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By: - 29th August 2003 at 19:00 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Well, I'm of the thinking that if they came up with the V-2, who knows what else they could have come up with before 1945??
There are a few model kits around of various Luftwaffe experimental aircraft. One of them looks like it has six engines on the box art! I think it's a Revell kit, but I'm knackered if I can think of what it was! :(
By: - 29th August 2003 at 19:35 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Think I know the one, looks like a flying wing with it depicted as overflying New York???
By: - 29th August 2003 at 20:06 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
If you've never visited it before, you really should go to www.luft46.com which deals with the advanced designs Germany had on the drawing board (or even further progressed) at the end of the war. The site includes artwork, model photos as well as historical information and photos. Its a fascinating website and shows just how advanced the Germans were. It's quite scary in that respect!
By: - 29th August 2003 at 20:09 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Alex - that's the one, with the wingtips bent down?
I think there's a couple of T-33s(?) climbing to intercept, not sure!
By: - 30th August 2003 at 12:58 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
That's the one, think they were P-80's weren't they (was the Shooting Star the P-80 or F-80, can't remember, like I said this era really isn't my thing).
Anyhow, it was a bloody nice design!!! :)
By: - 30th August 2003 at 13:39 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Dazdaman,
One often reads about how far advanced the Germans were regarding their aircraft technology, and no doubt they were far ahead in some areas, but alot of the push to develope these breakthroughs was initiated by desperation and the quest to find a "silver bullet" in order to turn the tide of the war. The Germans lacked quality research into other areas that the Allies excelled in, notably advanced radar systems. Also the British were relatively on parity with the Germans in regards to jet aircraft, It seemed that they did not emphisize it as much because at that point in the war they were winning and were'nt as desperate. The US P-80 shooting Star was flying by 1945 and would have given the Germans a run. BUT THE BIG PICTURE that many forget is that WE HAD NUKES!!!!!!!!Germany was nowhere near the US in this technology and it really renders the debate MOOT!!!!
Regards TTP
By: - 30th August 2003 at 14:16 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Originally posted by TTP
Dazdaman,One often reads about how far advanced the Germans were regarding their aircraft technology, and no doubt they were far ahead in some areas, but alot of the push to develope these breakthroughs was initiated by desperation and the quest to find a "silver bullet" in order to turn the tide of the war.
The Germans lacked quality research into other areas that the Allies excelled in, notably advanced radar systems. Also the British were relatively on parity with the Germans in regards to jet aircraft, It seemed that they did not emphisize it as much because at that point in the war they were winning and were'nt as desperate. The US P-80 shooting Star was flying by 1945 and would have given the Germans a run. BUT THE BIG PICTURE that many forget is that WE HAD NUKES!!!!!!!!Germany was nowhere near the US in this technology and it really renders the debate MOOT!!!!
Regards TTP
Problem with German nuclear weapons design was that they weren't developing an A-bomb like the Americans (well, three quarters of the team at Los Alamos were Europeans actually, with the bulk of those Germans), but tried to go for the big cheese immediately by trying to develop an H-bomb. This project was ultimately canned because they couldn't figure out a decent detonator (which is basically an A-bomb), and they lacked their best physicists. Which were of course at Los Alamos. Anyway, the US didn't have the Bomb until june/july 1945, when Germany already was defeated.
A lot of the later German projects were indeed born out of desperation, but these were relatively simple projects from the end of the war like the He-162 Salamander, the pretty well-known Volksjäger which was intended as some sort of saturation defense fighter. Nevertheless, the Germans kept working on high-tech and exotic designs which were by no means born out of despair. Neither the Do-335 or the Ho-229 could really be called desperate attempts to create at least something. The latter is the pretty famous flying wing, much of the desing expertise of which later was used by Northrop to move on with their flying wing designs.
And don't forget that the American space project began in Sperenberg and Peenemünde. NASA needed a German like Werner von Braun to turn Goddard's feeble little rockets into something capable of lifting stuff out of the atmosphere. Never mind the other catching-up done thanks to Operation Paperclip.
By: - 30th August 2003 at 15:53 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
if werner von braun had be the chief of the luftwaffe
instead of hermann goring the luftwaffe should have got
completly another inventory than the one at the end in 1944 !
werner von braun could have motivated and arranged the
money to the founders of the ME,DO,TA,HE en JU airplanecompagnies but also could have put priority for the making of the SYNTHETIC fuel by building the installations bigger
and sooner as a prime goal to reach.
without any doubt germany could have bombed new york
in 1942 or 1943 this way and... that would have had a much different impact for the war results.
