This point may have been made previously in this long thread, but Hitler’s biggest mistake was probably not in attacking the USSR but, quite needlessly, six months later (and before victory was assured against the USSR) declaring war on the US after Pearl Harbor, thus bringing America into the European war, which unleashed America’s overwhelming resources in manpower and production against Germany.
Whatever hope Germany had against the USSR was lost after it handed Roosevelt the opportunity to fight Germany.
But viewed from another perspective, Hitler’s (and or Germany’s, lest I be accused of erroneously conflating the two) biggest mistake, or paradoxically least bad biggest mistake, was in attacking the USSR.
It was the biggest mistake because, although an unintended consequence, early German success against the USSR encouraged Japan to strike southwards and to attack Pearl Harbor as part of that process, because the Soviet forces facing it in Manchuria would not launch an attack while Germany was advancing from the west. Japan’s attack in turn caused Hitler to declare war on America, etc …
Conversely, it was the least bad biggest mistake because the entry of Japan forced the English-speaking Allies to divide their forces to face Japan, and disproportionately so in the use of resources over considerable distances from their home bases, which reduced those Allies’ ability to bring all their forces to bear upon Germany. Be that as it may, America, which bore the brunt of the war against Japan, never devoted more than about 15% of its war effort to Japan. Still, if that 15% had been applied to Germany, both directly and through lend-lease to the USSR and Britain, it would have had a useful impact on the progress and duration of the war in Europe and the Mediterranean.
The He-274 developed for Heinkel in France as the He-177 H project. After a meeting between Hitler and aircraft manufacturers at Obersalzberg on 23 May 1943 maximum priority was given to the He-177 A-8 project which later in August 1943 became redesignated as the He-277. Hitler had demanded a bomber which could pound England “night and day.”
The He-274 design was abandoned because after a number of modifications to refine the design, it was too different from the He-177 airframe then in mass production at Oranienberg and Rostock-Marinehe. In particular the wingspan was greater, the main undercarriage was a conventional aft retracting type unlike the sideways folding He-177 A type’s and the fuselage was slightly lengthened.
Instead Heinkel proposed adopting the wings under production for the He-177 A-6/A-7 which had greater span than the He-177 A-3, but slightly less than the He-274 wingspan. The A-6 in particular was designed to be a high altitude bomber with an externally carried SHL-6000 (6,000kg) hollow charge warhead. The bomb bay was to be used for extra fuel.
The He-177 H adopted the DB-603A engine with Bosch TK11 turbo-superchargers but due to the lack of high strength alloys had poor maintenance reliability issues. This engine became designated the DB 603S.
The DB 603G was proposed for the He-277 B-5 but not ready for delivery before December 1944. Meantime these aircraft made do with modified DB 603E engines. The DB 603G had to undergo modifications late in production resulting in two types. the DB 603L for 87 octane fuel, or the DB 603N for 100 octane proposed for the He-277 B-5. Another variant was proposed being the He-277 B-6 with Jumo -213F engines.
The Jumo 213E had provided the high altitude variant of the Focke Wulf Ta-152 with an astonishing ceiling of 48,600 feet. The He-277 B-5 with DB 603N engines would have enjoyed a service ceiling of 49,200 feet over the UK. No Allied fighter could intercept it at such heights.
As many as three of the He-177 B prototypes were converted to He-277 B-5 with twin finned tails. Six prototype He-177 A-6/R1 aircraft and one He-177 A-6/R2 (with a quad gun tail turret) were also converted to He-277. Sixteen are thought to have been constructed and eight apparently flew. They were taken on strength by E-Stelle 2 which by July 1944 was placed under control of SS Lt Gen Dr Hans Kammler. E-2 controlled manufacture and development of Me-262, the Me-163 and Do-335.
As far as I have been able to ascertain it appears these aircraft were evacuated to Norway in 1944 and after the war were dismantled by Royal Engineers 21st Army Group. Dismembered airframes were railed to Horton Norway and loaded upon LST-519 from July 1945 onwards and thereafter dumped at sea.
Hitler was going to “pound England night and day” with 16 planes, only eight of which actually flew???
