What if the Germans take England And the B36 becomes operational

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HistoryGeek2019
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Re: What if the Germans take England And the B36 becomes operational

#61

Post by HistoryGeek2019 » 29 Oct 2019, 02:52

I agree that invading the USSR was a dumb decision, but Germany was doomed regardless. Even under your most favorable projections, Germany is only getting half the oil it got pre-war. Its total imports are still just a fraction of what it got before the war. It's a country trying to pursue an impossible economic idea, autarky, cut off from most of the world, up against the two richest most powerful regimes in the world with more of everything and better technology than Germany. Germany is a country slowly rotting away under siege in this ATL, until eventually Curtis LeMay reduces them to ashes.

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Re: What if the Germans take England And the B36 becomes operational

#62

Post by Anthonycumia1776 » 30 Oct 2019, 04:49

wm wrote:
23 Oct 2019, 00:46
The Soviets needed 4 years to built the bomb from scratch. The Germans would do it in 2 years.

It's not about bombing a French factory in Paris and killing a few hundred French civilians.
It's about bombing the same factory and killing a million of them.
Not going to happen.

That there was nothing in France and Britain is quite optimistic. Actually the production capacity of Britain alone was the same as Germany's.

There were numerous essential industries in Central Europe. We might start with the enormous Skoda Works, Silesia Industrial Region (one of the largest in Europe), Romanian petroleum fields, and the synthetic rubber plant in Auschwitz.

Are you ready to detonate the big one over KL Auschwitz and its 100,000 prisoners?
Assuming you would be able to avoid swarms of German jets, significantly faster than the B-36.

4 years AFTER getting the ENTIRE PLANS via spies, what does that say about the so called "brailance" of soviet scientists.


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Re: What if the Germans take England And the B36 becomes operational

#63

Post by Anthonycumia1776 » 30 Oct 2019, 04:59

Anthonycumia1776 wrote:
22 Oct 2019, 05:02
Lets say the German armed forces roll over England and it is lost in say Early 1941

Part two, the B36 was ordered 2 years earlier and is around 6 months from full operational status.
Meant to say that the operational date of the B36 is June 1941.

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Re: What if the Germans take England And the B36 becomes operational

#64

Post by T. A. Gardner » 30 Oct 2019, 07:47

Anthonycumia1776 wrote:
30 Oct 2019, 04:59
Lets say the German armed forces roll over England and it is lost in say Early 1941

Meant to say that the operational date of the B36 is June 1941.
Not possible. If it is delivered, it'd have to be a radically different plane in many ways. For example:

The K-1 and K-3A bombing and navigation system and associated Western Electric APS-23 and / or APQ-24 radar didn't exist in 1940. The core technology for the radar-- eg., the cavity magnetron wasn't available yet. The system itself was well beyond anything imagined for a plane in 1940. The associated Sperry A-1A bombing computer used in the system was really well beyond 1939 - 40 technology.

The tail gun position used a combination of an APG-3 or APG-32 radar and coupled it to a variant of the Sperry K-14 gyro gunsight. Again, none of that technology existed at the time.

The same goes for the rest of the gunnery system. The B-36 used a variant of the system placed in the B-29. That was a tour de force for the time and didn't exist even on paper in 1940.

None of the dedicated ECM and ESM equipment a B-36 carried existed in 1940. None of it was even conceptualized at that point.

The defensive armament would have likely had to be .50 Browning M2 machineguns instead of the M3 / M24A1 20mm fitted as the M2 / M3 20mm was not considered highly reliable or desirable in 1940.

The P&W R 4360 Wasp Major didn't even begin development until 1942 so there is no engine available for this plane... The only close alternative is the Allison V-3420 (a twin version of the V 1710 used on many US aircraft) that with turbocharging might get close to the Wasp Major in power. But, it's water cooled not air cooled.

Basically, you come up with a very different airplane in 1940 than the B-36 that actually flew.

