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

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My first job out of university was working on a lignite fueled power station which is where I found out how difficult a fuel it is to burn and to handle. It is a mine mouth plant, as they all are, due to the weight of extraneous material (water and ash) that you must transport. For this plant the lignite is carried by train 14 miles from the mine. The fact that they justified building a railway for such a short haul shows how uneconomic it is to ship. In fact very short railways are quite popular for mine mouth lignite plants. Three large lignite plants in Texas used dedicated railways: Oak Grove 13 miles, Monticello 40 miles (decommissioned), Martin Lake 42 miles. They even justified the expense of electrifying the last two.

This is what the US Environmental Protection Agency has to say on the subject

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One of the other issues with transporting lignite is that it tends to disintegrate after exposure to air giving it a short shelf life. At the power station the reserve coal pile has to be carefully compacted to prevent air from getting. This also helps with lignite's tendency for spontaneous combustion. The coal to be used is kept in silos

Here is the ultimate analysis for a similar coal to that is burned in the plant I worked on (Saskatchewan)

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In comparison here is the proximate analysis for Welsh coal. It is indeed as good as it gets. Note the extremely low content of water and ash. Other British coals are almost as good. The Sentinel steam wagon was designed to burn Welsh or hard coal.

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Here is the analysis for German brown coal. Note the extraordinarily high water content. The ash content is quite high as well. Its actually a worse coal than the one I have experience with.

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Before anyone gets too excited the heating value show is higher heating value which does NOT include water and ash.

For the record the Sentinel was designed for high quality coal

"The boiler design is suitable for burning either coke or Welsh coal (ref. 1)." From:
The Sentinel Steam Waggon at Riverside Museum ____________________________
By Andrew C. Whyte, BSc, MSc, CEng, M.I.Mech.E.
Copyright April 2016, January 2021
Web site: A Chartered Mechanical Engineers Web Site
A copy is attached.

The high water content has a large effect on boiler efficiency. This is due to the unfortunate fact that you are converting water into steam on the wrong side of the boiler tubes. Instead of producing steam for the engine you are sending steam directly up the stack.

Power stations mitigate this effect by recovering waste heat from the flue gases to preheat the air going to the boiler. The air going to the coal pulverizers is heated enough to convert the water to vapour before it enters the boiler. This requires large heat exchangers to do so which are not practical on a rail locomotive let alone one for the road.

Ash has a lesser effect on boiler efficiency but is still presents a heat loss.

The Germans did use lignite for domestic purposes. To lower the extremely high moisture content they pulverized it and then heated it. They used high pressure presses to compact it into the briquettes. They are still available today. The result is a product that still had a very low heating value and a relatively high ash content. The following document describes the briquette process in India.

https://nopr.niscpr.res.in/bitstream/123456789/17781/1/JSIR 59%285%29 413-416.pdf

The Germans did experiment with both pulverized lignite and lignite briquettes in steam locomotives without success. However they exigencies of war did result in the use of a mixture of hard and soft coal:

"Officially, the performance of the 52 class was rated at 1,400 tons at 37.5mph on level track with coal of 12,650 BTU, but as their steaming capacity was on the shy side it was not always achieved. Until the end of 1943 hard coal was usually available, but subsequently it was mixed with 50 per cent soft brown coal (lignite) or briquettes, which increased fuel consumption by 30 to 40 per cent and required the services of two firemen on the footplate for all heavy long-distance trains. The use of the mixed fuel of only 9,000 BTU had a serious effect on performance by reducing drawbar horsepower while increasing the fuel consumption to 125 lb per mile."

The Kriegslokomotiven - Railway Wonders of the World

If was difficult to accomplish something as large as a railway locomotive the chances of doing it in a much smaller vehicle are slim.

After the war it seems that some pulverized coal locomotives were built.

"It has long been recognised that brown coal, even when briquetted, is an unsuitable fuel for locomotives if only because of the fire hazard associated with funnel sparks. In Germany, where successful use of brown coal briquettes on main line operation would be a major economic achievement, there has never been more than small local utilization -principally in or about open cuts. If brown coal is to partly or wholly displace black coal in Victoria's State railway system, no other solution is in sight than its use in the form of dried dust."


Coal Dust Powered Steam Engines

Here's some additional websites on the Sentinel waggon

Sentinel Waggon Works, Sentinel Steam Lorry

Steam Wagon - Sentinel Waggon Works Ltd, Super Sentinel, circa 1924 Archive & drawings
 

Attachments

  • Sentinel_Steam_Waggon_Apr2016_with_Figs_&_Appendix.pdf
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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?



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.
It was said of Spain in the Peninsula War that "small armies are defeated and large ones starve."
The (Black Prince) Prince of Aquitaine's chevauchee in 1356 had a frontage on the match limited to how far the foragers could reach, find and supply the main army column. He could move with no more troops at speed as the later nes would find all available stores already taken by the early troops.
A significant contribution of the Duke of Marlborough to the armies he commanded was his support for light sprung carts which could move faster and over worse roads than the traditional heavy wagons. This both allowed him to reach more local supplies and move on faster thus benefitting from more land to forage.

Logistics have been the core of military movements since before recorded history. The Great Heathen Army changed Viking land strategy to a permanent wide inland ranging force by seizing horses and becoming a mounted infantry force instead of a foot infantry one.
 
Who can forget the lignite powered Lippisch P13a jet fighter?

But I don't think it would replace the horse…………..
 
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?
Like I said, shouldn't post Friday nights ;)

What I wrote is for really heavy individual horseshoes

True math is like this.
5 pounds of shoes for each horse. Work horses would have shoes weighing around 1 to 1.5 pounds each. 1.25*4=5 lbs average, 4 low end.

WWI pile of shoes.

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Yes, shoes can be reworked, but they do wear and do get lost. On the Farm, are considered a consumable. Cheaper to buy a new shoe than expend skilled labor(Smiths) to rework so the old shoe can be used for the re-set on the Hoof.
But the pile would eventually be picked up by scrap metal collectors, and then gets reborn as low grade iron

For more consumables, each shoe, six nails. That's about 2.5 ounces per horse, adding up to 250 tons in nails each year for 2M horses. Little things add up.
 
Here is the analysis for German brown coal. Note the extraordinarily high water content. The ash content is quite high as well. Its actually a worse coal than the one I have experience with.
As said before, Lignite is a bad fuel.

But is far less bad than the 1840-1870 Southern locomotives and paddlewheelers that used green softwood for fuel for those steam engines-- less than 2000 BTUs/lbs, with high ash and way high moisture.

Why?
It was Free. Forests everywhere.

Green softwood can be over 100% moisture content, while the worst Lignite is 62%
 
Returning back to the He112B:
It had comparable performance to the Bf109F, but greater range on internal fuel. Add drop tanks to extend that range and you'll have better bomber protection.
I have doubts that He 112B powered by the same engine which powered Bf 109C would have had comparable performance to the Bf 109F, even to the Bf 109F-1 or F-2 which were powered by the DB 601N, saying nothing about the Bf 109F-4.
And the Romanians took rather dim view about the He 112B after gaining combat experience against Russian fighters in the summer of 1941.
 
I have doubts that He 112B powered by the same engine which powered Bf 109C would have had comparable performance to the Bf 109F, even to the Bf 109F-1 or F-2 which were powered by the DB 601N, saying nothing about the Bf 109F-4.
And the Romanians took rather dim view about the He 112B after gaining combat experience against Russian fighters in the summer of 1941.
Perhaps you're not aware that the He112B-2 used the more powerful Jumo210Ga engine than the Jumo210B/D series engine used by the Bf109 and Bf110.
 

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