German logistics, purchase programs and war booty, reality and alternatives 1935-43 (4 Viewers)

Airborne & light Flak guns/cannons - seems like that Germans went a bit over-board with the wide variety they made.
Two LMGs, one HMG, 3 different 20mm guns/ammo + the big Oerlikon supplied from Switzerland + the 20mm Madsen, 'two and a half' 30mm guns (MK 101 and MK 103 used different priming) with the next 2 designs in the pipeline (213C and 303), 50-55mm guns of several sizes/weights/RoFs... Curiously, no specific 37mm gun for air fighting, but several 37mm AA guns to up the diversity, plus 40mm Bofors (captured, as well as produced in Norway), the 15mm gun, the 25mm French gun - enough of variety for two continents.
The development was even more diverse, with 13mm necked down to 10 and 8 mm, the transitional ammo for the MG 213A (probably very similar to the 20mm Flak?)
The magazine-fed LMG has no place in a serious ww2 air war.

Keeping the things simpler might've been prudent. Eg. a 700 and 900 m/s gun per calibre? So the LW gets the Oerlikon L (instead of the MG FF and 151/20) and the 'normal' Flak 30/38, a 30mm Flak good for 900 m/s and a gun for air fighting that does 700m/s, again the 37mm 900 m/s Flak and 700 m/s type air-to-air gun etc. Skip the bigger guns and the 15mm, but make the HMG a bit more powerful, using the ammo that about as powerful as the 13mm TuF.
The high MV 30 and 37mm guns will also be good for tank plinking.

GrauGeist said:

Wood.

Wood alcahol aka Methanol burns closer to the properties of gasoline than Ethanol and it's production base does not involve food sources.

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Producing methanol from wood is a way to convert a large amount of wood into a much smaller amount of methanol. At industrial scale, you're probably looking at scaling up the BASF process, patented in 1923. Which works at 200 atm / 350C using a chromium-zinc oxide catalyst. Is this more efficient than producing synthetic gasoline or diesel from coal? Recall Germany had a coal problem; they had mountains of coal but could dig it out and transport it fast enough for their needs. Would cutting down trees be less labor intensive at scale than digging up coal? Considering the industrialized world switched away from wood fuel to coal, probably not..?

IMO, the best way of usage of the methanol would've been to make the MW 50.

Sometimes the ammo supply was not as chaotic as it might appear. Older guns and ammo were seldom used in front line units and at times older guns and ammo were used in static positions and /or training grounds. The intention was often to replace them with new guns and ammo when the old guns wore out or when existing ammo was used up. Not to make new ammo for many of the old guns. Sometimes the situation changed.
The Germans had policy in 1938-40 about taking captured guns into German service. Not saying it was followed 100% but the guide lines called for a certain level of existing captured ammo to exist before any captured guns were taken into inventory for reuse. There were several levels. Like how much ammo per gun before they considered using the guns in the normal field army (or issue to allies?), and a significantly lower amount of ammo per barrel for use in training in France/Europe or for costal defense/fortifications. If the Germans thought they had captured insufficient ammo the guns were sent to the scrap yards.
There were exceptions. The Germans are supposed to have manufactured 100,000 rounds of 3.7in ammo for British AA guns captured in France in 1940. Maybe it was cheaper to make 100,000 rounds than it was to build over 100 new 88mm guns and and mounts? They would have needed the same amount of rounds for the 88mm guns in any case.
For 25mm AA guns, I think those stayed in France (or at least the low countries) and rarely, if ever, traveled East or South. How much manufacture of 25mm AA ammo was done in France after 1940 I don't know.

