How would you actually defeat and conquer the USSR during WW2?

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Darthmalgus
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How would you actually defeat and conquer the USSR during WW2?

#1

Post by Darthmalgus » 20 May 2017, 02:55

Hello!

What is actually needed conquer the USSR during WW2 or at the very least cripple the army or government? Be it Germany or another country attempting it.

Preparations? Long term strategy?

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T. A. Gardner
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Re: How would you actually defeat and conquer the USSR during WW2?

#2

Post by T. A. Gardner » 20 May 2017, 08:19

The number one thing you need:

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and

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Because this:

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Means you don't have this:

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Re: How would you actually defeat and conquer the USSR during WW2?

#3

Post by ljadw » 20 May 2017, 12:53

Darthmalgus wrote:Hello!

What is actually needed conquer the USSR during WW2 or at the very least cripple the army or government? Be it Germany or another country attempting it.

Preparations? Long term strategy?
The question is very vague

1 ) The only country that could attempt it was Germany


2 ) A German only attack or an attack with allies?

3 ) An attack with the rest of Europe allied, occupied or beutral, or an attack as it happened in the OTL?

4 )An attack subject to a deadline /timepressure ?

5 ) An attack in 1941 or later ?

6 ) What would be the aim of the attack ? to occupy a part of the USSR (conquer the whole of the USSR is out of the question) ? Which part ?

7 ) what would be the strength of both parties ? The strength of the OTL or something else ?

8 ) The conclusion is that it was impossible in WWII to defeat the SU, such a defeat could only happen if the regime collapsed,and everything indicates that the possibility for it was inexistent .

It was impossible to eliminate the SU in a short campaign, it was also impossible to do it in a long campaign .

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Re: How would you actually defeat and conquer the USSR during WW2?

#4

Post by losna » 20 May 2017, 17:31

Darthmalgus wrote:Hello!

What is actually needed conquer the USSR during WW2 or at the very least cripple the army or government? Be it Germany or another country attempting it.

Preparations?
For Germany, the only viable strategy would be forming an alliance with Baltic countries and Romania in 1940 without attacking Poland, after showing them the secret clauses of the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop pact, obviously having deleted those referring to German gains.
After a Soviet attack on Finland or a threat to any of them, they'll likely accept a German territorial guarantee.
Long term strategy?
What they did in OTL. There aren't many ways to defeat the SU, and initially grabbing as much as territory as possible and then denying to the Soviets important resources such as the Donbass and the Caucasus will work.
Germany had just enough men to bleed white the Soviets, and an attack in 1940 without other open fronts would catch the Soviets with the pants down even more than in 1941, so they'll be able if (and only) head to head to slowly crush them.

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Re: How would you actually defeat and conquer the USSR during WW2?

#5

Post by stg 44 » 20 May 2017, 19:32

T. A. Gardner wrote:The number one thing you need:
What?
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Re: How would you actually defeat and conquer the USSR during WW2?

#6

Post by ljadw » 20 May 2017, 20:29

losna wrote:
Long term strategy?
What they did in OTL. There aren't many ways to defeat the SU, and initially grabbing as much as territory as possible and then denying to the Soviets important resources such as the Donbass and the Caucasus will work.
That would have been a very bad strategy, resulting in the defeat of Germany .

Grabbing territory would not result in the defeat of the SU,neither would the loss of the Donbass and the Caucasus .

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Re: How would you actually defeat and conquer the USSR during WW2?

#7

Post by T. A. Gardner » 20 May 2017, 20:34

stg 44 wrote:
T. A. Gardner wrote:The number one thing you need:
What?
Image
Those don't fix the problem, they attempt to deal with it.

What I was alluding to was if the invasion can rapidly repair and build roads, bridges, railroads, pipelines, and shelter... Something the US military in particular was excellent at, and the British good at, then you gain all sorts of advantages beyond just having vehicles that can move in poor conditions.

