24-02-2005 10:18									#181
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Reference how the Nazis acted when they occupied an area (versus the Wehrmacht) here is a study from 1952 by the US army). It confirms what the posters have been discussing about how garrisoning the Soviet Union would have eaten up German personnel.

www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/WWII/20240/20-240c.htm

Reference logistics, it's not just supplies. You have the problem, and I just lost the link, of the huge variation in vehicle models that the Germans had. One example - of course it's going to be extreme - given was a Panzer Grenadier division, in 1944 I believe, that had 96 different vehicles. Both the US and Soviets had many fewer types, and also tried to guarantee standardization between models whenever possible. The German logistical system for spare parts had become a nightmare.

The supply side of logistics was a major problem. The article I took that from was published from a symposium at the US War College (I love half-price books, a really nice used book chain in Ohio and some other states). The Nazis and Japanese both tened to view logistics as the realm for second-string generals, with the result that many of the combat generals had minimal experience with the actual workings and limitations of logistics.

The US between the wars had been the opposite - no matter who you were, you got rotated into almost every staff position. Thus most US Generals had familiarity with training, logistics, and sometimes even construction as well as command. I once read an interesting commentary that critisized Rommel for making poor use of what he received logistically. It was by a Brit, and it was an interesting viewpoint. He apparently had it well documented, and the gist of it was that Rommel really didn't do that good a job stretching the supplies he received. Of course it was a comparison to the British desert comanders before the US supplies kicked in, so there was a little bias there.

Reference the Nazi pause during the invasion of France - look at the maps. www.onwar.com/maps/wwii/blitz/ It's been well documented they had to pause because tanks and other vehicles were simply wearing out. If the French and British armies had not already been routed, that could have been a disaster. In fact one of the things the German tank commanders commented on that they wanted, in 1944, were tanks that could keep running after 100 kilometeres like the Americans. The victory against the French meant that the Wehrmacht did not examine seriously the major problems that had cropped up. If those had been dealt with, then the Russian Campain of 1941 may have gone differently.

	25-02-2005 14:18									#182
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DS,

quote: The Second Panzer Corp and the SS Panzer Division Liebstandarde Adolph Hitler were police units? Dang hommie! I don't want to be caught loitering in your neighborhood if that's what you call the police! Actually of the units posted in Yugoslavia in mid-1943 ten of the division were armored, standard infantry or mountain.

Yes, but 2nd SS Panzer Corps and the Liebstandarde were not tied down in 1944 by partisans, but by Hitler's need to repress the revolt of the Slovaks. Was it overkill? Yes, it was, but it did get the job done.

	25-02-2005 14:33									#183
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The obsolescence of the Stuka has been commented on by mulitple writers, here's one example from www.vectorsite.net/avstuka.html. It had virtually no combat survivability by 1940 except under cases of total air supremecy.

quote: * During the invasion of France in May 1940, the Stuka proved as terrifying as it had in Poland, helping to bring about the quick collapse of French resistance. However, this was the high tide of the Stuka. During the Battle of Britain over the summer of 1940, the Ju-87 proved far too vulnerable to British Royal Air Force (RAF) fighters. One out of five Stukas was shot down and the type was withdrawn from the effort on 19 August 1940. There had been a faction in the Luftwaffe that had recognized even before the outbreak of war that the Stuka was an obsolescent aircraft and likely to suffer heavily in the face of effective air opposition. Reichsmarshal Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe, had sided with the advocated of the Stuka, but now the beliefs of the doubters were starting to prove justified. The writing was on the wall for the Ju-87, but its career was far from over.

	28-02-2005 21:56									#184
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Yeah, like I said, Stuka was a pure ground attack craft, useless and defenseless against other aircraft. That isn't a problem when it is used in its intended role.

	01-03-2005 14:42									#185
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quote: Originally posted by techumseh At the time of the Normandy landings, the Yugoslav partisans were holding down more German divisions than 2 Allied armies in Italy.

The units in Yugoslavia were seriously understrength and mostly second rate, some recruited locally.

The same was true in France.

