sandeepmukherjee196 wrote:williamjpellas wrote:To my knowledge, sandeep is correct when it comes to the state of the art, so to speak, of German nerve gas. It was far more deadly than any comparable US or other Allied gas weapon---so far as is known or has surfaced in the public realm to date. However: wm is absolutely correct to point to vastly superior Allied logistics and control of the air as certain to be decisive in the event of a gas weapon - WMD exchange in the latter days of WWII. And the Allies had an ace up their sleeve. Even as the Germans had superior gas agents, the British had superior biological weapons. Their stockpile of anthrax was as fearsome and deadly a Doomsday weapon as any of the warring powers had or thought to possess. In short, had Germany even thought about attacking the Allies with nerve gas, the British would have seeded the entire German nation with anthrax within a week. This would have meant genocide of the German people for all intents and purposes. In my opinion, this deterrent is also the most likely explanation for why the alleged-to-exist German nuclear weapons (in whatever form) were not used---at least not against the Western Allies. There is of course the matter of various documents attesting to their existence and purported use against the USSR on the eastern front.
Hi William..
The British anthrax angle certainly gives food for thought. I am largely in the dark till now on this issue.
However on the issue of "German nuclear weapons (in whatever form)" I find the existence of atomic weapons in whatever form in the German arsenal strictly an imaginary proposition.
To my knowledge there is absolutely no question of any operationalised german nuclear weapon in WW II. So the purported use of such weapons on the eastern front is impossible.
Ciao
Sanders
sandeepmukherjee196 wrote:williamjpellas wrote:To my knowledge, sandeep is correct when it comes to the state of the art, so to speak, of German nerve gas. It was far more deadly than any comparable US or other Allied gas weapon---so far as is known or has surfaced in the public realm to date. However: wm is absolutely correct to point to vastly superior Allied logistics and control of the air as certain to be decisive in the event of a gas weapon - WMD exchange in the latter days of WWII. And the Allies had an ace up their sleeve. Even as the Germans had superior gas agents, the British had superior biological weapons. Their stockpile of anthrax was as fearsome and deadly a Doomsday weapon as any of the warring powers had or thought to possess. In short, had Germany even thought about attacking the Allies with nerve gas, the British would have seeded the entire German nation with anthrax within a week. This would have meant genocide of the German people for all intents and purposes. In my opinion, this deterrent is also the most likely explanation for why the alleged-to-exist German nuclear weapons (in whatever form) were not used---at least not against the Western Allies. There is of course the matter of various documents attesting to their existence and purported use against the USSR on the eastern front.
Hi William..
The British anthrax angle certainly gives food for thought. I am largely in the dark till now on this issue.
However on the issue of "German nuclear weapons (in whatever form)" I find the existence of atomic weapons in whatever form in the German arsenal strictly an imaginary proposition.
To my knowledge there is absolutely no question of any operationalised german nuclear weapon in WW II. So the purported use of such weapons on the eastern front is impossible.
Ciao
Sanders
Radiologics trump Anthrax because they are less likely to get up on their hind legs and go walkabout and harder to defend against in terms of suits and filters. Any chemical toxin can be defeated by going sealed suit (rubberized cloth) and closed loop air. Moreover, even the most persistent chemical agent rapidly loses potency as UV, wind and water disperse and thin it's concentration. Radiologics don't and thus form superior ADEN barriers.
Radiation requires sealed vehicle protection to operate in a contaminated area effectively and the contamination is a lot harder to be rid of especially in builtups. Radiologics scattered by an Arado 234 over the invasion beaches (you could use a fairly large, internal, sprayer based on a pneumatic pump, maintaining speed by carrying and dropping fuel tanks instead of bombs) become a more or less permanent barrier (6-8 weeks) and also have the nasty benefit of cutting specific access to support elements.
An army on the move is a hammer. An army fixed in place for want of POL, ammo and spares is a drum.
Where Anthrax becomes problematic is in it's use against broad areas. Some form of the Walkure effort would quickly contain local breakouts (you cannot drop the stuff from altitude as, frozen, it dies) and rapid corpse treatment with chemical agents (killing rats) and burning of animal corpses would deny it legs. It would take about week for a city to be incapacitated with biologics, supposing you could develop a proximity fuse or intervalometer to properly disperse them without frying the agent. More than enough time to evacuate most of the population.
It would take less than an hour for a highly energetic radiologic to begin to rapidly disable both wide swaths of an urban population and emergency services while high altitude dispersal is actually helpful and it cannot be 'burnt'.
Rapid dissemination coverage to perpetuate the crisis thus becomes an issue, especially as all fighters of the era were more or less equal (370-390mph top speed, 4-6G turn) at low altitude, once the turbo vs. chemical booster and octane issues were equalized. You would not want to try low penetration with a bomber force more than once, you could not reach very deep into the Reich with fighters at low level and, if jumped while carrying sprayer tanks, they would be seriously mauled by superior numbers of equal airframes operating on much shorter radii.
Whereas the radiologic threat of an SA-4000 class weapon, dropped over a major port, early in the invasion, given altitude HELPS the dispersal pattern, means that civilian dockworker and sailor deaths will ultimately trump the landed forces as well, providing the opportunity for another, MAJOR, Allied defeat. Along the lines of the early Russian campaign in terms of effectives capture.
Likely due to his own wartime experience of CW, Hitler made a mistake.
He probably had radiologics, simply because they are cheap and easy to produce compared to nukes while BIOS reports detail what sound like 3-4 additional betatron or similar particle separator facilities in several of the occupied university towns of Germany, which points to the ability to rapidly build up and sustain a permanent inventory of carbon or even simple sand based radiologicals as an alternative to trying (with Greifs and Hs-293, getting all of what, five ship kills out of a couple thousand naval vessels committed during the campaign?) for a conventional ASUW effort.
And because these are ADEN measures, by creating a double barrier capability in both beachhead runs and tip'n'run port denial, you can let the enemy simply fight themselves dry without damaging much of the French interior.
Given the storms don't crash both Mulberries, you might even try, experimentally, for the amphib anchorage itself, possibly interdicting NGS fire support.
Choke any one of these and pressure goes off the Wehrmacht units which were already doing fairly well for themselves, in front of Caen and in the Bocage.
Such is the difference between trying to institute a mass panic in a country where distance isolates as much as enables the rise of pathogens. Versus maneuver containment of an active military offensive through narrow TCP chokes in a concentrated force area.
Hitler employs a radiologic weapon and Winning Winnie goes mad with Anthrax in response like he did in Iraq. Hitler gets 70% coverage per sortie that reaches release from untouchable fields, deep in France or the Low Countries. The RAF gets maybe 10-15% from altitude and 30-50% from lolo Mosquito runs.
The RAF/USAAF can only reach about halfway across Germany unless they shuttle. With heavy use of drop tanks, the Germans can reach the Normandy area from the German border or Belgium.
London dies, followed by Portsmouth, Southampton, Poole and Portland. Then Hitler goes OCA and 8th AF fields begin to be hit. And once you have done it in the West, there is nothing at all to stop you from doing it in the East as stabilizing the split Army fronts of Bagration becomes possible.
In an escalation battle, between radiologicals and biologicals, the Germans win. And we know they had them because men like Oppenheimer wrote opinion pieces on how bad it would be (IMO, because they knew we were losing the atomic race) _if we used them_.
