I took the liberty of computing the numbers for just 1939-1943 to give an idea of who would have been on top in the timeline resulting in RecruitMonty's mod (1944-45 is an abnormal situation for the purposes of this mod).
Junkers: 18,019 aircraft, of which the majority (53%) is the Ju-88. But they are very diversified, with 2,469 transports (Ju-52,Ju-252,Ju-290,Ju-352) and 3,869 Ju-87 Stukas being built.
Messerschmidt: 17,853 aircraft, of which the majority (76%) are Bf-109s. Remainder of their product line is largely fighters (Bf-110, Me 210, Me 410).
Focke-Wulf: 6,584 aircraft, of which majority (83%) are FW-190 derivatives.
Heinkel: 5,761 aircraft, of which 85% are He-111 bombers.
Dornier: 2,330 aircraft, of which majority (58%) are Do 217 Bombers followed by 20% Do 17.
Henschel: 1,149 aircraft, of which 55% are Hs129 Strafers.
Gotha: 43 aircraft, of which 100% are Go 244 transports.
Likely prospects Post War: The Big Four (Junkers, Messerschmidt, Focke-Wulf and Heinkel) are likely to swallow up smaller competitors as the cost of military aircraft gets bigger and bigger with the coming of the Late Jet Age (1950s), then the first airborne computers (late 1950s, early 1960s).
According to Flying Magazine Sep 1945; it took the US in 1939 about 150,000 engineering man hours to bring a heavy bomber to just beyond prototype stage; but this had been increased to 1.5 million man hours for the B-29 at the same stage of development; so you can see where this is going.
Likely prospects Post War: The Big Four (Junkers, Messerschmidt, Focke-Wulf and Heinkel) are likely to swallow up smaller competitors as the cost of military aircraft gets bigger and bigger with the coming of the Late Jet Age (1950s), then the first airborne computers (late 1950s, early 1960s).
Then again, this may not be the actual result. In the United States; Curtiss-Wright produced 29,269 airplanes and employed 180,000 workers and was #2 in total contracts awarded just behind General Motors.
Yet Curtiss-Wright's last plane made for the US military was the XF-87 Blackhawk in 1948; with the entire airplane division of Curtiss-Wright being sold 100% to North American Aviation after the F-87 contracts were cancelled.
Likewise, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation started in 1939 and spent most of WW2 being a major parts subcontractor for the bigger primes; and produced a few prototype aircraft, then got big with the jet age in aviation and then swallowed Douglas Aircraft to become McDonnell Douglas.
Then there's internal politics: the German aviation industry is pretty much a deliberate creation of the Reich Air Ministry (RLM); so politics is a big thing in it -- in May 1941, Milch managed to bring Junkers, Messerschmitt and Heinkel under near-direct RLM control by:
*Using the dud of the Me210 to force Willy Messerschmidt from managerial control
*Ending the RLM practice of advance payments for aircraft yet to be delivered to cause a financial crisis at Heinkel, to force Ernst Heinkel out of management.
*Forcing Junkers' chairman Heinrich Koppenberg, into retirement.
So there's a lot of room for flavor here for the late 1950s and early 1960s stuff; e.g. you might as well see the Me 910 Gerfalke instead of the MBB Gerfalke (Slots 764-769 in OBAT35 - Grossdeutsches Reich); as the mergers of Messerschmitt with Bölkow and Blohm + Voss might never happen -- or the corporate identities of the two lesser units are subsumed by the larger company, as what happened with North American Rockwell / Rockwell International and Boeing -- the NAA/Rockwell identity was destroyed in Boeing, to the point that Boeing basically threw away a good portion of the North American Rockwell archives in dumpsters following the merger.
Don't think so. If they had been in a postion to use it becasue the war was dragging on and there were no allied troops inside Germany borders I don't belive there is any doubt it would have been used there first.
Agreed, if allied troops were outside Germany.
I don't think captured German scientists had all that much affect on the early A bombs. Germans who left because of Nazi religious and racial policy did though...
Germany was close to developing the A-Bomb. Some say the second US bomb was "made in Germany" - at least the raw materials. In 45 the US was still a long way off from being able to mass produce nuclear weapons. I believe you underestimate the destructive power of regular bombing on the Reich from 42-45. The same goes for the German peoples' will to resist. It took two A-bombs to knock Japan out - on top of everything else - and the US would not have been able to come up with a third so quick.
What is one more city in a war for survival?
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"Wir Deutschen sollten die Wahrheit auch dann ertragen lernen, wenn sie für uns günstig ist."