	01-03-2005 16:10									#186
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quote: Originally posted by Straybow Yeah, like I said, Stuka was a pure ground attack craft, useless and defenseless against other aircraft. That isn't a problem when it is used in its intended role.

When you have air supremacy it isn't a problem. When you don't it's a big problem. For the Germans the big problem started after Poland.

	01-03-2005 20:55									#187
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Look at the two successful compatriots of the Stuka - the Sturmovik and the Dauntless. Both had much better survivability in a situation of contested air superiority, IMHO (which means I'm not bothering to look up some links right now).

Yes, the Sturmovik was not a dive bomber, but it fulfilled the equivalent function on the Eastern front of being the primary tactical aircraft. Oh, heck, here's some data I just looked up. http://users.belgacom.net/aircraft/...969.html#204549 - included at the end of the post.

These are all 1939-1940 models. However, the pure stats don't actually detail everything. The Stuka is a largely unarmored radiator-cooled engine. Not good. It makes you vulnerable to almost any hit on the radiator system, which is that big undersling intake at the front of the aircraft. Even a .30 calibre ground based machine gun can shoot this sucker down.

The Sturmovk, while also liquid cooled, has almost everything vital armored. Yes, they got shot down in appalling numbers. They were able to operate successfully even in cases where the Germans had Air Superiority. Plus, due to the arrangement of the armor, it was one of the safest aircraft, for pilot survivability, in the air.

The Dauntless whose stats looking largely similiar to the Stuka, has two major advantages. First it could use drop tanks, extending it's range. The tactical orientation of the Luftwaffe, combined with the suspicions of the Japanese and lack of interest on the German's part (Goering and Udet - look at my commentary earlier) meant that the Naziswere very late coming to that technology.

In addition the Dauntless had a radial engine. The Americans, due to the way engine development had been funded, started the war with the best radial engines, and that continued throughout. Some of the successful German radial engines were in fact copies/improvement on those. The radial engine can take a direct hit and keep running. It has the most survivability of any aviation engine ever designed, due to both the air-cooling and it's ability to keep running with multiple pistons damaged.

This is why simply "reading statisitics" can be very deadly to understanding the finer points to victory and defeat. I started off that way many years ago, but often it is the personalities, internal processes (the US Navy probably had the best design bureaus in the world), tactics, operations, and strategy. That's why I commented about the Nazis, or the Hitler state. It hijacked the German government due to one not-so-small loophole (government by decree in case of an emergency) and permitted a group of morons to hijack the apparatus of the state. The allies could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory - look at Stalin destroying his upper command structure in 1939 - but it was their's to lose, not Hitler's to gain.




JU-87B Stuka
Various
Crew: 2
Span: 13.80 meters
Length: 11.10 meters
Height: 3.90 meters
Wing surface: 31.90 sq m.
Wing load: 133 kg/sq m
Weight empty: 2 750 kg
Weight loaded: 4 250 kg


Propulsion
Engine: Junkers Jumo 211Da
Power (total): 1 200 HP
Specific power: 282 HP / ton
Maximum speed: 390 kph
Service ceiling: 8 000 meters
Range: 600 km
Armament
1 MG 15 machine gun
2 MG 17 machine guns
1 250 kg (551-lbs) bomb
4 50 kg (110-lbs) bombs

The bomb load could be altered according to the mission. If the plane carried a 500 kg bomb instead of the 250 kg one, it took no lighter bombs

Il-2 'Sturmovik'
Miscellaneous
Crew: 1
Span: 14.64 meters
Length: 11.60 meters
Height: 3.39 meters
Wing surface: 38.51 sq m.
Wing load: 139 kg/sq m
Weight empty: 3 800 kg
Weight loaded: 5 335 kg

Propulsion
Power (total): 1 300 HP
Specific power: 244 HP / tonne
Maximum speed: 450 kph

Range: 755 km
1 Mikulin AM-38 engine (1 300 HP)
Production
First flight: Saturday October 12, 1940

