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wiking85
Staff Sergeant
Steyr was producing things for the war effort during WW2:
Steyr-Daimler-Puch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Steyr Daimler Puch â€" Wikipedia
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Until mid 1941 all armaments contracts were annual contracts on a 'cost plus financing' basis. It means that the company is immune from losses if for example a weapon takes extra time to develop and get into production. There is also no incentive to produce more, faster or more efficiently. This is just one example of the malaise that lay at the heart of the Nazi government's cosy relationship with industry in general.
It has been estimated that the German motor industry was still operating at less than 50% capacity for military vehicles in 1942. The huge Steyr Werkes in Austria was still unoccupied in 1943!
Hoarding of raw materials was an endemic problem within industry and the aircraft industry was one of the worse offenders. This was partly due to the quota system exercised by the RLM. Companies consistently over estimated their needs assuming they would get less than whatever they asked for and then stockpiled any excess against future shortage.
There is some evidence that raw materials intended for the armament and related industries were diverted into consumer goods production. In 1942 the production of consumer goods in Germany was running at a rate only 3% lower than before the war. Corruption was rife in the Nazi system.
There was also considerable wastage due to inefficient techniques (one report estimates that a staggering 700Kg of aluminium was 'wasted' in the production of one aero engine) and inappropriate uses. Messerschmitt was still using aluminium to manufacture pre-fabricated barracks for the Navy and ladders for vineyards in 1943.
Other 'technological gambles', even those which did enjoy some success were fraught with problems. In November 1943 2,000 partially completed V-1s were scrapped due to 'structural weaknesses'.
Cheers
Steve
Steyr was producing things for the war effort during WW2:
I'll be more specific. The new built factory at Graz was still unoccupied in 1943 (Vajda and Dancey).
Cheers
Steve
My understanding was that that factory wasn't completed until 1943.
It was started in 1941 and still not operational in 1943. Whether it was complete or not after those two years I don't know, but it wasn't in use.
This was a minor inefficiency in the German aviation and manufacturing industry, cited merely as an example.
The result of the poor planning and inefficient practices was the damning figures for aircraft available to the Luftwaffe. In September 1939 the Luftwaffe started the war with 1,125 S/E fighters (870 serviceable). April 1945 it finished the war with 1,637 S/E fighters (serviceable number unknown). In the meantime they lost somewhere in the region of 42,000 of this type. For the entire war production barely kept pace with losses. The figures for other types are proportionally even worse. Put those numbers against the Western Allies or the Soviet Union and it is not difficult to divine why the Luftwaffe lost the air war. No technological gamble, however successful, was going to change this.
As I said above...resources, resources, resources.
Cheers
Steve
The Me 309 had full span leading edge slats, those on the 109(like many aircraft) covered only the aileron area. That in itself would increase CLmax by 40% such that the 77% wing area compared to the P-51 becomes 108% lift loading. Although slats increase CLmax considerably they do so by allowing far higher angles of attack before airflow becomes detached. Although these higher permisable angles of attack provide the desired extra lift they do so at a lower Lift to Drag ratio. These is more drag. Hence power to weight ratio is important in such aircraft: they are efficient at level flight but under conditions of high load will have more drag.
... A key problems will be the engines: either DB603 or Jumo 213. Neither seems to have exceeded 1750hp in production form until well into the second half of 1944. The Fw 190D9 itself had lacklustre performance until the increased boost modification increased power from 1750 to 1900hp in October and the MW50 addition to 2100 around November.
The Me 309 certainly seems to have had good performance on the 1750hp engine. It reputedly did 452 mph on 1725hp and supposedly around 462 on 1900. Moreover it had many features of what the Luftwaffe needed, a bubble canopy with spectacularly good rear vision, enormous fire power, improved range.
It seems more likely it was the victim of circumstance and timing. A completely new aircraft entering mass production in 1944 would have been a challenge for any nation.
It seems more likely that it was abandoned due to the circumstances around it.
In February 1940 Goering perfectly expressed the ineptitude of Nazi planning when he said, "the only projects considered as vital are those that will be completed in 1940 to 1941, at the latest..." His decision was an economic one, not a technical one. It was once again a short term plan to marshal resources.
Cheers
Steve
You sure about that time frame?A major blow to the BMW 801 production happened in March 1944, when Munich production lines were hit by Allied bombers. They just reached 1000 produced engines in February there. Production dropped to ~650 engines in April, looks like another bomb raid (raids?) in June 1944 cut monthly production to under 500 pcs.
bomb raid (raids?) in June 1944 cut monthly production to under 500 pcs. Subsequent successful raids were in October, production dropped down to 300+ pcs in Oct and November.
In 1942, USA produced almost 30000 of R-2600 and R-2800 combined, and in 1944 there was 45259 of R-2800 only produced. Between June 1944 and March 1945, there was only 4655 BMW 801s produced in Munchen area, and under 2000 in Berlin area.
Between June 1944 and March 1945 only 4,655 BMW 801s were built in the Munich plants.
Albert Speer to the USSBS:
"We were surprised for a long time that you attacked airframe production and not the motor production. we were always worried that you would attack the Bayerische Motorenwerke and others. There were only a few big factories...if you had attacked the motor factories at first and not the airframes we would have been finished."
The Munich area facilities of BMW were not attacked by the US 8th AF until July 1944 when a concerted effort was made. Munchen-Albach was hit on the 11th, 13th, 21st and 31st of July 1944. Munchen-Oberwisenwald was hit on 31st July 1944.
I guess that other raids may have been by the RAF, but I'm not about to go through the Bomber Command War Diaries page by page to find outI'm unconvinced that bombing of the Munich BMW plants was the direct cause of earlier falls in production. Of course bombing elsewhere may have caused problems.
Berlin-Basdorf was hit on 21st June 1944 and Berlin-Spandau on 28th March and 6th October 1944. Other plants were intermittently hit from June 1944 onwards, mainly in September 1944, with the exception of an early, 9th February 1944, raid on the Eisenbach facility.
Cheers
Steve
You sure about that time frame?
BTW, metapedia seem to be holocaust revision/denial site. FWIW.
Yet they were working on multiple facilities that weren't completed until 1943 like the tank plant expansions, Niebelungenwerke, Ostmark, and several others. Goering was not known for being good at managing the economy and that is why Speer took over in 1942.