The performance of the He-177 appears to have been on par with the Consolidated B-24, which first flew in 1939. By 1944 when the He-177 started testing, the USAAF was training combat crews to man the B-29, a plane which was a full generation ahead of the He-177.
Apparently, the design and construction of the He-177 embraced no particularly noteworthy features, if the surviving aircraft were broken up and dumped at sea instead of being taken to the US or Britain to be studied
The He-177 A-5 in use by 1944 could do little but nuisance raids over England because of it’s low service ceiling. The He-277 solution was invulnerable even to jet fighters and was an amazing aircraft even if you begrudge it.
The original question asked Wizzard…
When did Germany ever develop anything remotely like the British and American heavy bombers?
…and in May 1943 Hitler identified that he did need such an aircraft, thus ordered production of the He-277
Hitler was going to “pound England night and day” with 16 planes, only eight of which actually flew???
Since you demand a question which I was never attempting to answer, maybe you have not heard of the Emergency Fighter Program which halted bomber production from 3 July 1944?
It is no fault of the He-277 design that only 16 were produced and in no way condemns the design. These aircraft were produced from January 1944 to April 1944. Production halted following two raids on the Heinkel works at Vienna in 1944. Development of the He-177 H commenced October 1942. The He-277 design was commenced late May 1943 and ready for production by December 1943.
The He-277 was a cut above the rest. It was superior in all respects to the B-29 bomber and far superior to the B-24.
B-29A
max speed 357 mph
cruise speed 220 mph
service ceiling 33,600ft
max range 3,250 miles (with 2,270kg payload
max payload 9,000kg
He-277 B-5
max speed 354 mph
cruise speed 286 mph
service ceiling 49,210 ft
payload range 3,728 miles (with 2,000kg payload)
max payload 6,000kg
He-277 B-6
max speed 357 mph
payload range 4,474 miles (with 2,000kg payload)
He-177 A-5
max speed 305 mph
cruise speed 258 mph
service ceiling 26,245 feet
payload range 3,417 miles (with two Hs-293 payload)
max payload 5,993kg
B-24J
max speed 290 mph
cruise speed 215 mph
service ceiling 28,000 feet
payload range 2,100 miles (with 1,266kg payload)
max payload 3,632 kg
Apparently, the design and construction of the He-177 embraced no particularly noteworthy features, if the surviving aircraft were broken up and dumped at sea instead of being taken to the US or Britain to be studied
Why bother when the He-274 was superior and to the He-277 and examples of this survived in France?
The French were under no such illusions that they were going to contain a German attack to, and fight from, the Maginot Line as it existed solely to deter a German attack and give the French Army time to mobilize before a German breakthrough. The fortifications were in fact part of a much larger, more complex strategy based on the Allied use of slow, plodding combined arms strategy based on lessons learned in 1918 to break the ‘tench warfare’ stalemate called “Methodical Battle.” The actual French high command did not believe the Germans would necessarily attack the Line nor was the initial intention to put all their eggs in a basket of fortifications, otherwise they would not have gone to great lengths to modernize and mechanize large portions of the French Army. In the late 1930s, the French were well aware that perhaps some of their methods and tactics might be outmoded and that they needed to pursue improvements in their conduct of mobile war. There were in fact a large number of hugely complex factors in pre-war French military thinking and a number of scenarios and political-military considerations such as whether Germany would attack the low countries and Belgium first, and what to do if they did. These considerations effected the prosecution of the war and hindered purely military goals. For instance, obviously in hindsight, it would have been far better for the Anglo-French to not have sprung into Belgium the moment the Germans attacked and to have kept their best mobile forces in a strategic reserve and allowing the German breakthrough to result in a coalescing of armor spearheads they might have been able to cut off, rather than trying to keep the Germans out of French territory as much as possible. But political considerations greatly hindered France’s ability to contend with what was a German Wehrmacht that had a vastly superior tactical conceptualization of battle and a system of command and control…
…while the Allied bomber force hammered the Germans into ‘the stone age’, shortening the 4 years needed in WW-I to reduce the German war economy , down to two years. Meanwhile sheer allied naval superiority and ASDIC would truncate any U-boat threat and the allied fleets could blockade the German war economy by sea.