Unlike Germany, the US in Russia would have had:

All weather airfields following the advance. The US could have built them on the fly. It took the US just days in Normandy to open their first advanced airfield and about a month to have ones that were all weather.
On D+3 a sand and gravel plant opened on Omaha beach that supplied road materials to improve the dirt roads coming off the beach.
The Pluto pipeline across the channel allowed a 24/7 flow of POL to the forces in France. As the US advanced, they built a pipeline across France for the same purpose. In Russia such a pipeline would be much harder to destroy by partisan fighters, and would be nearly impossible to bomb from the air.
Building paved or at least graveled roads, and repairing bridges would save wear and tear on trucks meaning you have to replace them at a slower rate.
Rebuilding rail lines to handle larger capacity and having them further forward means less supply issues.
Having portable, quickly erected buildings means that supplies and troops don't have to deal as much with harsh conditions.
Having the ability to pump and drain swampy ground along with wholesale fogging using DDT means less mosquitos and flies, along with less disease.

Solving the problem of lack of infrastructure in Russia solves a whole host of other problems. Building a vehicle that can operate on poor terrain simply gives you a vehicle that gets stuck less often. It doesn't fix the underlying problems.

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Re: How would you actually defeat and conquer the USSR during WW2?

#8

Post by stg 44 » 20 May 2017, 20:53

T. A. Gardner wrote:
Those don't fix the problem, they attempt to deal with it.

What I was alluding to was if the invasion can rapidly repair and build roads, bridges, railroads, pipelines, and shelter... Something the US military in particular was excellent at, and the British good at, then you gain all sorts of advantages beyond just having vehicles that can move in poor conditions.

Unlike Germany, the US in Russia would have had:

All weather airfields following the advance. The US could have built them on the fly. It took the US just days in Normandy to open their first advanced airfield and about a month to have ones that were all weather.
On D+3 a sand and gravel plant opened on Omaha beach that supplied road materials to improve the dirt roads coming off the beach.
The Pluto pipeline across the channel allowed a 24/7 flow of POL to the forces in France. As the US advanced, they built a pipeline across France for the same purpose. In Russia such a pipeline would be much harder to destroy by partisan fighters, and would be nearly impossible to bomb from the air.
Building paved or at least graveled roads, and repairing bridges would save wear and tear on trucks meaning you have to replace them at a slower rate.
Rebuilding rail lines to handle larger capacity and having them further forward means less supply issues.
Having portable, quickly erected buildings means that supplies and troops don't have to deal as much with harsh conditions.
Having the ability to pump and drain swampy ground along with wholesale fogging using DDT means less mosquitos and flies, along with less disease.

Solving the problem of lack of infrastructure in Russia solves a whole host of other problems. Building a vehicle that can operate on poor terrain simply gives you a vehicle that gets stuck less often. It doesn't fix the underlying problems.
When in WW2 did the US ever attempt to rebuild an entire rail and road network on the scale of what the Germans did in Russia? In Normandy the US could afford to do so because they had the excellent French infrastructure they captured, plus they captured German facilities and repaired them. Even in French North Africa they were able to capture better infrastructure than what the German found in the USSR. US capacities to repair in Europe were never tested by a situation similar to that in Russia. In the Pacific they did to a degree, but never far inland from their coastal bases. My grandfather was a SeeBee, so I got to grow up hearing all his stories about carving airfields out of jungle and things weren't that fast or quality.

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Re: How would you actually defeat and conquer the USSR during WW2?

#9

Post by losna » 20 May 2017, 21:03

ljadw wrote: That would have been a very bad strategy, resulting in the defeat of Germany .

Grabbing territory would not result in the defeat of the SU,neither would the loss of the Donbass and the Caucasus .
[/quote]
Sure? The Germans simply occupying territory denied to the Soviets 5 million able-bodied men, that is about a year and a half worth of losses.
And yes, occupying the Caucasus wouldn't have stopped the Red Army, but it would have rended them almost completely dependent on imports from the US... assuming a LL act as in OTL.

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Re: How would you actually defeat and conquer the USSR during WW2?

