NASA marks anniversary of -- huh? Are they SERIOUS?!

Rand Simberg wrote:
On 22 Feb 2006 08:36:06 -0800, in a place far, far away,
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:


Rand Simberg wrote:

What made the A-4 so special that people who devoted themselves to
rockets did so at the expense of nuclear physics?

The fact that it was a relatively militarily useless program.

Non- responsive.

No, perfectly responsive.

No, it wasn't. It in no way demonstrated that the A-4 development team
would have contributed one iota to the German Abomb project.

On 22 Feb 2006 08:36:06 -0800, in a place far, far away,
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:


Rand Simberg wrote:

What made the A-4 so special that people who devoted themselves to
rockets did so at the expense of nuclear physics?

The fact that it was a relatively militarily useless program.

Non- responsive.

No, perfectly responsive.

On 22 Feb 2006 11:42:09 -0800, in a place far, far away,
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

What made the A-4 so special that people who devoted themselves to
rockets did so at the expense of nuclear physics?

The fact that it was a relatively militarily useless program.

Non- responsive.

No, perfectly responsive.

No, it wasn't. It in no way demonstrated that the A-4 development team
would have contributed one iota to the German Abomb project.

That was resolved previously--engineers are, to some degree, fungible.
I was answering your question as to why this was a higher opportunity
cost from that regard than other German weapons programs.

Jim Oberg wrote:
wrote
I am highly skeptical that not pursuing the V-2 program would have
given them the resources to pursue two large scale engineering
projects: long range bomber development and nuclear weapon development.
Nuclear weapon development alone would have been a stretch.


I concur. My concern is that more jet interceptors and tanks would
have held off Allied armies well into 1945, with the consequent need
for using the US A-bomb on Germany, leaving none for the Pacific
Theatre until 1946... with millions more deaths in both theatres.

We can play what if along these lines forever, and because I enjoy, it
I will play at least one more time. Canceling the V-2 project would
have freed technical expertise and material. The most critical needs
for Hitler's forcers were for air and ground superiority.

The most direct applicability of the V-2 team's technical expertise was
in aerodynamics. If I remember correctly the decision to go to a
fighter/bomber jet design was Hitler's, and was against the advice of
his experts who wanted a pure fighter. It is doubtful that they would
have been allowed to go for an air superiority air craft design even if
the V-2 had been canceled. Their expertise might have helped with air
to air or ground to air missiles, but that application depends
critically on guidance, e.g. a heat seeker, where (I believe) the team
lacked expertise.

They would have been useful in improving and fielding more V-1s.

It is doubtful that their expertise would have been useful for
mechanized armor, although Germany's armor needed improvements in
mechanical robustness. Germany already had experts in that field, and
diverting them into training "rocket" engineers would have run into
mythical man month costs.

A few of them might have been usefully employed developing anti-tank
missiles.

While the diversion of supplies to the V-2 hurt the Germans in other
areas, most of the diversion occurred after the war was clearly lost.
Given German fuel restrictions due to the failure to retain Romania
(and the earlier failure to take the Caucuses partly due to Hitler's
obsession with Stalingrad), aircraft and tank production was less a
bottleneck than fuel production. How fungible was V-2 fuel to jet/tank
fuel? If the V-2s were replaced with V-1s would that have had a
significant effect on the allies? While Germany could have fielded more
V-1s than V-2s, given how unimportant the V-2's effects were in a
strategic sense, wouldn't that have resulted in only a minor effect on
the war?

While I can see the above adding months to the war, I do not see them
adding years. While the US production rate of nuclear weapons were low
by the end of the war we had already produced three, and production was
ramping up. By 1946 we would be capable of producing more than one a
month. If the US strategic air force remained focussed on Germany until
August, would Germany have had more than one target worthy of nuclear
weapons by early August? While the delay would mean more lives lost in
Europe, the destruction of their merchant marine by our submarines
would result in a rapidly weakening Japan by the time we focussed on
them. Would the eventual losses from starvation result in a surrender
by Japan with a minimal strategic bombing campaign, perhaps with just
one nuclear attack (on Tokyo?). Note that in this scenario while
increases in US losses might be minor, Japanese losses from starvation,
malnutrition, and lack of medicine probably dwarf what they lost in the
strategic bombing campaign that actually occurred.

Monte Davis wrote:


Within more realistic alternatives -- could the V-2 have been much
more accurate given the 1944 state of the art? e.g. with plausible,
high-TRL improvements in its integrating accelerometers and how they
drove the vanes? Or was V-2 acccuracy about as good as it was going to
get without years more work on some kind of terminal guidance?



