WW2 bombers. If Germany had the allies heavy bombers would they have won the war?

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How hard would it be to take out underground oil-refineries and oil-stocks with bombs and technology used in WWII?
While I remember reading that Germany was using the Fischer Troppsch process as early as 1936. When did the Bergius high-pressure catalyzation process come online?

The first Commercial Bergius Hydrogenation plant was built in Germany in 1919 operated by Goldschmidt AG near Rheinau. By 1922 Fredrich Bergius had it producing 1 ton per day.
See this link.
New Scientist

It seems to have sent poor Friedrich Bergius Broke and a Balif chased him to Sweden to collect the money from his 1931 Nobel Prize.

German Government supported synthetic fuel plants began before 1930 under autarky programs in Germany well before Hitler became Chancellor.

Germany did not have significant oil resources or control and empire with oil. It had faced trade blockades and continued to face trade boycotts, financial boycotts, trade barriers and other problems accessing markets to create foreign exchange. The breakup of markets that came with break up of the Austro Hungarian empire and German empire even the Munro Doctrine created market access problems Autarky was promoted by the left as much as the nationalists not just in Germany or Italy but other countries as a way of avoiding the worst damage free trade to do to economies and provide security against blockades and boycotts. It was a matter of energy security and even food security.

ICI began construction of a 100,000/ton year Bergius Hydrogenation plant in Billingham England in the 1930s. Billingham Manufacturing Plant - Wikipedia . It is somewhat famous for the fact that that in the 1980s it proved nearly impossible to demolish due to the bomb proof concrete it was built out of. There was also a synthetic fuel program in the USA based around natural gas.

I know you are good at digging up material: the fischer-tropsch.org library has enormous amounts of documents related to this. Fischer-Tropsch Archive

A word of caution. Many 'pop' histories of the oil industry give fly away statistics such as that it took 6 tons of coal to produce 1 tone. Thermochemically the Bergius Hydrogenation process was about 50-55% efficient. Modern plants can be 70% efficient. The Fischer-Tropsch plants were probably just under 40% efficient. The FT plants often used brown coal which has 1/3rd the energy content of Black coal. Fossil and Alternative Fuels - Energy Content
In addition these plants used a lot of their input of coal to produced co-products such as ammonium nitrate for fertiliser and explosives.

In the last months of the war Albert Speer, realising the war was lost, ordered the chemical plants to focus on production of ammonia to ensure that there was fertiliser for next years food crop. This reduced mass starvation in occupied Germany.

Modern Bergius hydrogenation plants would be able to produce oil at $50/barrel. This is competitive with global oil prices most of the time, Such plants however have high capital costs and long payback periods, they must be big to be efficient and near coal fields to minimise transport costs and coal reserves big enough to support them through their payback period.

The real problem is that should someone build a coal to oil plant the oil cartels (eg Saudies) would sinply have lowered the prirce to damage the industry then jacked up the price again.
 
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Virtually none of the output from the Fischer Tropsch plants went into any direct use for the Luftwaffe.

If you want to investigate LUFTWAFFE, you will be quite safe to ignore Fischer Tropsch plants.

NB, this does NOT mean ignoring the FT archive, which contains general material on German synthetic production
of all sorts and despite the name isnt a collection of papers only on the Fischer Tropsch process. Incidentally,
the FT online archive went down for a period of at least 6months (maybe more) quite recently, so anyone
who feels like a hero, have a go at downloading the lot before it vanishes again !
 
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Virtually none of the output from the Fischer Tropsch plants went into any direct use for the Luftwaffe.

If you want to investigate LUFTWAFFE, you will be quite safe to ignore Fischer Tropsch plants.

NB, this does NOT mean ignoring the FT archive, which contains general material on German synthetic production
of all sorts and despite the name isnt a collection of papers only on the Fischer Tropsch process. Incidentally,
the FT online archive went down for a period of at least 6months (maybe more) quite recently, so anyone
who feels like a hero, have a go at downloading the lot before it vanishes again !