#10

Post by T. A. Gardner » 20 May 2017, 22:27

stg 44 wrote:When in WW2 did the US ever attempt to rebuild an entire rail and road network on the scale of what the Germans did in Russia? In Normandy the US could afford to do so because they had the excellent French infrastructure they captured, plus they captured German facilities and repaired them. Even in French North Africa they were able to capture better infrastructure than what the German found in the USSR. US capacities to repair in Europe were never tested by a situation similar to that in Russia. In the Pacific they did to a degree, but never far inland from their coastal bases. My grandfather was a SeeBee, so I got to grow up hearing all his stories about carving airfields out of jungle and things weren't that fast or quality.
Well, let's see:

The US rebuilt the French rail system, including bringing in huge masses of rolling stock and locomotives made in the US. The US and Britain had pretty much demolished the French system prior to D-Day to prevent its use by the Germans.

http://web.mst.edu/~rogersda/umrcourses ... %20ETO.pdf

http://www.wbachapter.org/files/Militar ... ervice.pdf

That easily parallels, and for the year or so it was done in, far exceeds, what Germany did in Russia. Germany never built any pipelines hundreds of miles long like the US regularly did for POL delivery.
Same goes in Italy.

Germany never came close to engineering projects like the ALCAN (Alaska) highway, the Burma Road, or building the B-29 bases on Tinian.

The Germans didn't truck or rail in lots of landing craft and other riverine naval forces for use on major rivers the way the US did either:

Image

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Those huge rivers in Russia would simply be very short amphibious beachheads to the US. That's a POV Germany didn't have.

It would make all the difference too. Instead of wasting thousands of men to construct something, you use hundreds and get it done faster and better. One bulldozer or earth scraper replaces hundreds of men with shovels and wheelbarrows.

The Luftwaffe in Russia could barely provide their aircraft with all-weather runways. On the US scale of things, these would have become common. It likely would have made the difference in something like the Stalingrad air lift. All weather runways at both ends of the run mean far more supplies arrive and arrive regularly as the weather has far less effect on flying. It means at the delivery end, the planes get unloaded more rapidly with some mechanization available, and the landings and take offs are safer.

A pipeline to deliver POL forward relieves the railroads of having to do it meaning there's more room on trains for other supplies and troops.

The Germans in the winter of 1941 - 42 built a temporary railway bridge out of ice across the Dnieper River. The workforce to do this was 300 German troops plus over 800 impressed Ukrainians. Their "equipment" consisted mainly of horses pulling wagons or sledges. Approaches to the rail bridge were hand dug. The bridge consisted of 15,460 large blocks of ice piled on the river ice that would support the rail line. It took the Germans about three weeks to build the bridge and it lasted in service just over a month before the weather started to warm.

By comparison, the US would have bulldozed the approaches, laid a proper ballast roadbed for the rail line, then simply used several pile drivers and cranes to build a real, wooden, trestle bridge across the river and been done with it. They could have done that in the same time with a fraction of the men.

The Russian campaign needed civil engineer skills on the US level to make it succeed.

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Re: How would you actually defeat and conquer the USSR during WW2?

#11

Post by stg 44 » 20 May 2017, 23:34

T. A. Gardner wrote:
stg 44 wrote:When in WW2 did the US ever attempt to rebuild an entire rail and road network on the scale of what the Germans did in Russia? In Normandy the US could afford to do so because they had the excellent French infrastructure they captured, plus they captured German facilities and repaired them. Even in French North Africa they were able to capture better infrastructure than what the German found in the USSR. US capacities to repair in Europe were never tested by a situation similar to that in Russia. In the Pacific they did to a degree, but never far inland from their coastal bases. My grandfather was a SeeBee, so I got to grow up hearing all his stories about carving airfields out of jungle and things weren't that fast or quality.
Well, let's see:

The US rebuilt the French rail system, including bringing in huge masses of rolling stock and locomotives made in the US. The US and Britain had pretty much demolished the French system prior to D-Day to prevent its use by the Germans.
Again repairing damage to a system otherwise of the same rail gauge and spec as your own is vastly different than rebuilding the entire rail system multiple times larger than France from scratch, that includes improving the rail beds, changing the gauge, creating the entire signaling/repair/coaling and watering/etc. system from scratch because it operates completely differently from your own. The damage the US and UK inflicted on the French rail system was extensive, but the Germans could and did repair it rapidly where they needed to, which indicates that it wasn't heavy damage, just constant and widespread. It was repair work, not a total tear down and rebuild as the Germans did with the Soviet rail system, which was completely different from the rest of the world. Bringing in locomotives isn't that hard if you have sufficient shipping and they built and ran few than Germany built and operated in Russia and throughout occupied Europe.
http://www.feldgrau.com/WW2-German-Stat ... Reichsbahn

http://www.militarymodelling.com/news/a ... tive/3326/
On 3rd July 1943 one plant, Maschinenbau- und Bedarfs AG in Babelsberg celebrated the fulfilment of Hitler’s order to build 500 locomotives per month. A few days later in the marshalling yard at Seddin near Berlin, 51 new locomotives were on parade, the highest daily output achieved by any of the locomotive plants.
https://ww2-weapons.com/german-arms-production/
Locomotives
?
1,688
1,918
2,637
5,243
3,495
?
14,981+
http://www.nationalww2museum.org/learn/ ... ction.html
US Military Production Totals
Rail Road Locomotives
7,500
T. A. Gardner wrote: http://web.mst.edu/~rogersda/umrcourses ... %20ETO.pdf

http://www.wbachapter.org/files/Militar ... ervice.pdf

That easily parallels, and for the year or so it was done in, far exceeds, what Germany did in Russia. Germany never built any pipelines hundreds of miles long like the US regularly did for POL delivery.
Same goes in Italy.
What are you basing that on? France is a much smaller country than Russia and the US had to repair damage, not rebuild, upgrade, and reorient the entire system by building all the siding infrastructure to accommodate smaller locomotives. Repairing damaging as the US did was vastly more simply than having to rebuild the entire system from scratch to accommodate the very different western European rail cars and locomotives.

The Germans never needed to build a pipeline, so it's like saying they never developed jungle warfare equipment, so they sucked at jungle warfare....if you don't need it, not doing it isn't necessarily an indication you can't.

T. A. Gardner wrote: Germany never came close to engineering projects like the ALCAN (Alaska) highway, the Burma Road, or building the B-29 bases on Tinian.

The Germans didn't truck or rail in lots of landing craft and other riverine naval forces for use on major rivers the way the US did either:

Image

Image.
I'd say rebuilding the entire Soviet rail net exceeds any of the above projects, which included multiple massive rail bridge rebuilds, nearly entirely without captured Soviet rail equipment and needing to ship in everything to rebuild, upgrade, and alter the entire system.
Plus they were building a cross strait bridge that the Soviets inherited:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerch_Strait_Bridge

The Germans did in fact rail and ship in multiple submarines and landing craft:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinef%C3%A4hrprahm
Between January and October 1943, Marinefährprahm were used to evacuate the Wehrmacht's 17th Army from the Kuban bridgehead on the Taman Peninsula in southern Russia despite repeated Soviet attacks during this period. The sea evacuation brought out 239,669 soldiers, 16,311 wounded, 27,456 civilians and 115,477 tons of military equipment (primarily ammunition), 21,230 vehicles, 74 tanks, 1,815 guns and 74,657 horses to the Crimea.[5]
In February 1944, three ships were transferred to the Romanian Navy, being renamed PTA-404, PTA-405 and PTA-406.[6]
https://translate.google.com/translate? ... t=&act=url
After the Operation Sea Lion was abandoned, the booms were used as supply vehicles in almost all sea areas. If they were not built on site, they were also moved via inland waterways. They were grouped into transport flotillas, landing flotillas, coastal protection flotillas and artillery tank flotillas or were assigned to mixed units, such as safety divisions.

In their originally intended function as landing boats, they were mainly used for the occupation of the Greek islands. MFPs were also used as replenishers, as tankers, for the safeguarding of ports and convoys , for the laying of mines and as an artillery carrier. Despite their low speed, they were even used for U-hunting, and they tried to use them for mincing, which was not achieved due to their low motive power. MFPs have also been largely rebuilt for special functions.