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Re: What if the Germans take England And the B36 becomes operational

#65

Post by T. A. Gardner » 30 Oct 2019, 08:07

wm wrote:
23 Oct 2019, 00:46
The Soviets needed 4 years to built the (atomic) bomb from scratch. The Germans would do it in 2 years.
The Germans didn't do it at all. They never built a working nuclear weapon. They had no uranium enrichment program beyond miniscule laboratory samples. They didn't know about Plutonium as an alternative and had no way to make any. Their one reactor they were building likely wouldn't have worked as advertised for a number of reasons. Heavy water as a choice of moderator was a big mistake, graphite was much better at the time. That's the route Enrico Fermi took with his first "pile" reactor at the University of Chicago.

Without being able to enrich uranium and concentrate U-234 or 235 to nearly 98% and lose the U-238 that won't readily fission, you can't build a bomb. There is ZERO evidence that the Germans had any sort of program of any size to do that.

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Re: What if the Germans take England And the B36 becomes operational

#66

Post by Takao » 30 Oct 2019, 20:13

Anthonycumia1776 wrote:
30 Oct 2019, 04:59
Anthonycumia1776 wrote:
22 Oct 2019, 05:02
Lets say the German armed forces roll over England and it is lost in say Early 1941

Part two, the B36 was ordered 2 years earlier and is around 6 months from full operational status.
Meant to say that the operational date of the B36 is June 1941.
An operational B-36 in June, 1941, is never going to happen without the intervention of Alien Space Bats...

For the B-36 to have been operational, it would have to have begun development in the very early 1930's, and the technology required was well beyond the technology then.

Also, as I stated earlier, there was no need for a US intercontinental bomber at this time.
Last edited by Takao on 30 Oct 2019, 20:42, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: What if the Germans take England And the B36 becomes operational

#67

Post by Takao » 30 Oct 2019, 20:35

T. A. Gardner wrote:
30 Oct 2019, 07:47
Anthonycumia1776 wrote:
30 Oct 2019, 04:59
Lets say the German armed forces roll over England and it is lost in say Early 1941

Meant to say that the operational date of the B36 is June 1941.
Not possible. If it is delivered, it'd have to be a radically different plane in many ways. For example:

The K-1 and K-3A bombing and navigation system and associated Western Electric APS-23 and / or APQ-24 radar didn't exist in 1940. The core technology for the radar-- eg., the cavity magnetron wasn't available yet. The system itself was well beyond anything imagined for a plane in 1940. The associated Sperry A-1A bombing computer used in the system was really well beyond 1939 - 40 technology.

The tail gun position used a combination of an APG-3 or APG-32 radar and coupled it to a variant of the Sperry K-14 gyro gunsight. Again, none of that technology existed at the time.

The same goes for the rest of the gunnery system. The B-36 used a variant of the system placed in the B-29. That was a tour de force for the time and didn't exist even on paper in 1940.

None of the dedicated ECM and ESM equipment a B-36 carried existed in 1940. None of it was even conceptualized at that point.

The defensive armament would have likely had to be .50 Browning M2 machineguns instead of the M3 / M24A1 20mm fitted as the M2 / M3 20mm was not considered highly reliable or desirable in 1940.

The P&W R 4360 Wasp Major didn't even begin development until 1942 so there is no engine available for this plane... The only close alternative is the Allison V-3420 (a twin version of the V 1710 used on many US aircraft) that with turbocharging might get close to the Wasp Major in power. But, it's water cooled not air cooled.

Basically, you come up with a very different airplane in 1940 than the B-36 that actually flew.
The electronics were not their, that is for sure.

The engines were either going to be the Allison V-3420 or the paper project Pratt & Whitney X(2 Twin Wasps connected together), possibly one of the 3 large liquid cooled engines P&W were developing.

The defensive armament varies - 8x.50 cal & 6x37mm, or 10x.50 cal & 5x37mm.

The remote control gun system was envisaged to be fitted on the Model 36. Although it was not yet designed.

Goggle Consolidated Model 35 and Consolidated Model 36 to see what the designs looked like.

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Re: What if the Germans take England And the B36 becomes operational

#68

Post by wm » 08 Nov 2019, 23:46

Anthonycumia1776 wrote:
30 Oct 2019, 04:49
4 years AFTER getting the ENTIRE PLANS via spies, what does that say about the so called "brailance" of soviet scientists.
The Soviets were seriously handicapped by their technical backwardness, especially their measuring equipment wasn't up to the task (although Soviet scientists were brilliant).
You can't run fast if you don't have shoes, pants, and even briefs.
See Rockets and People by Boris Chertok, he writes extensively about it.

