German logistics, purchase programs and war booty, reality and alternatives 1935-43

Shortround6 said:

My point is that a production line that is cranking out a few dozen guns a month might not be of interest to the Germans, they need hundreds or thousands of guns per month.

Click to expand...

Germans can start increasing the production in Belgium, include the production line(s) in France, and make the guns in Germany proper. Or, don't make a single HMG in Germany proper, make more of the 20mm weapons there instead.
The German need for the HMGs was far lower than their need for the 20mm cannons, that were favored weapons in all 3 Wehrmacht arms.

Shortround6 said:

They had also been working on their own MG 131 since at least 1938 and they were specifying it in number of aircraft in 1939-40 (shows up in some of the FW 187 specs).
Now it doesn't seem to have gone quite as planned and the MG 131 seems to have started trickling into Luftwaffe service in the spring of 1941 in bombers. For a gun that was supposed to have been fitted into cowl mounts that took quite a while to happen.

Click to expand...

By the same token, the Belgian Browning could've been trickling on the German bombers from 1941 on.
The MG 131 shows in the 1942 drawings for the Fw 187. It shows in the very early drawings for the Fw 190, as an wing-mounted synchronised weapon, but that place was quickly taken by a more substantial weapon, as one can expect.

Shortround6 said:

Now the American .50 cal was certainly not in great shape in 1940 or 41 but for some reason everybody assumes that the Belgian version was ready go, reliable and durable and available in large numbers in the summer of 1940.
It took ten factories in the US to satisfy the demand for .50 cal guns at it's peak during the war.

Click to expand...

German position on HMGs is very much removed from the US position on HMGs. They can opt not to make a single HMG and their combat effectiveness is not changed by a single iota.
Nobody said that the Belgian Browning was available in large number in the summer of 1940. Seems like it was more ready to go than the MG 131, though, and it was certainly more powerful of the two.

Shortround6 said:

The Germans don't seem to have had FN build very many (or any?) BARs and FN had the tooling to make BARs and even offered a quick change barrel version for sale in 1930s.

Click to expand...

BAR probably didn't offer anything over the MG 34, 42, ZB 26 and ZB 39, nor it was filling a niche that was present. Perhaps supplying the raw materials for these MGs was seen as the more prudent move than supplying the raw materials for the BAR?
OTOH, Germans sometimes (many times) didn't seem interested in the foreign designs as-is (bar what they found in the warehouses) until the proverbial hit the fan? Even their usage of the Czech factories was meh, IMO, until 1942, eg. the capable sFH 37(t) went nowhere.

Shortround6 said:

I don't have reasons. But there was a lot of tooling in the FN factory for all sorts of weapons. The question is how much tooling they actually had for the 13.2mm machine gun and if the 13.2mm machine gun was actually a finished ready to go project. Or was it pretty much in the same state the US .50 was? unreliable in high altitude cold weather, feed problems while pulling Gs and so on. The Swedes and Finns had a while to sort out the problems.

Click to expand...

Again, see this from the German perspective. They also have months to test and, need be, debug the Belgian Browning, and it is not a weapon that will make or break their warfare anyway.

The whole things that cold had make the wwii different and mayby an Axis victory was a Italy more competent that take North afrika and middle east alone in 1940/41

Alexander severus said:

The whole things that cold had make the wwii different and mayby an Axis victory was a Italy more competent that take North afrika and middle east alone in 1940/41

Click to expand...

Kinda off-topic, don't ya say?

If we are talking about licensed production, then perhaps a better choice is the Gebauer GKM in the version with two barrels and engine drive. 44kg and 2000-2600 rpg (admittedly Breda 12.7x81 but I guess 13.1mm can also be used in the wiff section ). There was also a single barrel gas variant.
Wiki have article on it.

BAR, I think, it was also made in Poland in Mauser caliber and I hear/read somewhere that some early SS formations had it?