Not likely. What Allied bomber force was that? The Luftwaffe had a huge advantage in quantity of medium bombers as well as a much more coherent doctrine on their use than did the Armée de l’Air. It was in fact Germany’s singular greatest technical and numerical advantage that could be seen “on paper.” As for the Allies, they did anything but use strategic air power in the first two years of the War and it wasn’t until RAF bomber Command gained prestige and new designs out of desperation that Douhet’s strategic combing thesis was fully adopted. In fact, the Allies were dropping more leaflets than bombs and seemed timid and horrified over the unrestrained use of strategic bombers and it was indeed the Luftwaffe that resorted to terror bombing first…
This way, after two years the allies could go on the offensive and end the war. They believed their superior weapons technology would hold the edge over the Germans long enough to win the war. But they were wrong on every count. Their weapons technology was not better than the Germans, the Maginot line didn’t hold the Germans back for more than a couple of weeks/days, and the allied air bombing campaigns were so poorly run they never even approached reducing Germany until nearly 5 years into the war. At sea the allies badly underestimated the ability of their adversary to work around the technological limitations they possessed. A flaw that still permeates through western military thinking to this day, they can’t adapt their prewar strategy to what an enemy might realistically be able to do to counter any advantage in weapons technology.
You seem to be making rather broad statements. The Allies did indeed initially underestimate the combat power of the German Army and had only a vague, disquieting notion of what they faced after the Wehrmacht crushed a determined, sizable if outmoded Polish military in six weeks when most thought it would take months of bitter fighting. No, the Allies thought that by waiting for the Wehrmacht to strike first, they would attrit the Heer and inflict casualties while keeping their own down as Germany had a 2:1 advantage in male births and hence manpower. The Allies then thought they could indeed eventually make good their strategic advantages in resources and production as they blockaded Germany and launched the final grand offensive sometime in 1941. Both sides knew full well that Germany was dependent on the good graces of Joseph Stalin and the USSR to obtain their necessary resources and that tap could have been shut off at any time.
There wasn’t any Allied bomber campaign, at least not a coherent or effective one, prior to the Fall of France. I’m not really sure where you ever got that. We can discuss the overall effectiveness of the later Allied air campaigns all day, but it has nothing to do with the “Phony War” and there was no unified Allied notion of what it would take to defeat Germany and what the Entente thought in 1940 bore little relation to Allied planners’ goals in 1942-1944…
German strategic thinking prior to Hitler’s ‘1936 Four year plan’ , fully acknowledged their strategic limitations visa-a-vie their allies and planned for a fast short lighting mechanized war lasting about 1 year in duration. The prerequisites were a stockpile of a years supply of arms and resources plus the reservists to mobilize a balanced armed forces that mechanized a moderately large army to sequentially engage and defeat the armies of their enemies in campaigns of destruction n a mostly European war. They firmly believed it would take them until the mid 1940s to have built up these prerequisites for such a war.
But Hitler forbade this strategic thinking and imposed his half baked vision of warfare against the rest of the world, where you ‘make it up as you go along’. Instead he demanded a huge army at the expense of the other branches to occupy Europe, since he firmly believed the Europeans could not band together to fight his will power combined with his racially superior army.
Eh, if you’re going to decry Hitler for his “half-baked visions,” then you need to at least acknowledge that there would have been no stunning victory over the French and British in 1940. Hitler and his Nazi subalterns also fostered and atmosphere in the Heer that allowed newer ideas on mechanized warfare to permeate and forward thinking generals such as Guderian and Manstein to come to the forefront of German military thinking. And Germany might well have built up a super military industrial complex by the mid-1940s, but then so would have France, Britain, and even the United States–as all had expansion plans and in fact the French has instituted a reevaluation and expansion of her armed forces only on the eve of war in 1938…
To clarify my original question, by ‘develop’ I meant not merely devise and build a few planes, but build a fleet comparable to the British or American heavy bombers and keep replacing the steady and significant losses in aircraft, never mind training and replacing the lost crews.
