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Post by tbr on Sept 4, 2017 12:53:28 GMT -6
The one weapon that could have won the war, even if introduced as late as early '43, was IBIS with active magnetic pistol. A wake homing torpedo with reliable proximity fused under keel detonation... Well, this is in diverging significantly from the Super-Cruiser thread, but a whole 'nother conversation could be had on German super projects. I think if any of us were handed Germany in 1939 in a game and told to conquer Europe we could do so by making 3 decisions. 1, let the Generals general. 2, go to a war economy immediately. 3, only focus on 3 super-projects; the type XXI, Panther, and Do-331. Let all of the other R&D be done privately and introduced privately. Those 3 pieces of hardware were sufficiently Advanced and Simple (stretching my example with the XXI i know) that with full state support they could have been available Sooner and in war-winning numbers. Though German leadership would need to negotiate and end then regardless, because the never-surrender economies of the US & USSR would eventually swamp them. Back on the OP though, I wanted to share something about this book; It has a ton of great stats and photos, and the operational histories of all 3 summarized. I would like to read more about the original architects conversations, but none the less I consider it a great buy. They exist for the other German surface ships too, but the Pocket BBs interested me the most for the engineering that made them a threat the other states spent time and resources on preparing for them.
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Post by Airy W on Sept 4, 2017 13:12:02 GMT -6
wow. You forgot to add your; *mic drop*. lol No need for microphones when one screeches autistically
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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 4, 2017 15:18:04 GMT -6
I think if any of us were handed Germany in 1939 in a game and told to conquer Europe we could do so by making 3 decisions. 1, let the Generals general. 2, go to a war economy immediately. 3, only focus on 3 super-projects; the type XXI, Panther, and Do-331. Only if the game is extremely unrealistic. The German wunderwaffen never lived up to the hype. The notion that Germany wasn't on a war economy as soon as possible is a load of long debunked crap invented by Speer (read Tooze's Wages of Destruction sometime.) And the german generals self aggrandizing memoirs with wildly inaccurate numbers should not have been the cornerstone of post-war assessment . This is one of the problems trying to separate fact from fiction in post war account. Tooze's book is excellent, I've had it in book and Ereader format for years. One also has to be careful of books by former officers. The German Generals Talk is one book that is good, but you have to read other accounts to get at the facts. Everyone believes that Eric Von Manstein was a victim and great general. Yes he was a good general, but a butcher also. You have to be careful reading Mitsuo Fuchida about Pearl Harbor. He states that he ran up to the bridge to find out why the next attack wasn't being prepared. That is load of BS, the CoS to Admiral Nagumo states that he never did that. He came up, they told him why and he left. Everyone who survived who was on that bridge said the same thing.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 4, 2017 17:25:27 GMT -6
I heard that plan Z was totally insane. Germany had not enough oil to move all the ships and ot enough money to purchase the steel for all the ships and not the dock capacity to build them. A really< intelligent strategy would have been to focus on submarines. A flleet of XXI class submarines would have been very effective. The German navy leadership was so bad that it did not see the enormous fighting abilities of the XXI-class subs during WW2. The issue with the strategy of focusing on submarines is that we can only say it with the benefit of hindsight. While a focus on U-Boats as the backbone of the navy could have had serious repercussions early in the war, German naval strategy was geared towards producing a surface fleet that could fight the British/French under the right circumstances. Another factor to consider is that before the war broke out and the U-Boat reconfirmed its effectiveness as an anti-shipping weapon, a fair number of people involved in the drafting of naval strategy remembered World War I, where the U-Boat had been defeated by the introduction of convoys and asw weapons (primitive though they were) while the blockade of Germany by the British surface fleet had hurt the German economy.
