they managed to squeeze a gunner on it, can't see how it can't fit a radar on it.
I doubt a 30cm plug to increase the lenght and put a radar screen and a radar operator would affect it's handling or speed by a lot.
After the BoB: rationalization of German/Axis aero engine development & production?
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I doubt a 30cm plug to increase the lenght and put a radar screen and a radar operator would affect it's handling or speed by a lot.
cherry blossom
Senior Airman
- 482
- Apr 23, 2007
Germany needed to develop jets and they should ideally avoid some of the illogical missteps that they actually made.
The Jumo 004A was developed to get something useful into service as fast as possible. However, a redesign was ordered to use less nickel and chromium. There was enough nickel and chromium available to make a fair number of 004As and getting some jets into service would have started the Luftwaffe's conversion training much earlier. Ideally Jumo needs the resources to put the 004A into service and develop a more powerful and reliable version. If the Luftwaffe is planning to survive the loss of Finish nickel after 1944, they were being rather optimistic.
The He 280 was designed to use the small and light jets being designed by Heinkel but those were all abandoned. The interesting engine is the HeS 30, which may have been very good for late 1942 if you trust Heinkel. However, by then Heinkel had already sacked its designer and never made great progress with the later 011.
The BMW 003 was not ready for the Me 262 prototypes but later became a useful engine. The scaled up BMW 018 was the only German jet that was not a dead end as we can trace its development all the way to the Atar 9K-50 of the Mirage F1. Thus using hindsight, we want a scaled up BMW jet rather than the HeS 011 as the engine for Luft 46.
The Jumo 004A was developed to get something useful into service as fast as possible. However, a redesign was ordered to use less nickel and chromium. There was enough nickel and chromium available to make a fair number of 004As and getting some jets into service would have started the Luftwaffe's conversion training much earlier. Ideally Jumo needs the resources to put the 004A into service and develop a more powerful and reliable version. If the Luftwaffe is planning to survive the loss of Finish nickel after 1944, they were being rather optimistic.
The He 280 was designed to use the small and light jets being designed by Heinkel but those were all abandoned. The interesting engine is the HeS 30, which may have been very good for late 1942 if you trust Heinkel. However, by then Heinkel had already sacked its designer and never made great progress with the later 011.
The BMW 003 was not ready for the Me 262 prototypes but later became a useful engine. The scaled up BMW 018 was the only German jet that was not a dead end as we can trace its development all the way to the Atar 9K-50 of the Mirage F1. Thus using hindsight, we want a scaled up BMW jet rather than the HeS 011 as the engine for Luft 46.
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- #23
For this thread, I was thinking more about 1942-44. Eg. an 1-engined jet fighter in second half of 1943 is more of a threat to the Allies than anything in 1945 etc. So I'd favor the 1st two engines to be from HeS, with Jumo 004 (or whatever we call it this time 'round) entering the stage by winter of 1943/44. Probably keep BMW and DB in the piston engine job only, there is a lot, a lot to improve on the 801, 601/603/605 - from altitude power to reliability.
- Thread starter
- #24
Recipe for Japan is probably the simplest - don't get involved in the V12 engines saga.
Keep Kawasaki and Aichi manufacturing the radial engines - let's say that Kawasaki starts making Ha-41/-109 series by late 1941/early 1942, and Aichi making Kinsei. This way, eg, Kawasaki makes the Ki-60 or/and Ki-61 around a capable, workable and available engine from day 1.
Admiral Beez
Captain
After the BoB was lost, the war was lost. By autumn 1940 Germany is already burning through more strategic resources, food and fuel than they can readily replace. And now they're about to join the Italians in North Africa and Greece and are already planning their ill-conceived invasion of the USSR. The smarter Führer would have sought an armistice with Britain and withdrawn from France to regroup. It's eastward that you want to go, not south or west.
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Thumpalumpacus
Captain
Not sure I agree. I think focusing on U-boats and longer-ranged aircraft could still have brought the UK into dire straits, so long as Barbarossa was delayed until a UK armistice. No Barbarossa, no interruption of Soviet oil and grain, and no manpower demands for a 3-million-man army. Pulling Italy's chestnuts out of the fire would still have been much, much cheaper than 300 divisions rolling into the steppes.
But that appears to be another topic for another thread.
Snautzer01
Honourably banned
- 34,805
- Mar 26, 2007
Uber Führer?
wiking85
Staff Sergeant
At least in terms of the Luftwaffe modern studies contradict this by saying the main reason for the rise was production efficiencies due to producing the same designs since the start of the war, ending corruption and rewarding efficiency, the increasing use of 'deskilling' and specialized machine tools, etc.
Arming the Luftwaffe by Daniel Uziel is a good start.
This is also a good paper:
That doesn't mean that as the war went on civilian production wasn't curtailed increasingly, but they were way more mobilized economically than the US or UK ever were.
Admiral Beez
Captain
Hmm.... I think I'll take Lyft instead.
Thumpalumpacus
Captain
Thanks. I'll read your link and offer a reply, if needed, in a bit. I appreciate you taking the time to post it.
wiking85
Staff Sergeant
No problem. I don't fully agree with the linked paper, as, IIRC, they claim elimination of inefficiency didn't help and they don't account for problems caused by the bombing. They seem to get a bit to 'economist' in mindset when it comes to reducing everything to numbers and forgetting some of the qualifiers that impacted things. The Uziel book is overall better IMHO, though Budrass (one of the authors of the paper) arguably wrote THE book about the Luftwaffe's supporting industry.Thanks. I'll read your link and offer a reply, if needed, in a bit. I appreciate you taking the time to post it.
