Brad Nelson
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Posts: 12,238
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T-34
Dec 8, 2019 13:08:36 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 8, 2019 13:08:36 GMT -8
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T-34
Dec 8, 2019 14:34:27 GMT -8
Post by timothylane on Dec 8, 2019 14:34:27 GMT -8
Actually, the Germans did deploy several 4-engine bombers, though the FW-200 was mainly used for reconnaissance and their main heavy bomber, the He-177, was a failure because of an insane engine system for mounting engines. (Ernst Udet, a fan of dive bombers, insisted that all bombers be able to dive bomb, and no bomber with more than 2 engines could dive bomb, so they paired the engines together so that it sort of would be a 2-engine bomber. It wasn't a bad plane when the engines didn't catch fire.) They even had a 6-engine transport, the Me-323. It was very slow and was mainly used for transport to and from Tunisia after Torch. I'll let you guess how the Allied P-38 pilots treated it.
All tanks broke down, but they could also be pulled off the field to be repaired. This was much harder to do with the heavier tanks, especially the Tigers. It was said that it took a Tiger to tow a Tiger. One might also note that the article compared actual Tiger losses with claimed kills by Tiger. So the kill ratio was probably lower than that.
A Tiger weighed around twice what a Sherman did, so they could probably make 10-11 105 mm howitzers for the steel of a Sherman. Of course, a howitzer needs a prime mover to transport it, which would considerably change the ratio. The article was a good one overall, but that comparison was rather unfair.
When we visited Carlisle Barracks on our Philadelphia Millennicon trip (which included visiting Valley Forge, Monmouth, and Gettysburg) we saw a captured 88 at the building used for a prison for Hessians captured at Trenton.
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T-34
Dec 8, 2019 14:37:31 GMT -8
Post by kungfuzu on Dec 8, 2019 14:37:31 GMT -8
Perhaps Nazi Germany's biggest problem was its limited manufacturing ability. Many things went into making this. For example, Hitler would not mobilize women in the factories because he believed they belonged at home. Think of the ways female factory workers supported the Allied war effort. (Not to mention the way millions of females in the workforce helped speed feminism in our society.)
Once Great Britain would not surrender, it was clear that Germany would be in for a long war. It could not have waged such a war without increased land, raw materials, workers and factories which lay to the East. One way or another, Nazi Germany had to get control of the Soviet Union's resources if it wanted to come out victorious and not completely bankrupt. The fact that the USSR was run by Bolsheviks, which Hitler so hated, was icing on the cake. Even if it had not been, Hitler would have turned to the East.
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T-34
Dec 8, 2019 15:02:42 GMT -8
Post by kungfuzu on Dec 8, 2019 15:02:42 GMT -8
A very superficial article, which had become the norm for most popular publications. Not only is Tim's point about howitzers needing to be hauled correct, but the comparison between tanks and artillery is somewhat specious. Tanks and artillery are made for very different uses in battle. The speed at which each can be inserted into battle varies greatly. A tank battalion should, theoretically, be able to take advantage of a weak spot in an enemy's position than would artillery some miles back of the front. Furthermore, with fronts ever changing, tanks have mobility that artillery doesn't.
It is true that the Tiger had many mechanical problems. One of the reasons for this is that the thing appeared to be over engineered. But another one was that as the war wore on, Germany could not obtain the quantity of ferro-alloys and other such metals needed to make the highest quality steel needed to run the monsters. As I recall, gear boxes in Tigers failed with some regularity due to this. Poor quality steel gears will break more easily when required to move a 54mt behemoth than they will moving 44mt.
I believe the consensus is that the Panther was Germany's best all-around tank. Had the Tiger had fewer problems, it would have easily taken this prize. The Mark IV was a very good tank, especially the later versions with the long 75mm gun.
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T-34
Dec 8, 2019 15:38:16 GMT -8
Post by timothylane on Dec 8, 2019 15:38:16 GMT -8
If you really want to get down to it, think how many Tiger tanks could be built using the steel of a single fleet aircraft carrier, or even a destroyer for that matter. The 75 mm L 70 of the Panther was comparable to the shorter 88 mm of the Tiger I -- indeed, superior at most battle ranges. Its armor was lighter, but also better sloped to make up for much of the difference. It also wasn't much lighter -- nearly 50 tons compared to 56. (The Tiger II and Jagdtiger were both about 70 tons.)
One interesting problem for the Panther was the semicircular mantlet for its main gun. In theory, one could bounce a shell off the lower portion through the thin plate above the driver. John Keegan reports on a story that one replacement tanker was told that was how to knock out a Panther. They said someone had actually done so -- and was "back at headquarters trying to recover his nerve". They also said, when he asked, that there was no theoretical way a Churchill could take out a Tiger, and no one had actually done so.