At maximum load, the navigability of the boats was restricted and an application with more than sea level 2 was no longer possible. The naval bombs that survived the war were partly used as cargo ships, work platforms or ferries, some of which were also temporarily taken over by the Allied authorities, such as the GMSA or OMGUS .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea ... l_strength
As Turkey was neutral during World War II, the Axis could not transfer warships to the Black Sea via the Bosphorus. However, several small ships were transferred from the North Sea via rail, street and canal networks to the Danube. These included six Type IIB U-boats of the 30th U-boat Flotilla which were dis-assembled and shipped to Romania along the Danube. They were then re-assembled at the Romanian Galați shipyard in late 1942 and afterwards sent to Constanța. The Germans also transported 10 S-boats (Schnellboote) and 23 R-boats (Räumboote) via the Danube and built armed barges and KTs (Kriegstransporter, literally war transports) in the captured Nikolayev Shipyards in Mykolaiv. Some ships were obtained in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary, and then converted to serve the German cause, such as the S-boat tender Romania, the minelayer Xanten and the Anti-submarine trawler UJ-115 Rosita. Additional vessels were built in German or local shipyards, captured from Soviets, or transferred from the Mediterranean nominally as merchant ships. The German Black Sea fleet ultimately operated hundreds of medium and small warships or auxiliaries before its self-destruction immediately prior to the defection of Bulgaria. Very few vessels were able to make good their escape via the Danube.

The Italian Navy dispatched a small force to the Black Sea. The force dispatched included six CB class midget submarines and a flotilla of torpedo motorboats. Hungary became landlocked in the aftermath of World War I, but some Hungarian merchant ships were able to reach the Black Sea via the Danube River. Hungarian cargo ships were operated as part of Axis sea transport forces on the Black Sea, and thus participated in the Axis evacuation from Crimea.
T. A. Gardner wrote: Those huge rivers in Russia would simply be very short amphibious beachheads to the US. That's a POV Germany didn't have.

