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June 17, 1953

Discussion in 'What If - Other' started by KaiserWilhelm, Apr 10, 2008.

  1. KaiserWilhelm

    KaiserWilhelm Member

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    England lost the BoB and capitulated shortly after a successful Operation Sealion.

    With no ideal beach head for the U.S. to launch a European invasion, there was nothing to occupy a large portion of Hitler's troops in the west. Therefore, the Germans could and did push Stalin's communists all the way to the Urals before the Soviets surrendered.

    The U.S. defeated Japan handily in largely the same fashion as in real life.

    By 1947, Germany had a working air-dropped Atomic Bomb. A V-2 variety was built shortly thereafter.

    Fast-forward a little more than half a decade. Europe has largely settled down under the yoke of Nazi rule, while the U.S. has rebuilt Japan, and helped Canada and Australia industrialize to a greater extent than ever happened in real life. Now the Nazi's look to attack the United States and bring about world hegemony.

    Knowing what we do about German tactics, the direction their technology was heading, and the experience of their commanders (as well as those of the U.S.), who invades who first? Where would said invasion land? Who ultimately prevails?

    (I chose 1953 because it predates mass-produced strategic H-Bombs, and thus the kind of 'everyone is killed in a nuclear holocaust' answer that probably would have taken place if this scenario begins in the 1960s.)
     
  2. AntiWank

    AntiWank Member

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    Nukes on a V-2 is impossible for many technical reasons too numerous to list.
     
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  3. mac_bolan00

    mac_bolan00 Member

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    this is more of a question on american thinking. in early 1942, the US already had a strategy for fighting both japan and germany without britain and the soviet union. that's why they focused on europe first and let bataan fall. they had to beat germany before it knocked out both britain and russia. what's important to note is the US never stood by and just let other countries seize the rest of the world.

    both sides already had designs for a trans-atlantic bomber as of 1944 (although i doubt if they can carry a-bombs shore-to-shore.)

    the US can develop a trans-oceanic navy faster than the germans can. we'll assume the german navy has been sapped to the limit on invading britain. britain, meanwhile, would have transferred it remaining naval units to canada, india and australia.

    the fight will happen in the middle east, north africa, india, china, indochina, and possibly south america. more likely, just as the US had with the USSR, both sides will wage proxy wars in these regions until one side calls it quits.
     
  4. Slipdigit

    Slipdigit Good Ol' Boy Staff Member WW2|ORG Editor

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    Weight of the payload vs lifting capacity being the primary one.
     
  5. Tomcat

    Tomcat The One From Down Under

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    Why is the US just sitting by and watching this happen?
    The German invasion of the USA whether it be throuhg South America, North America or canada would never succeced against the superior naval powers of both the surviving Royal navy (which, seeing the fall of Britian would have evacuated) and the USN. Germanys Battlecruisers and Pocket Battleships are no match for a US Battleship one on one.

    The USA would probably build a german type wolfpack and use them to harass the German sea lanes both for convoys travelling to Britiain, and surface ships both redeploing to their combat stations and the constant patrols needed to denfd the entire english channel and medeterrainen area's.

    Ok here is one, What about the man shortages the Germans faced? the losses with the long battle that would have happend against both the British and Russian armies, especially the losses sustained in Operation overlord.

    Now how are they going to find the men to manage all there captured territories, to fill there ranks in the Kreigsmarine, which will have to be expanded hugely, as well as the airforce and of course the men needed for the actual invasion of america?

    In your secenario do the British hold North Africa? if so there is the launch of point of the invasion, or if not that, with the fall of japan, through south-east Russia, the long way put pribably the only way.
     
  6. Za Rodinu

    Za Rodinu Aquila non capit muscas

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    The entire OKW and other top command structures all the way up to Hitler who was by now a twitching Parkinsonian would be all dead with the contagious dyphteria Rommel had brought back from Afrika.
     