As far as the XXI-Class goes, it was an innovative design: their influence can be seen on a bunch of post-war designs. I don't agree that the German Navy leadership failed to recognize its potential as by that point, Donitz was in charge, and he certainly would have recognized it. The reason the design failed to achieve anything is that the production of them was so poorly done that almost all of them suffered from serious construction flaws that had to be rectified (they were a modular design and most of the parts were manufactured by companies that had no experience in shipbuilding much less the advanced work that submarines required). Out of the 118 built during the war, only 4 of them were ever sufficiently fixed enough to be deployed to active service by which point in time the war, the war in Europe was nearing its end.The idea of a propulsion system that would be driven by hydrogen peroxide was actually conceived by Hellmuth Walter in 1934 and he proposed that the Kriegsmarine allow him to build a 300 ton submarine with a maximum speed of 26 knots on the surface and 30 knots underwater. It would have an endurance of 2500 miles at 15 knots on the surface, 500 miles underwater. The idea was rejected by the Kriegsmarine in 1934. It was not conventional, all militaries are conservative by nature. Donitz finally got wind of the idea, was shown the plans and by 1939 a design was provided for V-80. It was launched on April 14, 1940 and it turned out to be sensational. In 1943, the type XXI was conceived and was approved. The design was very complex, and I can see why it took so long to be developed and built. It's hard when you are being bombed day and night by heavy bombers. hydrogen-peroxide.us/history-Germany/hydrogen-peroxide-for-propulsion-and-power_PR_Stokes-1998.pdfRemember, Adolf Hitler was never focused on the West, he was focused on the East. To him, England was never an adversary, but a nation with a common history to Germany. He also was not a naval man, like the Kaiser. Why didn't they build the jet aircraft sooner? The engines were available.
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Post by aeson on Sept 4, 2017 18:29:00 GMT -6
In the game, from 1916 or so onwards, you cannot build BC's with more than 12inch belt armor at less than 32kn top speed. This forces the BC into a "British" philosophy. Those expensive 30kton plus ships are vulnerable to far cheaper 10in armed CA's. 12in or 7.5in armor do not matter, both keep 6in- rounds out but are tissue paper for 10in or larger in late game. If I can build 1,6-2,2 10in armed and 7.5 to 8in armored CA's for every 14in+ armed but 12in armored BC I still win, only the "German" philosophy BC's from shortly before the cutoff are really dangerous. While I will use some CA's the enemy loss in BC tonnage is usually far more expensive. You don't need to push the design speed all the way to 32kn; 31kn will also let a c.1916 or later ship in a traditional dreadnought/superdreadnought/fast battleship or battlecruiser configuration qualify as a battlecruiser regardless of its belt armor thickness. There is however another way to allow a c.1916 or later ship to qualify as a battlecruiser without pushing its design speed over 30kn: design it in a way which fails to qualify it for any of the other 'heavy' ship types. Main battery guns of a caliber greater than 10" will prevent it from being classified as a CA, a design speed greater than ~22kn will prevent it from being classified as a pre-/semi-dreadnought, and a main battery of less than eight guns in no more than two turrets will prevent the ship from being classified as a dreadnought/superdreadnought/fast battleship. A 2x3 15" 27kn ship with 15" of belt armor will be classified as a battlecruiser regardless of when you build it. 2x3 and 1x4+1x3 configurations are perhaps not as satisfactory as configurations with 8+ main battery guns, but I've used such ships to good effect in the past, and they're considerably cheaper than driving the design speed over 30kn.
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Post by director on Sept 4, 2017 19:49:35 GMT -6
The Walther hydrogen-peroxide system was a great idea that was ahead of the materials science and engineering that would have permitted it to work. It was highly effective, extremely unreliable and terminally dangerous, as experiments during and after the war proved.
Germany's U-boat problem was, as johnw says, largely a political and treaty problem. Britain only signed a special naval treaty with Germany permitting Germany to build U-boats in order to bring Germany back into the regular order of European nations by discarding some of the Versailles prohibitions, and to help direct German efforts toward a conventional surface navy.
"In the matter of submarines, however, Germany, while not exceeding the ratio of 35:100 in respect of total tonnage, shall have the right to possess a submarine tonnage equal to the total submarine tonnage possessed by the Members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. The German Government, however, undertake that, except in the circumstances indicated in the immediately following sentence, Germany's submarine tonnage shall not exceed 45 percent. of the total of that possessed by the Members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. The German Government reserve the right, in the event of a situation arising, which in their opinion, makes it necessary for Germany to avail herself of her right to a percentage of submarine tonnage exceeding the 45 per cent. above mentioned, to give notice this effect to His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, and agree that the matter shall be the subject of friendly discussion before the German Government exercise that right."
Had Germany begun a massive submarine construction program, Britain would have known. That would have led to Britain supporting French military efforts when Germany attempted to remilitarize the Rheinland, and generally given away the game four years early.
Two reasons for Britain to permit German submarine construction were British confidence in ASDIC and a desire to have someone other than the Soviet Union control the Baltic.
