Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

[Curufea]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

Not nearly as populare as his Dame Edna though...

 

Anyhow - sorry got side tracked with composing music, will get back to photo manipulation this weekend

[ThothAmon]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

http://www.aopt91.dsl.pipex.com/railgun/Content/Railwayguns/German/Dora%20index.htm

 

This gun is one of the default main objectives in the multiplayer WWII first person shooter game Enemy Territory (AKA ET). It features in the map RAILGUN.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenstein:_Enemy_Territory

 

ET is a free multiplayer version of Return To Castle Wolfenstein. Pulp lives even in the age of computers

[Curufea]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

I played Return - it is good. All the supernatural elements and zombies in WW2 make it a good Pulp game.

[Roter Baron]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

"Roter Baron" is that Sir Les Patterson' date=' Australian cultural icon, in your picture ?[/quote']

 

Yes, it is! He has accomplished what I am working on - becoming a dirty old man!

 

All the best from Hunland to Down Under!

[Old Man]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

A worthy goal indeed.

[Susano]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

Ahem....

[Curufea]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

Ha!

 

BTW I'll put machines on the wiki too - goes well with the plot seeds

http://www.curufea.com/hero/doku.php?id=resources:wunderwaffen

[Roter Baron]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

This is a recording of an impromptu hearing on the loss of app. 413 Allied bombers and fighter planes during an air raid on January 31st, 1945. Participants are Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, all members of the war government of the UK, the Generals De Gaulle and Eisenhower and William D. Donovan, head of the O.S.S. - several other secret service or military personell were also present but remain unlisted.

 

The audio-recording is to be stored as a TOP SECRET document in the vaults of the Ministry of War. It is not no be disclosed till February 1st, 2046.

 

"Mr. Prime Minister, Members of his Majesty's Government, Generals, Gentlemen!

It seems that the rumours about a new German fighter plane are true. As you all know we lost about 50% of our bombers during last Friday's offensive over Düsseldorf and Hamburg - and only one plane reached the outskirts of Berlin and came back! We are supposed to have air superiority! That is - until two days ago.

On the picture that I are about to show you we see one of the new squadrons that attacked our planes - the German propaganda refers to their new "wunderwaffe" as the MESSERSCHMIDT ME- 666 Strahlenflieger "Fledermaus". The Plane seems to have two modes of flying - regular and - as you see with the middle plane - dive-attack mode.

According to rough estimation by Spitfire and Hurricane crews who got away from what can only be described as a massacer in the sky these "Bats" are with regular flying mode as fast as our fighter planes going top speed and in dive-attack mode about twice as fast.

 

All these facts are undeniable and I know that you and your nations now want an answer to the question: How can we cancel this threat?

The situation is indeed a dire one. At the moment the R.A.F. and American planes defend the British capital against these newly appeared flying machines from hell, but how long can they prevent London to turn into ashes by this New Blitz ...?" -

[voices of Churchill and Eisenhower, several others - incomprehensible]

 

"Yes, gentlemen. YES! I said from HELL! And I mean it! Look: two weeks ago the Germans had hardly any fuel to lift a dozen planes from the ground and keep them in the air for 30 minutes - let alone capable pilots. And now, all the sudden, they have about 50 of these machines, gasoline without limit and enough highly trained pilots to man and fly these machines for hours and hours. We have reports on our hand that suggest that some of these machines were involved in ACTIVE FIGHTING for 8 hours without refueling, fighting first above Düsseldorf, then Hamburg and then they wiped out our bombers - or what was left of them - while they were trying to retreat to the U.K."

 

"You and I, we are all rational men. And because of that we have to take into account all the information about German mystical research. You all thought, and I hoped faithfully, that this was all part of Himmler's mumbo-jumbo believes or - in my case - that the Allied military advances would destroy the Nazi dreams of a new supernatural miracle weapon. Alas, we were wrong.