  7. Falcon Jun

    Falcon Jun Ace

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    Since England was lost early in this hypothetical scenario, the historical Overlord operation would not happen. It's good that North Africa was mentioned. That would be a big factor playing against Germany. But since it's been said that Germany had defeated Russia, I will assume that Germany and Italy were also successful in North Africa. So Germany's Europe seem pretty secure from invasion through the Med.

    However, Germany in this scenario would most probably not have the ability to invade the US. Since the US was able to defeat Japan, the US would have more than sufficient naval forces to control the seas.
    Besides, with Japan defeated, Germany would have to face a resurgent China and India, two countries that have massive population bases to sustain a war. Couple this population bases with US industrial support, and it's trouble for Germany and Italy. They won't have the population base to match this. And with the way Germany handled Russia, Germany wouldn't be able to tap the manpower of the defunct USSR.

    In fact, under this what if, it's the US and the remaining British Commonwealth that seem to have the advantage because their industries are more developed and would even be expanding. These industries, especially the US, have not been damaged by war. Germany would have to devote a lot more time and resources to repair and redevelop captured industrial facilities and resource areas.
    Thus, with the groundwork I laid down, Germany would not have a chance against the US and the remaining strength of the British Commonwealth.
     
  8. Mussolini

    Mussolini Gaming Guru WW2|ORG Editor

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    Do you think perhaps Nationalist Spain might have joined the Axis at this time? Weighing their options, they very well might have. No Britain, no France, no Russia. Would the Germans/Italians give thought to taking Spain?

    And what of Vichy France? Do they take an active roll in things? Not to mention Partisan activity in France and Russia...that alone would tie down several divisions.
     
  9. Twitch

    Twitch Member

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    What? The A-4 (V-2) family was being primed for the forthcoming nuke! The German nuke measured 2.2 feet in diameter and weighed 2,205 lbs. This was the REAL device that given time to experiment was the basis for their bomb. KaiserWilhelm's "what if" supposes they finally got a complete atom splitting detonation.

    OK 1st of all the Germans could have deployed a radiological device at just about any time after 1942. The danger in this would have been great. Paul Harteckk’s and Dr. Wilhelm Ohnesorge’s research theorized that low temperature for the reactor would work as a dirty bomb. Mixed with sand and dust it would leave behind plutonium and radioactive isotopes after detonation in a V-1 or V-2 warhead. A dirty bomb was feasible and possible at any time of the German program.

    The original device used 551 lbs of uranium and if the device does not detonate in chain reaction fashion the uranium commences meltdown similar to a 1942 German lab incident but not with just uranium powder. Once the material bores through to the water table a mass of superheated water will arise in a colossal cloud of radioactive steam that will poison the area for decades hence.

    The momentum at which the rocket program was going illustrates that the Germans were on target in precise calculations of what it would take to deliver a warhead to the US from Europe. Remember that it was Werhner von Braun, Willy Ley, Walter Dornberger and Hermann Oberth that were figuring exactly what thrust would be required to lift off, hit apogee and carry on to target. They had been calculating future moon trips since the 1930s. These were the greatest minds in the world not guys off the farm.

    They had conceived of the vehicles needed and the required performance back in 1940 to reach the North American continent. The 2-stage A-9/A-10 had the required number of A-4 motors for thrust and, as mentioned, the physical size of an atomic warhead had already been designed. All that was needed was a chain reaction within and boom!

    And if people don't want to employ missiles we must remember that the Amerika Bomber was green-lighted February 1945. By the "what if" 1947 timeline the Horton Project 18B could have been flying at 52,000 feet across the Atlantic, capable of 528 MPH top speed, able to carry 8,818 lbs of ordnance and go 13,670 miles. There were several other trancontinental bombers on the design boards by then plus a whole 2nd generation of high performance fighters.

    KaiserWilhelm you didn't mention if the Manhattan Project happened as real or not. If so we'd be trading nukes with Germany I guess. At any rate if the US was hit 1st invasion wouldn't have been necessary and it never was considered in acuality anyway. With GB out of it the US would have had to take the years to field the B-32 and B-36 so as to be able to attack Germany or whoever from US bases.

