To be the best of the best

[Y Ddraig Goch]

Before I went on the Internet I had no idea just how diverse German weapons development really was. I thought that it was just the 'regular' weapons like the Me 109 and Focke-Wulf Fw 190 aircraft, Panzer V and Panzer VI tanks, Type VII and Type IX U-boats. But there is more to it than that:- Infra-red night-fighting devices, Assault-rifles, 'smart bombs', intercontinental ballistic missiles, super-sonic aircraft, aircraft with forward swept wings, true submarines, homing torpedoes and ram jets -to name a few.

Their weapons development programme was a confused fusion of seperate programs from seperate weapons development labratories with no department to streamline and simplify the research projects and thus many projects were repeating what others were currently or allready had done.

Many say that Germany had a chance of winning the war in Europe. Of coarse they did but only a slim one. There were too many factors against Germany.

A lack of a centralised Ministry of War, which controlled every development and experiment in order to reach a common goal seriously hampered Germany's ability to produce advanced or conventional in any usable numbers.

If the war had continued into 1946, Germany would have weapons that were by far more advanced than anything the Allies had. But for all that they would have been unable to stop the dropping of an A-bomb on German held territory, which would have brought Germany to her knees.

What I propose to Marcus is a project which would illustrate the these very weapons that could have brought an end the possibility of the Allies winning the war.

The aim would be to make this site THE online -encycleopedia of the Third Reich.

As well as a Weapons section there would also be a campaigns section, tactics section, personalities section etc - basically cothering every aspect of the Third Reich. It could even be interactive.

The project would me a major effort and could not be done alone, it would be a united effort. But well worth it.

Its only an idea.

What do you think?

[Laurent]

If the war had continued into 1946, Germany would have weapons that were by far more advanced than anything the Allies had. But for all that they would have been unable to stop the dropping of an A-bomb on German held territory, which would have brought Germany to her knees.

Sure they would have super-planes and nobody qualified to fly them, super-tanks and no fuel to make them move and super-rifles but only 15-years old boys and WWI veterans to carry them.

[Pumpkin]

Look at http://www.luft46.com/ for what Luftwaffe might've looked like if it had had another year.

(Some pretty amazing stuff there!)

[Marcus]

What I propose to Marcus is a project which would illustrate the these very weapons that could have brought an end the possibility of the Allies winning the war.
The aim would be to make this site THE online -encycleopedia of the Third Reich.
As well as a Weapons section there would also be a campaigns section, tactics section, personalities section etc - basically cothering every aspect of the Third Reich. It could even be interactive.
The project would me a major effort and could not be done alone, it would be a united effort. But well worth it.
Its only an idea.
What do you think?

I'm not sure I understand you correctly. Are you suggesting a section in the forum for discussions on "1946" weapons and/or several new sections in the forum for discussions on tactics, campaigns etc?

/Marcus

[Christian Ankerstjerne]

I doubt the Allies would have nuked the Germans:

1) they were caucasian. People did think less of the Japanese back then, that is the truth, so the Allies would have been less likely to attack someone they saw as they equals, over someone they saw as inferior to themselve.

2) The Allied troops were pretty close to Germany - imagine what consequences it would have, if the US accidently nuked the Soviets

3) The Germans were, back then, considered a more important business partner than the Japanese were - so to finish off one of their potential major business partners seem unlikely...

[Ovidius]

I doubt the Allies would have nuked the Germans:

1) they were caucasian. People did think less of the Japanese back then, that is the truth, so the Allies would have been less likely to attack someone they saw as they equals, over someone they saw as inferior to themselve.

2) The Allied troops were pretty close to Germany - imagine what consequences it would have, if the US accidently nuked the Soviets

3) The Germans were, back then, considered a more important business partner than the Japanese were - so to finish off one of their potential major business partners seem unlikely...

I think we've already discussed that in the old forum.

The fact that the German population was White did not worthed a damn for the Allied warlords. They firebombed them, and hanged after war their leaders just as such. The firebombs killed more civilians than any atomic bomb was going to do - both A-bombs together killed instantly about 160,000-200,000 people, while the firebombs killed 110,000 people in Tokyo only, not counting the about 600,000 people killed in Germany. The fact that Germans were Caucasian did not mean anything, and even less, in the perspective of the 1945 allied High Command.

~Regards,

Ovidius

[Christian Ankerstjerne]

??? - yes, I wrote that - ??? 8)

[Pumpkin]

The nuke is not a "super zapper" from Space Invaders that ends level and gives a bonus. It's just a big bomb. One A-bomb is a propaganda weapon. If we have 10 000 A-bombs, then we have a threat to civilization.

The allies certainly wouldn't refrain from using it in Germany because they fared the environmental/human consequences. The radioactivity from a few bombs is not at all as scary as we were led to believe from pacifist propaganda during the cold war. 1000 A-bombs have been tested in the atmosphere, in the oceans and above the surface with only modest local and temporary environmental effects. Furthermore, the risks that indeed exist, weren't well known or respected in 1945.