But not all is lost: I offer you my help! And Mr. Donovan has already second my idea to set up a circle of mystics and psychics to find ways to keep the hellish "Fledermaus"-Planes away from British cities and to work on a counter-spell. Mr. Donovan has all my proposals for the needed personell and resources for this most important enterprise. Please allow me to leave you now and to await the results of your considerations." (End of recording)

 

The voice of the speaker was later identified as that of the famous mystic-psychic Dr. Harold van Helsing-Brown, called "The Sorceror in Scarlet"

[Curufea]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

Very cool - and I wish I could give you more rep ;p

http://www.curufea.com/hero/doku.php?id=resources:wunderwaffen#messerschmidt_me-_666_strahlenflieger_fledermaus

[gewing]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

I have done some research (in my private library ... ehm ... I went to the cupboard and grapped THE BOOK ...). The "New York rocket" was a two-phased monster that had the official name A-9/A-10 ( the V-2 was A-4), but existed only in design - they never even started to build one.

There was a "Super-gun" in design , too, that was planned to have a range of 160 km (Codename: "Hochdruckpumpe" (High pressure pump); Propaganda name: "Fleißiges Lieschen" (Little Industrious Beth), but neither saw action. They used a smaller version with a range of 42,5 km called "Tausendfüßler" (Millipede) which entered an experimental state (they mad epractice shots), but the way the war went never made it possible to use it to attack London (that was the purpose).

This is actually the V-3, so my bogus report should refer to a V-4.

 

Sidenote: Even though the V-3 never saw action during WW2 it almost saw action during the First Iraq War: An British engineer by the name of Dr. Gerald Vincent Bull got an order by Saddam Hussein to plan and build a Super-gun codenamed "Baby Babylon" - a 46 m long gun that was planned to shoot up to 400 km long and 180 km high. This design was derived from the German Tausendfüßler.

This gun never saw action either: Parts of the gun were intercepted by British intelligence and Dr. Bull was killed in Brussels - possibly by the Mossad.

 

The A9/a12 was supposed to skip a manned second stage across the upper atmosphere, iirc.

 

 

Now DORA was a gun! Realistically nearly useless, as it was TOO big, TOO heavy, TOO slow, and took TOO many men, but when (if) it hit something...

 

 

Now LIttle David made more sense, imo.

[st barbara]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

At this point I might recommend a book to people. "Last Talons Of The Eagle" by Gary Hyland and Anton Gill (subtitled "Secret Nazi technology which could have changed the course of World War II) (Headline Books, 1998). Including such delightful projects as the Lippisch LP13a, which was a COAL powered fighter and the Heinkel Wespe which was a VTOL fighter.

[Old Man]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

To wax serious for a bit, I have to wonder if all these Secret Weapons weren't part of the reason the Reich lost the war. With the sole exception of the Me-262, few if any of them panned out (and the 262 was late to the fight). Perhaps if Germany had been less obsessed with wacky contraptions like coal-powered fighters, and instead worked on more-conventional-but-better aircraft to replace the Fw-190 and the Me-109, perhaps they wouldn't have fallen so far behind? IIRC tank development went the same way, plenty of development of superheavy tanks and whatnot when all they really needed was to crank out more Panzers with 88s.

[Susano]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

In other words:

[Susano]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

Or...

[Mantis]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

To wax serious for a bit' date=' I have to wonder if all these Secret Weapons weren't part of the reason the Reich lost the war. With the sole exception of the Me-262, few if any of them panned out (and the 262 was late to the fight). Perhaps if Germany had been less obsessed with wacky contraptions like coal-powered fighters, and instead worked on more-conventional-but-better aircraft to replace the Fw-190 and the Me-109, perhaps they wouldn't have fallen so far behind? IIRC tank development went the same way, plenty of development of superheavy tanks and whatnot when all they really needed was to crank out more Panzers with 88s.[/quote'][dons his WWII History Buff's hat] It's more complicated than that, but you are on the right track. Hitler initially planned on a swift war, and kept Germany on a peacetime economy until 1942. This meant R&D resources were scarce. Messerschmitt had to keep producing (and improving) the Me109 and Me110 types with little left over to develop the Me262. Daimler-Benz, BMW, and Jumo were similarly constrained, so they had to keep producing, and wringing more performance out of their existing engines, rather than developing replacements, including the jet engine, and this ultimately proved the bottleneck in Me262 production - many airframes sat around for many months, waiting for a reliable engine to be available (a large number were destroyed by the Schweinfurt-Regensburg bomber raid in August 1943, nearly a year before the first operational unit was formed). Hitler's alleged order that the Me262 be produced as a bomber is often blamed for the late introduction to service of the Me262, but had the resources been available, it could have been ready as early as 1942!