    As it was in the Cold War the presumption was that it would be nuke vs nuke and invasion scenarios were superflous.

    If you use 1947-1953 as a timeline it would be very likely that the German detonating A-bomb would have been a reality since they actually found the proper moderator, graphite, as an agent to slow down the neutrons and cause fission in the atoms. Much later it was concluded that impurities in the graphite absorbed the neutrons instead of simply slowing them down. They had the perfect catalyst and didn’t know it simply because the small team could not repeat experiments for lack of personnel.
     
  10. AntiWank

    AntiWank Member

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    Quite easy, a president other than FDR. America wasn't all that different than Nazi Germany and with a slight change in American Presidents, such as Lindbergh, Kennedy's Father, or Ford and you would have America quite supportive of Hitler's anti-semitic policies and eugenics program. Hell it wasn't until the 1970s that that the U.S. stopped forced sterilizations of children who the Government felt should not reproduce. There is a lot more dirty laundry as well, far too numerous to list.
     
  11. KaiserWilhelm

    KaiserWilhelm Member

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  12. Twitch

    Twitch Member

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    The Ju 390 probably never made that flight but there were real deal planes like the Me 264 that certainly could have.

    And yes, AntiWank- history exists as it played out often by the slimest of margins considering the alternatives. Simply because we we able to build critical mass in manufacturing capability relatively quickly doesn't mean we had to or were destined to. In the 30s there was a peace movement about as big as the hippies in the 70s. The isolationist faction in the US was very strong and it was easier to be so in thos days without all the blairing media assaulting you as is the case today.

    The truth is that my parents and grandparents and their peers didn't really give a sh1t what was going on overseas. The Depression had folks here broke and in soup lines all over. My grandpa lost a great job with the gas company and basically had no alternatives in his are for work. He could have cared less what ws going on in France and he was a WW I vet.

    Note that history is written by the victors. For decades I've heard Allied propagandist garbage first in the 50s about how poor the enemy's weapons were and what poor soldiers they were. By the 60s it was how poor his aircraft were compared to ours- a precursor of these a-holes who contiinually come up with crap like "which plane would win the P-51 or the Ta 152? With pilots of equal skill?" It never ever works that way. This is sillyazz spin off from PC combat flight sims. The only way to compare capabilities is to have one pilot wring out both planes.

    By the 70s I was realizing that almost every Allied aircraft design own part or all of its essence to German designs. No one talks about complete aircraft factories moved with personnal as slaves to the USSR and then imagine that the entire post-war aircraft generation was not built on the backs of the Germans. Of course everyone was rationalizing the coincidences and simply dimissing the fact that blueprints and German aero engineers were passed around Moscow like baseball cards.

    In the last 30 years the innovative aircraft designs and many details on secret weapons on all sides has been made public. It is normal to be nationalistic but the victors have historically downplayed the significance of astounding things discovered in the archives of history. The truth is that Allies were scared sh1tless of what they thought the Germans had. It was an ongoing day to day expectation that the Nazis would deploy nuclear missiles. In hindsight it is downplayed so as to believe it was an insignificant threat.

    In Japan the intel was totally bogus. Kyushu was one giant copy of the typical fortified island with strength underestimated by 4X. An invasion would have been done under serious miscalculations with predictable results. You never hear of the Japanese nuclear program either. All the near misses and unknown data is just glossed over or severly downplayed by Allied historians.

    The outright fallacy that the A-4 was not an intended nuke carrier is simply more post-war revisionist propaganda. Peenemunde was built many times stronger than apparently necessary, not to weather Allied bombs but the constructions was designed to protect against nuclear accidents.

    And as for the size of the nuclear device- the 1,000 kilo warhead was planned for. If you delve into details of the Hiroshima bomb you will find that 50-60 kilograms of U-235 made its critical mass. The actual explosive mechanism was 530-850 kilograms. It is a little know fact that all the rest of the weight was unnecessary armor plate! THIS is why it was leaked down from the highest echelons via the Manhattan Project in the US that V-2 and even V-1 could be nuclearly armed! We (the Manhattan physisists) already knew what "the package" would be in size.