Armament
400 kg of bombs
2 x 20mm ShVAK guns
2 x 7.62mm ShKAS machine guns

SBD 'Dauntless'
Various
Crew: 2
Span: 12.65 meters
Length: 10.06 meters
Height: 3.94 meters
Weight empty: 2 970 kg
Weight loaded: 4 320 kg


Propulsion
Engine: Wright R-1820-32 'Cyclone'
Power (total): 1 000 HP
Specific power: 231 HP / ton
Maximum speed: 406 kph
Initial climb: 457 m/min.
Service ceiling: 7 400 meters
Range: 730 km
Production
From: at the end of 1940
Quantity: 57 examples


Armament
1 .50 Browning M2 machine gun
1 .30 Browning M2 machine gun
1 454 kg (1000-lbs) bomb
2 45 kg (100-lbs) bombs

Last edited by shawnmmcc on 02-03-2005 at 00:17

	02-03-2005 04:59									#188
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Comparisons of military machines from the early part of the war with those from later aren't very good. Its like comparing apples and oranges.

The stuka was a devastating ground attack weapon up until about 1943. Its major strength was accuracy, which also made it very effective against shipping. Early in the war, 1939 to 40, it had a terror role and did as much damage spreading chaos and fear with its air siren i.e. paralysing ground transport/refugee columns/demoralising enemy troops.

Its survivability in air combat was not good compared to later armoured aircraft but that was not uncommon for early war aircraft - the zero was similarly weak. However unlike the zero dogfighting was not its primary task and the stuka could evade air patrols much better than bombers. The decision in 1940 that stukas should avoid air combat prolonged its effective life.

Once the allies air superiority reached saturation however, the stuka's days were over.

	02-03-2005 05:53									#189
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AH - that's why I chose the 1940 variants of the Dauntless and Sturmovik. That is only one year into the war, and their respective countries are not even at war yet. The data is for the 1939 Stuka, and it and the Sturmovik started design work only one year apart The Dauntless first flew in July 1938, the same year as the Stuka . All three of these aircraft dated from 1938-1939, just the decision to put them into mass production differed because neither the US nor the Soviet Union are at war at the time.

The Dauntless was easily as accurate as the Stuka. The Sturmovik may have been less so, but the decision to deploy it with cannons made it even more useful in the context it was deployed. Both were more survivable, due to the added armor in the Sturmovick's case, or the use of a radial engine in the Dauntless case.

However, that's not my primary point. You make mine for me. By 1943 the Nazis should have had a new dive bomber being deployed. Fixed wheels for pities sake! They also should have been replacing the ME109 (Galland's opinion, not mine). This is to a large degree due to Goering and Udet, plus injudicious meddling by Hitler himself. Technical interference by the Nazi heirarchy, which held technical competence in contempt, almost always caused a f**k up. You can find me some isolated exceptions - France 1940 and the attempted deployment of a 50MM gun on the PZIII prior to Barbarossa - but in general whenever they meddled the screwed it up.

Remember, the Nazis were relying on the older scientists and engineers. Once they took over enrollment in the gymnasiums in those fields was cut roughly in half, and many industrialists complained about the lack of graduates interfering with their efforts. Plus favored industrialists got the design awards, if at times they did not have the best work. They got them due to connections.

I still stand by my premise, WW2 was the allies to lose, not the Nazis to win. The common mistake so many make in these hypothetical scenarios is to let the Nazis redo their mistakes (it plageus advocates of the Confederates in the US Civil War, also) but not the other side. In certain cases defeat is inevitable, as in Japan versus the United States. With the Nazis you can come up with plausible scenarios, but they require the Nazis not to act like, well, Nazis. The person who posted about shooting Hitler earlier in the thread has the most practical solution - I would choose sometime after the absorbtion of the Sudenten land and prior to Barbarossa. Then that invasion can be stopped, and I suspect that the Brits may be willing to negotiate.

	02-03-2005 09:53									#190
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I said summer of 1942 for inevitable defeat. To be more precise, when Hitler took personal command of the army, as well as some commands in Russia below that level, it was all over red rover.