The Germans did spend way too much time with 'toys'. High velocity guns using small projectiles. They seemed to forget at times, that the whole idea if punching holes through armor plate was not to make a hole in the plate but to destroy what was behind the plate. Granted the 37mm and 50mm AT guns did have small charge in the AP shells but sometimes they carried this to absurd lengths. The HE content of the 28/20mm taper bore gun was around 5 grams? The German 7.9mm AT rifle round had a small quantity of chemical that would produce tear gas. The amount of compound was about the size of an aspirin tablet and was only found when they broke down the ammo in testing. No British crewman ever reported noticing anything after their vehicle was hit/penetrated by the German AT rifle round. The amount of gasoline fumes, oil and cordite smoke from their own guns made noticing trace amounts of such chemical warfare items impossible. And then we have one of the ultimate toys.

The Idea of an anti-tank projectile to fired from a flare gun is bad enough.
The cost and manhours for the shoulder stock and the fancy adjustable sight (including sprit level?) for the number of tanks that were actually knocked out (or even noticed they were being shot at) boggles the mind.

As far as electric and percussion primers go. In some of the large weapons the cartridge cases were supposed to be reloadable. How often this was actually done I don't know. Or at what level. I do have an old 37mm round from WW I and you can unscrew the primer pocket from the rest of the cartridge case. Had a US 105 howitzer case and you could do the same thing. At supply levels the Germans may have swapped primers in 88mm gun ammo I don't know, maybe never but the there was one basic cartridge case for the cartridge case manufacturer. Electric or percussion priming was handled a lot closer to final assembly.

tomo pauk said:

several 37mm AA guns to up the diversity, plus 40mm Bofors (captured, as well as produced in Norway)

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Krupp owned 1/3 of Bofors, and when the 40mm Bofors was launched in 1932 they could have swallowed their pride and adopted it instead of developing their own 3.7cm flak 18/36/37/43. And even before rolling it out to the army, use the first production batch to replace that useless 3.7cm SK C/30 the navy had.

Timeline might not work out, but with an APCBC shell the Bofors gun could have been a pretty potent tank/AT gun as well. Presumably a lower profile hand loaded variant not sharing much commonality with the actual Bofors AA gun except the cartridge, but still.

z42 said:

Krupp owned 1/3 of Bofors, and when the 40mm Bofors was launched in 1932 they could have swallowed their pride and adopted it instead of developing their own 3.7cm flak 18/36/37/43. And even before rolling it out to the army, use the first production batch to replace that useless 3.7cm SK C/30 the navy had.

Timeline might not work out, but with an APCBC shell the Bofors gun could have been a pretty potent tank/AT gun as well. Presumably a lower profile hand loaded variant not sharing much commonality with the actual Bofors AA gun except the cartridge, but still.

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Two excellent suggestions. The Navy 37mm AA gun was part of the high high velocity at any cost school. Combined with the "if we can make a heavy, complicated, costly mounting system that will help accuracy and make up for the absurdly low rate of fire.

The Hungarians, who had adopted the 40mm Bofors in the 30s(?) made a 40mm barrel that took Bofors ammo and mounted them in their 3.7ch Pak 36 AT carriages.
At any rate the AT gun is the model 40.

Shortround6 said:

In some of the large weapons the cartridge cases were supposed to be reloadable. How often this was actually done I don't know. Or at what level.

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When we were done with shooting back in the day, we were required to pick up all and any spent case of the 30mm ammo, and to return that to the people that were issuing us the ammo.

Another story from the tough days of 1991/92: when the ex-Yu navy retreated from Pula (recall that in Pula/Pola was the location of the main Austro-Hungarian naval base between 1849 and 1918), our forces quickly found out that a lot of cannon ammo was dropped in the water nearby to the bases. And we were very short with the shells of any kind. So our divers went down, and started picking up the shells, that were then taken up by the 'ammo people', that dismantled, cleaned, dried, refilled, etc the ammo, and then sent to the units.

Shortround6 said:

The Navy 37mm AA gun was part of the high high velocity at any cost school. Combined with the "if we can make a heavy, complicated, costly mounting system that will help accuracy and make up for the absurdly low rate of fire.

