How big of a leap in technology did the Germans need to counter the Allies

[T. A. Gardner]

One note on the video. The narrator is wrong on Wasserfall. It was rejected out of hand in the US and had no influence whatsoever on SAM development. In fact, the US only fired like 3 Wasserfall before they decided the missile was worthless.
In the USSR they spend about 5 years trying to get it to work as a SAM, eventually scrapping the whole program and starting over with the S-25 that became the SA-1 SAM. Both the US Nike and Soviet S-25 were similar in design concept and owed nothing to German wartime SAM development.

[stg 44]

One note on the video. The narrator is wrong on Wasserfall. It was rejected out of hand in the US and had no influence whatsoever on SAM development. In fact, the US only fired like 3 Wasserfall before they decided the missile was worthless.
In the USSR they spend about 5 years trying to get it to work as a SAM, eventually scrapping the whole program and starting over with the S-25 that became the SA-1 SAM. Both the US Nike and Soviet S-25 were similar in design concept and owed nothing to German wartime SAM development.

So other than that nit-pick the idea is sound: the SAM was not a viable option during WW2.
Also it is no wonder the US dropped the Wasserfall, it wasn't advanced in development, certainly not significantly more than the NIKE, so why adopt that program when an American project was already near as advanced? It makes sense for the Soviets to give it a go because they are starting from scratch, but rocket technology moved beyond the 1944 German designs, so why keep on trying to make a old, obsolete design work?

[Stiltzkin]

Both the US Nike and Soviet S-25 were similar in design concept and owed nothing to German wartime SAM development.

Right and von Braun had nothing to do with the NASA space programme.
The Americans and Russians invented everything first, thats what usually pops up in contemporary literature and forums.

[T. A. Gardner]

Both the US Nike and Soviet S-25 were similar in design concept and owed nothing to German wartime SAM development.

Right and von Braun had nothing to do with the NASA space programme.
The Americans and Russians invented everything first, thats what usually pops up in contemporary literature and forums.

Maybe you should look this up before you criticize...

http://www.astronautix.com/h/hermesa-1.html

Development began in 1946 of an American version of the German Wasserfall rocket. Problems with the rocket engine delayed the first (failed) launch to May. Another failure in September 1950 was followed by a success on 2 February 1951. After two more tests in March and April the program was terminated in 1951, having been rendered irrelevant by more successful development of the Nike Ajax surface-to-air missile.

The US version of the Wasserfall was the Hermes A-1. There were three actual launches, and two failures that aborted the launch. The Wasserfall was determined to be useless and dropped.

On the Russian side, they started with the R-101

http://www.astronautix.com/r/r-101.html

The R-108 was a Russian homegrown version of the R-101, and components of it eventually made it into the Scud missile. But, as a SAM it too was a failure.

http://www.astronautix.com/r/r-108.html

What did work for SAM's for the US and USSR were the Nike and S-25

http://www.astronautix.com/s/s-25.html

By mid-1950 it was clear that the development work being conducted at NII-88 on surface-to-air missiles based on German technology was not producing any useful result. Although much had been accomplished, a lot of fundamental work remained to achieve an operational weapon. The effort spent on Wasserfall- and Schmetterling-derived missiles was now considered obsolete. The planned R-108, R-109, and R-112 successors had completed the design phase, but guidance system and propulsion technology were still not sufficiently advanced to support further development. So Stalin decided to start with a clean sheet of paper. He turned to his secret police chief, Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria, and ordered him to supervise a crash program to field an operational system to protect Moscow at the earliest possible date.

http://www.astronautix.com/n/nikeajax.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIM-3_Nike_Ajax

Nike owed nothing to Wasserfall, and very little, if anything to German wartime rocketry and missile projects.

At the same time, the USAF had moved in an entirely different direction with the GAPA Project that eventually led to the CIM-10 Bomac missile

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIM-10_Bomarc

The USN, was proceeding with Project Bumblebee and Typhoon. Bumblebee led to the Talos SAM, then Terrier SAM, and Typhoon eventually led to Ageis.

Von Braun and his companions had virtually nothing to do with any of that development, as they remained focused on US Army ballistic missile projects first at Ft. Bliss Texas, and later at Redstone Arsenal.

[Stiltzkin]

Maybe you should look this up before you criticize.