As for Germany starting the war with a few hundred submarines - why not imagine Britain starting the war with a few thousand heavy bombers? Or the French with sixty armored divisions? Hindsight is 20/20 but still not perfect.
The 12"-armor restriction on battlecruisers is why I stop building them. Unfortunately, even though some of my battlefleet may be capable of 27 knots or more, I'm not allowed to use them as a fast division.
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Post by Enderminion on Sept 4, 2017 20:08:55 GMT -6
hydrogen peroxide is positivly tame compaired to stuff like flourine peroxide (FOOF) or Clorine Trifluoride (N-Stoff for use in flamethrowers and gas/incinderary shells)
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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 4, 2017 20:34:47 GMT -6
The Walther hydrogen-peroxide system was a great idea that was ahead of the materials science and engineering that would have permitted it to work. It was highly effective, extremely unreliable and terminally dangerous, as experiments during and after the war proved. Germany's U-boat problem was, as johnw says, largely a political and treaty problem. Britain only signed a special naval treaty with Germany permitting Germany to build U-boats in order to bring Germany back into the regular order of European nations by discarding some of the Versailles prohibitions, and to help direct German efforts toward a conventional surface navy. "In the matter of submarines, however, Germany, while not exceeding the ratio of 35:100 in respect of total tonnage, shall have the right to possess a submarine tonnage equal to the total submarine tonnage possessed by the Members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. The German Government, however, undertake that, except in the circumstances indicated in the immediately following sentence, Germany's submarine tonnage shall not exceed 45 percent. of the total of that possessed by the Members of the British Commonwealth of Nations. The German Government reserve the right, in the event of a situation arising, which in their opinion, makes it necessary for Germany to avail herself of her right to a percentage of submarine tonnage exceeding the 45 per cent. above mentioned, to give notice this effect to His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, and agree that the matter shall be the subject of friendly discussion before the German Government exercise that right." Had Germany begun a massive submarine construction program, Britain would have known. That would have led to Britain supporting French military efforts when Germany attempted to remilitarize the Rheinland, and generally given away the game four years early. Two reasons for Britain to permit German submarine construction were British confidence in ASDIC and a desire to have someone other than the Soviet Union control the Baltic. As for Germany starting the war with a few hundred submarines - why not imagine Britain starting the war with a few thousand heavy bombers? Or the French with sixty armored divisions? Hindsight is 20/20 but still not perfect. The 12"-armor restriction on battlecruisers is why I stop building them. Unfortunately, even though some of my battlefleet may be capable of 27 knots or more, I'm not allowed to use them as a fast division. If Doenitz had had his way and been able to field about 300 U-boat or even 150 U-boats, he could have done many things; cut off supplies of trucks, waterproof cables and food to the Russians, possibly isolated Malta so it could have been overwhelmed and taken by German and Italian forces. With more supplies reaching Rommel regularly, he might have had a better chance of taking Suez. This action and others might have delayed the build up of heavy bombers in England and delayed the Strategic Bombing Campaign long enough for Germany to produce more jet fighters, Type XX1 U-boats and a host of other weapons they had on the drawing board. Highly speculative, of course. But the ASDIC and airborne radars that were vital for the ending of the "Happy Time" did not reach the field until 1942 or 1943. England could only supply half of its food consumption with domestic resources, and none of its oil, rubber or non-ferrous metals( copper, aluminum and aluminum alloys; the metals that you build aircraft out of). You want more corvettes and frigates to hunt down U-boats? Then you are going to need all of those items especially the non-ferrous metal to do it. Doenitz might have been able to do it in 1940. I can almost guarantee that Dunkirk would never have occurred with over 150 to 300 U-boats available to sink the ships trying to bring those troops home. What about Sealion? What happens if the Royal Navy tries to intervene. Forget the Royal Air Force, no fuel and aluminum, no flying. BTW, copper is second in importance to aluminum. Copper, magnesium and zinc were the largest imported non-ferrous metals. You can't produce electrical and mechanical devices without it. You know, ASDIC, radios, radar etc. You need magnesium to produce high grade steel. Copper and zinc were used to make cartridges and shell casings. It's a complex subject. To perform a detailed analysis of the effect of the German U-boat campaign probably would take volumes of data. You have weigh the cost to Great Britain with the cost to execute such a campaign by Germany. Here is something to consider in your discussion. If Germany manages to built 300 type IX and VII U-boats and Japan attacks the US, what if the German's decide to send, say 25 or more U-boats to the Pacific and the Indian ocean. They could operate out of Singapore, Japan and possibly Rabaul and Truk. How would that change the Pacific War equation.