The "future business partner" argument did decide US post-war policy a few years after the war-end. But that was not at all obvious in 1945! Didn't Morgenthau of the USA plan to turn post-war Germany into an agricultural area without industry or education? And to the opposite effect, didn't some people from Manhattan project, when they realized that Germany would surrender before the bomb was ready, suggest that the US should spread radioactive materials over wide areas from airplanes? (Such pollution is many times worse than the emissions from an A-bomb, since they can be spread far about. Also, large quantities of such low-grade radioactive materials was available.)

Maybe this was enlarged by German propaganda, but considering the no-holds barred de-housing policy and the unconditional surrender ultimatum, it does seem quite in line with the general policy of the allies. There certainly was no pardon because Germans were "caucasians". (I could question why there would such sympathy, when Morgenthau for instance wasn't caucasian, but I won't go there... :roll: )

[Y Ddraig Goch]

I'm not sure I understand you correctly. Are you suggesting a section in the forum for discussions on "1946" weapons and/or several new sections in the forum for discussions on tactics, campaigns etc?

/Marcus

I'm suggesting sections on:

Weapons and Equipment (in service or not).*
Tactics and Strategy.
Personalities.
Campaigns.


*The first section could include 'wonder weapons' or they could be in a seperate section.

Its only an idea. This site is GREAT and I only want it to improve.

[Gwynn Compton]

Finally, somebody else coming up with my campaign suggestion

and ram jets

However this one confuses me, I hadn't thought anyone had gotten a ram jet to work yet.... I know the Australians are building one.

[Ovidius]

and ram jets

However this one confuses me, I hadn't thought anyone had gotten a ram jet to work yet.... I know the Australians are building one.

The first ramjet to fly was the Leduc 010 in France. Ordered by the Air Ministry in 1937, the work was cancelled due to the defeat of France. Finished in December 1945, the plane was flown by Jean Gonord on November 19, 1946, after being raised and accelerated "piggyback" on a SNCASE 161 Languedoc transport plane.

The two Leduc 010 built were destroyed in accidents in 1951 and 1952.

Afterwards, the French tried a model with two auxiliary turbojets(Leduc 016), decommisioned in 1954. the French ramjet program was cancelled in 1958 due to budget limitations.

The German V1 flying-bombs were equipped with pulse-jet engines, similar to ram-jets but able to work when stationary.

~Regards,

Ovidius

[Scott Smith]

and ram jets

However this one confuses me, I hadn't thought anyone had gotten a ram jet to work yet.... I know the Australians are building one.

The German V1 flying-bombs were equipped with pulse-jet engines, similar to ram-jets but able to work when stationary.

Actually, the pulse-jet engine on the V-1 flying bomb could not work while stationary. It had to either be air-launched or propelled on an angled launch-rail by solid-fuel rockets or a steam-turbine trolley until it was moving fast enough to fly on its own. Some other time I'll post info. about how the pulse-jet engine on the V-1 worked.



A turbojet, like the Jumo 004B used on the Me 262 could start from a standstill because the engine had a COMPRESSOR stage, which in turn was started by a 2-cycle Riedel "lawnmower" engine housed in the nose with a small amount of special fuel.

CLICK! JUMO 004B TURBOJET DIAGRAM

Later it was simpler for ground crews in jet aviation to use starting-carts to provide the juice for electric motors to cold start an airplane's jet engines. I think this is how the F-86 Sabrejet worked.

Ramjets are nothing new, but unlike turbojets or turbofan engines (used by most jetliners today for better fuel economy) they cannot develop thrust while standing still.

Look at the photo of the SR 71 Blackbird, designed in the 1960s and capable of speeds of over Mach 3. It has a ramjet engine or SCRAMJET, for supersonic speeds. The front of the engine has a pointed aperture which can be adjusted in flight to achieve the Mach speeds. At rest or low speeds the SR 71 engines work like a conventional turbojet with a compressor, but at high-speed the pointed orifice is adjusted to use the supersonic shockwave itself to compress the air-fuel mixture in the tube without the drag from spinning compressor blades.

Now you know Lockheed Skunkworks' secret to the SR 71 engines!

Scramjet engines were developed in the 1950s by the U.S. Air Force for flying-bomb cruise missiles that could skip along the upper atmosphere at Mach speeds. But they were replaced in favor of conventional Army ballistic missiles patterned after the V-2, which are more accurate and harder to shoot down. The Atlas missile was the USAF's first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile. It was used to loft John Glenn into orbit in 1962.

[Marcus]

I'm suggesting sections on:

Weapons and Equipment (in service or not).*
Tactics and Strategy.
Personalities.
Campaigns.

We already have sections on Equipment and Personalities, but prehaps the current Third Reich section should be divided into a Third Reich and a Military section.

It has been discussed before and prehaps it is now time to made the change. What do the rest of you think?

/Marcus

[Y Ddraig Goch]

The weapons sections could be further split up into asection for the Heer and Waffen-SS, a section for the Luftwaffe and a section for the Kriegsmarine.

But it does complicate matters.

The weapons section could be called 'The Arsenal of the Third Reich'.

[Logan Hartke]

Maybe, but I like the Equipment section like it is. It allows the Enemies of the Third Reich and Modelling sections to get rid of some threads as well. Many Allied pieces of equipment are discussed, and it would be nice if they had a spot in the Equipment section, too. I'm fine with how it is currently set up.

Logan Hartke