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I agree Henning that the innefficiencies of the Nazi system should not be overstated. The proof that the german R&D efforts bore fruit are everywhere. German equipment was superior to Allied, or Soviet in very many ways, so it would be innaccurate to try and portray the effort as totally without fruit. However, the Nazis were just unable to target their resources to anywhere near the same degree as the Allies. There was nothing comparable to the JCS in the German camp, nothing even to compare to the General Board (of the US armed forces)> basically someone would think of a bright idea, convince one of the power barons, and off they would go, spending money and research RM, like they were in limitless supply.
Huh...? It actually lead to them, see Wasserfall... from this POV, the V-2 technology opened completely new technologies, which on the long term would have been the solution to Allied heavy bombers. The Wasserfall was close to being a usable weapon by the wars end.
As usually history is written by the victors. If the war turned out the other way we would be discussing why oh why there was the P-80 AND the Airacomet, the Meteor AND Vampire, the P-47M AND the XP-72, the F8F AND the F4U, the F9F, the B-29 AND the B-32 and probably a dozen other designs I don't remember.
The fact remains: At no point in the war did Germany have considerably more fighter designs in the air or in the pipes than any of its adversaries.
And evidence of that is in the poor showing of certain vital statistics. The one that comes to mind is the AFV production, something like 25000, compared to over 85000 in the US.
And Germany had a two year head start over the US, and enjoyed an economy that was about 40% as strong as the US productive capacity. On that basis they should have produced over 35000 units.
Why could they not? Partly because of resource shortages, partly because of bombing, but overwhelmingly because of poorly managed programs. Too many types, too elaborate types, production and component manufacture not thought out properly. A whole litany of failures that was the direct product of the Nazi system
Which is exactly why you have a He-162: Cheap, non-critical, resources, dispersed production. And it's not like the Germans "started to generate shortages" they were forced upon them and they had to respond. Which they did by basically focusing on a single piston fighter for further development and said jet fighter combo. As a matter of fact, of the He-162 a few hundred were available when the war ended. But not the fuel or the pilots to fly them.In 1944, the Allies had unlimited amounts of metals, fuel, manufacturing facilities, and workers, which allowed the luxury of variety. However, in spite of this luxury, they still made Sherman tanks, P-51s, P-47s, F4Fs, etc. because they knew production would win the war. The Germans, on the other hand, by 1944, was starting to generate shortages in just about all aspects of military support. When they really needed to simplify and produce, they continued to look at technology to save them.
The Germans suffered mostly from direct interference by high ranking party members into procurement. The thing is, branch by branch procurement was different and as was interference. You make vast generalizations over the whole military and assume because of obvious and well know mistakes, flaws must be present in every branch and every procurement process. More specifically you applied your logic to the case of the late war fighter developments in question, which simply doesn't hold.The Germans suffered from a badly disjointed procurement program, I am surprised that we are even having to debate this issue. Speer himself commented on it voraciously.
My numbers are very different (Christer Bergstroem):Yes, producing planes without spares, without fuel, and without pilots is an eminently sensible management of resources.......Even without too much allied interference the Germans managed to back themselves into a complete muddle, and sorry state of mismanagement. The Germans produced in excess of 40000 fighters in 1944, from memory, and just 8500 pilots to fly them. Even without allied interference with their petro chemical industry, there was an upper limit of about 5000 fighters that could be kept fueled and ready in 1944. In the Allied air forces, a P-51 had an average shelf life of 9 months (without combat attrition). So for the Germans, without combat attrition, if they have a similar shelf life, one could expect to maintain that force structure of 5000 with no more than 7000 fighters from the factories. On top of that, there is of course combat attrition, which for the Germans was running at about 1500 aircraft per month. That means to replace losses from combat, and maintain your maximum 5000 strong they would need another 15000 aircraft, roughly. All up, the Germans would have needed about 22000 aircraft to maintain their 5000 aircraft. They cant go past the 5000 mark, unless they find a way to increase pilot output, and fuel outputs. Neither of these were contemplated in the 1944 economic plans. So the result of this impressive production effort, was a whole bunch of useless airframes, sitting around airfields, waiting to be destroyed by the allies. Good management...yeah right.