Of course, that was only true for frontal shots. Both could be penetrated on the sides and rear.
Incidentally, the shortage of key ferroalloys was also why the German jet engines had short lifetimes compared to the Allied jet engines. From late 1944, the Germans had virtually no chromium, manganese, or nickel aside from stockpiles. For certain AP shells that used tungsten in their cores, they used uranium instead late in the world. (There were major deposits on both sides of the Erzgebirge, at Joachimstal aka Jachymov in Bohemia and Schneeberg in Saxony.)
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
Posts: 12,238
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T-34
Dec 8, 2019 20:31:45 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 8, 2019 20:31:45 GMT -8
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Brad Nelson
Administrator
עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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T-34
Dec 9, 2019 10:05:45 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 9, 2019 10:05:45 GMT -8
Here’s the Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor. It’s a nice looking plane. Number built: 276.  B-17 bombers built: 12,731 B-29 bombers built: 3,960 B-24 bombers built: 18,188 Lancaster bombers built: 7,377 Halifax bombers built: 6,176 So, in effect, the Germans had no heavy, long-range bomber in any practical sense. It’s ironic that as rotten as the Nazis were, they had an ethic (as Mr. Kung noted) that the place for women was not in factories. Politically the “total war” scenario might not have been possible or politically attainable. But it was the moved they needed to make. And I don’t know as much as Mr. Kung does on the subject, but it seems reasonable to assume that at a certain point, Hitler was just out of his mind from drug use and other conditions. As horrible as it would be for the Russians for the Nazis to prevail, had the generals in Berlin been in control of the plan from the start, the Russian campaign might have ended differently. Blitzkrieg was clearly a bad plan for a campaign across hundreds, if not thousands, of miles. Here’s a very geeky looking at Why didn’t the Germans just bypass Stalingrad in World War II? |
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T-34
Dec 9, 2019 10:22:51 GMT -8
Post by timothylane on Dec 9, 2019 10:22:51 GMT -8
I have pointed out many times that the movie Triumph of the Will actually has a very ironic title. If by will one means doing whatever is necessary to win, the Nazis lacked it. They were happy to commit war crimes that might or might not benefit the war effort, but mobilizing women or making the best use of available time (especially in the summer of 1940, but also in Russia after the capture of Smolensk) were unacceptable.
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Brad Nelson
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עַבְדְּךָ֔ אֶת־ הַתְּשׁוּעָ֥ה הַגְּדֹלָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את
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T-34
Dec 9, 2019 10:30:50 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 9, 2019 10:30:50 GMT -8
The double-edged sword of being driven by ideological zealotry. As one documentary I saw noted, the Nazis wasted enormous amounts of resources pouring concrete. War is horrible enough. But think of the logistical cost of persecution. Yes, slave labor was of some use. But dead people were of no use.
But these kinds of ideologies (like in the South) once hitched to an idea of cultural or racial superiority must constantly be fed, no matter how wasteful or destructive that is.
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T-34
Dec 9, 2019 11:36:05 GMT -8
Post by timothylane on Dec 9, 2019 11:36:05 GMT -8
I think they built a lot more He-177s than FW-200s, but they probably got more use out of the latter. In any case, the Americans (and the British, who had several heavy bombers of their own -- especially the Avro Lancaster, which could carry Barnes Wallis's monster bombs with a little work) produced far more and also made use of a higher percentage of theirs. The Germans also had a few new heavy bombers toward the end, but hardly any of them were produced. By then the economy was approaching collapse.
The closest thing they produced to an effective heavy bomber was the A-4 aka the V-2.
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Brad Nelson
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T-34
Dec 9, 2019 16:24:13 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 9, 2019 16:24:13 GMT -8
The most remarkable bomber (perhaps airplane) ever might be the B-52 Stratofortress. Apparently as of June 2019, 58 are in active service, 18 in reserves, and 12 in long term storage.  One reason is that it can hold a lot of stuff. Think about how many Wright Brothers planes could fit in there by weight. The Wright Flyer weighed 605 lbs. The B-52H will carry 76,000 pounds of armaments and 310,000 pounds of fuel. That works out to about 638 Wright Brothers planes that the B-52 could carry in terms of weight other than its own airframe (which is about 185,000 lbs.)  |
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T-34
Dec 9, 2019 17:24:48 GMT -8
Post by timothylane on Dec 9, 2019 17:24:48 GMT -8
I've seen a lot of these planes at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Museum in Dayton, OH, which we visited a few times. The B-36 was another huge plane. Just think how many nuclear bombs a B-52 (or even a B-36) could carry. That might give you a new light on Failsafe.