It appears that you are attributing to me something that I never posted.
I have heard of Germany’s problems with producing sufficient aircraft to both pursue a strategic bombing offensive against Britain with any hope of success, and simultaneously producing enough fighter aircraft to defend the Reich against the Allied bombing offensive. It illustrates why my original contention that Germany had no hope of defeating Britain is correct.
The He-277 design was not produced in any significant numbers because it was a hopelessly ambitious design and Germany had no possibility of building the plane in any reasonable quantities. It was too little and too late. Even the He-177 design was beyond the capability of the German aviation industry to build in any quantity, even if they had managed to eliminate the many design problems with the plane. This was partially due to the fact that the designs were not commenced until late 1942, long after there was any hope of a German defeat of Britain.
The design specifications and engineering estimates of performance were a bit above the actual performance of the B-24, and close to what the B-29 actually achieved in service, but the He-277 never became operational and never delivered a single bomb on enemy territory. As anyone who has experienced the real-world degradation of performance between prototype aircraft and service models can attest, it’s one thing to write the specs, quite another to field a combat-ready aircraft in quantities that can get the intended job done. The Allies actually manged to deploy heavy bomber fleets; the Germans put a lot of designs on paper and built a lot of flying test beds.
Indeed, why bother with either design, which were really rather primitive concepts, when the B-47 had already been proposed and the B-52 was soon (1946) to be in development?
Rough numbers (wiki, as I can’t be bothered to get my paws on a decent book).
B-29 wing loading (empty) ~2.06 kPa
He-277 wing loading (empty) ~1.64 kPa
B-36 wing loading (empty) ~ 1.75 kPa
For comparison, the B-36 really could reach those altitudes routinely with a decent operational payload - but took years of development before it could do so reliably.
Additional note: The high altitude performance quoted appears to rely on the BMW 801 J or Q engines, which never entered production due to very high costs (and, I suspect, hideous reliability - the two are usually closely correlated). The stellar performance of the B-36 at high altitude relied entirely on the turbocharged R-4360 which had excellent high altitude performance.
Poppycock. From December 1943 to when the Emergency Fighter Program commenced on 3 July 1944, Heinkel built 349 He-177 A-5. Late engine deliveries and political meddling frustrated production of an otherwise superior aircraft. An aircraft superior to the B-29.
The design specifications and engineering estimates of performance were a bit above the actual performance of the B-24, and close to what the B-29 actually achieved in service…
No there were sixteen airframes built and eight were test flown by Reichlin E-Stelle 2 … estimates my foot. Figures derived from actual testing. He-277 B-5 service ceiling far exceeds the B-29 and makes the B-24 look pedestrian.
Indeed, why bother with either design, which were really rather primitive concepts, when the B-47 had already been proposed and the B-52 was soon (1946) to be in development?
And I suppose the Junkers EF 132 had nothing to do with the B-47 ?
And if the He-277 was so primitive then why bother with the B-29, which itself was inferior to the He-277 ?
Wearing an eye patch was something popularised by General Moshe Dyan, but when viewing history being one eyed is like telling only half the story however that seems to float your boat…
Three hundred-forty nine heavy bombers was a drop in the bucket compared to what was actually needed.
The He-177 was far from a “superior aircraft” to the B-29; it’s engines caught fire all too frequently. So too, did the B-29’s, but that problem was eventually rectified in the B-29. The He-177 was originally to have had a remotely controlled defensive armament system, but it didn’t work, forcing a redesign to provided manned gun positions; the B-29’s remote control armament system not only worked well, but incorporated radar to provide warning of approaching fighters. The He-177 was not pressurized to provide comfort for crews on long, high-attitude missions, the B-29 was. The He-177 could haul far less of a bomb load for a much shorter range than the B-29. The combat range of the He-177 was somewhat less than 1,000 miles; the B-29’s was 3,250 miles. The Ferry range of the B-29 was 5,600 miles, that of the He-177 was 3,480 miles. The B-29 was slightly faster than the He-177. But the He-177 was a better dive bomber than the B-29, for whatever that is worth.