One of the big problems was that the V-2 tumbled at the top of its
trajectory due to having no way to stabilize it once the motor had shut
down; this meant that it could hit the atmosphere at just about any
orientation and only slewed around to the nose-forward position as air
drag built up. This really hurt accuracy, and was what lead to separable
warheads in postwar missiles.

Pat

Scott Lowther wrote:

What nuclear scientists and engineers were snapped up by the A-4
program???


Their nuclear programs (all...was it five?....of them, including the one
being run by the German Post Office)
were a completely disorganized mess with no cooperation between them, as
was usual on all the mucked-up Nazi research programs.
Even Peenemunde had to compete with Eugen Sangar for funding, and he,
not they, had the biggest LOX tank in Germany.

Pat

Henry Spencer wrote:

Against that, mind you, the V-1 success rate fell steadily as the defences
got better. Toward the end, if I recall correctly, only a small fraction
of them actually reached their targets. Cheap though they were, their
cost-effectiveness was declining.


Toward the end they were suffering around a 75% loss rate between failed
launchings and interception by fighters, barrage balloons, and AA fire.
But even then they were tying up a lot of resources in England to deal
with them that could otherwise have been devoted to use in the ongoing
invasion of occupied Europe. And that in itself could be considered a
winning stratagy for their use.
The 9/11 attacks cost almost nothing to do, but look how many hundreds
of billions of dollars they have led us to spend because of them.

On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 16:14:19 GMT, "Jim Oberg"
wrote:


wrote
I am highly skeptical that not pursuing the V-2 program would have
given them the resources to pursue two large scale engineering
projects: long range bomber development and nuclear weapon development.
Nuclear weapon development alone would have been a stretch.


I concur. My concern is that more jet interceptors and tanks would
have held off Allied armies well into 1945, with the consequent need
for using the US A-bomb on Germany, leaving none for the Pacific
Theatre until 1946... with millions more deaths in both theatres.


Actually while it is true that after Nagasaki, the US only had enough
material for one additional A-bomb ready, it is a mistake to equate
the actual post-war production of nuclear weapons with what was
planned or could have been accomplished if the war was continued.

When the war ended several of the less efficient plants were shut down
(S-50, and the Alpha Calutron tracks) , others were taken out of
service to be reconfigured or upgraded (K-25), others were run at
lower capacity (such as the Hanford piles) to extend their lifespan.
Other plans were cancelled or delayed (The "top plant" and the
composite core design). A number of new facilities also came on line
over the fall (additional Beta Calutron tracks, and the K-27 plant)

Production plans from July 1945, called for 3 weapons to be ready in
August (2 were used), 3 additional weapons for September, with
production rates growing to 7 weapons per month by December 1945.

There would have been plenty of nuclear weapons to go around if the
war had continued

Kelly McDonald

In article , Gene Cash wrote:
Freeman Dyson -- who was on the receiving end of the bombardment, but was
also doing operations analysis for the RAF at the time -- said that he and
his colleagues were delighted to see the V-2 in operation...

I saw an estimate once that each V-2 cost the time, materials, and
effort of building 11 fighter planes. Of course I can't find that in my
references now, nor online.
Have you heard anything equivalent?

Dyson called it the equivalent of a single "high-performance fighter", but
didn't elaborate.

That was bad enough, mind you, since the V-2s did no militarily-significant
damage, and the Germans were increasingly short of fighters.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Jim Oberg wrote:


wrote
I am highly skeptical that not pursuing the V-2 program would have
given them the resources to pursue two large scale engineering
projects: long range bomber development and nuclear weapon
development. Nuclear weapon development alone would have been a
stretch.


I concur. My concern is that more jet interceptors and tanks would
have held off Allied armies well into 1945, with the consequent need
for using the US A-bomb on Germany, leaving none for the Pacific
Theatre until 1946... with millions more deaths in both theatres.

Jim, I really don't see that as happening. While the Germans were
relatively quick to try to get a jet fighter into service, there was
just no way that it was going to happen before late 1944 in any case.
The airframe was more-or-less ready to go by May 1944, but the
engines were unacceptable until August/September. (They suffered from
dismal throttle response characteristics, and short Times Between
Inspection (Roughly 2 hours) and Time Before Overhaul (Roughly 10
Hrs) By 30 running hours, they were done. In order to keep an Me
262 in the air, you needed 4 sets of engines - one pair on the
airplane, 1 set on the way to the overhaul shop, 1 set at the shop,
and one on the way back. Transporting the engines to and from the
shop meant loading them into a truck, or, more usually, a horsecart,
& trundling down roads that were regularly bombed, rocketed, and
strafed by the omnipresent Allied Fighter-Bombers.
Me 262 production chugged right along through the last half of 1944.
By December of '44, they'd built more than 600. Introduction into
service was slow, and servicability was poor. The largest number of
German jets in the air at one time by October 5, 1944 was 5
airplanes. Two of these were nailed by a P-51 shortly after taking
off, and a 3rd was shot down by the fighters escorting the raid that
the jets were intercepting. (Jets, especially early jets, are at a
tremendous disadvantage to propeller aircraft at speeds below 'bout
300 mph. The Allies played this to their full advantage.) While they
managed to shoot down 3 bombers that day, the trade rate was
unacceptable. As experience grew, and improvements made, the numberr
of jets in service did increase, but not at any sort of great rate -
the largest number of Me 262s in the air at one time was 55, on April
8, 1945. (Attacking a raid of over 1200 Heavy Bombers, escorted by
1,000 fighters)