 

[As an aside, his request for it as a bomber was perfectly sensible; had a decent-sized number of bomber Me262s been available on June 6 1944, they could have wrought much damage on the invasion fleet, in spite of the massive air umbrella employed. The first unit did not become operational until July 1944, too few and too late to realize their potential as tactical bombers.]

 

By contrast, America's massive production capacity allowed them to continue to churn out F4F and P-40 fighters long after they had been shown to be second-class fighters, although they still had useful roles to play. Even the UK continued to build Swordfish biplane torpedo-bombers until 1944, although again they served a specific purpose. Both nations also put effort into their share of failures, too, but neither these nor the production of second-line aircraft took resources away from their successful models.

[Old Man]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

Well, I don't dispute that the ultimate reason Germany lost was that he was outproduced by the U.S. (and to a lesser extent, the Soviets). However, at the start of the war Germany had an incredible advantage in technology over pretty much the whole rest of the world. So I wonder, if German R&D hadn't been so badly mismanaged, might they have held out longer or even fought to a stalemate? If the 262 (or even the Arrow) had shown up by late 1943, in numbers, then American daylight bomber raids would have been doomed. Doooomed! Instead, all that effort went into vengeance weapons and land kroozers and other silliness.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

there were some funky german land attack plane designs, including ones equipped with a single shot recoilless cannon(of up to 300mm, though the plane necessary to fire such a gun would have been prohibitively large) , and also a design for a modified He177 heavy bomber, equipped with a battery of upward firing 210 mm rockets--to destroy enemy bomber formations.

[Susano]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

I'd like to point out that a lot of the really weird German plane and tank designs existed only on paper. The 1000-ton Ratte, the 1500-ton Landkrusier, many of the funky jet planes and rocket -- all were theoretical designs. Of course, bizarre planes, tanks, guns, and other technology are the perfect things to adapt into Pulp games!

 

I'll also agree with Old Man, if the Germans had built far more Jagdpanthers and Panthers, instead of wasting resources on Tigers, Tiger IIs, and Jagdtigers, the push into Germany could have been a lot uglier.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

I'd like to point out that a lot of the really weird German plane and tank designs existed only on paper. The 1000-ton Ratte, the 1500-ton Landkrusier, many of the funky jet planes and rocket -- all were theoretical designs. Of course, bizarre planes, tanks, guns, and other technology are the perfect things to adapt into Pulp games!

 

I'll also agree with Old Man, if the Germans had built far more Jagdpanthers and Panthers, instead of wasting resources on Tigers, Tiger IIs, and Jagdtigers, the push into Germany could have been a lot uglier.

Hetzers and He162s--both relatively cheap, easy to make and highly effective. The Panther wasn't that much cheaper or easier to make than the Tiger or Tiger II.

Hitler was discouraged from pursuing building the H-43/44 battleship because it was pointed out that it would have required steel equivalent to a year's tank production!

[Susano]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

Hetzers and He162s--both relatively cheap, easy to make and highly effective. The Panther wasn't that much cheaper or easier to make than the Tiger or Tiger II.

Hitler was discouraged from pursuing building the H-43/44 battleship because it was pointed out that it would have required steel equivalent to a year's tank production!

 

The Hetzer was very effective, the Jagdpanther even more so. And the Panther, while maybe not cheaper or easier, was far, far more effective and reliable.