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Post by director on Sept 5, 2017 3:29:55 GMT -6
oldpop2000 - agree with you on all points. Germany's naval building pre-WW2 was shaped by domestic and international politics, and submarine construction was limited because the Germans knew that would have been a large red flag to Britain. The rapid institution of convoys in WW2 was immensely valuable for protecting shipping, and failure to convoy was a reason for the shipping losses of WW1. With the losses from WW1 fresh in mind, resumption of large-scale construction of submarines in Germany a decade and a half later was simply not feasible, especially so when important things like re-occupying the Rheinland required the consent of other nations. France wanted to intervene militarily more than once in the 30s and it was Britain that kept saying no. With Germany churning out subs again it isn't hard to see France and Britain marching back into Germany in 1935-36. I was not saying that ASDIC was a 'magic bullet', only that British leaders viewed it as such - a solution to the U-boat menace. It was enormously useful, but aircraft were probably the real key to stopping U-boat attacks. Enderminion - yes, but safety changes depending on surroundings. Ships routinely and safely use high-pressure steam but attempts to do so in locomotives have been dangerous failures. Hydrogen peroxide needs very careful handling, which isn't always achievable in a submarine or aircraft. Had other systems (nuclear power for ships, jet propulsion for airplanes) not been developed, the hydrogen peroxide system might have finally been widely used, but I really doubt it. High-pressure steam couldn't be made to work in the dirty, vibration-intense world of locomotives; nuclear power could not safely be used in airplanes; hydrogen peroxide was (I think) too dangerous for submarines. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorer-class_submarineen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messerschmitt_Me_163_Komet
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Post by Airy W on Sept 5, 2017 9:29:40 GMT -6
If Doenitz had had his way The only way for Doenitz to have his way is if the government in London wanted him to have it's way. There were two things keeping the Germans from blockading Britain: 1) The German government would not pay for enough submarines. 2) If Germany did build more submarines, the British would build escorts at a faster pace. 2a) If Britain has more escorts, submarines become less effective. Both are empirically verifiable. The first point can be observed historically from before the war. The second point can be observed by what happened during the war. Doenitz made the fallacy of taking for granted that Britain didn't build escorts so if Germany had built subs, Britain would have been blockaded. However Britain did build escorts as soon as Germany increased submarine production so Doenitz's logic does not hold. He effectively ignored the second fact because the first fact was more immediate.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 5, 2017 12:23:29 GMT -6
If Doenitz had had his way The only way for Doenitz to have his way is if the government in London wanted him to have it's way. There were two things keeping the Germans from blockading Britain: 1) The German government would not pay for enough submarines. 2) If Germany did build more submarines, the British would build escorts at a faster pace. 2a) If Britain has more escorts, submarines become less effective. Both are empirically verifiable. The first point can be observed historically from before the war. The second point can be observed by what happened during the war. Doenitz made the fallacy of taking for granted that Britain didn't build escorts so if Germany had built subs, Britain would have been blockaded. However Britain did build escorts as soon as Germany increased submarine production so Doenitz's logic does not hold. He effectively ignored the second fact because the first fact was more immediate. The problem for Donitz was the mix of U-boat types that were produced in the Z-plan at the end of 1938 Donitz needed the Type VII boats but instead was to get sixty of the small Type Is, twenty-seven U cruisers and minelayers, sixty-two Type IX's but only one hundred Type VII's. This modification to his request was done by Raeder and it was done again in January 1939. The Type VII boats that Donitz wanted would never been more than 39% of the total force of boats. The political atmosphere scared Donitz who believe that war was coming quicker than anyone thought and he needed more Type VII boats. Donitz knew that the British had 3000 merchants in the late 1930's and that it would take 300 boats to throttle the British within 1.5 years. I believe he figured that with enough boats, he could overwhelm the British Royal Navy and their ASW forces. One of the reasons for his desire to have the Type VII' s was the fact that they were a medium size boat, capable of a good range but hard to detect. He just never had enough of the best boats, at the beginning of the war to accomplish what he wanted. We are assuming in the virtual world that the British could have produced enough of the new technology which wasn't available at the start of the war and ships, to handle the 300 boats that Donitz knew he needed. We can't assume such a plan, that the British would be able to build more ASW ships. If that was true, why did she need 50 overaged destroyers from us.
