Deleted member 68059
Staff Sergeant
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- Dec 28, 2015
My info is from the RLM stenographic record of discussions between Erhard Milch and people like Galland and Göring. Goebells didnt write many essays on engine failures.
BF-109 Metallurgical Quality?
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My info is from the RLM stenographic record of discussions between Erhard Milch and people like Galland and Göring. Goebells didnt write many essays on engine failures.
You claim to know a lot but I see zero info from your side. So what caused the high failure rate of the early DB 605A besides the temporary interruption of lubrication caused by foaming oil?
I would rather have more info on Marseille's plane.
Deleted member 68059
Staff Sergeant
- 1,058
- Dec 28, 2015
Luckily I`ve got a ready made pamphlet:
8504 - THE SECRET HORSEPOWER RACE - WESTERN FRONT FIGHTER ENGINE DEVELOPMENT | Mortons Books
Regarding my "claims", here is a holiday photo. Thats the son of the chief designer of Daimler-Benz AG, Professor Dr-Ing Karl Kollmann, hes holding a DB605 supercharger fluid drive, which his father patented for aero-engine use. That coupling was actually dug out of the ground by Sigi-Knoll, (regarded until his sad passing this year as the worlds indisputed expert on the DB601 and DB605) which he gave to me. I cleaned it up and presented it to Kollmann`s son (who was also an engine designer for Daimler, post-war). My website has a 1hour video interview with him.
Next year you`ll be able to buy his fathers never released memoirs, which I translated from German and will be published by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers next year (ASME).
I often get invited all over the world by companies to lecture to their engine design departments about WW2 engines. Ferarri F1, Mercedes F1, Renault F1 and so on.
I gave a free webinar last month, and posted the link on this forum; which covered "what caussed the high failure rate of the early DB 605A besides the temporary interruprion of lubrication caused by foaming oil" in reasonable depth. I`m guessing you missed it. Cobalt and Nickel were central-stars in the story.
The lack of a centrifuge was also covered, but it wasnt what caused Marseille to crash (he wasnt flying high enough for a start).
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Milch and Goring were both career Nazis and spent a lot of time pushing their own political agendas rather than telling the truth. Whilst Galland wasn't quite as bad, he has since done a good job of polishing his own wartime story. Milch was appointed by Goering as his yes man, and he was tasked with growing aircraft production after the "unfortunate death whilst flight testing a new weapon" (Goebbel's propaganda description of the suicide) of Ernst Udet. Milch had out-maneuvered and out-politicked his onetime friend, Udet, and took political advantage of his death. When Milch got his position of power he then tried to undermine Goering. Any conversation between Milch and Goering, whilst interesting for the political viewpoint, is unlikely to have painted a realistic picture of the Luftwaffe at war as both were secretly plotting against the other and trying to avoid admitting any weakness in their own performance.
Ooh, freebie! Post the link again, please, it sounds like a good read.
Deleted member 68059
Staff Sergeant
- 1,058
- Dec 28, 2015
I understand what you are trying to say but:
The fact is that this is the spoken word record of Milch in argument with Wolfram Einsenlohr (RLM head of engine dev.) - Milch had been visiting the front to speak to the pilots, to try to find out what was happening to the planes. The pilots told him... engine failures.
The reason this was a problem for Milch was that it was his job as secretary of state for air to provide effective fighters, these are the actual RLM meeting spoken word records not press releases, or letters to Hitler. Milch NEEDED Eisenlohr to fix the engines, otherwise the entire war was over for the Luftwaffe. Do you know what a stenographic record is ?
Its when a "court typist" is sitting in the room typing the spoken words of each member of a meeting, the ENTIRE reason Milch chose to have the meetings recorded was to prevent people lying about what they had said !!
It would have been utter suicide to lie in such meetings about having visited the front to talk to pilots about engine failures, because it was all recorded ! - Any of Milch`s enemies (such as Professor Messerschmitt, who was often present in the meetings in Berlin and at Gorings hunting lodge "Carinhall") would then have been able to have Milch ousted for making up rubbish.
Its utterly incontravertable.
(Milch HATED Messerschmitt because one of his friends had died in a crash (in a Messerschmitt) and he there-after never forgave him)
Well, I wouldn't call it lovely, more of an indication of the drivers for people like Milch in such conversations.
I don't doubt it is, but it's a bit like Chinese Whispers, what got back to Milch, and later Goering, and later still Hitler, was filtered through the desires of the people reporting to them not to take the blame for any issues.