Yes, thank you for that academic explanation, credible work. You know where the highest accumulation of patents is listed now? In the south east asian pacific region and all those "inventions" of course have nothing to do (and have of course not been in any sort derived of affiliated) with their US counterparts.
They had everything, yet somehow they could not deploy it earlier...this is the lame excuse you will hear frequently.

[Batman912]

The Germans needed a major paradigm shift in a significant technology that rendered the existing technological norm in that area obsolete, irrelevant, or insignificant. They also have to do it within a period of time that makes its introduction into service significant. Short of that, they were hit. Some examples (scored 1 to 10 on likelihood with 10 = very possible):

Germany invents and fields nuclear weapons (2)

Germany gets supersonic or transonic jet aircraft into service (5) Getting a jet is not sufficient here.

Germany develops guided missiles including a SAM, AAM, Air to surface, and antitank type that really work well (7)

Germany fields a high underwater speed submarine (9)

Develops a high altitude jet bomber (operational ceiling = > 40,000 feet) (4)

These are true game changers. The Allies would have a difficult or impossible time of countering them in a short period of time and when introduced in numbers these would have a massive impact on Allied operations.

What sort of impact would the submarines have?

[T. A. Gardner]

What sort of impact would the submarines have?

A Type XXI high speed underwater U-boat rewrites the equation on Anti-submarine warfare.

For example, this boat can manage about 18 knots submerged for a short period. It could easily do 10+ for several hours submerged. That means all of the Allied slower escort types such as the Flower class corvette are rendered obsolete by their lack of speed. A Flower class corvette maxes out at about 16 knots. Realistically, under normal operating conditions these ships would manage more like 10 to 12 knots. The sea would have to be relatively calm, the engines in good condition, and the bottom clean to get the full rated speed out of one.

This means that a Type XXI could go as fast or outrun this escort. That means the escort can't maneuver into a position to use depth charges or even hedgehog due to lack of a speed advantage. 12 knots versus the maybe 6 a Type VII or XI could manage submerged was sufficient to get the job done.

Then you need to reequip every ASW ship with a scanning type sonar instead of the widely used and common "searchlight" types typically used in WW 2. The later typically had a flashlight-like beam 11 degrees wide and was manually aimed for search. The operator would point the sound head in some direction, make a search, then move it 10 or so degrees, repeat the process, etc. This was slow and it was easy to lose a moving target using this sort of sonar. Thus, the move to types using many sound heads that could scan 180 to 270 degrees all at once with a PPI type indicator. These were just coming into service in 1944-45.

Next, comes weapons. The depth charge would be all but useless against a Type XXI. The boat moves fast enough that it can avoid the pattern due to the sink times. Even fast sinking depth charges would be of only marginal use against such a boat. Hedgehog, Squid / Limbo, or Weapon Alfa are a bit better as these throw a pattern of bombs that sink really fast and use very accurate data on the sub's position. But, you still need a faster escort and one that can mount two or more of these weapons so they can make multiple rapid attacks on the target.

Guided / homing torpedoes like FIDO were also becoming available, but these needed more development.

A Type XXI being brought into service at the beginning of say 1943 would have been a huge economic hit on the Allies. As it was, they spent something in the neighborhood of $10 billion US to defeat the U-boat threat. That's roughly 3 or 4 Manhattan projects in cost. The Type XXI, and boats like them, could have easily doubled that cost to defeat them. For the Germans, the cost would have only slightly increased above the estimated $1 to $1.5 billion they spent building and deploying U-boats. That's a big deal.

An early Type XXI is a paradigm shift in technology and a real game changer.

[Guaporense]

The problem faced by Germany, vis-s-vis the Allies, was a lack of manpower not only to fight their campaigns but also to produce their weapons and provide for the general economy. A manpower multiplier was needed through standardization of industrial processes and outputs and enhanced firepower for the units in the field, e.g. earlier introduction of the infantry assault rifle, etc.

Nah, that's not going to cut it. They needed to perfect human cloning: to produce massive armies of cloned soldiers.

In terms of per soldier effectiveness they were already far better than the Allies, being about 150% as effective as British or American soldiers and 300% as effective as Soviet soldiers in inflicting casualties.