Already explained like three times now. You on the other hand have yet to provide any explanation why Allied countries also had two or more jet fighters in the pipes as well as two or more piston fighters, if that was what was so wrong about RLM procurement.Which does nothing to explain why there were at least two jet designs, and four prop designs that I know of, other than to create procurement madness and confusion
Operational fighter losses on westerm front in '44 were ~11,000 alone iirc (don't have the book present now but will check later this evening) and the rest of your numbers... well I have no source ready and I'm not going to take your word for it after the 40,000 stuff before. You are also completely ignoring that a large number of your new planes are in fact rebuilds.And the table of losses supports my earlier contention, that the LW concentrated too much on the production of whole units, at the expense of serviceability. In 1944, the Jagdwaffe lost 13854 aircraft from all sources, but received 24654 new airframes. There was never a shortage of aircraft, but the reserve of aircraft could neve be used, because the pilots received, just 8500, and the fuel received, (total receipt in 1943 were 7.9 million tons, in 1944 it was projected that Germany would receive something like 8.1 million tons, but in the end, as a result of the losses of Ploesti, and the US bombing campaign, the Germans only received about 5.5 million tons). Luftwaffe oil receipts were in proportion to the total amounts received, so on that basis, the maximum expansion for the Jagdgruppen could have been from 2200 to just 2250 planes in the force structure. Instead, the Jagdgruppen were receiving enough fighters to support a force structure of over 3900. They failed however, to provide either the pilots, the fuel, or the spares to support such a change in the force structure. This is a clear and unrefutable indictment of LW management. They failed to manage their expansion in a way that would maximise the number of aircraft in the air. If they had produced less airframes, and spent the saved resources on increased fuel production, spare parts and pilot training, they would have achieved a higher sortie rate and possed a higher frontline fighter force than they actually did. Instead, they ended up with a whoile lot of unlflyable airframes on the ground, that were never able to contribut materially to the Reichs defences.
So where did it say it was due to lack of spare parts? Especially interesting how only four losses were attributed to technical faults.The laconic reports of II Gruppe/JG 53 indicate what happened to that unit in the months of May and August. In the former month the unit reported:
(A) Operations took place on thirteen days. Twenty-one scrambles, fifteen of which resulted in combats.
(B) Average aircraft strength thirty-four; average serviceability twenty.
(C) Fifty-three aircraft lost or damaged. Of these: (1) extent: thirty-four 100%, three over 60%, nine over 35%, seven under 35%, (2) reason: thirty-three through Allied action, four [through] technical faults, sixteen owing [to] servicing faults. . . .
(D) Personnel losses—Killed or injured: seven killed, five missing, three wounded (two bailed out), seven injured (of whom five bailed out). Two more injured not through Allied action. Seventeen parachute jumps, two jumped with wounds, two jumped twice without injury.29
So many adjectives... and your proof that this is attributable to the He-162 is where? In your mind.And people have pointed out to you, including myself, the false economy and poor logic behind your explanation. The luftwaffe would have vastly improved its operational rates (which were appalling, incidentally, by 1944 they were down to an average daily availability of about 50-65% of total force structure. This was in part, because of the fuel situation, in part because of previous battle damage, but also because of a shortage of spare parts (I dont think cannabilzing the spare airframes was permitted either)). Planes were grounded because ther were too many different types in service, and too few spare available to keep them airworthy).
Yeah, when it comes to facts instead of wild guesses and missing links in the chain of reasoning we can of course discuss that a bit later.We can discuss that a bit later, and compare the allied sortie rates, operational status etc, but for now I thought we were commenting on the Luftwaffe, and it overall poor level of management, of which the decision to produce the Do-335 is a part
The Ta-152H-1 already had the range needed for escort missions and was on top of that the best piston engined fighter in the air.
The Do-335 probably would've been an excellent nightfighter, fighter-bomber and bomber destroyer, but as a fighter its use was limited as Germany already possessed the two best figher a/c in the world at that point, both of which were far more capable in the role (The best no less).
It was faster than a 51B/D, Tempest, Spit XIV and P-47M - but a lot of 262s were shot down by those allied fighters and the Do 335 was only marginally faster