[Vettezuki]

Originally Posted by BRUTAL64

20 milliom Russians died by German hands (at least that is what the Russian claim. I think Stalin had a hand in some of those deaths.). Even with those numbers they were able to put up the largest land Army of WWII, if not of all time. Those frisky Russian.

People tend to fight pretty hard when they face extermination. They also aren't all that forgiving when the tide swings in their favor. This was part of the genius of the Roman and Mongol empire. Let your targets know your coming and what you're going to do. Give them the option to surrender. If they refuse, conquer them utterly, then absorb and assimilate . . . like the Borg.

[BRUTAL64]

Originally Posted by Vettezuki

People tend to fight pretty hard when they face extermination. They also aren't all that forgiving when the tide swings in their favor. This was part of the genius of the Roman and Mongol empire. Let your targets know your coming and what you're going to do. Give them the option to surrender. If they refuse, conquer them utterly, then absorb and assimilate . . . like the Borg.

When the Russians were able to go on the offensive, they were able to put 100 T-34 tanks per kilometer on the front line. 24,000 tanks for WWII itself. Tank building mofos!

[BRUTAL64]

Ben:
I was really enjoying our discussion about WWII. You have been the only person I know to keep up.

[Vettezuki]

Originally Posted by BRUTAL64

Ben:
I was really enjoying our discussion about WWII. You have been the only person I know to keep up.

I could geek out on you til your eyes rolled back in your head. Some of it's a bit fuzzy now, but did you konw the T34 was based heavily on an American design that the then DOD passed on cuz it was too expensive and difficult to manufacture. We went with the Sherman for its mass production and cost effective nature. Around D-Day, the Germans fully expected the most advanced tanks in the world to roll off the American ships. They were surprised by two things. One, what a piece of crap they were (compared to the Panthers and Tigers) and two, just how fing many of them there were. We simply drowned them in steal and that works too.

Generally though, American war equipment had a couple major advantages over the typically more sophisticated German counterparts. Namely they were very simple and easy to repair, which is handy when people are shooting at you. They, especially the tanks; however, were very dangerous compared to the German models. An American tank crew didn't have much of a chance of getting out alive from the Shermans, where the German models had better armor, were diesel so they didn't just explode, and had better escape hatches. Actually, America didn't make a good tank til we teamed up with our German and British pals to make the M1, which is a bad motha.

[BRUTAL64]

Originally Posted by Vettezuki

I could geek out on you til your eyes rolled back in your head. Some of it's a bit fuzzy now, but did you konw the T34 was based heavily on an American design that the then DOD passed on cuz it was too expensive and difficult to manufacture. We went with the Sherman for its mass production and cost effective nature. Around D-Day, the Germans fully expected the most advanced tanks in the world to roll off the American ships. They were surprised by two things. One, what a piece of crap they were (compared to the Panthers and Tigers) and two, just how fing many of them there were. We simply drowned them in steal and that works too.

Generally though, American war equipment had a couple major advantages over the typically more sophisticated German counterparts. Namely they were very simple and easy to repair, which is handy when people are shooting at you. They, especially the tanks; however, were very dangerous compared to the German models. An American tank crew didn't have much of a chance of getting out alive from the Shermans, where the German models had better armor, were diesel so they didn't just explode, and had better escape hatches. Actually, America didn't make a good tank til we teamed up with our German and British pals to make the M1, which is a bad motha.

Yea, the was the point of the Sherman was to build simple and then drown the Germans in pure numbers. Yea, the GIs had a name for the Sherman but I can't remember it right now ( I think it ws something like the torch ). The cannon was a joke. Ole "Oddball" in Kelley's Heros said it best. Can't remember that now either. It was something about all he could do against a Tiger was let it punch holes in his Sherman.

One of the things that was showing up in a lot of what I read in some books, was that German soldiers would not even try to fix their equipment and the American GI was all over their stuff when it broke.

There are some stories about GIs putting bigger engines in thier jeeps from Nazi staff cars.

[Vettezuki]

Originally Posted by BRUTAL64

Yea, the was the point of the Sherman was to build simple and then drown the Germans in pure numbers. Yea, the GIs had a name for the Sherman but I can't remember it right now. The cannon was a joke. Ole "Oddball" in Kelley's Heros said it best. Can't remember that now either. It was something about all he could do against a Tiger was let it punch holes in his Sherman.

One of the things that was showing up in a lot of what I read in some books, was that German soldiers would not even try to fix their equipment and the American GI was all over their stuff when it broke.

