BF-109 Metallurgical Quality?

pbehn said:

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.

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Very much so.
Just as the British has started the War with the idea of distinct cruiser and infantry tank designs, the Germans started with the idea of distinct tank-fighting and support tanks, those being the Panzer III and Panzer IV. Whilst the Russians made only a few changes to the T-34 during the War, the biggest one being the change of turret for the T-34/85, the Germans persisted in fine-tuning their designs and creating lost of specialist vehicles with incompatible parts. Whilst the Russians could swap parts between early and late T-34s and scavenge wrecks for common spares, the Germans created a nightmare training, supply and maintenance scenario. The Germans attempted to rectify this by creating a common main battle tank with one common gun, the long 75mm, based on parts of the Panzer III and parts of the Panzer IV. The program was imaginatively titled the Panzerkampfvagen III/IV, but it was too slow in development. It was originally proposed in September 1941 and finally cancelled in July 1944.
Whilst it seems a quite short and easy development to create one tank from parts of two existing designs, the design staff kept being revising their designs, and the Heer kept revising the requirements. It might have been a better idea to just concentrate on banging out as many Panzer IVs with the long 75mm gun as possible, but this was again a project that fell victim to the idea that superior Aryan development capability meant producing the best of the best solution. If you endlessly fine-tune and redevelop a product you will never get it out the door.
You can see a similar pattern in the Bf109K, which was supposed to unify the many different field and factory upgrades fitted to the Bf109G. It wasn't a success as the Bf019K program also splintered into different variants because there wasn't one Bf109K build good enough to do all the tasks the 1945 Luftwaffe was demanding be covered.

pbehn said:

Revisionist tripe and way off topic.

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Please be more specific, if only for comedy value.

Mad Dog said:

Very much so.
Just as the British has started the War with the idea of distinct cruiser and infantry tank designs, the Germans started with the idea of distinct tank-fighting and support tanks, those being the Panzer III and Panzer IV. Whilst the Russians made only a few changes to the T-34 during the War, the biggest one being the change of turret for the T-34/85, the Germans persisted in fine-tuning their designs and creating lost of specialist vehicles with incompatible parts. Whilst the Russians could swap parts between early and late T-34s and scavenge wrecks for common spares, the Germans created a nightmare training, supply and maintenance scenario. The Germans attempted to rectify this by creating a common main battle tank with one common gun, the long 75mm, based on parts of the Panzer III and parts of the Panzer IV. The program was imaginatively titled the Panzerkampfvagen III/IV, but it was too slow in development. It was originally proposed in September 1941 and finally cancelled in July 1944.
Whilst it seems a quite short and easy development to create one tank from parts of two existing designs, the design staff kept being revising their designs, and the Heer kept revising the requirements. It might have been a better idea to just concentrate on banging out as many Panzer IVs with the long 75mm gun as possible, but this was again a project that fell victim to the idea that superior Aryan development capability meant producing the best of the best solution. If you endlessly fine-tune and redevelop a product you will never get it out the door.
You can see a similar pattern in the Bf109K, which was supposed to unify the many different field and factory upgrades fitted to the Bf109G. It wasn't a success as the Bf019K program also splintered into different variants because there wasn't one Bf109K build good enough to do all the tasks the 1945 Luftwaffe was demanding be covered.

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getting tired of every discussion being about Ayrian or other racial superiority.

Maybe to steer this discussion in a slightly different direction:

In thinking about military equipment, the common solution when facing an enemy who either possesses significantly more material or is able to significantly produce more than you is to design weapon systems of such superiority that they can overcome loss and attrition. While German manufacturers and designers were embedded in Nazi philosophy, the emphasis on developing tanks, planes, submarines etc that are significantly better performing than those systems possessed by the Allies is to my thinking highly pragmatic and simply an effort to overcome Allied numerical superiority and equipment parity.

A good corollary is to look at weapon systems development by the U.S. during the cold war. Each new system had to be a significant advancement in performance to offset Soviet numerical superiority and the relative parity of U.S. vs Soviet weapon systems.

It is difficult to pull off these kind of advancements in peace time, see F-35 among others, let alone during war.

