, either, largely with knowledge of what was gained in Schneider Cup racing engine developments.

That doesn't mean there would have been no developments, but it probably means they would not be the same developments, nor would they happen at nearly the same pace. I'm thinking that modern planes of the Bf 109 / Spitfire type would probably take some 10 - 20 years longer to come out since the threat of war is what caused these weapons to be developed at the speed with which they were developed.

But, it's a thought, not an alternate history suggestion.
 
The Air Force would be the first to move on from WW I equipment. In large part due to the Aircraft and engines not being very durable.
Ships were designed to last 10-20 years (Destroyers on the low end and Battleships/Dreadnoughts on the upper end). The German army had very few tanks in the Fall of 1918 so left overs in this scenario would be ???? French, by the time contracts were wound up had something like 3000 FT-17s which rather limited the demand for new tanks for quite some time and also limited the tactical thinking.

WW I aircraft engines lasted between 20-40 hours between overhauls (for the better engines) so new engines are going to be needed relatively soon compared to new field guns and such. French were blessed/cursed with the Hispano V-8 which was one of the first cast block engines. It showed the way for most of the liquid cooled engines to follow and the Hispano V-12s of 1940 were essentially enlarged V-8s (larger bore/stroke) with 4 extra cylinders spliced in. Same valve arrangement and same Siamesed ports. It was hitting it's limits in 1940 pretty hard.
British also were ahead of the Germans in engine design in 1917-18. While the majority of combat aircraft were powered by the Hispano (and derivatives) and Rotary engines Roy Fedden was running Jupiter prototypes at the Cosmos company and Napier was running Lion prototypes. Less said about the ABC Dragonfly radial the better. The Rotary was a dead end in the early 20s and the separate cylinder Liquid cooled engines ( German BMW and Mercedes and American Liberty and RR Eagle) while serviceable in the 1920s were hitting the end of their lives by 1930 ( German BMW V-12 staggered on a bit longer). Everybody needed new or improved radials and the companies and countries that were able switched to cast block V-12s.
The wooden and fabric aircraft of WW I and the 1920s required frequent replacement even if designs didn't change much and by the end of the 1920s some air forces were demanding metal air frames even if fabric covered to reduce maintenance.

Germany may have made faster progress if not limited by the Versailles Treaty. But some progress was limited by available fuels and available knowledge of metal fatigue and vibration. Fuel injected BD 601s were not going to happen in 1929 no matter what.
 

The Schneider Cup races pre date WW I, being flown in 1913 and 14. The Gordon Bennet races in the US were flown in 1910, 11, 12, and 13 and started again post war. Air racing was much like auto racing. War could halt things temporarily but once peace was at hand the racing would start again. The retractable landing gear monoplane fighter (and bomber) were simply a matter of time and with commercial aircraft like the Lockheed Orion showing up in the early 30s (The Orion first flew in 1931) Military aircraft would not be all that far behind. There had been a number of monoplanes and a number of aircraft using retracting landing gear before the Orion. Including the Verville Sperry R-3 racer in the 1922, 23 and 24 Pulitzer Air races.


Not the only monoplane retractable landing gear racers in the early 20s.
 
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The cup races in the Early 20s saw American (in 1923), British (almost from the start), French (in and out) and Italian aircraft.
Had Germany survived the war in a better position (define WON? French and Italians forced to sign peace treaties forbidding them aviation for number of years?) Germany may very well have joined in the Competition. What that does to development I don't know.
 
If one reads some of the German "peace" proposals, from as late as 1917, when Germany had about as much chance of winning WW1 as did Liechtenstein, one would see proposals that made Versailles the apex of generosity: they were vindictive, and imperialistic, mandating puppet governments in all the territories that Germany had invaded.
 