So expecting an even higher superior margin of per soldier effectiveness versus the Allies was unreasonable, the only way to change the tables would be to make the German manpower barrel bigger.

The problem faced by Germany, vis-s-vis the Allies, was a lack of manpower not only to fight their campaigns but also to produce their weapons and provide for the general economy. A manpower multiplier was needed through standardization of industrial processes and outputs and enhanced firepower for the units in the field, e.g. earlier introduction of the infantry assault rifle, etc.

That is frankly not a reasonable excuse, given total control of continental Europe and a large chunk of the pre39 Bolshevik Russia.

If the Nazis managed to convince French, Poles, Italians, Dutch, Belgians, Danish, Czech, Greeks and other nationalities to fight for Hitler the same way the convinced the Germans, WW2 would have been a rather different conflict.

As I wrote many times, in terms of pre-war population and GDP, the Axis and Allies controlled resources of similar magnitude, however, ethnic-Germans (Germany+Austria+Sudetenland) constituted only 30% of the Axis' controlled Europe's population and about 34.3% of it's GDP (according to my estimates, the combined GDPs of Germany, Austria and Sudetenland was 34% of Nazi controlled Europe's GDP in 1937, given the territories the Nazis controlled in 1942). Since the Nazis alienated the bulk of the population and resources under their control they couldn't utilize most of these resources for themselves.

We ended up with a war involving 80 million ethnic Germans fighting the 450 million strong populations of USSR, US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand plus their manpower from India and Brazil. The fact that the Germans were far more effective than the Allies explain why the war lasted so long since they should have been defeated in 1939 if the Allies were minimally competent.

[T. A. Gardner]

In terms of per soldier effectiveness they were already far better than the Allies, being about 150% as effective as British or American soldiers and 300% as effective as Soviet soldiers in inflicting casualties.

Where'd this come from, Dupuy? Oh, please say it was Dupuy! PLEASE!

[Richard Anderson]

Where'd this come from, Dupuy? Oh, please say it was Dupuy! PLEASE!

No, it isn't Dupuy. At best it is a willful misunderstanding of what Trevor said. At worst it is deliberately falsifying a source in order to make a misleading point.

[T. A. Gardner]

Where'd this come from, Dupuy? Oh, please say it was Dupuy! PLEASE!

No, it isn't Dupuy. At best it is a willful misunderstanding of what Trevor said. At worst it is deliberately falsifying a source in order to make a misleading point.

You spoilt it! No fair. I bet he was going to say Dupuy...

[Kingfish]

We ended up with a war involving 80 million ethnic Germans fighting the 450 million strong populations of USSR, US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand plus their manpower from India and Brazil. The fact that the Germans were far more effective than the Allies explain why the war lasted so long since they should have been defeated in 1939 if the Allies were minimally competent.

One could make that same claim in reverse. If the Germans were the super-warriors you make them out to be why didn't they defeat Russia in the two years they were the only land opponent on the continent?

[Richard Anderson]

One could make that same claim in reverse. If the Germans were the super-warriors you make them out to be why didn't they defeat Russia in the two years they were the only land opponent on the continent?

Don't try to make him think through that chain of logic...his head might explode.

[Michael Kenny]

..his head might explode.

I think it already has. The recent Photobucket ransom demand has destroyed all his old posts..................


viewtopic.php?p=2028498#p2028498

[Gorque]

The problem faced by Germany, vis-s-vis the Allies, was a lack of manpower not only to fight their campaigns but also to produce their weapons and provide for the general economy. A manpower multiplier was needed through standardization of industrial processes and outputs and enhanced firepower for the units in the field, e.g. earlier introduction of the infantry assault rifle, etc.

Nah, that's not going to cut it. They needed to perfect human cloning: to produce massive armies of cloned soldiers.

In terms of per soldier effectiveness they were already far better than the Allies, being about 150% as effective as British or American soldiers and 300% as effective as Soviet soldiers in inflicting casualties.

So expecting an even higher superior margin of per soldier effectiveness versus the Allies was unreasonable, the only way to change the tables would be to make the German manpower barrel bigger.

As with the other postings subsequent to your post, what sources can you refer to or what raw data can you provide that supports your argument regarding effectiveness/soldier and for what point in time are you writing about?

As an aside, my post was not just about combat forces, but also about production, military and civilian.