    The mere existence of the V-2 confirms the fact that it was destined for other purposes. The V-1 had for all intent the same explosive power. The Germans and Albert Speer especially, were not dumb enough to duplicate weapons of that magnitude. He would never have allowed its cost unless it was to deliver a nuke. Why would be believe and praise the usual Germans' efficiency and precision and imagine they were dumb enough to rationalize that cost of a ton of explosives delivered by an A-4 was justified when the V-1 was readily available at a far lower price.
     
  13. T. A. Gardner

    T. A. Gardner Genuine Chief

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    Well, let's see:

    Germany having met most of their goals of the Nazi party settle into a decline in science and physics. Most of the population is relegated to a late 19th century education system and xenophobia and nationalism reign supreme.
    The US rearms the Soviets and Chinese along with the remaining Commonwealth nations. Because the US dominates (with the Commonwealth) the Middle East and the world outside the Nazi empire the Germans are also facing a severe trade deficit for many critical raw materials.
    At the same time, the US using captured and stolen componets from the V-2 has already leaped far ahead of the Germans in rocket technology. The lack of a credible German spy program in Soviet Russia or the US has left the Germans in a severe intelligence deficit. The US and Russians know much of what is happening in Germany while the Germans know little or nothing of US and Soviet developments in military technology.
    The US is has broken the sound barrier and is working on both several IRBM and ICBM missiles along with sub launched versions and on long range cruise missiles. The B-36 is coming on line along with the B-47 and the B-52 is close to flying. In Germany the lack of several critical metals due to import restrictions by other nations is crippling their jet engine program along with their rocket program.
    The lack of highly skilled scientists and engineers with the latest knowledge due to Nazi doctrinal restrictions are falling behind the US and Soviets in technology development. Plutonium bombs are unknown to the Germans as they haven't advanced much beyond theoretical research in this area due to Nazi dislike of nuclear physics. This has kept the "best and brightest" from entering the field. Defections also hamper programs.
    The US with the Commonwealth as a fleet second to none. The Germans in an attempt to finally become a sea power have tried to meet this by building some version of the Z plan themselves. Their carrier development is about a decade behind the US /Commonwealth. Their electronics are likewise considered quite inferior. The Germans also lack any credible ASW capacity against the newer US high speed submarines and GUPPY fleet boats. Of course, as they haven't had any real practice dealing with these submarines they are unaware of their weakness in this respect.
    Admiral Rickover has also pushed up the construction of the first nuclear submarine and carrier as a result of the "Cold War" tensions unbeknownst to the Germans. These systems will come as a minor shock to them when they go into service.
    The Germans have had little amphibious experiance during their war and have paid little attention to this sort of operation since. They have no real capacity to wage a naval war outside a traditional Mahanian style naval conflict between fleets.
    The Soviets and US are also regularly making over flights of German territory much to the chigrin of the Germans. The US has also given the Soviets limited access to their SAM technology and deployed missile batteries with equivalent capacity to Nike Hercules in Russia making German counter reconnissance very costly. This increasing tension has led to calls to stop overflights.
    Basically, the Germans are once again screwed. They are in a situation where they are cut off from resources they need. Many of their critical resources are highly vulnerable to attack in a war. They lack knowledge of their opponets and their opponet's economic capacity. German / Nazi politics has crippled many programs to boot.
    Basically, if the Germans go to war in the mid 50's they get nuked then overrun. It isn't a pretty picture.
     
  14. Hawkerace

    Hawkerace Member

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    Mind you, the manpower situation for Germany would be completely ridiculous. I guess you could try to recruit in the countries you pissed off and annexed ;) But thats no good.

    America has been untouched physically in the states themselves. Not one crater on the country (im excluded the Aleutian islands and Hawaii but y'know what I mean)
     
  15. Twitch

    Twitch Member

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    The only thing off in your scenario T.A. is the fact that without von Braun and company or the chaps Russia got, there could be no successful US missile program.