@ Reluctant Poster

Unfortunately, I don't have blueprints or full specifications for the Sentinel wagon, but the point of the condenser is that its we trade it's weight for the huge hundreds of kilos of water it was driving anyway, and that it doesn't have to stop every 30 miles. Of course, it's just an idea without calculation, but if I remember correctly we talk about 400 kg (cca 800 lb) of water so...

tomo pauk said:

I tedeschi possono iniziare ad aumentare la produzione in Belgio, includere la linea di produzione in Francia e produrre le armi in Germania vera e propria. Oppure, non produrre un singolo HMG in Germania vera e propria, ma produrre più armi da 20 mm lì.
La necessità tedesca di mitragliatrici pesanti era di gran lunga inferiore a quella dei cannoni da 20 mm, che erano le armi preferite da tutte e tre le armi della Wehrmacht.


Allo stesso modo, il Browning belga avrebbe potuto essere impiegato a pioggia sui bombardieri tedeschi a partire dal 1941.
L'MG 131 è presente nei disegni del 1942 per l'Fw 187. È presente nei primissimi disegni per l'Fw 190, come arma sincronizzata montata sulle ali, ma quel posto è stato rapidamente preso da un'arma più consistente, come ci si può aspettare.


La posizione tedesca sugli HMG è molto lontana dalla posizione statunitense sugli HMG. Possono scegliere di non costruire un singolo HMG e la loro efficacia in combattimento non cambia di un solo iota.
Nessuno ha detto che la Browning belga fosse disponibile in grandi quantità nell'estate del 1940. Sembra però che fosse più pronta all'uso della MG 131, ed era sicuramente più potente delle due.



BAR probabilmente non offriva nulla in più di MG 34, 42, ZB 26 e ZB 39, né stava riempiendo una nicchia che era presente. Forse fornire le materie prime per queste MG era considerata la mossa più prudente rispetto a fornire le materie prime per BAR?
D'altro canto, i tedeschi a volte (molte volte) non sembravano interessati ai progetti stranieri così come erano (tranne quello che trovavano nei magazzini) finché non è scoppiato il proverbiale incidente? Anche il loro utilizzo delle fabbriche ceche è stato meh , a mio parere, fino al 1942, ad esempio il valido sFH 37(t) non è andato da nessuna parte.


Di nuovo, guardate questo dalla prospettiva tedesca. Hanno anche mesi per testare e, se necessario, mettere a punto il Browning belga, e non è un'arma che farà la differenza nella loro guerra in ogni caso.

Click to expand...

Belgian industries had some Blue print of engines or aircraft that could had helped germany?

Alexander severus said:

Belgian industries had some Blue print of engines or aircraft that could had helped germany?

Click to expand...

I don't think so.
(never knew that my Italian is that good )

Zmauky said:

Unfortunately, I don't have blueprints or full specifications for the Sentinel wagon, but the point of the condenser is that its we trade it's weight for the huge hundreds of kilos of water it was driving anyway, and that it doesn't have to stop every 30 miles. Of course, it's just an idea without calculation, but if I remember correctly we talk about 400 kg (cca 800 lb) of water so...

Click to expand...

From a set of British road tests of Steam Trucks in 1898-1901 the Leyland ran at average 212 psi and used .8 to 1.36 gallons of water per Ton-Mile, with capacity for 5 tons payload, 3 tons unladen and dry/empty. Water tank capacity was 138 gallons
Notes on the test that the Steam was also far superior to horses on roads with even minor grades, and that water was easily available every 15 miles, wasn't economical for the weight, cost, and filtering the recovered water(removing the injected lube oil) when equipped with condensors, and they fell out of favor.

The later Sterling had far more power, and higher top speed than the Leyland, that given the laws at the time(1900) seems to have had a 5mph road speed limit

With that restriction in mind, a company had done a comparison with the Leyland for moving grain from docks, mill and warehouses.
For moving grain, one steamer moved 34.8 tons of bagged grain in a working day, vs 3 wagons each with a 2 horse team pulling
moved 12.6 tons worth
The Steamer on a cost basis for crew, wages and fuel, was also 3 Pounds 14 Shillings cheaper than the Horses and Drovers each day.