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Re: What if the Germans take England And the B36 becomes operational

#69

Post by wm » 08 Nov 2019, 23:51

T. A. Gardner wrote:
30 Oct 2019, 08:07
The Germans didn't do it at all. They never built a working nuclear weapon.
They never built it because they didn't intend to build it. The project was defunded. In 1943 the entire budget was about $60,000 (in today's money) - if I'm not mistaken.

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Re: What if the Germans take England And the B36 becomes operational

#70

Post by Takao » 09 Nov 2019, 02:49

wm wrote:
08 Nov 2019, 23:46
Anthonycumia1776 wrote:
30 Oct 2019, 04:49
4 years AFTER getting the ENTIRE PLANS via spies, what does that say about the so called "brailance" of soviet scientists.
The Soviets were seriously handicapped by their technical backwardness, especially their measuring equipment wasn't up to the task (although Soviet scientists were brilliant).
You can't run fast if you don't have shoes, pants, and even briefs.
See Rockets and People by Boris Chertok, he writes extensively about it.
That's a cop out, the Soviets reverse engineered a B-29 in 2 years, and exploded their first atomic bomb years ahead of Western predictions.

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Re: What if the Germans take England And the B36 becomes operational

#71

Post by wm » 09 Nov 2019, 14:46

Those predictions were based on tasseography, not on facts.
The idea that the Russians didn't have easy access to uranium was laughable, only Polish uranium mines delivered almost 1000 tons of pure uranium.

The Soviet aircraft industry was well developed (thanks to technological transfers from the US and Nazi Germany) but still wasn't sufficiently high-tech to do atomic bombs, and that's by far.
You can't extract plutonium with lathes, you can't measure atomic reactions with calipers.
Actually lots of hardware needed, especially advanced measuring equipment the Russians got from occupied Germany.

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RE: What If The Germans Take England And The B-36 Becomes Operational.

#72

Post by Robert Rojas » 10 Nov 2019, 14:00

Greetings to both brother Anthonycumia1776 and the community as a whole. Howdy Anthony (or Tony if you so prefer), Well sir, in reference to your installment of Monday - October 21, 2019 - 7:02pm, old yours truly is of the school of thought that you're inflicting damage upon your own cause when you arbitrarily shift the goal posts in this scenario of yours. The disparate contributors to this thread base (OR HAVE BASED) their responses upon the initial information provided by yourself in your introductory posting of Tuesday - October 29, 2019 - 6:59pm. As I understand your weltanschauung, the B-36 Peacemaker was initially ordered EARLY in the year of 1939 with a projected operational status some six months AFTER the military collapse of the British Isles in the also EARLY in the year of 1941 and will be in FULL OPERATIONAL STATUS on OR about some six months after the capitulation of the British Isles in EARLY 1941. Now, as noted within your posting of Monday - October 21, 2019 - 7:02pm, you've now changed the FULL OPRATIONAL STATUS of the B-36 Peacemaker to the month of June in year 1941. This change of yours will certainly be fortuitous bolt out of the blue gift to First Secretary Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili's now hard pressed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics after the onset of Operation Barbarossa on OR after June 22, 1941. Assuming that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration has managed to finagle a formal declaration of war out of the Seventy Seventh United States Congress against BOTH National Socialist Germany and its assortment of continental allies, after the ignominious fall of the British Isles in EARLY 1941, I will assume (RIGHTLY or WRONGLY) that the ANGLO/AMERICAN air campaign will begin in earnest once Air Marshal Arthur Travers Harris and General Curtis LeMay can prioritize their strategic and tactical target selections. Undoubtedly, the all knowing Bohemian Corporal's Wehrmacht will be the recipient of what would ultimately become to be known as CARPET BOMBING on the open steppes of the Western Tier of the Soviet Union. Yes, the now growing and expanding gigantic airfields in now American occupied Iceland will be quite busy indeed. Well, that's my latest two Yankee cents worth on this clearly wanting topic of interest - for now anyway. In any case, I would like to bid you an especially copacetic day from sea to shining sea.