It would make all the difference too. Instead of wasting thousands of men to construct something, you use hundreds and get it done faster and better. One bulldozer or earth scraper replaces hundreds of men with shovels and wheelbarrows..
And what is your sourced proof that the Germans lacked the technology for bulldozers? In 1941 their military had more than the US did.
T. A. Gardner wrote: The Luftwaffe in Russia could barely provide their aircraft with all-weather runways. On the US scale of things, these would have become common. It likely would have made the difference in something like the Stalingrad air lift. All weather runways at both ends of the run mean far more supplies arrive and arrive regularly as the weather has far less effect on flying. It means at the delivery end, the planes get unloaded more rapidly with some mechanization available, and the landings and take offs are safer..
In 1941 sure, because they were constantly advancing and didn't have the time to build any. The US wouldn't either unless it sat still for an extended period, as in Normandy, or captured some, as in the French campaign. You're making a bunch of silly statements because they totally lack context for the campaigns in question and the military and plain structural reasons why things happened. For instance the US advancing through the most infrastructure developed countries in the world in 1944-45, including into the Autobahn, the only such highway system to exist in the world at the time and the US didn't have a copy of until the 1950s. French infrastructure despite war damage was light years better than what existed in Russia in 1941; the Germans found that out the hard way when they compared the experiences of invading France in 1940 to invading the USSR in 1941. In a matter of months they had repaired all the damage they inflicted in 1940 in France so that they could launch their air campaign against Britain, while Russia needed to be built up from 19th century infrastructure into something resembling early 20th century rail and roads. The US had all weather roads and airfields to capture in France and repair from the damage they inflicted during capture, the Germans had to build those from scratch in Russia after the invaded.
T. A. Gardner wrote: A pipeline to deliver POL forward relieves the railroads of having to do it meaning there's more room on trains for other supplies and troops..
Those took years to build every time the US did so, so you're not going to get that built quickly for an invasion across Russia, especially when you need to build up all weather roads and change the rail system from scratch the moment you cross the border. The US never experienced anything that primitive outside of the pacific islands, but then didn't need to build up extensive modern roads and rail on islands.
T. A. Gardner wrote: The Germans in the winter of 1941 - 42 built a temporary railway bridge out of ice across the Dnieper River. The workforce to do this was 300 German troops plus over 800 impressed Ukrainians. Their "equipment" consisted mainly of horses pulling wagons or sledges. Approaches to the rail bridge were hand dug. The bridge consisted of 15,460 large blocks of ice piled on the river ice that would support the rail line. It took the Germans about three weeks to build the bridge and it lasted in service just over a month before the weather started to warm..
Why would they commit vast modern resources building a temporary ice bridge when they had to build up the entire supply system from scratch throughout the country??? There was too much to do and too little resources to meet all demands, so in the winter of 1941-42 it was triage until the weather improved enough to build a permanent rail bridge and they could cover things like the East Polish rail gap, as well as all the other demands ahead of them. No one outside of Scandinavia and Russia had locomotives weatherized to survive in that climate, so over the winter the Germans also had to deal with major locomotive issues, so couldn't move equipment around the country to do all the infrastructure tasks ahead of them, so they had to improvise in a tough situation, yet made it work.
T. A. Gardner wrote: By comparison, the US would have bulldozed the approaches, laid a proper ballast roadbed for the rail line, then simply used several pile drivers and cranes to build a real, wooden, trestle bridge across the river and been done with it. They could have done that in the same time with a fraction of the men..
Not really if they faced the same climate issues with their same impact on equipment. I love how you completely ignore the circumstances and the troubles the US would have had in the exact same situation and blithely assume it was just the primitive western Europeans that couldn't understand how modern technology worked in order to do what you suggest the US could, rather than a very serious confluence of issues forcing improvisation on the fly that was related to the enormity of the infrastructure construction task across the country in the coldest winter in 100 years in Russia as equipment that was not Russian winterized broke down across the front en masse. The US was no more prepared to handle that environment than the Germans were, as evidenced by the problems they too had in the cold winter of 1944-45 and then again in Korea in 1950-51. US military history is repleat with their own supply fuck ups that were only remedied with time, experience, and vast and costly commitment of resources. Your above comment just shows how little you understand the issues impacting that specific situation and just assuming the US could do better because: 'Murica, fuck yeah!
T. A. Gardner wrote: The Russian campaign needed civil engineer skills on the US level to make it succeed.
No, it needed a vast application of resources over time to upgrade the USSR to modern standards; the US brought no special skills to the task, just potentially unlimited resources to throw at the problem eventually. I mean at what point in time in US military development is this being done, 1944-45 US military? That isn't really equivalent to the German mobilization level in 1941, so isn't really a fair comparison in terms of proporitional economic resources thrown at the issue.

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Re: How would you actually defeat and conquer the USSR during WW2?

#12

Post by Richard Anderson » 21 May 2017, 04:47

stg 44 wrote:What?
From 1940 to 1944 the Germans built 42,404 Maultier half-track and RSO full-track cargo carriers and 61,260 Zgkw half-track prime movers of all types. Neither were construction vehicles. They also built 362,204 truck chassis for all purposes, mostly single axle drive, which is why they found they needed the Maultier.

The U.S. Army Ordnance built 15,889 full-track cargo carriers, 34,295 full-track prime movers. They also built 536,167 6X6 2 1/2-ton, 109,119 6x4 2 1/2 ton, 10,646 6x6 4-ton, and 7,237 6x6 6-ton trucks, just for cargo hauling, and another 6,111 4x4 5 to 6-ton, 7,157 6x6 6-ton, and 2,067 6x6 7 1/2-ton prime movers...all of which performed as well as our better than the Maultier and Zgkw in the same roles. And 281,305 other specialty chassis in the same classes.

Oh, and 82,097 construction tractors...of which the Germans built...zip?
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Re: How would you actually defeat and conquer the USSR during WW2?

#13

Post by stg 44 » 21 May 2017, 04:56

Richard Anderson wrote:
stg 44 wrote:What?
From 1940 to 1944 the Germans built 42,404 Maultier half-track and RSO full-track cargo carriers and 61,260 Zgkw half-track prime movers of all types. Neither were construction vehicles. They also built 362,204 truck chassis for all purposes, mostly single axle drive, which is why they found they needed the Maultier.