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Post by archelaos on Sept 5, 2017 13:46:31 GMT -6
The problem for Donitz was the mix of U-boat types that were produced in the Z-plan at the end of 1938 Donitz needed the Type VII boats but instead was to get sixty of the small Type Is, twenty-seven U cruisers and minelayers, sixty-two Type IX's but only one hundred Type VII's. This modification to his request was done by Raeder and it was done again in January 1939. The Type VII boats that Donitz wanted would never been more than 39% of the total force of boats. The political atmosphere scared Donitz who believe that war was coming quicker than anyone thought and he needed more Type VII boats. Donitz knew that the British had 3000 merchants in the late 1930's and that it would take 300 boats to throttle the British within 1.5 years. I believe he figured that with enough boats, he could overwhelm the British Royal Navy and their ASW forces. One of the reasons for his desire to have the Type VII' s was the fact that they were a medium size boat, capable of a good range but hard to detect. He just never had enough of the best boats, at the beginning of the war to accomplish what he wanted. We are assuming in the virtual world that the British could have produced enough of the new technology which wasn't available at the start of the war and ships, to handle the 300 boats that Donitz knew he needed. We can't assume such a plan, that the British would be able to build more ASW ships. If that was true, why did she need 50 overaged destroyers from us. The problem is what would Germans sacrifice to build almost two times the planned number of subs. Let's assume they do not build type II (baltic/training subs), this mean they would have around 20 additional VIIs (but some of them would need to be used in training), if all other also became VIIs you would have 200 subs. What ships would be cut to get to 300? Tirpitz and Bismarck? If yes, British would just cut 2 last KGVs and use the money and steel to build a hundred of ASW ships, or say 60 Hunt style DEs. What's more, massive threat from German subs would force French to deploy more of their DDs in Atlantic, they would be available at Dunkirk and loosing their bases, they would arrive in Britain where they will either join free French forces or be interned and manned by UK personnel.
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Post by dorn on Sept 5, 2017 13:55:12 GMT -6
Also, in the case of the Deutschland-Class at the outbreak of war the RN had only 3 big-gun ships which could catch them if they found them: Hood, Repulse and Renown. As the war continued this changed as the KGV-Class ships entered service. It's important to note that for 3 months the Graf Spee managed to run amok all over the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans until she encountered Commodore Harwood's South Atlantic Squadron waiting for him off the River Plate. The downfall of Graf Spee, of course, was that she was unable to withstand the damage she took and had to lay up in Montevideo, where she was scuttled a few days later. British strategy was different. They have lot of cruisers that can find, harass and slow them down to be caught and destroy by heavy force.
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Post by Airy W on Sept 5, 2017 14:44:47 GMT -6
We can't assume such a plan, that the British would be able to build more ASW ships. If that was true, why did she need 50 overaged destroyers from us. Well gee... I'm just gonna go waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out on a limb here and say maybe if people are talking about counterfactual strategic pressures, they are thinking that maybe, just maaaaaaybe the British are building different ships then historically? There was in fact a slight hint about this. That hint was the multiple posts that explicitly discuss why the british would have built different ships. This was a subtle clue could have tipped you off. We are assuming in the virtual world that the British could have produced enough of the new technology which wasn't available at the start of the war I'm not. You can tell this from the fact that I explicitly talked about corvettes, the ships built with civilian grade technology.
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Post by oldpop2000 on Sept 5, 2017 18:29:25 GMT -6
I found this site and I thought it had some interesting conclusions and information. I just wish sources would have been provided. www.leander-project.homecall.co.uk/Corvettes.htmlSome questions that I feel needed to be answered about the counterfactual history that the Germans would be able to built about 150 Type VII U-boats. 1. During the actual "happy times" what was the number of Type VII boats? 2. What was the actual number of ASW ships that were deployed. 3. What was the actual capacity of the private shipbuilding to produce enough ASW ships to deal with the increased number of U-boats. My idea is if we can put some numbers on this, we could get an idea of how many ships would be needed, this early in the war, to deal with that dramatically increased number of U-boats. Based on my books, the British did not detect the Germans beginning to ramp up their U-boat production until around 1937, so they were behind the curve. My belief is that if the Germans were building that number of U-boats, it would be hard to hide. Just some fun things to research and maybe it would allow us to put some numbers on our little exploration into the virtual historical world.
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