fix the early war non-wonderwaffe, would it make any difference?

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sitalkes
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fix the early war non-wonderwaffe, would it make any difference?

#1

Post by sitalkes » 02 Jun 2017, 05:33

So early in the war, Germany could fix a number of things without costing too much extra in resources, but would it make a difference? What would you fix in the army, navy and air force that could be done without too much extra cost?
For example, fix the torpedoes and the merchant navy & RN suffers more losses (especially in Norway), maybe making Sealion less scary
Make/buy more aerial torpedoes
Don't make everything a dive bomber
Make a proper drop tank
Make better parachute harnesses for the paratroopers, so they can land with something better than a pistol
Have a standard truck design

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stg 44
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Re: fix the early war non-wonderwaffe, would it make any difference?

#2

Post by stg 44 » 02 Jun 2017, 20:46

Torpedoes hands down would give the biggest bang for the buck if 100% reliable pre-war.
http://www.uboataces.com/articles-woode ... does.shtml
http://uboat.net/history/torpedo_crisis.htm
http://www.uboat.net/technical/torpedoes.htm

That and keep Udet from getting into the Luftwaffe at all and turning everything into a dive bomber.


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T. A. Gardner
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Re: fix the early war non-wonderwaffe, would it make any difference?

#3

Post by T. A. Gardner » 02 Jun 2017, 20:51

I'd think the big one is the Luftwaffe cooperates better with the Kriegsmarine. If Germany started the war with the Graf Zeppelin finished and equipped with aircraft, and the Peter Strasser being finished, the KM has a much better force for raiding in the Atlantic.
The Luftwaffe also has both seaplanes / flying boats and long range land based maritime patrol planes available too. That would allow an earlier dominance of merchant shipping in the Atlantic.

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stg 44
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Re: fix the early war non-wonderwaffe, would it make any difference?

#4

Post by stg 44 » 02 Jun 2017, 22:14

T. A. Gardner wrote:I'd think the big one is the Luftwaffe cooperates better with the Kriegsmarine. If Germany started the war with the Graf Zeppelin finished and equipped with aircraft, and the Peter Strasser being finished, the KM has a much better force for raiding in the Atlantic.
The Luftwaffe also has both seaplanes / flying boats and long range land based maritime patrol planes available too. That would allow an earlier dominance of merchant shipping in the Atlantic.
That and no Plan Z would help; if instead of trying to build a major surface fleet starting in early 1939, which was scrapped in November 1939 with a bunch of wasted time, labor, and materials, they had instead opted to build up the Uboat fleet would have meant that come early 1940 they'd have dozens more Uboats right at the time it would have mattered.

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T. A. Gardner
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Re: fix the early war non-wonderwaffe, would it make any difference?

#5

Post by T. A. Gardner » 03 Jun 2017, 01:53

Now another interesting twist is the Germans contract with the Japanese in 1939 when the war begins to rebuild the liner Scharnhorst that was trapped in Japan into a carrier. The Japanese historically did this once the Pacific War started taking about a year to complete and the resulting carrier was commissioned in the IJN as the Shinyo. The crew was about 1,000. So, what the Germans do is send the eventual crew as "civilians" via the USSR in 1939 - 40 to Japan in groups of say 100 or so over a number of months.
These men become both shipyard workers on the conversion and the eventual crew, reverting to military ranks on commissioning of the ship.
Scharnhorst's sister ship Gneisenau in Germany undergoes a similar conversion using plans converted from the Japanese conversion ones.

The Germans send Graf Spee and say, a commerce raider, to Japan to escort the ship when complete. The 33 aircraft necessary to equip it are shipped to Japan early in the war. After all, Japan did receive a number of German aircraft after the war in Europe started in small numbers for evaluation. Here, they simply up the number sent.

The result is a small German Pacific squadron. Add a few U-boats operating as U-boats would, and this could present a serious problem to the US once the Pacific War starts.

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Re: fix the early war non-wonderwaffe, would it make any difference?

#6

Post by pugsville » 03 Jun 2017, 03:33

Building the aircraft carriers does not make a carrier striking force, the doctrine has to be developed. and aircraft developed and the crews trained. To have an effective carrier strike force a large effort with many of the best pilots diverted from the Luftwaffe. It's hard to Goring co-operating with so much of the trained personnel escaping form his control, you might get madness like the carriers being part of Luftwaffe, with all the conflicting command and control issues. Developing carrier based aircraft is not a trivial process.

In these what-ifs , what are the Germans giving up? The more resources built into carriers and U-boats will mean inevitably in the very constrained Germany economy that something else must be forgone. Less tanks? Less fighter aircraft? less trucks? exactly where would these resource4s be diverted from.

And the British are extremely sensitive to naval matters. Any german build up of their Naval forces, will be responded to.

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Re: fix the early war non-wonderwaffe, would it make any difference?

#7

Post by sitalkes » 07 Jun 2017, 00:53

Well a better suggestion is to build more S-Boats and destroyers, as that was permitted by the Anglo-German naval agreement, and wouldn't upset the British (and the smaller boats could be built out of wood in more locations). Also, the Dutch had schnorkels on some of their submarines that were operating in 1940, so the Germans should have done that, too. The Heer and Luftwaffe worked well together, if that sort of relationship could have been built up with the navy, it would have worked wonders even without building the carriers or altering the building programme

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