The Fischer-Tropsch process started out with catalysts that were discovered to produce alcohols. One of these fischer-tropsch like alcohol processes was used to 17% butanol and about 80% methanol. The methanol was recirculated through so that the output was predominantly butanol because it could be turned into iso-butylene which could be polymerised to iso-octane. Curiously these facilities seem to have been only built at the Bergius Hydrogenation plants. Latter they used butene byproduct to make the iso-butylene.

A question you might be able to help me understand is why nobody in the 1920s and 1930s developed engines to run of methanol. ICI considered building a coal to methanol plant in the 1930's. The catalyst is just copper/zink. After all Indianapolis racing has proven the practicality of methanol as a fuel and the early Rolls Royce Schneider trophy engines (R-type) used a methanol based fuel. Also butanol is almost a 1 for 1 drop in replacement for petrol. It could even be produced by fermentation at the time.

One reason British could produce so much 100/130 was the introduction is acid alkylation by BP in the early 30s. The American 100 octane program pushed by the USAAC I believe came out of iso-butylene that came out oil. Latter they added an alumina based regenerative cracking catalysts that further improved yields. German acid alkylation plants were started in 1940. I read only 1 was completed by 1943.
 
A question you might be able to help me understand is why nobody in the 1920s and 1930s developed engines to run of methanol. ICI considered building a coal to methanol plant in the 1930's. The catalyst is just copper/zink. After all Indianapolis racing has proven the practicality of methanol as a fuel and the early Rolls Royce Schneider trophy engines (R-type) used a methanol based fuel. Also butanol is almost a 1 for 1 drop in replacement for petrol. It could even be produced by fermentation at the time.

It would have been really difficult to get long range using methanol fuel.

The stoichometric air fuel ratio for methanol is 6.25:1 compared to petrol's 14.7:1. A rich mixture for petrol is around 12.5:1 while methanol is 4:1. So you will be using 2 to 3 times the amount of fuel for the power.

Also, methanol has a specific gravity ~ 6-7% greater than petrol.
 
6% doesn't sound much, but is about 36kg (79lb) increase for fuel in a P-51D (184USG).

But the fuel burn is the killer. While the P-51D might burn 65GPH on petrol in a normal cruise setting, a Methanol fueled version would be 130GPH or more for the same power setting. Endurance is basically halved.
 
6% doesn't sound much, but is about 36kg (79lb) increase for fuel in a P-51D (184USG).

But the fuel burn is the killer. While the P-51D might burn 65GPH on petrol in a normal cruise setting, a Methanol fueled version would be 130GPH or more for the same power setting. Endurance is basically halved.

That is one of the reasons why for backpacking stoves, Coleman fuel/white gas is more practical than alcohol.
 
No, but it made Japanese admirals happy.
IDK, if I was a Japanese admiral I'd be asking about the intel failure, as the raid was conducted when the USN carriers should have been known to be elsewhere.

Lexington (CV-2): 5 December 1941 sailed from Pearl Harbour. On Dec 7th was located 500 miles southeast of Midway
Saratoga (CV-3): being overhauled at the Puget Sound Navy Yard, Bremerton, WA
Ranger (CV-4): Atlantic Fleet
Yorktown (CV-5): Atlantic Fleet
Enterpise (CV-6), 28 November 1941 sailed from Pearl Harbour to reinforce Wake Island. On Dec 7th located 215 miles west of Oahu
Wasp (CV-7): Atlantic Fleet
Hornet (CV-8): Atlantic Fleet
 
I would imagine sometime after breakfast but before lunch.
There is perhaps a small window between two and four, but certainly not at four in the afternoon.
Anytime after four and through dinnertime is unacceptable and anytime between bedtime and morning is simply barbaric...
I'm kind of under the impression that at dawn is traditional?
 
Terrible time for an attack - disrupts coffee (or tea), breakfast and especially paper delivery.
No modern influencer would advise a dawn attack, it just isn't the done thing if you want to network and project an image.
 