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About this tidbit.
The Navy's 37mm AA gun has not sacrificed the shell weight to get to 1000 m/s. It's shell was heavier than what the 37mm Flak was using, 750g vs. 640 g. If wanted so, there was more than enough of elbow room to tweak that ammo. Like use the heavier shells, perhaps 800-850g for 900+- m/s (less of a barrel burn), or tone it a bit down, talk 750 g shell at 950 m/s (that will probably mean reduction of propellant weight by some 10%?).
At any rate, the automatic AA gun designed around that cartridge would've been superior to the 'normal' Luftwaffes/Heer's 3.7cm Flak. It would've also been better in killing the tanks.

tomo pauk said:

Like use the heavier shells, perhaps 800-850g for 900+- m/s (less of a barrel burn), or tone it a bit down, talk 750 g shell at 950 m/s (that will probably mean reduction of propellant weight by some 10%?).

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According NavWeaps the Big German 37mm semi auto used 385g of propellent per shot which sounds bad (and it is not great.
The Ex army 37mm AA guns used 185-190g (?) of propellent.
The 37-40mm AA guns were a balancing act. Effective range was a balance between short time of flight (high velocity) and an effective gunsight (were should you be aiming for an impact point 2-3 seconds after the projectile left the barrel. A 400kph airplane is covering 111 meters per second. Changing the velocity of the gun helps, but not a lot, or not enough to let you use those cartwheel gun sights and affect range by more than a few dozen meters.

Barrel wear/burn is dependent on a number of things. One is the amount of propellent burned vs the weight of the barrel. Not stated well. What is better is the amount of propellent burned per unit of time (like 10 seconds?) vs the weight of the barrel. The Big 37 is burning a lot of powder per shot but even at a miraculous 30rpm ( 5 shot in 10 seconds) it is around what the Flak 36 did. 60-80 rpm 10-13 shots in 10 seconds. The Flak 43 firing at 180rpm is 30 shots in 10 seconds.
It is not the first shot through a cold barrel that really hurts, it is the shots fired through a warm/hot barrel that is several hundred degrees closer to the melting temperature of the steel.
A heavier barrel takes more propellent burn to reach the same temperature.
But heavier and longer barrels take more effort to train/elevate quickly.
Power operated mountings were more effective.


There is a reason that a lot of the Naval 40mm Bofors guns had water jackets on the barrels.

Shortround6 said:

According NavWeaps the Big German 37mm semi auto used 385g of propellent per shot which sounds bad (and it is not great.
The Ex army 37mm AA guns used 185-190g (?) of propellent.

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The manual says 350-364g, but that is close enough.
(hi-res manuals can be seen here, that for the Navy's 37mm is named "M.Dv. Nr.170,3")
If that is really that bad, it was much easier to tone down the ammo a bit, than to soup-up the weak ammo. Fill it to just 300g for all I care (ie, ballpark of the 40mm L60 Bofors).

Trucks, trucks and more trucks. Awd and heavy, like the Mercedes-Benz L4500A. And half track transports, like the Opel Maultier. And more investment in the Eisenbahn-Bau-Bataillone (railway construction battalions) and Heeresbahn (Army Railway Service) to expand and convert railways into Russia behind the advancing Wehrmacht.

z42 said:

Producing methanol from wood is a way to convert a large amount of wood into a much smaller amount of methanol. At industrial scale, you're probably looking at scaling up the BASF process, patented in 1923. Which works at 200 atm / 350C using a chromium-zinc oxide catalyst. Is this more efficient than producing synthetic gasoline or diesel from coal? Recall Germany had a coal problem; they had mountains of coal but could dig it out and transport it fast enough for their needs. Would cutting down trees be less labor intensive at scale than digging up coal? Considering the industrialized world switched away from wood fuel to coal, probably not..?

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The coal would be better used to produce diesel, kerosene (for jets), and other essential fuels.

BASF was fully capable of mass producing M-Stoff in usable quantities, especially if this what-if scenario saw the Reich ask them to set a significant production quota.