With Hitler in charge of the army and Goering in charge of the air force, Germany didn't stand a chance.

	02-03-2005 09:54									#191
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But even without that, German defeat was absolutely inevitable once the US entered the war.

	02-03-2005 10:23									#192
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Yeah but fixed wheels looked cooler!

Very informative post shawn.

	02-03-2005 14:15									#193
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quote: Originally posted by David Floyd But even without that, German defeat was absolutely inevitable once the US entered the war.

Not really. Defeating Russia was the key. Either that or avoiding war in the East and defeating Britain.

You can wargame either scenario with any number of military sims. If Germany wins in the East they can keep the Western allies at bay quite easily.

The joker is nukes, which Germany may or may not have developed. In either case the most likely outcome is negotiated settlement leaving Germany dominant in Europe i.e. they win.

	02-03-2005 15:09									#194
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It's interesting that the U.S. never really bought into the idea of a air support bomber during the war. Sure, there was the A-20 and its variants and some medium bomber variants like the A-26 but these never really hit full stride in deployment. Fortunately the fighter-bomber concept was successful.

	02-03-2005 15:19									#195
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quote: Originally posted by Alexander's Horse Not really. Defeating Russia was the key. Either that or avoiding war in the East and defeating Britain. You can wargame either scenario with any number of military sims. If Germany wins in the East they can keep the Western allies at bay quite easily. The joker is nukes, which Germany may or may not have developed. In either case the most likely outcome is negotiated settlement leaving Germany dominant in Europe i.e. they win.

It depends on the relative will to continue the war. The U.S. never hit its peak potential of forces during the war, and was already gearing down during the last year or so. Assuming that Germany could have for the most part won the war against the Soviets in 1942, they will have already hit their peak or very nearly so, and would have enormous territories to control. If the Anglo-Allies had the will to continue then I think they prevail in time. Germany had no offensive capability to take them out and was unlikely to develop one no matter how long the war dragged on. The question then becomes: Can the Anglo-Allies develop a powerful enough land force to defeat the Germans?

	02-03-2005 20:39									#196
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Sikander - good post reference military potential.

Reference the A-bomb, the Nazis really were not that close. Between the British commando raids on the Norwegian heavy water supplies/production, and the number of scientists who had fled the Facist regimes in Germany and Italy, they were at a huge disadvantage. They had a limited number of people working on the problem, and had gotten into a practical blind alley - heavy water as the moderator for the reactor, which has real problems from an engineering standpoint. Read the first link that shows how Fermi engineered the first working nuclear reactor. He did some truly brilliant work, and ended up using Cadmium rods and then graphite blocks as a moderator - which are much easier to use from an engineering standpoint. www.ces.clemson.edu/linux/fermi.pdf
Also check out the attached document file from a different source, boredofstudies.org.


The Yanks are going to have the first A-bomb, period. Now the question is, in the case of Germany controlling Russian (with extensive forces tied up with anti-insurgency duties) with a Vichey-Britian, who is the US going to use them against? You could end up with WW2 1/2 being fought accross the middle east, the Indian subcontinent, the Urals, and maybe into Southern Africa, between a Euro-African Germany and a Pacific-America US. That becomes an interesting scenario.

Attachment: 1108878522_2004_physics_notes_kv.doc
This has been downloaded 1 time(s).

	03-03-2005 03:44									#197
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Another interesting scenario is USA stays out of the war in Europe and Russia wins anyway.

Is it possible Britain and the USA might have sided with Germany to prevent Russia taking Europe?

	03-03-2005 04:59									#198
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Don't forget that later in the war the allies started turning some of their best fighter aircraft into fighter-bombers, and were much more successful at it than the axis. The P-47 was particularily effective as a dive bomber.

	03-03-2005 05:07									#199
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quote: Originally posted by shawnmmcc The person who posted about shooting Hitler earlier in the thread has the most practical solution - I would choose sometime after the absorbtion of the Sudenten land and prior to Barbarossa. Then that invasion can be stopped, and I suspect that the Brits may be willing to negotiate.