NevadaK said:

Maybe to steer this discussion in a slightly different direction:

In thinking about military equipment, the common solution when facing an enemy who either possesses significantly more material or is able to significantly produce more than you is to design weapon systems of such superiority that they can overcome loss and attrition. While German manufacturers and designers were embedded in Nazi philosophy, the emphasis on developing tanks, planes, submarines etc that are significantly better performing than those systems possessed by the Allies is to my thinking highly pragmatic and simply an effort to overcome Allied numerical superiority and equipment parity.

A good corollary is to look at weapon systems development by the U.S. during the cold war. Each new system had to be a significant advancement in performance to offset Soviet numerical superiority and the relative parity of U.S. vs Soviet weapon systems.

It is difficult to pull off these kind of advancements in peace time, see F-35 among others, let alone during war.

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Germany had a short time to re-arm, it had to make sure that those arms were good enough to overcome the opposition. As a single nation in a continent it could only steal a march on the opposition, when things went from individual campaigns to continuous protracted war defeat was guaranteed. Germany didn't out produce the UK in most areas of military equipment which means it was fighting Russia and the USA with next to nothing. Most of the tanks that went into Poland and France had machine guns, to me the biggest surprise about the Blitzkrieg and German warfare is that they did it without a huge number of tanks, compared to the opposition.

Mad Dog said:

Please be more specific, if only for comedy value.

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Your views on Churchill and race have little to do with Bf 109 metallurgical quality, in fact they have nothing to do with it, hard to be specific about "off topic" perhaps you could explain how Churchills parentage impinges on the nickel content of a Bf-109 exhaust valve, purely for comedy value of course.

pbehn said:

Your views on Churchill and race have little to do with Bf 109 metallurgical quality, in fact they have nothing to do with it, hard to be specific about "off topic" perhaps you could explain how Churchills parentage impinges on the nickel content of a Bf-109 exhaust valve, purely for comedy value of course.

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To the contrary, you need to understand the mindset of Hitler and the Germans to understand their motivations for some of what we would consider really bad ideas.
Why did the Bf109's exhaust valves have low nickel content? It's because Hitler led an enthusiastic Germany into a war when Germany did not have the economic capability to support the industrial requirements of said war, especially in that they didn't have access to enough strategic materials as (drum-roll) nickel, and very limited foreign funds. And why did the Germans enthusiastically embrace said war? Because they believed that the scientific genius from Aryan racial supremacy outweighed any other disadvantage.
As regards Churchill and the Empire, I was simply pointing out that us Brits weren't immune to a bit of racial superiority belief as a way of showing the Germans weren't unique in that respect, they just took it to the extreme. Churchill himself was very aware of the limitations of pre-War German industry, and proposed the whole Norwegian Campaign a a way to exacerbate the lack of strategic materials available to Germany by cutting off their access to Swedish ore.
And nickel was just one of the materials in short supply. The British (under Churchill) also correctly foresaw the Germans had complete reliance on Spain and Portugal for wolfram ore to make tungsten, and they diddled the Germans by simply buying all the wolfram ore they could. Bidding was so intense that the price of Portuguese wolfram ore rose 775% from 1939 to 1943. The Germans were forced to bargain with Portugal with valuable coal, steel and fertilizer they desperately needed at home, but this only got them about 2800 tons annually, when they needed about 3500 tons. In March 1940, the British were pursuing a trade agreement with Spain to also reduce Germany's sources of wolfram and other strategic materials. This led the price of Spanish wolfram ore to rise from $75 a ton to $16,800 in 1942, the US joining the scheme to put the squeeze on Germany. Germany had very limited access to foreign funds so the scheme worked.
In a away, Churchill was playing three-dimensional chess with a war based on economics, whilst Hitler struggled in two dimensions.

Mad Dog said:

To the contrary, you need to understand the mindset of Hitler and the Germans to understand their motivations for some of what we would consider really bad ideas.
.

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I don't need to know your understanding of Hitler and Germans at all, they are not facts and don't explain anything about Bf-109 exhaust valves

pbehn said:

I don't need to know your understanding of Hitler and Germans at all, they are not facts and don't explain anything about Bf-109 exhaust valves

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OK, so the economic and industrial situation of Germany with regard to strategic materials, and the mindset that led Hitler to disregard those issues, couldn't possibly have an impact on the metallurgy of Bf109G exhaust valves? Hmmmmmm, there are none so blind as those that don't want to see.