There are some stories about GIs putting bigger engines in thier jeeps from Nazi staff cars.

The Germans called the Shermans "Tommy Cookers". Come to think of it, we called them Jerry (especially the British.) Come to think of it wonder if there is any connection to the later Tom & Jerry.

As for the field guns, the German model was deadly accurate and could punch through anything, it also had an unbelievable number of moving parts. The American version which was sorta accurate and powerful enough to make a mess had like 5 moving parts. The Germans required technicians to fix their equipment. The operators couldn't touch it generally.

In reality though, pretty much except for the Nuke (kinda a big deal) and heavy bombers the Germans were equal, superior, or just plain generations ahead with all their equipment as far as function was concerned. There were some odd exceptions though. American submarines were actually better than the feared U-Boats.

The real interesting part most people don't know is that a lot of development on German weapons was halted in the late 30s and didn't resume until around 42 when they realized the war wasn't quite going to plan. They literally had world class scientists in trenches they had to recall to the Fatherland. To say nothing of the fact they were using a human resource to eliminate and educated technical class of Jews. Throw in the fact they had a bizaarely organized military industrial complex where information was NOT shared and they often worked at odds internally, we can only imagine what they might have developed and deployed had they worked continuously in a more cohesive manor from the late 30s. We might have seen things like fully functional Me-262s by 43, mass produced Sturmgewehr 44 assault rifles, etc.

There are other funny things like one of their big chiefs in charge of building up their Luftwaffe in the 30s insisted that if they were going to go to major war with the Soviet Union and the west they would absolutely need long range heavy bombers. Hitler disagreed. That guy died in a test flight for some other aircraft. They were never able to deliver the super heavy bomber blows like the US and UK could. The kinda thing that allowed the Soviets to move their entire industrial base behind the Ural mountains, which in itself is one of the greatest moving feats in the history of the world.

They were a strange mix of truly brilliant and really, really stupid.

[BRUTAL64]

The development of the Me 262 was going strong for a late 43 deployment. We would have been in a world of hurt if Hitler hadn't screwed that up to.
They were haveing problems with the turbine fin metal in the early engines and , of course, flame outs. What Hitler did was demand that the Me 262 be converted to a bomber. That delayed the Me 262 another year. Which was good for us.
Here's a list of some other planes the Germans were working on. Some were in the development stage and others were on the table for development.


The Bachem Natter Ba349 Manned Rocket
The Bachem Natter was projected as a small lightweight expendable interceptor, capable of destroying any enemy bomber using the least possible weapon expenditure. To achieve this objective, this ambitious project employed a vertical rocket-assisted takeoff followed by separate descent and landing of pilot and aircraft by separate parachutes.
It was believed that pilots having little or no experience would need only rudimentary flight and gunnery instruction, rather than spending valuable training resources on the finer points of flight training. Erich Bachem reasoned that, a reasonable number of such interceptors and launch sites could be installed around key industrial targets, to make attacking Allied bombers pay a prohibitively high price.

Heinkel He-162 Salamander Volksjager Nazi Jet Fighter
The prototype of the Heinkel He 162 turbojet-engine interceptor was flown for the first time on 6 December 1944, only 38 days after detail drawings had been issued to the factory. This prototype was lost in a fatal flying accident on 10 December, but the program was continued and revealed some aerodynamic problems, these being remedied in the third and fourth prototypes, both flown on 16 January 1945; first deliveries of aircraft for operational evaluation and service trials were also made during January 1945.
On 4 May 1945 one Gruppe of three squadrons, with a total of 50 aircraft was formed at Leck in Schleswig-Holstein, but British forces occupied the air field on 8 May and accepted the unit's surrender. A total of 116 He 162s was built, and more than 800 were in various stages of assembly when the underground production centers were captured.