Thumpalumpacus
Captain
I've yet to read it, but I do agree that the BC history I recently read also suffers the fault of reducing everything to maths -- so that fault may lie in both our sources. I think we both agree that in war reducing things to simple numbers is probably not the best heuristic for such a complex regime.
At any rate, I will read and respond, likely tomorrow. I had a long neighbor moment with Burl, the guy across the drive, and boy can he chew your ear off.
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
The He280 was intended to use the HeS8 until the HeS30 was available.
As it was, the He280 performed remarkably well with the HeS8 even though they were troublesome.
The development of the HeS8 and HeS30 was stopped by the RLM and Heinkel was ordered to concentrate on the HeS011.
It's interesting to note that the HeS30's development was maturing at the same rate as the Jumo004 and BMW003 and would have been able to be fielded much faster, as the He280 was designed for it.
The whole Nazi strategy was based on lighting war/lightning victory; if the war's not won by 1943, it's lost.
After BoB, the only hope for defeating Britain would have been winning the Battle of the Atlantic. Armistice and air war were dead horses. (It was already too late for victory in the Atlantic, but they wouldn't have known that yet.) Meanwhile, hit Russia with everything they had (and probably fail miserably, but they wouldn't have known that yet, either.)
So to answer the original question: after BoB, they needed to forget about jets, rockets, diesel, etc, put everything they had into churning out whatever was currently in production, and throw it at the Russians as fast as possible. (And forget about propping up Mussolini while they were at it.) Hope that the Americans would stay out of the war and keep on believing that the Enigma system was impenetrable. Most likely that strategy would have also resulted in failure, but at least it would have been consistent with their pre-war planning.
After BoB, the only hope for defeating Britain would have been winning the Battle of the Atlantic. Armistice and air war were dead horses. (It was already too late for victory in the Atlantic, but they wouldn't have known that yet.) Meanwhile, hit Russia with everything they had (and probably fail miserably, but they wouldn't have known that yet, either.)
So to answer the original question: after BoB, they needed to forget about jets, rockets, diesel, etc, put everything they had into churning out whatever was currently in production, and throw it at the Russians as fast as possible. (And forget about propping up Mussolini while they were at it.) Hope that the Americans would stay out of the war and keep on believing that the Enigma system was impenetrable. Most likely that strategy would have also resulted in failure, but at least it would have been consistent with their pre-war planning.
cherry blossom
Senior Airman
- 482
- Apr 23, 2007
Deciding that the Luftwaffe will be using jets for its frontline forces by 1944 is consistent with throwing everything at Russia. The reason that German produced more steel than the USSR and fewer tanks or guns was to a significant extent because of the synthetic fuel program. If the German leadership believed that Baku will be captured in 1942 and that they will not need so much high octane fuel by 1944, they can produce many more weapons for the war with Russia. As it was, production for Barbarossa was limited to what was thought to be necessary (I am repeating myself How to prepare Luftwaffe for Barbarossa if accurate intel on Soviet forces?).
Hitler could've been blown up and replaced by Martin Luther himself (probably even more antisemitic than Hitler himself, lol) and Britain wouldn't still accept even a cease-fire.
I don't think the war was about nazism or the holocaust, everyone knew something was going on after 1943, the Nurember trials seem to be more focused on "crimes against peace" than anything else, it was to curb germany from ever threatening france and england ever again, economically or militarily.
Best case scenario is some sort of cold war for a couple of years until stalin rebuilds his purged army and tries something.
I wonder if a neutral italy would be much better for germany, a place to import stuff from asia and america, factories that although obsolete and inefficient are unable to be attacked, even a neutral place for a potential negotiation with the allies, let's say Mussolini get's whacked and the anglophile Balbo takes over.
Good points, including in the link. I agree that the Nazi strategy assumed victory on all fronts, otherwise they were screwed. Their only problem in 1940 was that the British didn't completely throw in with the French, so the Nazis couldn't defeat both at once. After that, it was all downhill. By 1944, it didn't matter what airplanes and engines they were using, their pilots were dying and not being replaced. The General Staff hd already predicted that they could only win a short war; after that, their only option would have been to load themselves into some Fw200's and fly to South America.
I'd go one further and say that the winning strategy for Germany would have been not to fight a war, but to dominate Europe economically. Fill the skies with airliners and airships (filled with helium, which the U.S. would have gladly sold to a peaceful country) and set their Jewish scientists, engineers and doctors with inventing the technologies that would have made Germany a world leader, if not for a thousand years, at least well into the 21st century.
Bingo! It's worth noting that when Tank was working on night fighter Fw 187s, there was no provision for the fitting of radar or a second crewmember. This is based on drawings of the night fighter variant that appear in the Fw 187 book.
Because German night fighter radar aerials look like this...
And if you put this on an Fw 187 the prop disks will cut them to pieces! The prop disks are within inches of the aircraft's nose. You'd need to do some serious surgery to the design to fit radar to it. This is presumably why Tank designed virtually every variant of this aircraft on paper with new fuselages because the original was too inadequate in terms of space for equipment.
If he stopped at munich, he'd be the hero even today, there would be probably a lot of his statues going around until the 2000s.
He was that guy at the cassino who won big at blackjack and instead of cashing out at the first 21, he kept playing until all his cards were overdrafted.