Why would the Brits negotiate? Germany did not have the naval capacity to invade Britain, nor did the axis have the capacity to ship enough equipment to North Africa to seriously threaten British territory in the middle east. The British OTOH were counting on the US eventually coming to their aid. Heck, adding the Soviets to the list of Hitler's enemies probably made US entry into the war slightly less likely, as many American found the idea of becoming de facto allies with the commies distinctly distasteful.

	03-03-2005 13:51									#200
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quote: Not really. Defeating Russia was the key. Either that or avoiding war in the East and defeating Britain. You can wargame either scenario with any number of military sims. If Germany wins in the East they can keep the Western allies at bay quite easily. The joker is nukes, which Germany may or may not have developed. In either case the most likely outcome is negotiated settlement leaving Germany dominant in Europe i.e. they win.

Wrong. Once the US enters the war, the US is in it to win it, as they say. That is, the US only would enter the war for a good reason, with a large amount of popular support. Given that situation, it stands to reason that the US would not negotiate a settlement with the Nazis.

If that is the case, it is absolutely inevitable that the US would be the first to atomic weapons, and, even IF Britain was conquered, which, I can argue, would be impossible for Germany to do after the Battle of Britain with the US supporting Britain, then by 1948-1949, B-36 bombers would be able to absolutely annihilate Germany with atomic weapons from bases in the Continental United States.

I don't care how many countries Germany conquers, and I don't care if they conquer England the the Soviet Union. Once the US enters the war, the eventual defeat of Germany is inevitable - the only question is the level of atomic destruction of Germany, and the number of German civilian casualties.

Sikander,

quote: The U.S. never hit its peak potential of forces during the war, and was already gearing down during the last year or so

Well, actually, the US DID reach it's peak potential forces, given the priorities set at the beginning of the war - that is, "only" 89 Army and 6 Marine divisions, with a major emphasis on specialist forces, naval forces, and army air forces, as well as industrial production (the US pretty much outproduced the rest of the world combined from 1941-1945).

By 1944-1945, US forces were suffering from a shortage of infantry, and US generals were arguing for a larger number of infantry divisions. Thank God those arguments did not prevail.

	03-03-2005 13:54									#201
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DS,

quote: nor did the axis have the capacity to ship enough equipment to North Africa to seriously threaten British territory in the middle east.

Well, that isn't necessarily true. Remember that following Operation Torch the Germans somehow found the ability to ship tens of thousands of men and hundreds of tanks to Africa.

Furthermore, had the Germans/Italians have undertaken Operation Herkules - the invasion of Malta - operations in North Africa would have been much easier for them. I believe that Malta would have fallen to a major offensive - the Allies simply lucked out in that they were able to destroy enough German airborne forces on Crete to dissuade Der Fuhrer from rebuilding the Fallschirmjaeger forces very quickly and committing them to Malta en masse.

	03-03-2005 14:55									#202
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quote: Originally posted by David Floyd Wrong. Once the US enters the war, the US is in it to win it, as they say. That is, the US only would enter the war for a good reason, with a large amount of popular support. Given that situation, it stands to reason that the US would not negotiate a settlement with the Nazis.

Ah - That would explain why the US never made peace with Vietnam

	03-03-2005 17:00									#203
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That's punching under the belt horsie

	03-03-2005 18:11									#204
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quote: Originally posted by David Floyd DS, Well, that isn't necessarily true. Remember that following Operation Torch the Germans somehow found the ability to ship tens of thousands of men and hundreds of tanks to Africa. Furthermore, had the Germans/Italians have undertaken Operation Herkules - the invasion of Malta - operations in North Africa would have been much easier for them. I believe that Malta would have fallen to a major offensive - the Allies simply lucked out in that they were able to destroy enough German airborne forces on Crete to dissuade Der Fuhrer from rebuilding the Fallschirmjaeger forces very quickly and committing them to Malta en masse.