Lippisch P-13a Ramjet Interceptor
The last desperate attempts by the Luftwaffe to stop the Allied bomber streams were exemplified by the demand: fighters, fighters, fighters - quick and simple to build, cheap and from easily accessible materials, small dimensions, superior speed compared to enemy escort fighters and firepower. Nearly all aircraft manufacturers and designers in the Third Reich put designs to paper along these lines. Even Dr. Lippisch's ideas during the last year of the war fit into this concept. Of his numerous variants, the Lippisch 13a was actually given serious consideration.
The Lippisch P.13a was an experimental ramjet-powered delta wing interceptor aircraft designed in late 1944 by Dr. Alexander Lippisch for Nazi Germany. The aircraft never made it past the drawing board, with testing of wind tunnel models showing the design had extraordinary stability into the Mach 2.6 range. As conventional fuel was in short supply at the end of the war, the ramjet was to be powered by powdered coal.
It was the end of the war that prevented further development beyond the un powered DM-1 test glider. After the war, Lippisch, working with American aircraft designer Convair, developed and tested the XF-92 based on his designs, leading to the eventual adoption of the F-102 Delta Dagger and its successor, the F-106 Delta Dart

Me P 1109 ScissorsWing (Oblique Wing)Top Secret Project
Twenty-five years before the Ames-Dryden AD-1 ScissorsWing experiment, and most probably a major inspiration for the same, this Messerschmitt Me-P-1109 was being developed in February 1944 as yet another 'last ditch' WWII effort to thwart the Allies.
The Ames-Dryden AD-1 scissor wing research aircraft tested a wing that could pivot fore and aft to form oblique angles up to 60 degrees. Tests revealed that the scissor wing decreased aerodynamic drag, permitting higher speeds and longer range. The concept was not new. Dr. Vogt designed the BV P 202, with a similar scissor wing that could pivot up to 35 degrees

The Horten Ho 229 Flying Wing
The first Horten wing (a glider as were many of their designs), flew in 1934 and their devotion to the design carried them on even after the war. What is truly amazing about their story is that often their work was done in secret, even from the Luftwaffe, who did not want a new design interfering with other types.
The final design they were working on during the closing days of the war was one that would be able to carry two atomic bombs to the U.S. and return. It was thought to be able to do over 600 mph.

The Focke-Wulf Triebflugel
In 1944, at Focke-Wulf, Professor Otto Pabst worked on an interesting fast vertical takeoff aircraft named the Triebflugel. Its purpose was to rise quickly from just about anywhere and attack the allied bombers.
Similar to a helicopter, it was powered by THREE large wing-like rotors but unlike a helicopter, the rotors turned around the fuselage. To preclude fuselage torque, the rotors were powered by small ramjets mounted on the tips and these were to be boosted to start speed by rockets. The landing gear casters in the tail were retractable.The use of the ramjet made it possible to use various cheap fuels.

The Nazi WWII Secret X-Plane-Huckebein Ta-183
The Nazi WWII Secret X-Plane-Huckebein was the officially recognized identifier however, soon thereafter it became known by the nickname Huckebein, after a cartoon raven who got others into trouble.
This was one of the last secret Nazi X-planes that were designed by the brilliant German designers and almost flown at the very end of WWII.. A scarcity of parts and constant bombing of the factories made things difficult as best.
The Allied forces crated and sent home the prototypes for 'evaluation'. Both the Russians and the Americans came out with a flying version in the late 1940


These are just a few of the planes the Germans were working on. Just think of what would of happened if they developed any number of these. Damn!

We haven't even got to the German Heavy Water project yet.

[Vettezuki]

Originally Posted by BRUTAL64

. . .

We haven't even got to the German Heavy Water project.

One thing is clear. From debriefing scientists after the war, the Germans were no were near a nuke or really even quite on the right track. Turns out a couple of those dirty Jews would have been quite useful for that little project. All in all, let's be grateful they were dumb asses or we would have had to nuke'm.

[BRUTAL64]

Originally Posted by Vettezuki

One thing is clear. From debriefing scientists after the war, the Germans were no were near a nuke or really even quite on the right track. Turns out a couple of those dirty Jews would have been quite useful for that little project. All in all, let's be grateful they were dumb asses or we would have had to nuke'm.

Yes, Hitler didn't have them pursue it as they should have. They did have the brains to develope a nuke , just they were of the wrong faith.
Yes, I've always wonderned what would have happend if Hiltler did things as he should have. That just scares the HELL out of me.

[Vettezuki]

Originally Posted by BRUTAL64

Yes, Hitler didn't have them pursue it as they should have. They did have the brains to develope a nuke , just they were of the wrong faith.
Yes, I've always wonderned what would have happend if Hiltler did things as he should have. That just scares the HELL out of me.

Their math was completely wrong-headed, particularly regarding critical mass. As I recall, the "funny" part is they thought it was much harder than it was in reality. Hip hip hooray. A nuke on the Tip of a V2 (which BTW they were able to launch from a sub!) would have been a bit much to deal with. Fortunately they got the as*es paddled.