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Were the Germans secret weapons folly ?

Discussion in 'What If - Other' started by uksubs, Jan 2, 2008.

  1. Carl W Schwamberger

    Carl W Schwamberger Ace

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    After the port of Antwerp was opened to cargo ships it became the primary target of the V1/V2 weapons. Evidently they had little effect as you dont find any complaints about a disruption of Allied Suply through that port.

    The Remagen bridge had dozen or so fired at it with little effect on th traffic crossing there.
     
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  2. Tony Williams

    Tony Williams Member

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    I think that the V1 was an effective use of resources (it was simple and cheap), but only as a wide-area terror weapon. Most of the other secret weapons were indeed a waste of resources. The reason why there were so many outlandish projects is partly because Hitler was a sucker for them, partly because the designers were very keen to keep churning the ideas out, otherwise they would have been handed rifles and sent to the eastern front...
     
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  3. T. A. Gardner

    T. A. Gardner Genuine Chief

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    On the V-1: The US actually had a working V-1 copy 60 days after the first German launch against England. They also seriously contemplated mass producing the copy and using it against Germany. Ford Motor Company was setting up facilities to produce more than 5,000 per month and the US goal in such a counter campaign was to fire that quantity against Germany! This meant if the US really seriously carried out their plan they would be firing every 30 days more V-1's into Germany than the Germans fired during the entire war!
    Kind of makes you think the Germans really were just done doesn't it?
     
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  4. FramerT

    FramerT Ace

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    I still think if the engineers could have tinkered with the aiming system more as to have the V1 or 2 land within 100 yds or so of the intended target, it would have made for a good weapon.

    The German "super guns", maybe not a secret weapon, was one of the worst waste of time,material and manpower. IMO.
     
  5. T. A. Gardner

    T. A. Gardner Genuine Chief

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    Very, very unlikely to happen. First, the Germans would have had to invent far better gyroscopes and have skilled technicians rather than slave laborers putting them together. With the V-2 they would have had to replace the graphite vein directional control with a gimbaled exhaust cone on the engine just for starters. Then they would have had to be able to calculate the effects of planetary rotation on targetting alot better than they actually could back then. This just wasn't in the cards for Germany then and for anybody post war at those ranges for like 15 years.
     
  6. Isotope

    Isotope Member

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    You might not call it a weapon but the German Autobahn was also a great German invention. They invented the modern on-ramp and off-ramp, whoch without there would be no US Interstate System.

    I have heard about the secret German weapon the Bell (sp?), can someone give me any information on this as I have been interested in it since I heard about on Coast to Coast AM? I have heard it might've been able to lead the Germans to build many things including:

    1: Nuclear weapon size of brief case
    2: Time Machine
    3: Anti-biological weapon [(kills bio-matter)(I've heard it once turned a plant into liquid mush)]

    I think these were built only because Hitler wanted to have the largest artillery in the world. They were only used in a few missions. Hilter just wanted to out-do all of the other world powers.
     
  7. Tony Williams

    Tony Williams Member

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    The Golden Rule to remember when reading about such "German secret weapons" is this: if nobody has discovered them in the sixty years since then, despite the technological secrets of Nazi Germany being picked over by the Allies and the vast improvements in science over that time, then they didn't exist.

    I believe that they were experimenting with a very primitive kind of proto-reactor at the end of the war, and might have had the capability of making a "dirty bomb" by strapping uranium around HE in order to poison the area affected by the HE blast, but that is a long, long way from a nuclear weapon.

    Time travel? Sheer fantasy.
     
  8. Isotope

    Isotope Member

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    no well, it wasn't exactly a time machine. Just the Germans survived another 10 years the weapon could have created some kind of "worm hole" that many physicists have said can be created for time travel. It was simple experimentation that could have been used for said weapons (most likely unknown to scientists at the time)
     
  9. Tony Williams

    Tony Williams Member

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    "Worm holes" are a theoretical construct of physics: no-one has even found one yet, yet alone has the slightest idea of how one might be made.

    This goes beyond fantasy: it is pure BS.
     
  10. Isotope

    Isotope Member

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    Of course! The Germans had no idea either! However, many people believe that they could have accidently done it! Time travel is possible. A Russian cosmonaut went back something like 0.0002 seconds. How they measured that, I don't know, but he did.

    The Germans I am positive did not construct the Bell for the reason of time travel, or nuclear power, or some other kind of weapon. It was a simple experiment that had the potential to lead the Germans to create all kinds of wonders. There is no doubt in my mind it exists.
     
  11. T. A. Gardner

    T. A. Gardner Genuine Chief

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    I guess you haven't been to Germany and seen the original autobahn roads. They are nothing comparable to US (or modern German) interstates. They were much narrower, lacked ramps and other automobile friendly ammenities, and while far better than most European roads of the time were hardly a giant step forward in civil engineering.

    You "quote" something, anything off Coast to Coast!! That radio program is nothing but a mix of crackpot conspiricy theories, straight out nutters, and other assorted loose screws coming up with tin foil hat stuff.