    The timeline wouldn't quite work on the KaiserWilhelm's scenerio to me. I say why would the Germans wait till 1953 when they had a nuke in 1947 and both ICBMs in the A-9/A-10 IRBMs in the A-4b family and an intercontinental jet bomber with the Horten 18B? These would have been available by 1947 given Kaiser's perameters with many others on the way. So I'm starting my attack early, in 1948. Hehehe!:) 1947, 2 years later, is a realistic timeline for the Germans to have redone their experiment using a pure sample of graphite as a moderator and having success.

    Hitler would still have the majority of Europe to exploit for whatever he needed to finance weapons or whatnot. Without the exodous and capturing of scientists in 1945 Germany would still have all her tech people. Where would they have gone?

    Type XXIs would have gone over to nuclear power and actually had proven ways to launch nuclear missiles close to the US shores.

    Any interconental US bombers would arrive over Europe unescorted greeted by an array of SAMs that were near deployment in 1945 anyhow. Then the 2nd generation jets with TOW guided missiles with 5 mile range would clean up even B-52s.

    Without German aero engineers the B-47 and B-52 would have straight wing for chrissake!

    Conclusion- without von Braun and his group or the far larger soviet-bound group neither the US or Russia would have done jack in the missile field, so far ahead was Germany. If left unmolested to carry on von Braun would have had not only the group that actually went to the US but all the people that the Russkies grabbed. These were the entirely of the people who in actuality built the missile programs of the USSR and USA. Without them there would have been no missile programs as they existed in the 50s-60s.

    So any advances and vehicles that came out of early 50s USSR would have been coming out of Germany. Having V-2 parts isn't the same as having von Braun. The stuff the Americans were having him do in New Mexico he had ALREADY done in Gemany- intermediate missiles, radar guidance, multi stage ICBMs, bio-chemical warheads- opps! not yet, etc. He was teaching the Americans.

    Any missile technology the Americans would have had without Germans would have been about 10 years behind the German efforts. They might have been comparable to Iraq compared to the US in the 1990s.
     
  16. skunk works

    skunk works Ace

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    All interesting.
    Could they hit anything with these things? We've all seen the (played up) videos of the vaunted V-2 going up on the pad, falling over, and coming straight back down.
    Was their chance of blowing themselves to bits, or glowing in the dark, or missing more than 50/50 ?
    I mean would they take the chance, and I doubt they'd be able to calculate distance/direction, curvature of the Earth/winds etc., from land with maps, and even less from the water (in a sub?).
    I believe the best way (even today) to rid ourselves of nuclear waste is to fire it off at the sun. They still wont do it because of the chance of it coming back down/burning up in the atmosphere etc.
    Apocalyptic gamble. If they were smart enough to create this, they would've have known the risks?
    I believe they still would've been strangled & smothered from outside their (newly acquired) territories from their uniformed enemies, and from within by resistance/saboteurs who dislike their uninvited company/agenda.
     
  17. JCFalkenbergIII

    JCFalkenbergIII Expert

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    "Then the 2nd generation jets with TOW guided missiles with 5 mile range would clean up even B-52s."

    You do realize that the Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided missile (TOW) as an air to air missle at the very least would not be effective as an aircraft borne weapon. 5 miles of wire in addition to having to keep the enemy aircraft in sight while manuvering.
     
  18. T. A. Gardner

    T. A. Gardner Genuine Chief

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    Obviously, you know nothing of late WW 2 and post war US missile development. Paperclip engineers under von Braun worked exclusively for the US Army first at White Sands and later at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. The 300 or so German engineers had no input into what became the most important IRBM and ICBM developments in the US. These came from US Navy and Air Force projects that had little or no input from von Braun, Paperclip, or wartime German sources.

