German Assault Rifle

[Red Dog]

Originally posted by JunoReactor:

About air-to-air missiles: Germans actually used them to intercept bombers. They were heavy, had short range and unguided but bould be used on single-seated fighters.

Actually, that was just a pair of 81mm mortars mounted under the wing of a FW190. They also had smaller fin stabalized rockets, the R4M (I beleive), which were carried by the Me262.

The guided missiles were completely different. The first ones were radio controled, but after the problems the Luftwaffe had with British jamming their radio frequencies durring the Batt;e of Britain they switched over to wire guided.

[Brian Rock]

You're really into this stuff, aren't you?

[-Jochen-]

Actually Lufwaffe used pair of 21 cm WGr unguided rockets on Fw 190 and Bf 109. R4M rockets were used in Me 262 as air to air and in Fw 190 as air to ground, in that role they were fitted shaped charge warheads and called Panzerblits.

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jochen

Kids today! Why can't they fetishize Fascist military hardware like normal people?

Ladysmith wants you forthwith to come to her relief

Burn your briefs you leave for France tonight

Carefully cut the straps of the booby-traps and set the captives free

But don't shoot 'til you see her big blue eyes

[Chupacabra]

Originally posted by JunoReactor:

About the bombing campaign - really, how effective was it? I like to think that Hitler caused more delays in advanced weapons production than bombing campaigns, especially before the second half of 44.

Strategic bombing blew the German petroleum industry to hell, and ersatz alternatives never really got up to speed.

Hard to fly planes that you can't fuel.

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Soy super bien soy super super bien soy bien bien super bien bien bien super super

[illo]

Originally posted by Skipper:

As the legend goes, Kalashnikov designed the original AK in 1943, when he was a young sergeant passing his time in a hospital after receiving a wound on the front.

MP44, as suggested by the index, was issued to the troops in 1944.

Apart from somewhat similar looks (from some 300 meters distance, anyway), and similar idea (a real rifle that can shoot bursts) the two designs have almost nothing else in common.

And isn't AK-47 a chinese version of same? At least, there never was AK-47 in soviet army - there was AK, AKM, AKSU etc.

Skipper, I heard A.Kalashnikov say in television documentation that he found gun from dead german soldier and designed AK-47 from it. Then he was asked what it feels to be a man who has designed gun which has killed more people than any other gun...he was silent.

[illo]

Originally posted by Warmaker:

About that hypothetical situation with German weapons/equipment I remember watching something on the Discovery Channel about the Luftwaffe's and they had some VERY interesting stuff going until the last months of the war. They had a 4-engined bomber to reach continental Europe to the U.S.'s East Coast in the works to possibly carry an atomic bomb, everyone knows of the cutting edge Me-262, and it went on with some other stuff that they actually used in scale. But what got me the most was that in response to the overwhelming Allied airpower and the bombers esp., they had another jet powered aircraft as a prototype. Unlike the Me-262 the designers also had agility in mind. But the key development for the jet was that Germany was actually quite close to fielding air to air missiles for it and were quite close to production had the war dragged on, especially another year. Forgot the designation of the aircraft/prototype but it looks VERY familiar to the later Korean War era MIGs/F-86 Sabres. Anyhow, even with few of these jets airborne since each could have carried at least four of these bulky missiles the Allied bombers could do very little in defense. This jet and the AA missile would've been ALOT more practical to Germany than the Maus super-heavy-with-a-kitchen-sink tank. Though the German regime did some godawful stuff, you gotta admit, despite large losses and a relentless bombing campaign they were hot on some good weaponry.

Focke-Wulf TA-183 (Mig-15 was slightly modified version of it, tail fin was shortened and wings changed a little) or

Messerschmitt p.1101

Or maybe Gotha Go-229 which was higly maneuverable in flight tests and ready for production at end of war.

[Dan Robertson]

There is a balance between development and production.

The Germans were great at starting the development of new projects, but awful at finishing them or actually building any of them.

On the other hand the allies once they had the ability to out produce the Germans began to cut back on some projects.

For example, during the battle of Britain development was started on a beam-riding surface to air missile. However after the Battle of Britain there was now no need for such a device.

Have the UK continued to developed this it would have been a very effective design well before the Germans ever could have built am effective anti aircraft missile.

On the case of the SAM missile program, even by the end of the war the German had never really worked out how they were going to guide the missile. Proposals for visual guidance, audio fuses and even infra red guidance were floating around. In practice none of these were achievable.

The British on the other hand had X-band microwave radar, so could effectively guide the missile close enough to the target to allow radar proximity fuse to explode.

The German had neither what they had was excellent liquid fuelled rocket technology. Judging by the size and complexity of the Wasserfelt rocket I reckon even if they managed the impossible and actually got it to work, the allies could probably build more four engine heavy bombers than the Germans could build missiles.

It is an often theorised point "what if the German could have got their latest weapons into production" the answer is that at best it would have lengthened the war and increased the German peoples suffering.

Necessity is the mother of invention. The German technical advancements would have appeared in bits and if they had overwhelmed parts of the allied war machine they would have eventually been countered.

In addition the allies had some pretty advanced weapons coming on line. The Americans sank a Japanese destroyer with a radar-guided bomb in the closing days of the war. The British were building a supersonic jet in the closing months of the war, the miles aircraft corporation built a jet capable of going at over 1000mph, it also featured the world first escape capsule Frank whittle developed the worlds first after burner to propel it. But a bureaucrat who had seen that German supersonic proposals had swept wings cancelled the program. The Americans copied the design and built the Bell X1, and broke the sound barrier. A few months later the miles aircraft flew to Mach 1.4 under radio control.

The German superiority was greatest in the field of tanks, but one of the reasons the allies did not have to developed superior vehicles was because the inferior ones beat the German into surrender with in a year.