GrauGeist said:

BASF was fully capable of mass producing M-Stoff in usable quantities, especially if this what-if scenario saw the Reich ask them to set a significant production quota.

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Not saying you shouldn't produce any methanol at all. Clearly there are cases where it's needed, like for rocket fuel as you mention. Methanol is also an important feedstock in many chemical processes.

My argument is that in terms of manpower and industrial infrastructure, producing synthetic fuel from coal might be more efficient than producing methanol from wood.

Admiral Beez said:

Trucks, trucks and more trucks. Awd and heavy, like the Mercedes-Benz L4500A. And half track transports, like the Opel Maultier. And more investment in the Eisenbahn-Bau-Bataillone (railway construction battalions) and Heeresbahn (Army Railway Service) to expand and convert railways into Russia behind the advancing Wehrmacht.

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Also more (lot more!) 6x6 trucks; while not as capable of difficult terrain as half or fully tracked vehicles, can still be pretty good. Examples Germany used, and should (could?) have built many more of: Einheitsdiesel - Wikipedia and Tatra 111 - Wikipedia

Of course, even 6x6 trucks have limits:

Speaking of logistics, a logistical innovation widely used by the US during WWII: pallets and forklifts (and things like pallet jacks etc.).

Per the previous discussion in this thread, behind-the-lines vehicles should preferably use coal (steam or coal gas) to save the precious liquid fuels. I'm now imagining a steam-powered forklift. Choo-choo!

Further blowing into my trumpet:
- Intermediate cartridge ASAP.
- An actually fast bomber. Something size of Me 110 (the Ju 88 is too big); the earlier the Do 17 is phased out, the better.
- Spitfire-sized, and as sleek fighter-bomber/ LR fighter/recon.
- The DB-powered Fw 187, 190 or He 100 (with a normal cooling); the 187 will also do well with Jumo 211s.
- Axe the Hs 129.
- 2-seat versions of 1-engined fighters for training ASAP.

tomo pauk said:

- A fast bomber.
- sleek fighter-bomber
- DB-powered Fw 187, 190 or He 100
- Axe the Hs 129
- 2-seat fighters for training

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You've lost me, how does this relate to logistics? Are you on the wrong thread?

z42 said:

Of course, even 6x6 trucks have limits:

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Indeed. Half track transports would help, such as he Opel Maultier....


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGA3cH6yzFY
...the Wehrmachtschlepper (you have to like these names)...


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrEKZLIVEAI
And especially the Sd.Kfz. 9 Famo, which came in useful variants.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUwWDNo5dn8
All these halftracks could benefit from track width extenders or OEM wider tracks before deployment to Russia. The Famo's tracks were the widest of all halftracks at 500 mm (19.7 inches), which is the same width as the later T-34/85.

tomo pauk said:

So here it is: a place where we can hump on the Nazi Germany leadership wrt. their mistakes in the field of logistics, purchase programs

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Step one requires some deeper thinking on the part of Hitler and the entire leadership, with an assumption that the invasion of the USSR will take longer, and will thus require winter-capable uniforms, weapons and ammunition for the German foot soldier.

tomo pauk said:

- An actually fast bomber. Something size of Me 110 (the Ju 88 is too big); the earlier the Do 17 is phased out, the better.
- Spitfire-sized, and as sleek fighter-bomber/ LR fighter/recon.
- The DB-powered Fw 187, 190 or He 100 (with a normal cooling); the 187 will also do well with Jumo 211s.
- Axe the Hs 129.
- 2-seat versions of 1-engined fighters for training ASAP.

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Ditch the He100 - it was too small for adequate armament.

Pursue the He112 instead.

Also, when Heinkel demonstrated the He178, get excited and throw the full backing of the RLM behind the fledgling jet program instead of dismissing it as a novelty - and this includes suppressing internal in-fighting.

Keep the Hs129, but give it the engine power it needs to perform better. And threaten anyone with a firing squad who mentions installing a BK7.5 on it...