IDK, if I was a Japanese admiral I'd be asking about the intel failure, as the raid was conducted when the USN carriers should have been known to be elsewhere.

Lexington (CV-2): 5 December 1941 sailed from Pearl Harbour. On Dec 7th was located 500 miles southeast of Midway
Saratoga (CV-3): being overhauled at the Puget Sound Navy Yard, Bremerton, WA
Ranger (CV-4): Atlantic Fleet
Yorktown (CV-5): Atlantic Fleet
Enterpise (CV-6), 28 November 1941 sailed from Pearl Harbour to reinforce Wake Island. On Dec 7th located 215 miles west of Oahu
Wasp (CV-7): Atlantic Fleet
Hornet (CV-8): Atlantic Fleet

You don't think getting intelligence on Pearl Harbour was going to be difficult for the Japanese in the lead up to the attack?
 
IDK, if I was a Japanese admiral I'd be asking about the intel failure, as the raid was conducted when the USN carriers should have been known to be elsewhere.
People today in this world of spy satellites, instant global communication, and massive data processing have a hard time understanding the limitations that existed in 1941. Without a mole in Naval HQ there's no way the US carriers future schedules could have been communicated to Kido Butai before they departed on their radio silent nearly month long voyage to Oahu. The constraints of time, fuel, distance, USN patrol/search ability, and rigid planning set the date and time of the attack cast in concrete.
It's a bit harsh to call an intel impossibility an intel failure.
Nagumo was a battleship admiral, not an aviator, and depended on a Lt. Commander for guidance in aviation matters. Lt Cdr Genda advocated for a strike on the fuel facilities and a search for the carriers, but was over ruled by the surface warriors who feared damage to their precious ships.
You've got to realize, Yamamoto was a maverick, who had risen through the ranks on sheer competence and good diplomacy and was way ahead of other aviators in the rank structure, whose rise was resisted by the traditionalist surface warriors. He had paid his dues and established his contacts in the surface fleet before getting involved in aviation.
So, yes, most all Japanese admirals other than Yamamoto were big gun admirals, didn't understand the implications, and rejoiced at the decimation of USN's battleship fleet. Yamamoto was their Billy Mitchell and Pearl Harbor was their Ostfriesland.
Cheers,
Wes
 
Without a mole in Naval HQ there's no way the US carriers future schedules could have been communicated to Kido Butai before they departed on their radio silent nearly month long voyage to Oahu.
You don't think getting intelligence on Pearl Harbour was going to be difficult for the Japanese in the lead up to the attack?
It doesn't take a lot of intel to know that at the very best only two USN CVs could possibly be at PH. The rest were publicly known to be either in the Atlantic or under refit in Washington state.
 
It doesn't take a lot of intel to know that at the very best only two USN CVs could possibly be at PH. The rest were publicly known to be either in the Atlantic or under refit in Washington state.
Catching more than 2 carriers in the same place would be a good trick under any circumstances. Even if 4 of them were supposed to be at Pearl harbour. They are carriers, if they want to practice flight operations they need to sail. And given the arrival of new aircraft types, and the general state of the world at the time, I think they would have been under some pressure to drill.
 
It doesn't take a lot of intel to know that at the very best only two USN CVs could possibly be at PH. The rest were publicly known to be either in the Atlantic or under refit in Washington state.
So, Admiral Y, what should we do, cancel Pearl Harbor and send Kido Butai to the Atlantic, or let The Empire run out of fuel in 6 months? Do you think those gaijin yankees will send the rest of their carriers to our doorstep before we run out? What do you say, Admiral?
 
So, Admiral Y, what should we do, cancel Pearl Harbor and send Kido Butai to the Atlantic, or let The Empire run out of fuel in 6 months? Do you think those gaijin yankees will send the rest of their carriers to our doorstep before we run out? What do you say, Admiral?

Quite the opposite.
They stuck the knife in... now twist it
 

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