After the war, the Soviets built their own version of the B-29 heavy bomber, based on an interned WW II B-29; I don’t think they built many He-177’s for their air force.
These were development aircraft, not combat models. My statement stands.
The Junkers EF-132? Wow, now there was an aircraft! Or would have been had the Germans managed to get past building a mock-up. The B-47 was actually built, flown, and entered operational service, albeit after the war.
Ignoring the fact that Germany never deployed significant numbers of heavy bombers and trying to pass off development projects as superior to actually deployed combat aircraft is another form of wearing an eye patch. Sorry, but I don’t swallow the myth that Germany managed to develop vastly superior combat aircraft during WW II. Paper design projects, mock-ups, and flying test-beds are fine, but can’t compete with aircraft that actually were fielded in combat and got the job done.
No not cold hard facts from you, but rather selective reasoning by rejecting a superior aircraft simply because of political meddling in it it’s production. Remember this?
The original question?
Things Hitler could have done to win WWII
If you want a debate on political interference with aircraft production and procurement go start another thread.
Three hundred-forty nine heavy bombers was a drop in the bucket compared to what was actually needed.
which was in reply to what you said here:
The He-277 design was not produced in any significant numbers because it was a hopelessly ambitious design and Germany had no possibility of building the plane in any reasonable quantities.
Which was not factual. the aircraft was not hopelessly over ambitious. Had the He-277 aircraft been built in 1943 and He-177 production given over entirely to the He-277, then by late 1944 British ports airfields and infrastructure could have been pounded with impunity from 49,200 feet where no Allied fighters could reach them. Instead it was given low priority in 1942 because of Goering and Udet’s intrigues. No failure of the aircraft itself.
The He-177 was far from a “superior aircraft” to the B-29; it’s engines caught fire all too frequently. So too, did the B-29’s, but that problem was eventually rectified in the B-29. The He-177 was originally to have had a remotely controlled defensive armament system, but it didn’t work, forcing a redesign to provided manned gun positions; the B-29’s remote control armament system not only worked well, but incorporated radar to provide warning of approaching fighters. The He-177 was not pressurized to provide comfort for crews on long, high-attitude missions, the B-29 was. The He-177 could haul far less of a bomb load for a much shorter range than the B-29. The combat range of the He-177 was somewhat less than 1,000 miles; the B-29’s was 3,250 miles. The Ferry range of the B-29 was 5,600 miles, that of the He-177 was 3,480 miles. The B-29 was slightly faster than the He-177. But the He-177 was a better dive bomber than the B-29, for whatever that is worth.
So what?
I’m not debating the He-177 which had entirely different engines in case you haven’t twigged to that yet?
You’ve lost the plot Wizzard. You’re not even on the same page. I am not even discussing the He-177. I am discussing the He-277 which was an entirely superior aircraft, which shared some major components like wings and fuselage. It combined these with a pressurised cockpit, new tail empennage and new high altitude engines
After the war, the Soviets built their own version of the B-29 heavy bomber, based on an interned WW II B-29; I don’t think they built many He-177’s for their air force.
As mentioned before the He-177A was only comparable to the Lancaster. Why would they build a Lancaster when they actually captured and put into production the Junkers EF 132?
Nor did they ever capture the He-277, nor it’s plans.
These were development aircraft, not combat models. My statement stands.
The He-277 reached production. Production ceased prematurely. You simply can’t cope with someone pointing out that by early 1944 the Germans had a bomber far superior to the B-29 so you shifted the goal posts.
Stand on your views all you like. Don’t impress me much when you’re incapable of acknowledging a superior aircraft design.
The Junkers EF-132? Wow, now there was an aircraft! Or would have been had the Germans managed to get past building a mock-up. The B-47 was actually built, flown, and entered operational service, albeit after the war.
Go treat yourself. the original B-47 proposal was the straight wing Model 424 with piddley little 1,650lb thrust, underpowered cetrifugal flow gas turbines. The American design for the B-47 was as ungainly and underpowered as it was inelegant. Model 432 and Model 448 proposals which followed were even more pathetic.