Mad Dog said:

OK, so the economic and industrial situation of Germany with regard to strategic materials, and the mindset that led Hitler to disregard those issues, couldn't possibly have an impact on the metallurgy of Bf109G exhaust valves? Hmmmmmm, there are none so blind as those that don't want to see.

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I have no specific knowledge of Bf-109 exhaust valves, I mentioned nickel content, not low nickel content and you have hung all your ideas about political and racial dogma on it, lets just stick to facts eh? Just as Germany was short of nickel the UK was short of eggs, obviously because of a lack of proportional representation and devolution in parliament. An abundance of nickel is no argument for sound government.

pbehn said:

I have no specific knowledge of Bf-109 exhaust valves, I mentioned nickel content, not low nickel content and you have hung all your ideas about political and racial dogma on it, lets just stick to facts eh? Just as Germany was short of nickel the UK was short of eggs, obviously because of a lack of proportional representation and devolution in parliament.

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So you don't even have a question over metallurgy, you just want to pretend the actually racial ideology of Nazism didn't have any impact on wartime German production? By the way, the racial content of the idea of Aryan supremacy are facts. That the British were in short supply of eggs was down to rationing due to the U-boat blockade and nothing to do with proportional representation (which I think is a daft political idea anyway), but does suggest it is you that is making presumptions.

Mad Dog said:

So you don't even have a question over metallurgy, you just want to pretend the actually racial ideology of Nazism didn't have any impact on wartime German production? By the way, the racial content of the idea of Aryan supremacy are facts. That the British were in short supply of eggs was down to rationing due to the U-boat blockade and nothing to do with proportional representation (which I think is a daft political idea anyway), but does suggest it is you that is making presumptions.

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I trained as a metallurgical technician and spent thirty five years testing metals all over the world, if you have anything to say about metallurgy go ahead, just don't link the availability of metal ores to government, it is woke nonsense. Shortages of eggs or nickel were purely the effect of war and blockades not a commentary on the nations government.

pbehn said:

I trained as a metallurgical technician and spent thirty five years testing metals all over the world....

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It seems you skipped history class during your studies.

pbehn said:

.....just don't link the availability of metal ores to government, it is woke nonsense.....

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War is an extension of politics, as is peacetime economics. The industrial situation of Germany on the brink of war was the result of politics. Hitler chose to go to war despite the shortage of strategic materials partly because he thought Aryan supremacy guaranteed victory. That's a historical fact and nothing to do with wokeness.
Since you skipped the history bit and only want to talk metallurgy, I'll try and give you an example you might understand. In developing the Jumo 004 jet engine, Dr. Anselm Franz used as much molybdenum, nickel and cobalt as he though necessary. His development unit passed its 100-hour test, which is standard test of reliability. For production, due to the economic situation of wartime Germany with regard to strategic materials, he was forced to massively reduce the amount of those three strategic materials used, which meant the production 004B had a service life of only 10-25 hours. I'm sure, as a trained metallurgical technician with thirty-five years experience testing metals all over the world, you might appreciate on a metallurgical level how that change in production materials had an impact on the reliability of the Jumo 004B engine. It just seems you don't understand that the facts of the Nazi politics that forced Franz to make that decision were a dominant factor in stifling the supply of said metals.

Mad Dog said:

It seems you skipped history class during your studies.
War is an extension of politics, as is peacetime economics. The industrial situation of Germany on the brink of war was the result of politics. Hitler chose to go to war despite the shortage of strategic materials partly because he thought Aryan supremacy guaranteed victory. That's a historical fact and nothing to do with wokeness.
Since you skipped the history bit and only want to talk metallurgy, I'll try and give you an example you might understand. In developing the Jumo 004 jet engine, Dr. Anselm Franz used as much molybdenum, nickel and cobalt as he though necessary. His development unit passed its 100-hour test, which is standard test of reliability. For production, due to the economic situation of wartime Germany with regard to strategic materials, he was forced to massively reduce the amount of those three strategic materials used, which meant the production 004B had a service life of only 10-25 hours. I'm sure, as a trained metallurgical technician with thirty-five years experience testing metals all over the world, you might appreciate on a metallurgical level how that change in production materials had an impact on the reliability of the Jumo 004B engine. It just seems you don't understand that the facts of the Nazi politics that forced Franz to make that decision were a dominant factor in stifling the supply of said metals.

