Jack Carr Posted September 19, 2003 Share Posted September 19, 2003 Where was Germany getting it's tungsten from during the war? I notice that later in the war, no German tank has it while the Allied vehicles do. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andreas Posted September 19, 2003 Share Posted September 19, 2003 Could be Portugal, apparently the mines at Fundao are one of the largest sites for the metal. There may also have been some domestic sites for the metal. To make up for it, the same site I found that on claims that Portugese Uranium was in the Hiroshima bomb. Edit: Check this out. [ September 19, 2003, 10:54 AM: Message edited by: Andreas ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YankeeDog Posted September 19, 2003 Share Posted September 19, 2003 A lot of it was coming from Norway. In fact, one of Germany's major reasons for invading Norway was to insure uninterrupted supply of a number of important raw materials, including Tungsten. I'm not sure that the supply of Tungsten from Norway was really ever enough to satisfy all of Germany's wartime economy needs, though. Tungsten is important for many industrial applications in addition to being a great metal for AP rounds. For one thing, Tungsten alloy is an important ingredient in many machine tools. The Brits also put a high priority on interdicting shipping from Norway from a pretty early point in the war, and this probably limited Germany's supply of the metal, especially once the US entered the war and the Luftwaffe began to go south. AFAIK, US ships and planes never got involved in attacking supplies travelling between Norway and Germany, but American ships and planes elsewhere freed up British planes for this mission. There some great old newsreel footage of British Beaufighters and Mosquitos attacking shipping along the Norwegian coast if you're looking for some fun eye candy. The Norwegian resistance was also one of the more active and effective during the war, and certainly played a role in limiting the amount of tungsten (and other resources) the Nazis could actually get out of Norway. The Territories of the former Soviet Union also contain a fair amount of minable Tungsten ore, but AFAIK these regions are located farther east and therefore would not have been accessible to the Nazis at any point in the war. Cheers, YD 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paco QNS Posted September 19, 2003 Share Posted September 19, 2003 They stockpiled quite a bunch of all things before the war (tungsten mainly from China). During WW2, both Portugal -with gobernment imposed limits- and (mainly) Spain sold tungsten to Germany. Mostly, per auction. Bidders were both Germany and Great Britain -to block german boughts-. Later the U.S.A. also entered in. Spain´s production went from 225 Tons. in 1939 to 3.974 Tons. in 1943 ( 17,66 times ). Prices escalade from 639 $ /Ton. in 1939 to 27.397 $ /Ton. ( 42,87 times ). Good article (in spanish) withs graphs -though incomplete- in last pages: http://www.unizar.es/eueez/cahe/caruana.pdf Another article ""A Wolfram in Sheep's Clothing: Economic Warfare in Spain and Portugal, 1940-1944"" (go to "Download the selected file" at the end of webpage to get the PDF) http://ideas.repec.org/p/rut/rutres/200008.html Regards. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Determinant Posted September 19, 2003 Share Posted September 19, 2003 Originally posted by YankeeDog: There some great old newsreel footage of British Beaufighters and Mosquitos attacking shipping along the Norwegian coast if you're looking for some fun eye candy.Do you enjoy snuff movies in colour as well? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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