    Nuclear weapons? We've been over this one more than once here. The Germans didn't even have a fully operational reactor. Without at least the fundimental basic research that such a reactor provides they were not going to get very far making a nuclear weapon. As for suitcase nukes: Even today these are largely impractical. There is a minimun size of fissionable material necessary to make one. Adding the conventional explosives and necessary controls along with shielding (yes, you have to have some) it comes to a very large suitcase with a weight around 100 + pounds. And then, such a weapon has a service life measured in weeks at most. This is due to the decay of uranium or plutonium it is made out of. Such a bomb quickly loses sufficent mass due to natural decay to be rendered ineffective.

    Time machines? This is just purile and silly.

    Anti-biological weapons? Soman / Sarin possibly? Defoliants were well known as were pesticides. Everyone had both for use. The US developed DDT as probably one of the best advances in this field at the time. DDT saved alot of troop's lives and kept even more from disease like malaria.
     
  12. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    Suitcase nukes?

    Are there even any in existence today?
     
  13. TA152

    TA152 Ace

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    In theory you can go back in time but first you have to figure out how to go faster than the speed of light. A radio beam or anything in the electro-magnetic spectrim goes out into space at the speed of light. If you pass it then you are going to see or hear it again. The light of far away stars are measured in light years. A star, 50 light years away means the light coming from it left the star 50 years ago and travels around 186,000 miles per second give of take a few miles per second. No one has figured how to go this fast because the equation E=MC sq means Energy = mass times the speed of light squared. This intern means that the faster a mass goes the larger it will become.
     
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  14. chocapic

    chocapic Member

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    They had not enough fuel to use their time machine anyways ;)
     
  15. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    :rofl:
     
  16. tikilal

    tikilal Ace

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    While we have not figured out how to reach or break the speed of light we know that certain particals can. (mueons) But time travel... skeptical I am.

    German speciaol weapons may not have helped to much to win the war, but the advances that they made have changed the world, besides what else would the engineers been working on?
     
  17. brndirt1

    brndirt1 Saddle Tramp

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    An old post that I just finished compiling some stuff on. Nazi sub-orbital ballist rockets and V-1 pulse jets.

    The V-2 had nearly the same payload; about 2,000 lbs (900 - 1,000 kg) as the less expensive but more vulnerable V-1. Then factor in that each V-2 had a production cost bordering on RM 120,000 per unit, using slave labor! In 1939 the production cost would have been much higher as the slaves from conquered lands would be unavailable. The cost may have been able to be lowered as the production was streamlined, and slave labor incorporated, but it would probably never have gotten below RM50,000. That makes them equivalent in cost of about five V-2s per B-24 or six per B-17 at the historical cost (using slave labor), for a one shot delivery.

    The American bombers carried more payload, further, and returned again and again. I am not including the cost of the training for aircrew for the bombers, or ground crew for either as they are not comparable in any meaningful manner. Nor am I including the venerable Lancaster bomber in the mix as I am unsure of even its estimated cost of production per unit.

    A B-24 cost about $296,000 (RM 750,000), while a B-17 ran about $240,000 (RM 600,000). Not only including the cost of each limited warhead delivery system which is a one shot wonder, one must factor in Hitler’s attitude toward the rockets as a system.

    After the death of his long-time friend; who was experienced in rocketry and a proponent of same (Max Valier), in a liquid fueled rocket experiment he regarded them with the same jaundiced eye as he did Zeppelins in war. They were both dangerous, explosive, and thus unusable/unsuitable. It took the specter of defeat in the field to alter Hitler’s mind concerning the A-4 (V-2).

    While the accuracy of the Norden bombsight was vastly over-rated, it did have a CEP (circular error probability) of about 3,000 feet (1,000 meters), the V-2 had a recognized CEP of between 6 and 17 kilometers. This discounts wind cross currents as it would effect both in target stikes, only cloud cover would give the rocket the advantage as it was preset and not reliant on visibility of the target.

    Here is some data concerning the V-2 that I have yet to verify, but I will post it none the less:

    Number manufactured: 6,240
    Number launched: 3,590
    Successes: 2,890 (81%)
    Failures: 700 (19%)
    In inventory: 2,100
    Work in progress: 250

    Expended in development: 300

    Development program cost: US$ 2 billion
    Development cost per launcher: US$ 350,512
    Total manufacturing cost per launcher: US$ 43,750
    Marginal cost, launchers 5000+: US$ 13,000 (Yes, 13K!)

    These are actual figures for the first mass-produced rocket vehicle, the V2 (A4) years ago. Prices are in gold backed US wartime dollars.

    Stating the obvious.... The V2 was a suborbital vehicle, intended to lob high explosive over relatively short distances. Quantity production of the V2 at Mittelwerk was accomplished with unpaid slave labour under the brutal rule of the SS. And the failure rate was unacceptable by current standards.

    From:

    A Rocket a Day Keeps the High Costs Away

    There was no way to get these "Wunderwaffen" into the field sooner, or cheaper, or use them more effienctly.
     
  18. P-Popsie

    P-Popsie Member

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  19. brndirt1

    brndirt1 Saddle Tramp

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  20. brndirt1

    brndirt1 Saddle Tramp

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    how did nearly three identical posts show up? When I first posted, none appeared, so I went back and edited and reposted, and again nothing, so I posted with more information a third time and they ALL showed up!

    Sorry 'bout that guys!
     

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