herman1rg said:
On what premise could the German Empire win WW1?
Click to expand...
I can give you four:
#1. DON'T FIGHT A TWO FRONT WAR
Germany's Schlieffen plan, called for concentrating on France in the opening days of the conflict while keeping weaker forces in the East. The key was to defeat France quickly while vast and underdeveloped Russia still mobilized, and then transfer forces by rail to settle accounts with the Tsar. However, Russia did attack into East Prussia in August 1914, only to be surrounded and annihilated at the Battle of Tannenberg. They lost 170,000 men to just 12,000 Germans in one of history's most famous battles of encirclement. Yet the Russian advance also frightened German Army Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke into transferring three corps from France to East Prussia. They arrived too late for Tannenberg, while depriving the Western offensive of vital troops at Germany's best time to overcome France and possibly end the war.
From then on, Germany had to spread its forces between West and East, while supporting its Austro-Hungarian and Turkish allies. Consider what happened in 1918 when the Germans forced the new Soviet government to sue for peace, the Germans quickly transferred 500,000 troops to France. They also unleashed innovative new stosstruppen infiltration tactics—an early form of blitzkrieg without the tanks—that enabled them to break the trench-warfare deadlock.
Kaiserschlacht offensives shattered several British armies and compelled British commander Douglas Haig to warn his troops that their backs were "to the wall." After four years of unrelenting combat and economic blockade, Germany still had the strength to achieve more in weeks than four years of bloody Allied offensives at the Somme, Passchendaele and Chemin des Dames.
Ideally, Germany could have found diplomatic means to have fought against Russia alone without war with France, or vice-versa. Failing that, and given the shorter distances in the West, it would have been better to have temporarily conceded some East Prussian territory while concentrating on capturing Paris. It might not have been easy, but it would have been far easier than fighting on two fronts.
#2. DON'T INVADE BELGIUM
Britain had guaranteed Belgium's neutrality. That "scrap of paper" had been derided by German leaders, but the parchment gave London a casus belli to declare war. Now Germany faced not just France and Russia, but also the immense military and economic resources of the British Empire.
France had a population of 39 million in 1914, versus Germany's 67 million. Can anyone imagine France alone defeating Germany? It failed in 1870, and it would have failed in 1914. Russia could boast of a population of 167 million people, yet shortages of weapons, supplies and infrastructure rendered it a giant with feet of clay. Despite keeping much of their army in France, the Germans were still able to drive Russia out of the war by 1918. Without British support, even a Franco-Russian combination would probably have succumbed to German might.
The entry of Britain and her empire added nearly 9 million troops to the Allies. More importantly, it added the Royal Navy. The French battle fleet was half the size of Germany's and was deployed in the Mediterranean against Germany's Austro-Hungarian and Turkish partners. The Russian navy was negligible. It was Britain's Grand Fleet that made possible the blockade that starved Germany of raw materials and especially food, which starved 400,000 Germans to death and sapped civilian and military morale by late 1918.
It is quite possible that Britain might have declared war on Germany anyway, just to prevent a single power from dominating the Continent, and to preclude hostile naval bases so close to England. But if Germany had managed to stave off British entry for months or years, it would have enjoyed more time and more resources to defeat its enemies.
#3. DON'T BUILD A BIG SURFACE FLEET
Imperial Germany's High Seas Fleet was the second most powerful navy in the world in 1914, behind Britain's Grand Fleet. It mustered fifteen dreadnoughts to Britain's twenty-two, and five battlecruisers to Britain's nine. German surface ships enjoyed better armor plating, guns, propellant and fire control systems than their British rivals.
And what did this powerful surface fleet accomplish? Not much. Its capital ships rarely left port, which also left the British blockade in place. If the German fleet could not break the British blockade, impose its own blockade of Britain, or enable a German amphibious invasion of England, then what was it good for?
It did have value as a classic "fleet in being", staying in port while waiting for an opportunity to pounce, and threatening the enemy just by its existence (Churchill described Royal Navy commander John Jellicoe as the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon). But its main contribution was provoking the British into regarding Germany as a threat even before the war began. Challenging the Royal Navy's maritime supremacy through a naval arms race was the one move guaranteed to arouse the British lion.
Despite ambitions of becoming a global colonial empire, Germany was still a Continental power in 1914. If it won the war, it would be through the immense power of its army, not its navy. What could Germany have bought with the money, material and manpower tied up in the High Seas Fleet? More divisions? More guns and aircraft? Or best of all, more U-boats, the one element of German naval strength that did inflict immense damage on the Allies.
#4. DON'T RESORT TO UNRESTRICTED SUBMARINE WARFARE
It appears such a quaint custom now. But in 1914, submarines were supposed to surface when attacking merchant ships, and allow the crew and passengers to escape. As nobly humanitarian as it was, it also left submarines more vulnerable.
The Germans honored this convention until 1915, and then switched to unrestricted submarine warfare in which ships would be sunk without warning. And the Germans sank plenty of ships, only to rescind it under American pressure, and then resume it in 1917 as a desperate measure to end a conflict that was bleeding Germany to death.
Was it worth it? The all-out U-boat offensive did sink 880,000 tons of shipping in April 1917 alone and endangered the seaborne trade that Britain depended on. Unfortunately, it also helped U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to persuade Congress to declare war on Germany in April 1917. The intervention of more than a million fresh American soldiers by late 1918 heartened the British and French armies battered by years of war and the devastating German 1918 offensives.
Wilson believed that America should enter the war against Germany, and perhaps he would have achieved this regardless. Foregoing unrestricted submarine warfare would also have sheathed the dagger that did inflict painful cuts on Britain. It also would have postponed the flood of U.S troops that changed the balance of power on the Western Front in 1918.
 