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But if the Hertz mountains were full of chrome nickel and molybdenum then Adolf would be a great and obviously superior leader wouldn't he? Zimbabwe has huge Chromium reserves which proves the superiority of their electoral system, along with South Africa and Kazakhstan, doesn't it?

pbehn said:

But if the Hertz mountains were full of chrome nickel and molybdenum then Adolf would be a great and obviously superior leader wouldn't he? Zimbabwe has huge Chromium reserves which proves the superiority of their electoral system, along with South Africa and Kazakhstan, doesn't it?

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Not sure what you're trying to say there, are you trying to defend Hitler's decision to go to war despite the economic constraints imposed on 1939 Germany or do you just not like the realities of geopolitics? As I recall, Hitler used the democratic system (using proportional representation) to get voted in to power, then used that power to form a popular (with the German public) dictatorship.

Mad Dog said:

Not sure what you're trying to say there, are you trying to defend Hitler's decision to go to war despite the economic constraints imposed on 1939 Germany or do you just not like the realities of geopolitics? As I recall, Hitler used the democratic system (using proportional representation) to get voted in to power, then used that power to form a popular (with the German public) dictatorship.

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Your grandstanding about "geopolitics" is nonsense, your argument is based on the random disposition of ores in the earths crust refusing to support an extremist government, it is actually more whacky than the Nazis theories about Aryan supremacy, but go ahead, its good for a laugh.

pbehn said:

Your grandstanding about "geopolitics" is nonsense, your argument is based on the random disposition of ores in the earths crust refusing to support an extremist government, it is actually more whacky than the Nazis theories about Aryan supremacy, but go ahead, its good for a laugh.

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No, it's about the failure to realise that the distribution of ores could hamper the ability of the German industry to provide the material (including high-grade aircraft aluminium!) required to win the War. Take a breather and then try again.

Mad Dog said:

Very much so.
Just as the British has started the War with the idea of distinct cruiser and infantry tank designs, the Germans started with the idea of distinct tank-fighting and support tanks, those being the Panzer III and Panzer IV. Whilst the Russians made only a few changes to the T-34 during the War, the biggest one being the change of turret for the T-34/85, the Germans persisted in fine-tuning their designs and creating lost of specialist vehicles with incompatible parts. Whilst the Russians could swap parts between early and late T-34s and scavenge wrecks for common spares, the Germans created a nightmare training, supply and maintenance scenario. The Germans attempted to rectify this by creating a common main battle tank with one common gun, the long 75mm, based on parts of the Panzer III and parts of the Panzer IV. The program was imaginatively titled the Panzerkampfvagen III/IV, but it was too slow in development. It was originally proposed in September 1941 and finally cancelled in July 1944.
Whilst it seems a quite short and easy development to create one tank from parts of two existing designs, the design staff kept being revising their designs, and the Heer kept revising the requirements. It might have been a better idea to just concentrate on banging out as many Panzer IVs with the long 75mm gun as possible, but this was again a project that fell victim to the idea that superior Aryan development capability meant producing the best of the best solution. If you endlessly fine-tune and redevelop a product you will never get it out the door.
You can see a similar pattern in the Bf109K, which was supposed to unify the many different field and factory upgrades fitted to the Bf109G. It wasn't a success as the Bf019K program also splintered into different variants because there wasn't one Bf109K build good enough to do all the tasks the 1945 Luftwaffe was demanding be covered.

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This seems to be repeat of immediate post war speculation by authors that don't know their stuff and contradicts what we have learned about German tanks.

The Point was that in 1941 a German 25 tons tank with no room for growth was confronting T-34/76 (28 tons with huge room for growth) and KV-1 (44 tons)

Hence Panzer V (latter known as Panther was unavoidable and necessary. It should have been built earlier.

Firstly, lets wind back to September 1939 when hostilities between Poland and Germany begin. The Panzer III and the Panzer IV are in service.
There are no Sherman's, nor even the chassis precursor for Sherman the Lee Grant, No T-34's or KV-1.

The Panzer III, a specialised anti tank tank with its 3.7cm gun looks pretty good and so does the Panzer IV with a 7.5cm low velocity gun designed for infantry support.

The Russians had fast, mobile light tanks, they had maybe 25,000, possibly 15,000 in service, probably 10,000 in good condition.