Not until 1946 with the benefit of captured German plans for the swept wing EF132 did the Boeing adopt a swept wing with bicycle undercarriage. with the. Ity also took the capture of German axial flow gas turbines before the aircraft actually got enough power to perform to specifications. At that point the Model 432 was modified from the basic straight wing B-29 and was given the swept wing of the Junkers EF132 to become the Model 450 which was a total redesign by German scientists recruited from Paperclip. Even the B-47’s test pilot was Dornier’s test pilot Henry Quenzler.
EF132 was such a good design that the Soviets copied it too.
Knock yourself out Wizzard and read some history.
Ignoring the fact that Germany never deployed significant numbers of heavy bombers and trying to pass off development projects as superior to actually deployed combat aircraft is another form of wearing an eye patch. Sorry, but I don’t swallow the myth that Germany managed to develop vastly superior combat aircraft during WW II. Paper design projects, mock-ups, and flying test-beds are fine, but can’t compete with aircraft that actually were fielded in combat and got the job done.
Which is petulant reaction to an honest answer to the original question, “Things Hitler could have done to win WWI ?”
My, my, still talking about Hitler’s regime producing large numbers of “superior aircraft”?
Ok, just how was Germany going to produce large numbers of superior aircraft when they couldn’t even manage to produce large numbers (and by large numbers I mean the numbers of aircraft produced by the Allies) when they struggled to produce adequate numbers of old and obsolete designs in 1943-45? Don’t give me that “political meddling” crap; Germany simply didn’t have the production facilities nor the raw materials to compete with the Allied aviation industries.
It didn’t matter what Hitler or Goering did, or didn’t do, the factories and raw materials just weren’t there, period.
Definitely factual. neither the He-177, nor the He-277 designs were ready for production in 1943, they still had far too many design glitches to send them into combat even if the materials had been available to produce them. By 1944, the Allies were bombing Germany with near impunity, not the other way around. If anything, the Allied bomber offensive in Europe demonstrated that it’s advocates had seriously underestimated the numbers of planes and crews required for a bombing campaign to be effective. Germany simply could not manufacture the thousands of bombers required and train the air crews because they did not have the factories, raw materials or manpower required. Citing political meddling is a cop out because nothing could have changed the physical facts of Germany’s position.
Oh, but you are discussing the He-177 and He-277 designs as if they were interchangeable. You claim that the He-177 was produced in large numbers (349 aircraft), then you claim the He-277 was superior to the B-29 (with no data to support that claim by the way), even though the He-277 was never built in anything but very small pre-production numbers. You arguments are pure “bait-and-switch”, so t6ypical of debaters who have no real case.
What pray-tell does post-war Soviet production of an EF-132-type aircraft have to do with the He-177/He-277? The Germans never flew or even built an EF-132 aircraft; all they had were diagrams on paper, and a mock-up of the plane. That’s a damn long way from even an experimental aircraft.
Nope, the He-277 never reached full-scale production; the 16 airframes were pre-production aircraft and definitely of an experimental nature. No combat-worthy He-277’s were ever built. And no, I didn’t “shift goal posts”, I’m still comparing the He-177/He-277 to the B-29.
I’m not trying to impress you, just point out the flaws in your reasoning. There’s no point in claiming the He-277 was a “superior aircraft” simply because some of the non-combat aircraft in the series reached a ceiling of 49,000 feet. As the US experience with the B-29 in the Pacific demonstrated, the Germans might have been able to hit England from that altitude, but there certainly would have been overs landing in Ireland.
I was not referencing the original B-47 concept of 1941, but the updated proposal of 1945.
So what?
The B-47 was certainly far and away better than the He-177/He-277 concept. And it was mostly work done after the war. Yes, the swept-wing idea was German, but there was a lot of original design work done on the B-47. Perhaps most importantly, unlike the EF-132, it was a real plane which actually became operational.
At the same time they were building a fleet of B-29’s??