Getting Horses back on the Farms is the best thing to do for efficiency of army logistics, even with the additional up front costs

in 1939, roughly 900k horses were used as pack animals in the Heer.
From US AEF experience in WWI France, each horse would need to be reshod 4.8 times a year, from lost shoes, hoof growth, etc. I'll declare the German experience was similar.

So follow along. Heer has 2M horses in service once the War went into the USSR, the average weight of a draft horseshoe is 4 pounds. In one year, Germany needs to cast almost 77,000 24,000 (edit, Friday night and bad at math) tons of mild steel horseshoes

That's a lot of metal that can be used for more useful items than shoes.

Like Steam powered vehicles.
I'm using the shorthand that one of those can replace 6 horses in service.
Call that 150,000 Steamers. So would need 30,000 a year production rate on average or 2500 a month with a early start on production, like 1934 for start date. For a later start of production, the average will need to be higher to reach that goal of replacing all the Horses in the armed forces.
For perspective, 1940 thru end of the war, ICE Truck annual production averaged around 160,000, while 1939 after war started to 1940 was around 60,000, with production ramping up, if I'm reading my German truck production chart correctly.

Steam Vehicles will not be taking the place of ICE, that stays unchanged. The goal here is to eliminate horses from Army use.

marathag said:

From a set of British road tests of Steam Trucks in 1898-1901 the Leyland ran at average 212 psi and used .8 to 1.36 gallons of water per Ton-Mile, with capacity for 5 tons payload, 3 tons unladen and dry/empty. Water tank capacity was 138 gallons
Notes on the test that the Steam was also far superior to horses on roads with even minor grades, and that water was easily available every 15 miles, wasn't economical for the weight, cost, and filtering the recovered water(removing the injected lube oil) when equipped with condensors, and they fell out of favor.

The later Sterling had far more power, and higher top speed than the Leyland, that given the laws at the time(1900) seems to have had a 5mph road speed limit

With that restriction in mind, a company had done a comparison with the Leyland for moving grain from docks, mill and warehouses.
For moving grain, one steamer moved 34.8 tons of bagged grain in a working day, vs 3 wagons each with a 2 horse team pulling
moved 12.6 tons worth
The Steamer on a cost basis for crew, wages and fuel, was also 3 Pounds 14 Shillings cheaper than the Horses and Drovers each day.

Getting Horses back on the Farms is the best thing to do for efficiency of army logistics, even with the additional up front costs

in 1939, roughly 900k horses were used as pack animals in the Heer.
From US AEF experience in WWI France, each horse would need to be reshod 4.8 times a year, from lost shoes, hoof growth, etc. I'll declare the German experience was similar.

So follow along. Heer has 2M horses in service once the War went into the USSR, the average weight of a draft horseshoe is 4 pounds. In one year, Germany needs to cast almost 77,000 tons of mild steel horseshoes

That's a lot of metal that can be used for more useful items than shoes.

Like Steam powered vehicles.
I'm using the shorthand that one of those can replace 6 horses in service.
Call that 150,000 Steamers. So would need 30,000 a year production rate on average or 2500 a month with a early start on production, like 1934 for start date. For a later start of production, the average will need to be higher to reach that goal of replacing all the Horses in the armed forces.
For perspective, 1940 thru end of the war, ICE Truck annual production averaged around 160,000, while 1939 after war started to 1940 was around 60,000, with production ramping up, if I'm reading my German truck production chart correctly.

Steam Vehicles will not be taking the place of ICE, that stays unchanged. The goal here is to eliminate horses from Army use.

Click to expand...

Those are some interesting stats. I never considered the usage of steel as horse shoes before. I don't think I've ever seen it mentioned anywhere.

SaparotRob said:

Those are some interesting stats. I never considered the usage of steel as horse shoes before. I don't think I've ever seen it mentioned anywhere.

Click to expand...

Add to the shoes figure, the leather and accessories needed for livery.

GrauGeist said:

Add to the shoes figure, the leather and accessories needed for livery.

Click to expand...