For example, the Jadgwaffe prior to 1942 developed a fascination with the personal score of their fighter pilots, a condition known as "throat ache" because such pilots hankered after the Knights Cross. Career advancement became dependent on personal success and Luftwaffe formation leaders adopted tactics that they thought would ensure their personal success at the least risk to themselves. These tactics revolved around the superiority of the ME109 as a boom-and-zoom fighter against mediocre fighters and lightly built bombers, where the light armament of the ME109 wasn't an issue. These types of tactics were emphasised by the RAF's moronic "Lean into France", which allowed the Jagdwaffe to pick off Blenheims and Spitfires at leisure, and even avoid combat because there was little of value for the RAF to actually bomb in France inside the range of Spitfire escorts.
However, as the War progressed, the Jagdwaffe found itself facing situations where the superiority of ME109 had been eroded, and boom-and-zoom could not be applied. Things really came to a head with the battles with the 8th Air Force bombers and escorts over Europe. Suddenly, the Jadgwaffe couldn't hit and run, they had to stick around and fight or see their industrial heartland pulverized. The altitude advantage they had held over France, Russia and the Desert evaporated with such escorts as the P-47, and the lightly armed ME109 often couldn't take down a B-17 without multiple passes. Suddenly, every other problem became a major issue to excuse the lack of success. Whilst the DB605's problems were real, they suddenly became a lot more reported when the Jadgwaffe started losing. So, whilst the frontline pilots might have been saying "It's the engines" as the biggest issue, the reality might have been factors like bad tactics and improving Allied opposition that the Jadgwaffe just didn't want to admit to.
The war was over for the Luftwaffe when Hitler realised he couldn't invade and subdue Britain and therefore couldn't defeat the British Empire. Everything after that was just the slow and inevitable death of the Fourth Reich, sped up by the invasion of Soviet Russia and declaring war on the USA. Milch needed to make sure he didn't take the blame from Hitler as that was certain death for a Jew, hence his desperation to get the DB605 issue sorted. That doesn't mean it was the actual root cause of the issue, which went back to the pre-War economic situation in Germany, its unpreparedness to fight a war, and the lack of strategic materials. Economics defeated the Nazis, not engine lubrication, and the DB605 could have been the German Merlin 66 and it still wouldn't have saved the Nazis.
I am very tempted to say no just to see if you'll bite.....
It's an incontrovertible record of what was said in those meetings (provided no-one went back and edited the records, which did happen in Nazi Germany). That doesn't mean it was the reality of the situation at the front. The DB605 could have been perfect from the word go and the Bf109G was still going to get shot down in droves by superior Spitfire IXs, P-51Bs and P-47Ds.
Deleted member 68059
Staff Sergeant
- 1,058
- Dec 28, 2015
So.. the stenographic record is wrong, the pilots are wrong, ... and the complete development records of Daimler-Benz are wrong.
In fact the reliability of engines was so bad that the pilots gave the DB605 and the BMW801 engines nicknames. (not complimentary)
"flowerpot" and "pig"
I have that on microfilm from the German military archives. I suppose thats wrong too ?
You are misunderstanding my post, it is not an attack on the authenticity of the recordings and definitely not a denial of the problems with the DB605, and I would applaud your research. Indeed, the BMW801 was noted for its unreliability by the Germans, but falsely lauded as part of "the amazing FW190" story by the Allies. The reality is that the period of FW190 dominance over the Channel was largely down to the DB601E-engined Bf109F-4, not the FW190.
I'm not saying the DB605 development history is wrong, or that the recordings are wrong, I'm just saying that probably wasn't the actual biggest issue impacting Jadgwaffe operations because no-one in the Luftwaffe or the Reichsluftfahrtministerium wanted to face up to what the real problems were. Part of the problem was that the whole Nazi ethos was based on the idea of Aryan racial superiority, therefore German fighters had to be the best or it undermined their whole raison d'etre. For example, it was heresy to suggest that the untermenschen Slavic Russians could make a better fighter than the Nazis, even after the La-5 and Yak-3 appeared.
Consider that the Bf109F-4 had more than enough performance advantage to catch a B-17, and had been lauded for it's dominance through high altitude boom-and-zoon tactics over the Channel Front, Russia and the Desert, so why was the faster Bf109G suddenly "not good enough", even when the de-rated DB605 still gave the Bf109G-2 better performance than the Bf109F-4? The answer is because now the B109G was meeting the RAF's Spitfire IXs and VIIIs, which were infinitely superior, especially in the high altitude band the Bf109F fliers had considered their safe zone. Then came the P-47C, then the P-47D and P-51B, and suddenly the Bf109G is just out-classed. Instead of hacking down Bristol Blenheims and Tupolev SBs, now the Bf109s are trying to catch de Havilland Mosquitos and Petlyakov Pe-2s, and then they meet the B-17. And the Bf109G is just not good enough, regardless of the engine issues, because it is essentially a lightweight fighter.