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T-34
Dec 9, 2019 20:49:20 GMT -8
Post by kungfuzu on Dec 9, 2019 20:49:20 GMT -8
They are extremely loud. Just the sound is enough to impress one.
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T-34
Dec 9, 2019 21:45:34 GMT -8
Post by timothylane on Dec 9, 2019 21:45:34 GMT -8
Adolf Galland pointed out that jets were quieter than propeller-driven planes. I once happened to take a flight from a commuter airline in a prop plane, and discovered how noisy those could be. It makes me wonder how noisy some of the earlier strategic bombers were by comparison. The B-36, as I recall, had 10 engines, and they may all have been propeller rather than jet engines. Imagine how noisy that would be.
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T-34
Dec 9, 2019 22:08:43 GMT -8
Post by kungfuzu on Dec 9, 2019 22:08:43 GMT -8
I have flown in numerous propeller-driven planes and none was as loud as a B-52. Of course, the B-52 only got really loud as it revved up the engines for takeoff and then sped down the runway. There are eight engines so that would make for more noise than the normal 4 engine jet liner. I heard the B-52 back in 1981 so I am pretty sure that the Airforce was not as concerned with noise pollution as they are today.
Back in 1973 I was walking in North Germany when an F-4, about 2-300 hundred feet in the air and about 3-400 meters away from me, lit its afterburners. That got very loud.
But you are correct that props can be very loud. Years back I was in the airport at Medan, (Sumatra) Indonesia. The Indonesian government allowed the Singapore Airforce to use the airport for military pilot training. Singapore is too small for some training. There were a number of C-130s practicing landings and takeoffs and when they revved the engines to take off, those C-130s could also be very loud. I suspect that was one reason they weren't training in Singapore.
For that matter, a top-fuel dragster is very very loud as well as beautiful to watch at night. It has no mufflers and the flames shooting forth from the naked exhaust pipes is impressive.
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T-34
Dec 10, 2019 6:51:17 GMT -8
Post by timothylane on Dec 10, 2019 6:51:17 GMT -8
Galland was comparing single-engine prop fighters to the Me-262 with 2 jet engines.
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Brad Nelson
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T-34
Dec 10, 2019 9:16:35 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 10, 2019 9:16:35 GMT -8
That seems like a legitimate criterion for judgement. It’s amazing that a plane whose first flight was in 1952 is still viable 67 years later. They must have found an “archetype” of plane design. And at a cost of $60.2 million, that’s a bargain. The B-2 stealth bomber goes for “$737 million flyaway cost, $2.1 billion average cost.” I’m not sure what that means. Either is quite out of my price range, even if I was a billionaire. I’m assuming these things have a very expensive muffler. But the B-52 is what any respectable conservative silicon billionaire would be flying around in. |
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T-34
Dec 10, 2019 9:28:24 GMT -8
Post by kungfuzu on Dec 10, 2019 9:28:24 GMT -8
The roar that B-52 made as it was taking off from Edwards(?) Air Force Base was something. It was so impressive that I still remember it almost 40 years later.
LOL!
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Brad Nelson
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T-34
Dec 10, 2019 9:35:00 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 10, 2019 9:35:00 GMT -8
It must have been very loud. No sneaking up on the Russkies in that one.  By the way, these are (were) a bargain at $34.6 million in 2018 dollars. I want one. However, I think there would be some sticker-shock when it came to fill-up. If we can assume the Googled-capacity is 30,600 gallons, and put the price of gas at $3.261 (regular/Washington State) per gallon, that would be…a lot: $99,786.60. Maybe it took Ethyl, however, which would add a bit more. Still, that gives you a nice range of 10,000 miles. You’re likely not going to be able to land in most tropical airports. I’m told that an automobile could “easily circle the globe 16 times with the 30,000-plus gallons of hight-test gasoline in the wing tanks of a B-36.” Apparently you need a 10,000 foot runway. That’s nearly two miles long. And if you blow out one of its two massive tires, I don’t even want to think about what that would cost. Still, keeping the peace was never something that could be done on the cheap.  [ Larger Version] |
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Brad Nelson
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T-34
Dec 10, 2019 9:49:33 GMT -8
Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 10, 2019 9:49:33 GMT -8
You're obviously not going to get a representation of the sound. But look at this lumbering beast struggling to take off. I'm guessing if the Wright Brothers were watching, they would bet that it had no chance.
Here's an interesting shot:
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