    For example, the US had a working copy of the V-1 just 60 days after the first was fired on England. As for the V-2, collected parts and intelligence was given to Consolidated and under the direction of one of their engineers, Charles Bossart, Consolidated came up with an improved V-2, the MX 774, with triple the range and double the payload. His team's two biggest innovations on this project (which became world standards for ballistic missiles since then) were the elimination of the airframe in favor of stressed skin tanks using internal pressure for rigidity and swivelling nozzles for rocket engines.

    If you want a run down, the US was ahead of the Germans in SAM technology by the beginning of 1945 having the Nike series in development for the US Army and Typhoon and Bumblebee (became Talos, Terrier and, Tartar SAMs) for the US Navy. The JB-3 Tiamat AAM became the AIM 4 Falcon post war. The USN had the Bat ASM in service. This led eventually to the development of the Bullpup missile. That service was also developing what became the Sparrow AAM at China Lake in 1945.
    The list is long and just literally dwarfs the miniscule program the Germans had in this area. For example, the Germans weren't even contemplating an ABM, yet the US had studies underway by the University of Michigan and General Electric (projects MX 794, and 795) for ones with characteristics of 550 mile range, 500,000 foot altitude. There were projects for sonic and subsonic cruise missiles as well as ballastic missiles in progress.

    You do know, historically, the US had the Atlas ICBM in testing in 1953 and scheduled for operational deployment by 1957. Titan, a true ICBM was not far behind with expected operational service in 1960. Thor and Jupiter IRBMs were already in service. The Navy was working towards having Polaris in service.
    In addition, various cruise missiles were either in service or development including: Regulus, Snark, Navajo, Matador, Lacross among others.
    AAMs in service included Sidewinder, Sparrow, and Falcon. In SAMs the Nike Ajax and Hercules were deployed with Zeus coming on line, the F-99 Bormac was deployed and the Navy had Talos and Terrier in service.
    As far as your own plan goes: The A-9, or winged A-4 / V-2 (aka A-4b), was a total failure in the few tests attempted. The A-10, planned as an A-4 successor, called for a 4000 kg warhead, on a 100 to 180 ton thrust missile with a range of about 500 NM. This project was shelved in 1942 and never got beyond basic design calculations. It really couldn't even be called a drawing board project.
    The ICBM A-11 and 12 were never more than conceptual ideas of Von Braun and other Peenemünde engineers. These never even got to design stage. So, to go from literally nothing to a working ICBM in just what, two to five years? It isn't going to happen. First, the Germans would need to develop far better airframes than the one that the A-4/V-2 was using. Then they would have to come up with alternative fuel mixtures to the low efficency LOX - alcohol one in use. RFNA or LOX and gasoline are two possibilities they knew about. But, using gasoline would be difficult given other priorities. LOX - H2 is possible but the technology isn't in place for it.
    Then there is guidance. The simple gyroscopic mechanical mechanisms the V-2 used would not be accurate enough for an ICBM. Development of high temperature metals for the engines would be necessary. Alot more study of upper atmospherics and the Earth's magnetic field along with radiation effects on electronics is also necessary before getting an ICBM to work.
    Post war, the US ran three concurrent major IRBM programs and two ICBM ones taking nearly ten years to deliver a working IRBM and another ten to get to an ICBM. The Soviets were even slower with their program. Yet, you think the Germans on a fraction of the budget, with a fraction of the personnel, with only one working program can do it in less than five?!
    As for intercontinential bombers, there is no knowing that the Horten would have proved successful. Northrop's jet flying wing bomber proved a failure, even while the propeller driven version worked. The B-36 was a true intercontinential bomber but by 1947 it is highly vulnerable to interception. Of course, it could have carried an ASM like Rascal and simply nuked its target from 300 miles out instead of running the risk of interception. For the Germans the danger is the US Navy could (and likely would) have carriers in the flight paths of German bombers making them far more risk prone to interception by either fighters or missiles while enroute.
    As far as nuclear reactors go, the graphite moderated fast fission reactor only gives a working basis for research initially. The Germans would still have to come up with a mass producable method of seperating U235 from U238 as the US had. The alternative would be to discover Plutonium and then produce it in a larger fast fission breeder reactor as the US was doing at Hanford Washington. Either way, the program will need to be quite large and very expensive up front. I doubt that the Nazi hierarchy would stand for it; particularly if the US beat the Japanese without using a nuclear weapon....a very, very likely scenario here.