Best Regards,
Uncle Bob :idea: :|
Last edited by Robert Rojas on 10 Nov 2019, 17:40, edited 1 time in total.
"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it" - Robert E. Lee

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Re: What if the Germans take England And the B36 becomes operational

#73

Post by Takao » 10 Nov 2019, 17:35

wm wrote:
09 Nov 2019, 14:46
Those predictions were based on tasseography, not on facts.
The idea that the Russians didn't have easy access to uranium was laughable, only Polish uranium mines delivered almost 1000 tons of pure uranium.

The Soviet aircraft industry was well developed (thanks to technological transfers from the US and Nazi Germany) but still wasn't sufficiently high-tech to do atomic bombs, and that's by far.
You can't extract plutonium with lathes, you can't measure atomic reactions with calipers.
Actually lots of hardware needed, especially advanced measuring equipment the Russians got from occupied Germany.
Then the British must have been even more technologically backwards the the Soviets...They didn't detonate their first bomb until '52.

Or is it that the Soviets are not as technologically backwards as you would have us believe.

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Re: RE: What If The Germans Take England And The B-36 Becomes Operational.

#74

Post by Takao » 10 Nov 2019, 17:41

Robert Rojas wrote:
10 Nov 2019, 14:00
Greetings to both brother Anthonycumia1776 and the community as a whole. Howdy Anthony (or Tony if you so prefer), Well sir, in reference to your installment of Monday - October 21, 2019 - 7:02pm, old yours truly is of the school of thought that you're inflicting damage upon your own cause when you arbitrarily shift the goal posts in this scenario of yours. The disparate contributors to this thread base (OR HAVE BASED) their responses upon the initial information provided by yourself in your introductory posting of Tuesday - October 29, 2019 - 6:59pm. As I understand your weltanschauung, the B-36 Peacemaker was initially ordered EARLY in the year of 1939 with a projected operational status some six months AFTER the military collapse of the British Isles in the also EARLY in the year of 1941 and will be in FULL OPERATIONAL STATUS on OR about some six months after the capitulation of the British Isles in EARLY 1941. Now, as noted within your posting of Monday - October 21, 2019 - 7:02pm, you've now changed the FULL OPRATIONAL STATUS of the B-36 Peacemaker to the month of June in year 1941. This change of yours will certainly be fortuitous bolt out of the blue gift to First Secretary Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili's now hard pressed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics after the onset of Operation Barbarossa on OR after June 22, 1941. Assuming that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's administration has managed to finagle a formal declaration of war out of the Seventy Seventh United States Congress against BOTH National Socialist Germany and its assortment of continental allies, after the ignominious fall of the British Isles in EARLY 1941, I will assume (RIGHTLY or WRONGLY) that the ANGLO/AMERICAN air campaign will begin in earnest once Air Marshal Arthur Travers Harris and General Curtis LeMay can prioritize their strategic and tactical target selections. Undoubtedly, the all knowing Bohemian's Wehrmacht will be the recipient of what would ultimately become to be known as CARPET BOMBING on the open steppes of the Western Tier of the Soviet Union. Yes, the now growing and expanding gigantic airfields in now American occupied Iceland will be quite busy indeed. Well, that's my latest two Yankee cents worth on this clearly wanting topic of interest - for now anyway. In any case, I would like to bid you an especially copacetic day from sea to shining sea.

Best Regards,
Uncle Bob :idea: :|
Just a note, Lemay was a Captain in 1940, and would not be in charge of such a Strategic Campaign.

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RE: What if the Germans take England And the B36 becomes operational

#75

Post by Robert Rojas » 10 Nov 2019, 18:00

Greetings to both brother Takao and the community as a whole. Howdy Takao! Well sir, you ARE absolutely 100% correct about the time chronology about our future General Curtis LeMay. I stand duly corrected! I guess old Carl Spaatz will have to do for the time being. Incidentally, being one of the forum's erstwhile sailors, if you are so inclined to do so of course, I would love to read a critique of the remake of the movie MIDWAY which just made its theatric debut this past Friday. Well, that's my latest two Yankee cents worth on this meandering topic of interest - for now anyway. As always, I would like to bid you an especially copacetic day over in your corner of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Best Regards,
Uncle Bob :idea: :|
"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it" - Robert E. Lee

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