Horse drawn wagons use steel "tires" too, correct?

A little off topic, but still towards logistics and consumption.
Yesterday I watched a good French TV show about the Maginot / Siegfried lines.
And so they mentioned that Germany spent (for all those dragon teeth and about 13000 bunkers) almost 700000 tons of steel reinforcement. That's the weight of 20 battleships. Of course it's not high alloy steel but ....
And yes without the West wall and a safe back they would have had a hard time deciding on war. But realistically the strongest part of the Siegfried line was propaganda anyway but it's hard to estimate how much they could have saved there.

Zmauky said:

A little off topic, but still towards logistics and consumption.
Yesterday I watched a good French TV show about the Maginot / Siegfried lines.
And so they mentioned that Germany spent (for all those dragon teeth and about 13000 bunkers) almost 700000 tons of steel reinforcement. That's the weight of 20 battleships. Of course it's not high alloy steel but ....
And yes without the West wall and a safe back they would have had a hard time deciding on war. But realistically the strongest part of the Siegfried line was propaganda anyway but it's hard to estimate how much they could have saved there.

Click to expand...

To support their horses the Germans seized all the leather they could causing a widespread shortage of leather across their territories for any other uses. Horses use up a lot of leather.

Another cost is stabling. You can't just hobble them in a field all night in winter and rain. Not if you want to keep them both alive and capable to extended heavy work.

In comparison with an ICE lorry the steam one needs a lengthy preparation for the working day and cleaned out at the end. But a horse also has to be attended to and brought to the wagon and harnessed to it. Spare horses have to be available to replace those who are sick or die and have to be looked after in addition to those currently working. Yes horses can make new horses, unlike a lorry, but the process requires the young to grow up and the presence of the mares and a few stallions all of which need to be fed and sheltered and attended to. Mechanised armies do not revert to horses. Yes pack mules in difficult terrain but that is a niche use not a general one: IF they have have the fuel for ICE lorries.

Steam lorries are not a one to one alternative to the ICE lorry. They have a different logistical need. In a logistics based Heer planned army the steam lorry would complement the steam railway. The steam railway has much the same logistical complement as the steam lorry. It can transport vast bulk loads even better but cannot extend beyond its rail head and stations. It makes sense for the steam lorries to work out from each station and railhead as an integral part of the railway system. Working to local supply bases from which ICE lorries and horse transport can deliver to the end users. The most important arm of the Heer becoming the Railway Corps which ensures that the steam rail and road work as a single system. With the flexibility of those ICE lorries which can be obtained directed to the immediate supply of the fighting divisions. Equally the civilian needs for transport for the war effort can be steam powered leaving the horses to farming and local transport. Releasing more military suitable men for the army. Some form of Land Army in the British sense to work those horses plus POWs again as used by the British until 1948 or so.

Once the grand logistic framework is in hand then the army strategy can be based upon confidence that armies will have the material to do their task and the tasks take account of the logistical framework.

One only has to take a look at the Prussian Moltke, who learned that they could not bring a bigger army into play than the Austrians etc but a lightbulb moment (oil lamp moment?) caused them to jump into an extensive railway building program and a planning staff. Who could thus mobilise far faster than their potential enemies therefore bringing more Prussian troops to the battlefield at the start of a war and defeat their enemies before the enemies could react. As more modern armies needed more 'stuff ' the above creation of a steam based Railway Corps as the fundamental base of Heer strategic planning is merely the same writ large.

It would not happen though. The Nazis loved cool and fast and a vast Railway Corps is neither. Closer to the Kreigesmarine Plan Z for 1948 in timing. Also it is designed for a war in the east. In the west short term mobility was the only chance to win a war there. A go fast with what you have strategy. If Hitler could have achieved a white peace and reined in Mussolini (or take over Italy) and settle the west then the steam Railway Corps concept could come into play with Barbarossa delayed by a few years.

SaparotRob said:

Horse drawn wagons use steel "tires" too, correct?

Click to expand...

Not just steel for the wheels, but for overall construction.