Then you toss in the inability of the Germans to train pilots. German
pilot training was limited since even before hte War by a number of
factors - Lack of fuel and resources, early on, a blinkered attitude
toward what skills were required for a Fighter Pilot (Navigation and
Instrument flying were sketchy, at best.), the German policy of
keeping experienced pilots at the Front, so that lessons learned
could not be passed on. Things didn't get better after the Flight
Instructors were pulled off to fly transports into Stalingrad and
Tunisia, and were slaughtered in droves. Effective flight training
effectively dropped to 0 in late 1943/early 1944, when the
availability of Allied long range fighters to cover all of Germany
meant that there weren't any safe areas to train in.
(By contrast, a newly-minted American fighter Pilot was fully
qualified in long-range navigation and instrument flight, had been
through advanced schools instructed by returned combat veterans, and
given further advanced instruction in-theater. We were flying
airplanes that allowed us to do things like fly Counter-Air missions
over Prague from bases in East Anglia.

The Germans had fought the entire war with inadequate fuel supplies.
This wasn't helped at all by hte loss of Russian fuel from the
Caucasus after the invasion of the Soviet Union in June '41, or the
loss of the use of the Romanian oil fields at Ploesti in 1944.
While they did try various means of creating coal-based fuels, the
entire POL infrastructure was designated as the prime target of the
Strategic Air Forces after the Normandy Invasion. Fuel facilities
and refineries were attacked whenever they showed signs of activity.
The transportation infrastructure was the prime target of the Tactical
Air Forces. Flights of Fighter-Bombers roamed the entire length and
breadth of Greater Germany, bombing and strafing anything that moved
on roads, rails, or canals.

The Luftwaffe in 1944 and 1945 was an M&M - (Smartie to the Brits) a
thin hard/brittle shell of highly experienced, but fatigued,
veterans, and a soft inner layer of rank rookies with a very low
chance of survival. The early 1944 air offensives had pretty much
wiped out the Luftwaffe Air Defense forces in France and Germany in
early 1944. The forces in Germany got a chance to recover during the
Normandy Invasion, but ended up getting cut to pieces throughout the
Summer and Autumn of 1944. Luftwaffe Air Defense tactics consistied
of husbanding resources in order to strike isolated "Hammer Blows" at
individual raids, in the vain hope that this would somehow dissuade
the Allies. While that meant that a particular Bomber Group might
have a bad day, it also resulted in the destruction of, and the need
to rebuild, the Luftwaffe's day fighter forces - the escorting
fighters wiped out the gaggles of neophyte pilots. At that point, it
didn't matter what they were flying.

It wasn't a shortage of airframes - in 1944 and 1945, the Germans
managed to build tremendous numbers of mostly complete airframes.
Airframes that had no pilots to fly them, or fuel to use.
The situation was such that by 1945, the Luftwaffe had such a surplus
of unusable airframes that they didn't bother fixing damaged aircraft
- they just scrapped it and got one of the new ones that were
clogging up the airfield perimeters.

Much the same story went on the ground, as well. The Germans did have
some very effective tanks - but never very many, and they suffered
from poor servicability (A German Tiger Company, on a 20 or 30 mile
Road March, would expect to have 12 or so of its 15 vehicles break
down en route. An American or Soviet Soviet Tank Company would begin
with 17 or 10 vehicles, respectively, and have all of them arrive.
When you factor in extremely spotty quality control - examination of
German Panther tanks knocked out or captured at Normandy showed that
the armor's penetration resistance varied by 30% from tank to tank -
when they were good, they were very good, but if you got a lemon...),
and they suffered even more than the Luftwaffe from having their fuel
supply interdicted. While it was difficult for the fighter-bomber to
destroy a tank from the air, the fuel trucks were no sweat.
It's one of the Dirty Little Secrets of World War 2 that most Allied
Tankers never saw a German tank - there just weren't very many of
them.


--
Pete Stickney
Java Man knew nothing about coffee.