The U.S. Army Ordnance built 15,889 full-track cargo carriers, 34,295 full-track prime movers. They also built 536,167 6X6 2 1/2-ton, 109,119 6x4 2 1/2 ton, 10,646 6x6 4-ton, and 7,237 6x6 6-ton trucks, just for cargo hauling, and another 6,111 4x4 5 to 6-ton, 7,157 6x6 6-ton, and 2,067 6x6 7 1/2-ton prime movers...all of which performed as well as our better than the Maultier and Zgkw in the same roles. And 281,305 other specialty chassis in the same classes.

Oh, and 82,097 construction tractors...of which the Germans built...zip?
Based on? How can you claim that they built no construction tractors without some sourcing? AFAIK the major construction tasks were handled by non-military groups like Organization Todt and in terms of rail by the Reichsbahn.

Of course you could also check this:
http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/w ... 1_1945.pdf
CHAPTER VIII. EQUIPMENT
Section V. ENGINEER EQUIPMENT
9. Mechanical Equipment
a. 6-TON MOBILE CRANE (Sd. Kfz. 9/1) (Drehkran Kraftwagen 6 t.). This crane is mounted on the chassis of the 18-ton semi-tracked vehicle (Sd. Kfz. 9). It has a telescopic jib mounted on a ball-bearing base, which permits a traverse of 180 degrees and an adjustment for ground slope up to 12 degrees in any direction. The jib has two radii of operation according to the lifting capacity: 6 tons for the smaller radius and 4 tons for the larger radius.

f. GERMAN PILE DRIvES. (1) Field Pile-Driving Frame 1939. (a) Description. This equipment consists of a guide mast with a double block at the top, supported on a base by two back stays. For pile-driving from land the frame is mounted on four wheels. These wheels are replaced by beams when pile-driving is carried on from a raft. A two-drum, hand winch serves to raise and lower the pile driver. The following can be operated on the frame:
(b) Characteristics.
Three-piece hand-operated monkey . . . . . 440 foot pounds.Compressed air pile driver . . . . . 360 foot pounds.Compressed air pile driver . . . . . 1,440 foot pounds.Diesel pile driver . . . . . 992 foot pounds.Diesel pile driver . . . . . 1,323 foot pounds.
(2) Pneumatic pile driver (360 foot pounds). (a) Description. The main components are a stationary part, consisting of the piston, piston rod, and piston base; a moving part (monkey) consisting of driving block, cylinder, and screw-in cylinder head; a spring-loaded clamping device, and a guide for use with the pile-driving frame 39. The driver is the fast hitting type and attains its high rate because the acceleration of the moving portion is due not only to its own weight but also to the compressed air operating downwards on an internal flange at the base of the bore of the cylinders.
(b) Characteristics.
Weight of monkey . . . . . 121 pounds.Cylinder base . . . . . 2.5 inches.Stroke . . . . . 1 foot 5 3/8 inches.Force per blow . . . . . 360 foot pounds.Striking rate . . . . . 105 per minute.
(3) Pneumatic pile driver (1,440 foot pounds). (a) Description. This pile driver is similar to the lighter one, but it has a heavier monkey and a longer stroke. This driver is the free falling type. The monkey is lifted up by compressed air, falls freely onto the base plate, and gives up its kinetic energy to the pile after covering a stroke of little more than a yard.
(b) Characteristics.
Weight of monkey . . . . . 448 pounds.Cylinder base . . . . . 3 9/16 inches.Stroke . . . . . 3 feet 3 1/2 inches.Force per blow . . . . . 1,440 foot pounds.Striking rate . . . . . 54 per minute.
(4) Diesel pile driver (992 foot pounds). (a) Description. The main components are the piston with anvil, the monkey, the guide tubes, the headpiece, and the fuel tank. This diesel pile driver works on the two-stroke principle: an explosion takes place on each hitting stroke. The required ignition temperature is reached through the compression of the air trapped between the top of the falling piston and the monkey.
(b) Characteristics.
Weight of monkey . . . . . 980 pounds.Total weight . . . . . 2,100 pounds.Stroke . . . . . 4 feet 7 inches.Striking rate . . . . . 56 per minute.
(5) Heavy diesel pile driver.
(a) Characteristics.
Weight of monkey . . . . . 1,100 pounds.Cylinder base . . . . . 8 1/2 inches.Stroke . . . . . 7 feet 2 5/8 inches.Energy per blow . . . . . 8,255 foot pounds.Striking rate . . . . . 50 per minute.