The reach had steel flanges, the suspension was steel reinforced, there were "irons" to reinforce the corners and usually "stringers" to hold the frame together. Plus all the fasteners, etc.

GrauGeist said:

Not just steel for the wheels, but for overall construction.

The reach had steel flanges, the suspension was steel reinforced, there were "irons" to reinforce the corners and usually "stringers" to hold the frame together. Plus all the fasteners, etc.

Click to expand...

Tough anti-horse crowd here.

The amount of steel needed for a horse drawn wagon (200lbs? - rims, spindles, axle reinforcements, connections for the harness, etc)*3 = 600lbs pales in comparisons to the 6 tons 13 hundred weight on the Sentinel Standard Steam wagon (6*2,240+13*112)=13,896lbs. Once the ground is frozen, you can exchange the wheels for skis (again having them steel wrapped is beneficial for wear).

Note: Just because the horse needs to be reshod, doesn't always mean you need a new shoe. After trimming the hoof, you can often reattach the old shoe.

One thing to note, while horses do struggle when road isn't completely flat, the steamer are unable to operate when road has gradient greater than 1:8. So, in the rolling hills of the Russian steppe, you need road building equipment to flatten the terrain.

yulzari hits on the main issue: there are 2 (or 3) very different requirements: The requirements for the war in the East were very different from those in the West (and those in the south are different again (although closest to that of the East)). Nazis thought English (Chamberlain) and Russians (Stalin) would surrender (at least white peace) allowing them time.

marathag said:

1950s Minnesota, that is even colder
View attachment 814142

Tanks were insulated, and had circulator pumps and steam heater for tanks that didn't have much use. The local well used to fill would be above freezing, that also helped.
Each tender needed over a thousand gallons

Click to expand...

Railways move far greater tonnage than even a fleet of steam lorries justifying the expenditure. You're not going to put these up one every road the lorries could possibly take. Basically as SR noted you are restricted to an out and back operation. See attached document:

"The steam waggon paid best on long journeys of say 20 miles out and 20 miles back home with
loads both ways. The waggon could work a 40 or 50 mile day and be ready for a repeat journey the next
day. Horses could not stand this. In rush hours waggons could cope with the extra work whereas horses
would be working near their limit and could not do more. In terms of ton-miles, the waggon working rate
was reckoned to be 1 1/4 old pence per ton-mile as against 2 3/4 old pence per ton-mile for horses. This latter
figure is considered to be very low, horse costs were often 4 to 6 old pence per ton-mile (ref. 1). However,
reference 14 (a Brewer's working with three to four Sentinel waggons) quotes a figure of 2.6 old pence per
ton-mile and average annual running cost of a waggon at £400 to £430.

Note that is from 1912. The S version of the Sentinel waggon introduced in 1934 was much more sophisticated and would have a greater range for the same expenditure of coal. I was surprised to find that it was a water tube boiler with a superheated and a feedwater heater!
The Sentinel in its final form is an amazing tribute to the perseverance of the British in wringing the last drop of performance out of a technology that was obviously on the way out. Sentinel's main rival Foden saw the writing on the wall and abandoned steam in favor of Gardner diesels in 1931 prodding Britain first commercial successful lorry.
I can't imagine any other country devoting the effort although.

SaparotRob said:

Horse drawn wagons use steel "tires" too, correct?

Click to expand...

Most times, but


Similar reasons on why other vehicles went with pneumatic tires.

don4331 said:

One thing to note, while horses do struggle when road isn't completely flat, the steamer are unable to operate when road has gradient greater than 1:8. So, in the rolling hills of the Russian steppe, you need road building equipment to flatten the terrain.

Click to expand...

Same requirement for Horse drawn equipment, or go for longer paths to stay with the permissible lower grade
Horse drawn wagons were limited to 1 in 12, unless many extra teams were hitched on

marathag said:

From US AEF experience in WWI France, each horse would need to be reshod 4.8 times a year, from lost shoes, hoof growth, etc. I'll declare the German experience was similar.