There is 3 things to note about these German tanks:
1 The armour was found wanting and was pretty quickly upgraded from 30mm to 50mm (latter 80mm) keeping up with the Sherman & T-34/85 after up gunning.
2 They followed the British pattern of a 3 man turret with a reduced crew work load and an effective turret drill.
3 They had effective radios which not only allowed better coordination between tanks it dovetailed with the Model/Blitzkrieg idea of being able to make decisions more rapidly.
4 The gun of the Panzer III needed upgrading. Hitler personally demanded the 5.0cm L60 gun but only the 5.0cm L44 was fitted in 95% of the time by the time of operation Barbarossa. Plans for using tungsten based armour piercing discharging sabot ammunition in the 5.0cm L44 fell foul of technical issues (probably accuracy due to sabot separation) while tungsten cored lacked range and and in any case Germany was short of tungsten.

-When these early German tanks confronted far more heavily armed and armoured French tanks they defeated them because of the superiority of the 3 man turret as opposed to 1 man French turrets. A French Tank commander had to command, lookout, load and aim.

-When the latter German tanks confronted the T-34 during Barbarossa there were already 1500-1800 T-34 and 500 KV-1 in service (2/3rds on the western side of the SU) the Germans again had a better turret drill.

-Confrontations with British tanks were difficult. Their armour was outstanding (Matilda. Churchill) and the turret drill was just as good , fortunately for the Germans British tanks were with rare exception under armed for tank to tank engagement due to their procurement imposing railway transport limitations which limited the turret ring diameter.

Note the T-34/76 had only a 2 man turret. It was cramped and hard to load. Not improved till T-34/85 2 years latter.

Effectively the Germans tanks were out numbered and facing theoretically better tanks. The "Panzaerwaffe" used the superior ergonomics, 3 man crew, better optics, radios and just plain greater experience to deal with Soviet tanks that had vastly superior armour by getting in a first shot usually to the side. The KV-1 had a 3 man turret was dealt with because of its low number and poor Soviet experience.

The Panzer IV grew to 25 tons with a high velocity gun and over 80mm of armour. It couldn't grow in weight anymore,. The tank was 'nose heavy' and it couldn't grow anymore.
The Panzer III was produced as the StuG III which had the turret replaced by the casement. 5 had been on service by the time of the Polish campaign. The Germans had reasoned that Infantry were usually held up by the slowness to bring foreword artillery so they produced the StuG III with only a 4 man crew, manned by Artillery Units (not tankers) and designed with a height no greater than a solider. It was the most produced German tank and the WW2 vehicle with the most kills.

The Point was that a German 25 tons tank with no room for growth was confronting T-34/76 (28 tons with huge room for growth) and KV-1 (44 tons)

Hence Panzer V (latter known as Panther was unavoidable and necessary. It should have been built earlier.

Than tank featured extremely thick and sloped frontal armour (80mm sloped 50 degrees, effectively 150mm) that was immune to the T-35/85 and in most cases resisted the US 76mm and UK 17 pounder firing tungsten. It's side armour was not particularly thick. It's own 7.5cm gun could outrage most other tanks.

The tank went from drawing board to service in less than 1 year. It's not surprising it had difficulties with reliability. They were pretty much solved after about a year. The most nagging problem was the two final drives, the straight cut spur reducer gearbox on each driving wheel. On Tiger I and T-34 this was a planetary gear box on the Sherman Herringbone gears. The Germans had a shortage of gear cutting machine tools and as they wanted 500 Panther's/month settled on straight cut gears. Panther was designed to take less man hours.

Strengthening the gearbox casing and improving lubrication increased lift to 1500km before molybdenum shortages reduced this back to 150km.

The Tiger was reliable, but required a lot of maintenance. This was acceptable in a specialised breakthrough tank.

Final Panther Ausf F (Issue F) was to receive armour upgrade from 80mm to 100mm, an 88mm gun and and finally the planetary gears originally envisaged.

Back on topic, and in the real world, here's a few pages from the analysis done by the Americans of the Bf 110 kindly sent by the British.

stona said:

Back on topic, and in the real world, here's a few pages from the analysis done by the Americans of the Bf 110 kindly sent by the British.

View attachment 590697
View attachment 590698View attachment 590699

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Okay, I will bite. Why did the Germans put such a thick / heavy coating(s) of paint on their aircraft? I would assume camouflage initially, but was the thickness due to changing paint schemes?

Cheers,
Biff