i. EARTH MOVING EQUIPMENT. Trench plows. Small and large trench plows are used by the German Army. The small trench plow consists of a double plowshare on the hooked end of a girder wHich is supported on a two-wheeled trailer and towed behind a semi-tracked vehicle. The large plow consists of the plow, anchor, pulley asseanbly, tow wire, and support.

ljadw
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Re: How would you actually defeat and conquer the USSR during WW2?

#14

Post by ljadw » 21 May 2017, 05:13

losna wrote:
ljadw wrote: That would have been a very bad strategy, resulting in the defeat of Germany .

Grabbing territory would not result in the defeat of the SU,neither would the loss of the Donbass and the Caucasus .
Sure? The Germans simply occupying territory denied to the Soviets 5 million able-bodied men, that is about a year and a half worth of losses.

And yes, occupying the Caucasus wouldn't have stopped the Red Army, but it would have rended them almost completely dependent on imports from the US... assuming a LL act as in OTL.[/quote]


1 ) That is an unproved claim : a lot of these 5 million were evacuated to the east

2 ) An other unproved claim : you are looking at the production only, and ignore reserves, needs and consumption .

Richard Anderson
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Posts: 6350
Joined: 01 Jan 2016, 22:21
Location: Bremerton, Washington

Re: How would you actually defeat and conquer the USSR during WW2?

#15

Post by Richard Anderson » 21 May 2017, 06:20

stg 44 wrote:Based on? How can you claim that they built no construction tractors without some sourcing? AFAIK the major construction tasks were handled by non-military groups like Organization Todt and in terms of rail by the Reichsbahn.
Based on going on forty years interest and research in the subject, as amateur and professional, in which, curiously enough, I have yet to find a German example of a construction tractor like a bulldozer...and certainly not the LeTourneau motorized pull-scraper developed in the U.S. in 1932, which combined with the bulldozer, revolutionized road building. Nor does it matter if it was OT, RAD, Heer, KM, Luftwaffe, or W-SS Bautruppen or Pioniere, they did not have them and they were not manufactured in Germany. The closest I have ever found was the Menck and Hambrock series of twin-crawler cable shovel excavators in steam and electric power versions, produced from 1924...they only weighed 540 tons though. Orenstein & Koppel and Lubecker-Maschinenbau-Gesellschaft both built bucket dredgers and bucket-chain excavators designed for waterways and coal fields, while Buckau-Wolf AG built a crawler bucket wheel excavator in 1938, also for mining use. How any of those are use in road building, railroad building, or military engineering is beyond me.

So how can you claim, well, imply, that the Germans built any significant number of construction tractors? Unless you have a major trove of photos and data pertaining to all those OT and RB bulldozers and other mechanized construction equipment other than the motorized cranes? That were built in small numbers on a few of the 61,260 Zgkw half-track prime movers completed for all purposes.

Meanwhile, Komatsu in Japan built a crawler tractor for farm use in 1931, but did not produce a bulldozer until 1944...and by 1962 built 10,000 of them.

BTW, the Reichsbahn was a rail operating agency. Rail construction was primarily done by Bautruppen or by OT.

Also BTW, a "trench digger" does just that, digs trenches. It is for preparing fortifications and has little use in building roads or railroads...although I suppose it would make a decent ditch digger.
Richard C. Anderson Jr.

American Thunder: U.S. Army Tank Design, Development, and Doctrine in World War II
Cracking Hitler's Atlantic Wall
Hitler's Last Gamble
Artillery Hell

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