The Axis didn't have the capability to sustain a large enough force to overwhelm the British in Egypt and gain access to the vital areas of the middle east. Remember that the further the Axis advanced into Egypt, the further they were from their supplies centers in Libya. Even if they had taken Malta supplies to the front would still have had to cross all that dessert. Remember that most other Axis formations relied upon animal transport bringing stores from railheads. In North Africa they had neither railheads nor sufficient suitable draft animals.

	03-03-2005 19:50									#205
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Dr. Strangelove (you and Sikander are my two favorite WW2 posters, BTW) do you have any documentaton on that one - Axis supply capabilities in North Africa (I've never seen a comprehensive source - both shipping and wheeled transport - that's why I'm curious). With Malta not falling, I agree due to documented shipping losses. But if it does fall?

You get to increase the shipping potential, the British Mediterranean fleet is largely bottled up in the western Mediterranean (Italian three-engine torpedo bombers could wreak havoc with iit - we are not talking Pacific theatre quality naval air here), and I would assume (so feel free to challenge this one ) that the British submarine warfare will be less effective since they will not have the aircover/reconissance from Malta.

Now I will grant you the Axis was none too sharp on the logistics side - I have to considering all my posts. But if Rommel can take out the British in 1941 (i.e. Malta is taken - cutting supplies/units/hardware available to the British or do they all ship around Cape Horn?) prior to US direct involvement, what other forces are going to be opposing them? I know the British had some smaller units deployed throughout Africa, but how many front line units are left if Rommel destroys the British army opposing him?

Rommel was using motorized supply, albeit with great difficulty - the Wehrmacht simply didn't have the logistics or the reliable hardware to do it well. However, against the limited British forces that remain, will he need to have that much logistics? Also, once he takes Alexandria the supplies can be brought in by ship.

	04-03-2005 01:03									#206
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The Germans only put a measly 2 divisions into North Africa, at the time they had 200 divisions in Eastern Europe, but the total forces were well over half a million if you count Italian forces. They could easily have put enough forces into North Africa to overwhelm the Brits.

The real reason they didn't was Hitler wasn't interested, he never saw the potential of taking Egypt and the Suez canal, which might have knocked Britain out of the war by causing the fall of Churchill's government.

	04-03-2005 01:55									#207
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There are few wargames out there that have scenarios that model the fall of Suez to Germany and start the scenario with fighting in Palestine and the rest of the middle east.

This is a more probable alternative history than many other WW2 scenarios. Montgomery was more lucky than good.

	04-03-2005 02:16									#208
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quote: Originally posted by Alexander's Horse The Germans only put a measly 2 divisions into North Africa, at the time they had 200 divisions in Eastern Europe, but the total forces were well over half a million if you count Italian forces. They could easily have put enough forces into North Africa to overwhelm the Brits. The real reason they didn't was Hitler wasn't interested, he never saw the potential of taking Egypt and the Suez canal, which might have knocked Britain out of the war by causing the fall of Churchill's government.

Most of the Italians were infantry - not nearly as demanding logistically as armor, and its more armor they would have needed to win.

and supposing they take Suez, and Churchill falls - why should a successor Brit goverment make peace? Suez doesnt matter, the Brits arent moving anything through the Med other than for the defense of Egypt anyway.

	04-03-2005 02:18									#209
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quote: Originally posted by shawnmmcc Also, once he takes Alexandria the supplies can be brought in by ship.

Once hes rebuilt the port, which the Brits will destroy on their way out. It took the Brits months to get Benghazi going, and they were in a better position to move equipment there. This gives the Brits a lot of time to respond before Rommel is supplied out of Alex.

and of course the axis is short of merchant ships, and theyve got farther to go from Italian ports to get to Alex than to Libyan ports.

	04-03-2005 02:51									#210
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quote: Originally posted by David Floyd DS, Well, that isn't necessarily true. Remember that following Operation Torch the Germans somehow found the ability to ship tens of thousands of men and hundreds of tanks to Africa.

To Tunis, which they didnt have access to before Torch, and which is alot closer to Italy than the Libyan ports. Also they just used them in Tunisia - that doesnt say anything about the problem of moving supplies overland with not enough trucks, not enough infrastructure, etc.