Don't think so. If they had been in a postion to use it becasue the war was dragging on and there were no allied troops inside Germany borders I don't belive there is any doubt it would have been used there first.
I have been thinking about this and I wonder if the Western Allies would have used an A Bomb on Nazi Germany all that easily, unless they thought Germany was at all close to developing her own -when they most certainly would have, merely to get in before Hitler used his.
Germany had millions of slave workers, many from western nations, not to mention large numbers of Western Allied POWS, so I think the war has to be going very badly for the Western Allies, and very well for Germany, for an A bomb, or bombs get to be dropped there. Especially since conventional raids on Germany were devarstating city, after city (as they were also doing in Japan). There were not many Atomic bombs available in 1945-46 and no one much wanted to invade Japan...
Don't think so. If they had been in a postion to use it becasue the war was dragging on and there were no allied troops inside Germany borders I don't belive there is any doubt it would have been used there first.
I have been thinking about this and I wonder if the Western Allies would have used an A Bomb on Nazi Germany all that easily, unless they thought Germany was at all close to developing her own -when they most certainly would have, merely to get in before Hitler used his.
Germany had millions of slave workers, many from western nations, not to mention large numbers of Western Allied POWS, so I think the war has to be going very badly for the Western Allies, and very well for Germany, for an A bomb, or bombs get to be dropped there. Especially since conventional raids on Germany were devarstating city, after city (as they were also doing in Japan). There were not many Atomic bombs available in 1945-46 and no one much wanted to invade Japan...
So what? The Americans tested nukes well within reach of their own troops who were in little more than fox holes in the 50s. It is said they only figured out the dangers posed by radiation much later.
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"Wir Deutschen sollten die Wahrheit auch dann ertragen lernen, wenn sie für uns günstig ist."
Last edited by RecruitMonty; April 9th, 2016 at 06:05 PM..
It is said they only figured out the dangers posed by radiation much later.
During the Manhattan Project, fallout wasn't actually even taken seriously or known if at all -- hence the disbelief by Groves about radiation casualties at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in late August 1945 when Japanese news started talking about it.
Essentially in the Manhattan Project, radiation poisoning was considered to only be a danger to those within the prompt zone of the bomb -- e.g. those within 700 to 1000 meters of the device when it initiated -- and subject to about 10,000 Rads (100 Grays) of instantaneous ionizing radiation from the fission reaction itself.
This was considered to be of minor interest, as that zone nearly neatly overlapped the 20 PSI radius (600 meters out), where
"Heavily built concrete buildings are severely damaged or demolished."
Also, unlike TRINITY (100 foot tower), the Japanese attacks were airbursts at several thousand feet above ground level, so weren't considered to be at danger for causing a lot of contaminated ground.
Its quite interesting watching peoples rational for where things would have gone & trying to base it on history.
First you have to take DRGs post & rationalise the atomic bomb never worked as Germany would have been the first target if things did not go the way they did.
Marks post with regards to manufacturing & Suhiirs about Panther being flawed also possibly hold little merit.
German designs at the start of the war were okay, Panther was good & fixed as best as a nation in industrial crisis probably could.
It was most likely rushed into service because Germany had limited manpower so better equipment would help alleviate that. The guy in charge had lost his marbles by then & pushed stuff into service ready or not I would guess. So what happens when he is dead & a more level head to R&D takes over.
Yes you can generalise to a degree using Suhiirs post Panther vs Sherman
USA take their time develop reliable easy to manufacture equipment, its a if not the main criteria.
Brits etc a more Ad Hoc approach possibly
Germany did make more (overly) complex stuff but if they had less "silly projects" & they were not rushed into service who knows how good they could have been.
Germany would have had to be at the forefront of new ammo & armour & engine research using different materials because they didn't have enough to maintain the war till it ended let alone if it extended.
Actually thinking about it if the war had gone on another 6 months or so the German Army of the early 50s would have been just the same as it was in real life.
Very little artillery because there are no shells to fire & hardly any vehicles because there was nothing to run them on even if they could manage somehow to keep production going.
Would you folks mind posting some screenshots up of your various battles etc with the mod? I think the community might like seeing them. I don't have a clue how to otherwise I'd have done so already.
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"Wir Deutschen sollten die Wahrheit auch dann ertragen lernen, wenn sie für uns günstig ist."
I'd be inclined to ignore paper projects entirely. Some of them (such as Project Habakkuk - the iceberg aircraft carrier) while actually technically feasible required such an outlay of resources as to make them impractical.
The same goes for early prototypes (i.e. non-functioning mock-ups).
Stuff that actually had a (reasonably) functional prototype in testing I could see.
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Re: WinSP MBT: Das Reich
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