No, it’s a condemnation of your attempt to pass off overly ambitious German aircraft designs as a viable production option for the Third Reich. There were a few things that Hitler’s regime could have done to marginally improve their strategic situation during the war; building large fleets of advanced heavy bombers certainly wasn’t one of them.
I suggest that it might be helpful if you reviewed some history yourself.
You might start with “The Wages of Destruction” by Adam Tooze. It gives some insight into the kind of aircraft production the Third Reich was realistically capable of.
As I mentioned previously, the 49k ft performance requires an engine that never went into series production having been assessed as “too expensive” by the German authorities. Given that it was the Turbocharged variant, I suspect this means “uses too many scarce resources” such as Nickel for the turbocharger. In other words, it requires unavailable resources to put into production - so isn’t something that could actually have been done. Yet another Napkinwaffe.
Also, I’d dispute the “no allied fighter could reach them” claim. The early marks of Meteor had a service ceiling of 45k ft, and weren’t even particularly optimised for high altitude. Fitting a longer wing and a pressure cabin would not have taken long to do in an emergency, and then the He-277 rapidly becomes rather vulnerable. Furthermore, the RAF and Luftwaffe used different definitions of “ceiling” - for the RAF, this is the altitude at which rate of climb drops below 100ft/min with full warload and some fuel fraction (I have no idea what), for the Luftwaffe it was the maximum height attainable. With a heavy load, even a Mark VII Spitfire (service ceiling 43k ft) would probably be able to intercept them if given good enough radar information.
Hardly - Busemann’s work from 1935 was well known in the west (having been presented at an international aerodynamics conference in 1935). What was instead going on was something completely different. Firstly, the Germans had shown that it was actually possible to control a swept wing aircraft (more of a surprise than it should have been - the aircraft stability and control problems are frankly horrible). Secondly - and more importantly - aircraft engine design had advanced to the point that sufficient power was available for flight in the transonic regime where swept wings are actually of benefit. Below ~M=0.8, swept wings are only of benefit for CofG reasons (the reason the Me-262 had swept wings - the turbine section on the engines couldn’t use the alloys they wanted and so was much heavier than expected - they had to move the Centre of Lift aft to compensate. The wings on the Me-262 are frankly too thick to benefit much from wing sweep - putting the thin, unswept Spitfire wing on the Me-262 would have given it a ~10% increase in critical Mach number.
OK, this is either breathtaking ignorance or downright mendacity. The German axial flow engines were so truly awful in conceptual design that it was a miracle they got them to fly at all. It is noteworthy that the Russian engine programme - which had full access to all the captured German engines - got nowhere until they were able to buy a small number of RR Nene turbojets. The entire Russian engine programme is based on these. Furthermore, even the Axial flow concept had little to do with the Germans - it was developed by A.A. Griffith at Farnborough before the war (who, not being nearly as good an engineer as Whittle, sat in his ivory tower thinking about it while Whittle went ahead and built a working engine). The British also had the Metrovick F.2 (later the Beryl) flying in 1944, which had twice the thrust of any engine the Germans managed to run on a test bench by the end of the war.