So follow along. Heer has 2M horses in service once the War went into the USSR, the average weight of a draft horseshoe is 4 pounds. In one year, Germany needs to cast almost 77,000 24,000 (edit, Friday night and bad at math) tons of mild steel horseshoes

Click to expand...

How does that math work? Using metric units, 4lbs is 1.8kg. And each horse has 4 shoes. So for 2M horses per year I get 1.8*4*4.8*2e6/1000 = 69k metric tons per year. That being said, can't shoes be reused (assuming they haven't been lost, of course)? If nothing else, if they are too deformed or worn, through a melting + recasting step?

That being said, hundreds of thousands of trucks in heavy use, be they ICE or steam powered, will need replacement of worn out components as well, so I'm not sure avoiding the horse shoe issue buys one that much in the end?

Like Steam powered vehicles.
I'm using the shorthand that one of those can replace 6 horses in service.
Call that 150,000 Steamers. So would need 30,000 a year production rate on average or 2500 a month with a early start on production, like 1934 for start date. For a later start of production, the average will need to be higher to reach that goal of replacing all the Horses in the armed forces.
For perspective, 1940 thru end of the war, ICE Truck annual production averaged around 160,000, while 1939 after war started to 1940 was around 60,000, with production ramping up, if I'm reading my German truck production chart correctly.

Steam Vehicles will not be taking the place of ICE, that stays unchanged. The goal here is to eliminate horses from Army use.

Click to expand...

Interesting. I'm surprised that such a modest addition to the existing truck production would be needed to rid the army of horses. Seems pretty feasible if they had started ramping up truck production sooner to have a mostly horse-free army by the time the war starts.

Another thought from these figures is that 150k steam lorries instead of ICE trucks isn't going to make or break the German fuel situation. So forget the steam lorries and just make more of the existing ICE trucks instead? Together with some modest increase in the synthetic fuel production capacity?

yulzari said:

Steam lorries are not a one to one alternative to the ICE lorry. They have a different logistical need. In a logistics based Heer planned army the steam lorry would complement the steam railway. The steam railway has much the same logistical complement as the steam lorry. It can transport vast bulk loads even better but cannot extend beyond its rail head and stations. It makes sense for the steam lorries to work out from each station and railhead as an integral part of the railway system. Working to local supply bases from which ICE lorries and horse transport can deliver to the end users.

Click to expand...

Or perhaps the other way around, rear area transport from factories, depots etc. to the railhead. Just use the ICE lorries at the other end closer to the front, where logistics gets more difficult and the lower fuel demand (and no water requirement) and higher flexibility of the ICE lorries are worth relatively more?

One only has to take a look at the Prussian Moltke, who learned that they could not bring a bigger army into play than the Austrians etc but a lightbulb moment (oil lamp moment?) caused them to jump into an extensive railway building program and a planning staff. Who could thus mobilise far faster than their potential enemies therefore bringing more Prussian troops to the battlefield at the start of a war and defeat their enemies before the enemies could react. As more modern armies needed more 'stuff ' the above creation of a steam based Railway Corps as the fundamental base of Heer strategic planning is merely the same writ large.

Click to expand...

Good points. There's BTW an interesting series of blog posts from an ancient history academic about the logistics of pre-industrial armies at Collections: Logistics, How Did They Do It, Part I: The Problem . The gist is that the modern style (well, late 19th and first half of 20th century style at least) mass armies were enabled largely by railway logistics. Before railways, the options were basically

• Carry what you need with you by horse and cart. Which limits the campaign length; as you increase the length of time your army stays in the field more and more of the transportation capacity will be consumed by the horse feed.
• Live off the land. Which limits the size of your army because there's only so much land your foraging parties can cover (er, pillage) and get the food back to your camp. This also limits the time your army can stay at one place, as pretty soon the food will start to run out (particularly if you're moving in friendly territory and you don't want to cause massive starvation of the local populace; granted often not a particularly high priority of military commanders, but still..).

Railway logistics allowed armies to sidestep these limits and transport huge amount of supplies and troops over long distances. Together with conscription this allowed huge armies to be raised and deployed.