Even if the DB605 had worked fine from the go, in the Bf109G it was too much engine in too small an airframe with too small a wing, and it lost the pleasant handling qualities of the Bf109F. By 1943 the Bf109 is done, regardless of whether the DB605 is delivering as promised. What is needed is a fighter capable of taking an engine the size of the DB603 to put Germany back on par with fighters like the P-47, Typhoon and Tempest, but the Bf109 struggles on with the smaller DB605 and tricks like MW-50 to try and match Allied developments.
And the Germans were stuck with the Bf109G/K because Milch had to produce numbers, and the Bf109 could be produced far faster, with less materials and much more cheaply than the FW190A or D. So it is vital that Milch gets Einsenlohr to fix the DB605 but it's so Milch doesn't get sent to a concentration camp. It won't change the course of the War, it won't stop the Jadgwaffe pilots grumping, but Milch hopes it will keep Milch eating caviar for a little while longer.
While I know nothing about the issue at hand, I think you are exaggerating there. Nazi racism was of course EXTREMLY real, but AFAIK, their reaction to encountering better enemy equipment was not denial but rather to improve their own. To my knowledge, the T-34 tank kickstarted a lot of new development in German tank engineering and the US bazooka soon found itself copied by the Germans. Decrying better allied equipment as heresy would have flown into facts on the battlefield, the one place where you cannot afford to, and the bulk of the Wehrmacht was still too professional for that, sadly.
MiTasol
1st Lieutenant
You should buy Calums book The Secret Horsepower Race and then you would know - Oh and by the way Calum is Snowygrouch, a well known expert on the subject and the book is the result of many years actual research using PRIME sources, not hearsay and propaganda releases.
Snautzer01
Honourably banned
- 42,394
- Mar 26, 2007
side note
Quite a few of the m20 crashed not only the prototype. Milch head of the now called lufthansa stopped payments to Messerschmitt because of that. A part of the reason Willy went belly up.
Actually, no. The Luftwaffe's strategic presumption was that superiority of equipment meant they would be able to defeat more numerous enemies. That presumption was based on the idea that German scientists and designers were superior to every other nation in the World. It's one of the reasons that Hitler deluded himself into the idea that the versuchs "revenge" weapons would save the Aryan peoples. For the Luftwaffe or Hitler to believe otherwise was to accept that defeat for Germany was inevitable because they were not superior to other races.
You can see this belief in Hitler's quotes on science, such as: "Die ganze Natur ist ein gewaltiges Ringen zwischen Kraft und Schwache, ein ewiger Sieg des Starken über den Schwachen." "The whole of Nature is a mighty struggle between strength and weakness, an eternal victory of the strong over the weak." Hitler couldn't accept that the Germans weren't "stronger". i.e., scientifically smarter/better, than his enemies, because to do so meant admitting that "his people" would be defeated. Hitler was lambasted by his own scientists for driving Jewish scientists out of Germany in the '30s, but he persisted because he thought the innate superiority of the Aryan people meant they could overcome any loss in research and still defeat his "inferior" enemies. After all, Germany had only lost WW1 because "the Jews had stabbed them in the back!"
The idea permeated through the Nazi ranks and even the general population. Hitler promised that he would lead the "Aryan people" to victory because they were the anointed ones, the German population (not just the Nazi Party) loved the idea and supported Hitler. Sure, there were plenty of Germans that realised the War was lost, but even right up to the end of the War, you can still find quotes from ordinary Germans saying that Hitler will save them from the untermenschen with his "secret weapons", and that belief is based on the idea that Germany could produce those war-winning weapons because Aryan scientists were supposedly smarter because they were racially superior.
On the flip side, if you've bought into the belief that "good Aryans" are going to win, you don't want to accept responsibility for a failure because that means you aren't a "good Aryan". If you can't defeat untermenschen you're not up-to-scratch and must be of racially inferior stock. Just as promotion in the Wehrmacht became dependent on personal scores, demotion (and even arrest and execution) was the result for those held up to be "failures". So the Germans officers, including those in the Luftwaffe, became very good at denial.
The Luftwaffe was actually less representative of the Nazi Party than the Kriegsmarine or Heer, but they were still just as prone to the "I am superior, therefore I can't be defeated by inferior Allied tech, it must be something else to blame" idea. For example, Jadgwaffe pilots shot down in the Battle of Britain regularly insisted they had been shot down by Spitfires, not one wanted to admit he had been shot down by an "inferior" Hurricane. This was even prevalent in the 1940 Battle of France, when there were no Spitfires involved! Some German pilots claimed they had had a technical issue, and that was the only reason they had "failed" in being shot down by an "inferior enemy", such as "my engine lubrication wasn't working....."