I really don’t want to get involved in what is becoming a contentious debate. But…
The above statement is a bit inaccurate, as Allied fighters surely would have “touched” German bombers at their aerodromes as the RAF and USAAF had near complete air superiority over Western Europe. Both services adopted ‘goal-picking’ tactics as a countermeasure for their fighters to smother Luftwaffe airfields in order to nick Me-262’s and other jet fighters while most vulnerable taking-off and landing. By late 1944, the Americans especially, were conducting a direct campaign against the Luftwaffe by hunting them both on the ground as-well-as in the air and reducing what was left of the once proud and mighty Luftwaffe–they would have simply been under far too much pressure to have conducted any sort of bombing offensive against England, and there are always countermeasures as much of the Wehrmacht’s resources were tied down in halting the Allied air-offensive against them…
I should also point out that Gen. Ernst Udet would have had a hard time arguing with Goering in 1942 as he was dead by the end of 1941, a suicide most attribute to the strain of running a two-front air war against impossible odds and that, Udet being a realist, he knew the die had been cast long ago and Germany could not sustain itself against the British (and the Americans by extension) and the Soviets at the same time. My understanding of the difficulties of the Luftwaffe developing a true strategic bomber arm went back to the Reichswehr and the fact that the Luftwaffe was a service that had been recently reconstituted largely under the political control of the Heer and that many saw its bomber arm as essentially a tactical extension of the artillery–something that gave them great success against the French in a short war with a relatively small nation, land-wise. But something that would haunt them against the vast expanses of the Soviet Union and in the Western Desert. In short, the Germans were having a hard enough time producing the designs they already had in mass production…
Order Japan to help the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union
Not attack Afrika and England,order the Afrikakorps,and Rommel to help the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union(Rommel was a genius commander,much better place in Soviet front)
Attack in the first line at the same time the Kaukazus oil fields at the start of the Barbarossa
Heavy winter clothes in 1942-43
Transport 7.62X25 mm tokarev ammo,to the PPSH submachineguns (the precise mp40’s was frozen)
Not to take too much from “Rommel’s Genus” but I’ve read that much of his success (in N. Africa) was due to an intel source providing him with US (prior to the US entry into the war) Analysis of the Brits.
Imi, you really need to read something about WW II other than battles and military weapons.
Hitler could have “ordered” Japan to help in the Soviet Union, but the result would have been a great deal of laughter on the part of the Japanese and them continuing to do exactly as they wished. Japan was under no obligation to obey Hitler’s commands, and, in fact, there was very little Japan was capable of doing to help the Germans in the European war. Once the US cut off their regular supply of oil in July, 1941, the Japanese desperately needed oil just to maintain their naval and military forces in the field. That meant they had little choice but to try to seize the NEI, the closest available significant source of oil. The Japanese didn’t have the military strength to continue their war against China, fight a war against the US , Britain, and the Netherlands, and attack the Soviet Union.
As for Rommel, he was no genius, competent, perhaps even good, but no genius. And his presence on the Eastern Front would have ultimately made no difference. Germany seriously underestimated what would have been required for a successful Operation Barbarossa; in the end the Germans simply didn’t have what it took to win against the Soviet Union.
Probably their first and greatest mistake was in calculating the logistical effort required to adequately supply an Army in western Russia. That is why they didn’t have warm winter clothing for their troops; they were too busy trying, and failing, to supply adequate ammunition, fuel, and food to their forces. It wasn’t a matter of will, it was a matter of capability; they just didn’t have it.
Even if the Germans had Soviet submachine gun ammo, and had been able to deliver it to the front-line troops, it wouldn’t have changed anything. The Germans in Russia n the winter of 1941-42 were starving, and freezing, to death while their tanks and assault guns were immobilized because their logistics were hopelessly inadequate.
Once the operation began, there wasn’t a damn thing that Hitler, or any other German officer, could do about that.
Like most other posters here, I think Rommel is a bit overrated if he was able and driven. But I’ve never heard this. If we’re going to mention intelligence matters in the Desert War, then we must acknowledge that the British had a huge advantage in the Enigma decrypts.
Seems that there was a US Army Colonel by the name of Bonner Fellers who was the Military Attache at the US Embassy in Egypt in 1941. The British made the mistake of giving Fellers full access to their activities and intelligence, which he then reported back to Washington using the US diplomatic “Black” code.
Unfortunately, the Germans were able to read the “Black” code after compromising it in September, 1941, and thus had an excellent window into everything the British were doing, or knew in North Africa. Rommel made good use of this information until Fellers was transferred back to the US in July, 1942. Feller’s replacement in Egypt continued to report British activities back to Washington, but used a military code that the Germans never compromised, thus Rommel’s flow of timely intelligence fell off and his operations no longer appeared to be so brilliant.
Fellers later served on MacArthur’s staff in the Pacific where he became MacArthur’s adviser on most things Japanese. Fellers had a female cousin married to a Japanese who happened to be a high official in the court of Emperor Hirohito. This official and Fellers conspired, after the war, to cover up Hirohito’s war crimes and prevent the Emperor from being tried by a military tribunal. Fellers later became a member of the John Birch Society.