An allied alliance without Britain in the frontline increases Germany's chances for success, but it remains a long shot for them and far from certain.

Tannenberg was a major tactical victory for the Germans, but its effects were tactical, not strategic, and most importantly it was a defensive effort. The elephant in the room for the eastern front was of course Austria, which came within an ace of collapse in 1916. The Russian offensive of June-September 1916 forced the abandonment of the attacks around Verdun .

moreover, the Schlieffen plan of 1914 was not defeated by a shortage of men so much as logistic failures. moreover it is a long bow to draw in the extreme, bordering on the farcical, to claim that the british at this early stage were instrumental or vital to the allied avoidance of defeat. At mons, in august , the major commitment of the BEF before the Marne, a mere 80000 british troops in two corps were committed to try and tackle german 1st army of over 200000 men. The British make much of mons, but in the overall scheme of 1914 operations it was a miniscule affair....just 1600 casualties to some 5000 German dead or wounded .

At the marne, BEF commitment was again very modest, just 6 divs to the French 39. French losses were 67000, British losses just 1700, to 85000 German. I don't think that can be argued as a decisive effort by the british.

Further afield and it becomes more speculative. Whilst much is made about the effects of the MG and the advantages of defensive trenches (which are undoubtedly important, it is often lost that offensive also placed great strain on logistic networks, particularly if some sort of breakthrough was achieved. this was certainly the main reason the failure of the Ludendorf offensive. it had virually nothing to do with the arrival of the americans. Defensive operations absorb far fewer resources, cost far fewer men, and would be well within French capabilities to achieve. if the germans had been forced to continue the attack, their ca. s. ualties would have skyrocketed. if the british were still neutral for some reason, it can safely be assumed that they would still maintain the blockade of the central powers, and also become a major lend lease supplier for the allies, thus evening up the apparent manpower imbalance.

I tend to agree with your notions, but easy or certain victory for the Germans I do not agree with. Germany at best might win a negotiated settlement, emerging heavily weakened, whilst britian if she had remained neutral would be far stronger and able to develop far more efficiently
 
In my opinion, eagerly joining WWI was the real mistake Germany made, as their perceived combat readiness vs actual combat performance were not the same. Of course, since we're on an alternate history discussion, WWI as we know it could easily have not happened had Frederick III not had/survived cancer. Then again, maybe we're just living in one continuity strip, and the next ones over get progressively different [not necessarily better, though] until the end result is nearly unrecognizable [or a "Mirror Universe"].
 


Invading Belgium was an intrinsic part of the Schlieffen Plan, and a basic indication of the political stupidity of the German officer class and of the German government, primarily Kaiser Wilhelm II. The generals lost the war for Germany in 1914.


Navies -- especially battleships -- are about prestige and the appearance of power. Submarines would not supply that.

mikewint said:
#4. DON'T RESORT TO UNRESTRICTED SUBMARINE WARFARE
It appears such a quaint custom now. But in 1914, submarines were supposed to surface when attacking merchant ships, and allow the crew and passengers to escape.
Click to expand...

As naval ships acting as commerce raiders had done for a very long time. For the most part, 18th and 19th Century fleets and armies claimed not to target civilians.


Germany's navy switched to unrestricted submarine warfare because their navy was weak and they required imported nitrates for their munition production, at least until the Haber process was sufficiently industrialized. Nitrates also supplied the fertilizer that Germany needed to maintain its agricultural productivity. While the nitrate supply was throttled -- and nobody except Germany and its allies were at all outraged by the RN's surface blockade, as it didn't tend to kill innocents, as did trying to blockade by U-boats -- the German Navy needed to do something to weaken Britain. A few trivial raids were annoying to coastal communities, but killing a few civilians in Dunwich-by-the-bay wasn't going to do much except get a couple of marginally useful old ships to be posted as guard ships.

For Germany to keep Britain out of the war, they couldn't go through Belgium, but if they didn't go through Belgium, they'd not have access to the parts of France that were most vulnerable. Once Britain was in the war -- and Britain did have a formal alliance with France in case of German attack -- the German Navy would have to respond to the blockade that would inevitably follow.
 
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