By: - 30th August 2003 at 21:57 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Originally posted by FASTPASS
if werner von braun had be the chief of the luftwaffe
instead of hermann goring the luftwaffe should have got
completly another inventory than the one at the end in 1944 !
werner von braun could have motivated and arranged the
money to the founders of the ME,DO,TA,HE en JU airplanecompagnies but also could have put priority for the making of the SYNTHETIC fuel by building the installations bigger
and sooner as a prime goal to reach.
without any doubt germany could have bombed new york
in 1942 or 1943 this way and... that would have had a much different impact for the war results.
Putting a scientist in charge of a military arm would have been pointless. Scientists don't do strategy and tactics.
That said, I do take your point about what might have been. It's very chilling to think that the world could have been a very different place to the one we know now, but ultimately, no-one really knows for sure what they were capable of. But we can all guess.
One thing that has always stood out for me, is how amazing it is that Germany managed to wage all out war for five and a half years, almost in complete isolation. Okay, so the Italians were their allies from 1940 to 1943, and the Japanese from 41 to the end in 45, but neither of these nations made any significant contribution to the Nazi war effort.
For a predominantly landlocked country to a) expand as far and wide as it did up to late 1941 (when Barbarossa almost reached Moscow), b) continue to develop potentially world beating technology despite a lack of imports from the outside world, and c) continue to fight with such commitment on all fronts during that time, shows just how advanced Germany really was.
In terms of population numbers, Germany, France and the United Kingdom were very similar in 1939. In terms of sovereign territory, the Anglo-French alliance had the edge. Yet the German strategy, strength and ability to project power, was very much more than any other nation could muster.
Yet all this was accomplished with an egotistical and tactically inept dictator at the helm. Hitler had a strategy, but insisted on micro managing the war instead of leaving the details to his military commanders. Time and again, his interference had a negative impact on existing military operations.
I shudder to think how our world would be now, had Hitlers military commanders been given the freedom to pursue their orders without the Fuhrer's interference. :eek:
By: - 30th August 2003 at 23:21 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
I can't get very excited about paper projects which never took off. It's easy to sit down and design a 600-seater aerobatic, amphibious, supersonic cargo/bomber/passenger/fighter aircraft which will fly from Europe to New York at Mach 8.0 on a litre of olive oil; getting it operational is another matter. The Me 262, Me 163 and Horten designs impress me though. And don't forget there's a lot of "artist's creativity" in the renderings of these designs as they are presented to us today, be it in a book or as a model.
By: - 31st August 2003 at 00:10 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
That's a fair enough comment Kenneth, there are a lot of suppsositions floating around today from authors and historians who have the benefit of hindsight.
However, the fact that so many German scientists and designers were snapped up by the allies for their own ends rather than being tried for war crimes or interned as PoW's would tell it's own story.
Von Braun's A4 design formed the basis of America's whole space programme, and the Me262 wing planform is remarkable similar in shape and proportion (if not size) to the whole Boeing 707 / 727 / 747 series. Sixty years on, they're still shaping our world...
By: - 31st August 2003 at 01:23 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
I made the 6-engined thingie from Revell, it's a Arado E.555. It looks quite good one it's completed!
:D
By: - 31st August 2003 at 06:50 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Originally posted by Arthur
Problem with German nuclear weapons design was that they weren't developing an A-bomb like the Americans (well, three quarters of the team at Los Alamos were Europeans actually, with the bulk of those Germans), but tried to go for the big cheese immediately by trying to develop an H-bomb. This project was ultimately canned because they couldn't figure out a decent detonator (which is basically an A-bomb), and they lacked their best physicists. Which were of course at Los Alamos. Anyway, the US didn't have the Bomb until june/july 1945, when Germany already was defeated.A lot of the later German projects were indeed born out of desperation, but these were relatively simple projects from the end of the war like the He-162 Salamander, the pretty well-known Volksjäger which was intended as some sort of saturation defense fighter. Nevertheless, the Germans kept working on high-tech and exotic designs which were by no means born out of despair. Neither the Do-335 or the Ho-229 could really be called desperate attempts to create at least something. The latter is the pretty famous flying wing, much of the desing expertise of which later was used by Northrop to move on with their flying wing designs.
And don't forget that the American space project began in Sperenberg and Peenemünde. NASA needed a German like Werner von Braun to turn Goddard's feeble little rockets into something capable of lifting stuff out of the atmosphere. Never mind the other catching-up done thanks to Operation Paperclip.
But they paid enough attention to research of non essential mattaers to have a primitive ejection seat in both the He-162 and the Do-335
By: - 31st August 2003 at 11:15 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
i think some important detail is forgotten here !
facts:
the germans did had a platform to bomb new york already
in...1929.
and they could do it in a non-stop flight.
yes ! the z e p p e l i n !
payload:
replace any 4 average passengers for 1 bomb of 250 Kilo or 2 bombs of 125 Kilo and you have a deadly load onboard.