    Stripping countries of their wealth to finance an arms race is a poor way to go. Germany would still need to trade with the rest of the world for many resources not available within their empire. Oil would still be a big problem. Even with access to ex-soviet fields their production would be far less than total demand.
    As for an exodus? Just as happened with the Soviet empire post war many people fled to the West. A Nazi police state with strict racial, social, and academic restrictions would have given plenty of incentive for defectors to leave.

    The Type XXI would have been quickly eclipsed by post war naval developments just as it historically was. The biggest problem it would face is the late war US - British development of what were essentially phased array sonars (scanning sonars). These owe nothing to German technology being entirely US and British inventions. By 1953 the US subs would have had some equivalent of PUFFS aboard giving them 3 dimensional fire control while submerged.
    The Germans would have been falling behind simply because the Navy was not an important player politically. Nuclear power for Germany, as I pointed out, was a political no-no being viewed by the top Nazi hierarchy as "Jewish science." With no great amount of political support how are the Germans going to do much of anything with nuclear power?

    The B-52 program started in 1944 along with a large number of other jet aircraft projects for the US. US jet engine technology rapidly eclipsed that of the Germans and with the British providing additional engineering the two nations dominated the engine market post war completely. Even the Russians were relying on unlicsensed copies of their engines.
    As for SAMs, the Germans were moving down the wrong track entirely. They went with command guided missiles using optical control that they could not get to work. Note how the Wasserfall SAM program missile went virtually untested in the US at White Sands (a total of just 3 launches) then was abandoned as a worthless system. The other two German SAMs of the wartime period were not even considered beyond technical review by the US.
    The wartime X-4 Ruhrstahl AAM was, likewise, a joke of a missile. Its guidance was unworkable, it had an untried and ludicrious acoustic fuze mechanism. So, the Germans would have gone into the post war period with dead end systems needing completely new thinking. This is unlikely to happen in the intellectual vacuum of Nazi politics.

    Swept wings hardly constitute a viable aerodynamics program on their own. Having intelligence operatives that spot aircraft flying with swept wings would have let the cat out of the bag on that one. The US has wind tunnels and aircraft engineers too.

    Your conclusions are wrong as demonstrated above. While German technology contributed some to post war developments it was hardly earth shattering or so critical that the same developments couldn't have occured without it.

    Having V-2 parts got the US the MX 774 in short order trumping the mediocre V-2 and without any German engineering input. It also got the US the Atlas and Titan with no German input. The same goes for virtually evey system I mentioned herein. The von Braun team had input into Private, Corporal, and Sergeant missiles for the US Army and gave some technical input on NASA programs. They did nothing for USAF and USN programs. White Sands was just one of many US development locations. There were also labs at GALCIT (became the JPL in California), ORDCIT (became Redstone), von Karman labs New Jersey, MIT, University of Michigan, and then there are the private contractors....



    You have this backwards. And this doesn't even hit on other things like Cadillac I and II giving the US AWACs capacity....something the Germans hadn't even conceived as a program by 1945.
     
  19. mac_bolan00

    mac_bolan00 Member

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    ???

    with no werner von braun, how would the US have fared in a space race with the germans whose rocket program would have remained largely intact?

    with a limited export market (assume that china, india, australia and canada would still be embroiled in some sort of proxy war or a revanchist move by the british commonwealth,) how would US trade fare?

    who will take the arab oil fields first?

    a nazi europe would be a far-far more difficult cold war opponent than the former soviet union. all the US would have is a WATO (west atlantic.)
     
  20. Tomcat

    Tomcat The One From Down Under

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    Wow T.A you sure held nothing back in that last post.
     

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