In the case given, Milch is effectively berating his engine supplier for not being "Aryan enough" to give him a superior engine to that of his enemies. As Hitler reasoned, the tank manufacturers had managed to develop tanks better than the Soviet T-34 and KV-1, so if Milch and his suppliers couldn't produce planes that restored Nazi dominance over the Eastern Front (or Malta, or the Desert, or the Channel), it must be because they were not "good Aryan stock" or even traitors! As Milch's father was Jewish, he must have felt especially vulnerable to accusations of not being "good Aryan stock", so he was very motivated to find (a) a solution to restore Luftwaffe air superiority, and (b) someone else to blame his problems on.
Ironically, you can also claim the War was only won because the British (i.e., the English) were just as prone to a racist belief of superiority. Churchill and co refused to countenance surrender to Germany in 1940 because they couldn't accept the idea that the British Empire could be defeated. Why? Because the English, dear boy, were superior! Yes, call it nationalism, but it boils down to belief of innate racial superiority.
Churchill was half American, his view was based on the size of the British Empire and the Royal Navy.
I forgot to point out that the Tiger tank was in development before the Germans met the T-34, and sloped armour was around long before the T-34, even going back to the sloped front of the French Saint-Charmond of 1917, or the more recent FCM 36 of 1936:
Thick armour and diesel engines? Please see the British Matilda II.
Whilst a lot of people like to the hype the T-34, it's biggest shock for the Nazis was that untermenchen had been able to design it! The Nazis failed to discover the T-34 pre-invasion because their intelligence service was very lax, falling for the idea that the Slavic Russians would not be able to match German designs. But, please note that by the end of December 1941, the Soviets had lost 2,300 T-34 and over 900 KV tanks to the same anti-tank weapons as the Germans had been using in June 1941. The T-34 was far from perfect, especially the 2-man turret, and their crews were inferior in training and tactics to that of the Germans. As it was, the long-barreled Panzer IVF matched the T-34, and that was the development of a tank design going back to pre-War.
The insistence that the Germans copied the Bazooka as brand new tach is undone by the operational use of the 7.5 cm Leichtgeschütz 40 in Crete and the development of the Faustpatrone in the Summer of 1942, long before any Bazookas arrived in Russia or North Africa. There's also the use of hollow-charge weapons even as early as 1940, such as the British No.68 rifle grenade, and an American called Dr. Goddard (IIRC) had a shoulder-mounted "rocket gun" in 1918. Indeed, the original Bazooka was no more effective than the Panzerwurfkorper 42, which was a German HEAT grenade fired from what was essentially a flare pistol with a shoulder stock, which was also in development before the arrival of the Bazooka.
Also forgot to add that Hitler actually used the example of the T-34 to say he was right and his staff was wrong. We know from Speer's autobiography Inside The Third Reich that Hitler had proposed putting the long 75mm into the Panzer IV long before June 1941, but the Heer persisted with the 50mm in the Panzer III because they could make more of them faster, because they had already set on a tactical plan of the Panzer IV a a support tank, and because they were convinced their enemies just could not match the Panzer III (because Aryan supremacy, bla-bla-bla). The T-34 may have been a shock for Hitler's staff, but for Hitler it was another example of why he was right and everyone else was wrong. Quoting Speer: "When the Russian T-34 appeared, Hitler was triumphant, for he could then point out that he had earlier demanded the kind of long-barreled gun it had. Even before my appointment as Minister of Armaments, I had heard Hitler in the Chancellery garden - after a demonstration of the Panzer IV - inveighing against the obstinacy of the Army Ordnance Office which had turned down his idea for increasing the velocity of the missile by lengthening the barrel."
The Germans already had a potentially better solution in the Panzer IV F, and a superior solution in the Tiger tank, so the T-34 was not the great technical shock often presented as fact.
Yes, which was why it was inconceivable in 1942 that the British could be kicked out of Singapore by the "little yellow men" of Imperial Japan. Prior to 1942, the natives in the countries of the British Empire had accepted the notion that the British were racially superior. The defeat of the British in Malaysia spurred Indian nationalism as Indians now saw that The Great British Empire could be beaten by non-white people. Post-War, the British Empire gradually crumbled partially because the British had lost that mysticism that allowed them to dominate a massive empire with a relatively tiny standing army. Britain was actually the only European imperial nation not to have conscription between the Wars simply because the British only needed a small, professional army and air force to control the Empire. The Royal Navy was impressively large but it was largely equipped with outdated ships, and in many ways was a lot less impressive under close examination. But the British public thought the would always win. Even after Dunkirk, the predominant thought amongst the public was it was a setback (mainly due to those cowardly and incompetent Frogs), but that the Empire would prevail, and for no other real reason than "because we're British".
I thought that the greatest property of the T-34 was that it wasnt bad and there were thousands of them, over 60,000 during the war.
Revisionist tripe and way off topic.