(keep in mind max.passengers allowed on each flight and.. deduct the weight of their luggage because bombs do not need extra weight for their luggage!)
strategic weapon:
1941/1942 version would be an updated one in safety (non-explodic hull paint),gas,reliability and capable for a non-stop
return flight europa-usa-europa
and about the german a-bomb...
the usa was lucky the belgian king sold them the uranium
for their 1st atomic bomb because he "owned" the belgian kongo,and therefor also the mines.
just think what could have happened if that king had sold the uranium to the germans in return for a heavy load of german bars of gold...
By: - 31st August 2003 at 11:18 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
Mike,
An ejection seat would't have been much of a luxury in both the 162 and in the 335. In the first, the pilot was sitting directly in front of the over-fuselage mounted intake. Jumping out with an engine out of control would have been a tough, if not impossible, job. A similar problem faced the pilot of a Pfeil if he wanted to bail out: the prop on the rear end of the fuselage made ejecting without any outside help quite an adventurous task.
The Germans had done quite a bit of ejector seat development anyway - by the time the Salamander and the Pfeil were being tested, production He-219s already had (primitive) ejection seats.
By: - 31st August 2003 at 12:26 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
I think one of the main things we're forgetting here is the supply of raw materials to Germany's war industry.One thing which Germany has always been short of is supplies of it's own raw materials.In both world wars the Germans had to comprimise in various ways,even on the simplest things as wooden propellors.If you look at the LVG at Shuttleworth,you'll see it has a beautifully crafted prop made of light and dark woods.Pretty as this looks,it's a comprimise,the Germans having virtually no access to the hardwoods available to the Allies.They also used poorer quality synthetic oil for lubrication of their engines-the Germans would often fit captured Clerget's,LeRhone's etc to thier own aircraft,but these engines didn't last long with German oil.
Possibly the most famous case of the these comprimises is the Me262 and other Nazi jets.Nazi Germnay's war industry was cripplingly short of materials such as Nickel and Tungsten-metals which could be used at extremely high temperatures.These two materials were already in extremely high demand for the making of large calibre gun barrels,and there simply wasn't enough to go around for the aviation industry.Although the people at Junkers and BMW were ingenious in thier design of engines like the Jumo 004,they simply couldn't build the engine they wanted due to shortages of the necassary materials.
The bottom line is that even the most fantastic Nazi designs were doomed to remain as paper projects as long as Germany continued to suffer material shortages.
By: - 1st September 2003 at 11:00 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
the ex-belgian kongo uranium was used in the alamogordo
trinity project and not in one of the ww2 atomic bombs because:
the 4 tons little boy dropped over hiroshima used uranium 235
and the second fatman dropped over nagasaki used plutonium.
i doubt very very much that the russians had an enormous stock
of uranium and the know how how to use it because they simply were not ready to construct a weapon as this.
(the proof is in the actual colourfilm of the dropping of their first atomic bomb !!)
a 1942/43 improved zeppelin could make a non-stop trip over the ocean flying much higher because they could use oxygenmasks and attack for example new york by complete surprise and drop bombs even from high altitude.
the effect in a populated already new york would have been
devastated and bad for the moral of the usa..
for the return they could make a not unusual bunkering fuel
in one of the occupied or germany friendly countries.
By: - 1st September 2003 at 11:20 Permalink - Edited 1st January 1970 at 01:00
What about radar? What about the quality of helium/hydrogen at extreme temperatures? (in other words, what happens to the gas as it gets colder??). There'd have to be some sort of reaction to the gas inside the balloon (and maybe even the balloon itself) at high altitude, or so I would have thought. Of course, I'm no expert!
Even if the airship was cruising at 40,000ft, it'd still be reachable. Lets not forget the high-altitude fighters that would be around in 1942/43. Spitfire MkVI/VII/IX, Mosquito...just to name a few. If you wanted to avoid the fighters, 50,000 might be a bit safer....! ;)
The airship would also have to use a very sophisticated bombsight, like the Norden on the B-17 in order to get its comparatively small bombload on target. Mind you, NYC is a big target...!
Posts: 353
By: alex - 29th August 2003 at 14:33
Hey guys, I recently purchased two books on secret German projects of WW2 concerning fighters and bombers. I was amazed when I came across artist pic's of several bombers which look a lot like the B-2. Despite lacking any real interest in the era I would like to know more about any such project u know about, please. Can u tell me if u think the Germans were really ahead of their time? If Hitler had left the invasion of Europe for several years and had pressed ahead with these projects would he have been unstoppable? Could Britain, the Soviet Union, France or the US of A been able to catch up? Would Germany really have been able to produce a long range bomber capable of hitting the US mainland?