 

As for the He162, did it ever actually fly? I mean, did it ever see combat? I'm not sure it did.

[megaplayboy]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

The Hetzer was very effective, the Jagdpanther even more so. And the Panther, while maybe not cheaper or easier, was far, far more effective and reliable.

 

As for the He162, did it ever actually fly? I mean, did it ever see combat? I'm not sure it did.

I believe it did, though probably not much action since it was introduced very late in the war. But it was a jet fighter designed for mass production, and was relatively easier to train new pilots on.

 

from wiki--

The He-162 finally saw combat in mid-April. On April 19, a captured Royal Air Force fighter pilot informed his Germans interrogators that he had been shot down by a jet fighter matching the description of a He 162. The Heinkel and its pilot were lost as well, shot down by a RAF Hawker Tempest while on approach. Though still in training, I/JG-1 had scored a number of kills beginning in mid-April, but had also lost thirteen He 162s and ten pilots. Ten of the aircraft losses were the result of various technical malfunctions, such as engine flameouts and sporadic structural failures: just two were shot down. The He 162's 30-minute fuel capacity also caused problems, as at least two of JG-1's pilots were killed attempting emergency landings after exhausting their fuel.

 

In the last days of April, as the Soviet troops approached, II/JG-1 evacuated from Marienhe and on May 2 joined the I/JG-1 at Leck. On May 3, all of JG-1's surviving He 162s were restructured into two groups, I. Einsatz (Combat) and II. Sammel (Replacement). All the JG-1's aircraft where grounded May 5 when General Admiral von Friedeburg signed the surrender of all German armed forces in Holland, Northwest Germany and Denmark. On May 6 when the British reached their airfields, JG-1 turned their He 162s over to the Allies, and examples of the fighter were then shipped to the US, Britain, France, and the USSR for further evaluation. Erprobungskommando 162 fighters, which had been passed on to JV 44, an elite jet unit under Adolf Galland a few weeks earlier, were all destroyed by their crews to keep the jets from falling into Allied hands. By the time of the German unconditional surrender May 8, 1945, 120 He 162s had been delivered; a further 200 aircraft had been completed and were awaiting collection or flight-testing; about 600 more were in various stages of production.

 

The difficulties experienced by the He 162 were caused mainly by its rush into production, not by any inherent design flaws. One experienced Luftwaffe pilot who flew it called it a "first-class combat aircraft." Though a RAF pilot was killed in November 1945 when one of the tailfins broke off during the Farnborough air show, a British pilot who evaluated the He 162 praised it.

[Markdoc]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

As for the He162' date=' did it ever actually fly? I mean, did it ever see combat? I'm not sure it did.[/quote']

 

It did (although not much) - 2 kills are recorded for it, three claimed. That's actually not bad, given the two kills were British Tempests, one of the best prop-driven fighters of the war and the one the Germans rated as the greatest threat to the Me262

 

Edit: Damn - I see I was beaten to it by Megaplayboy!

 

cheers, Mark

[Roter Baron]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

Well' date=' I don't dispute that the ultimate reason Germany lost was that he was outproduced by the U.S. (and to a lesser extent, the Soviets). .[/quote']

 

Well, actually I would dispute this. Sure, the USA did do a lot to help The U.K. and the Soviets with equipment and had more than enough stuff for there own troops at the same time, but from the German pesrpective it D-Day was just the final coffin nail. The war was lost in the east against the Red Army at Stalingrad. That was the decisive battle that also crushed in the German people the hope that the war could be won.

That does not mean that D-Day was not neccessary - Stalin demanded a second front since 1942 to lift the pressure from the Red Army -, but even during the last days of the war German troops were deployed do fight the Soviets even while the western Allies were advancing. Or, to put it in a different way: The western allies were able to advance more quickly because in a doubt troops were moved east to fight the "Bolshevik menace".

 

Regarding research in miracle weapons and loosing the war: People, get real!

Yes, Germany had one of the best and most modern military forces in the world when the war started: Poland - occupied in 3 weeks; France - 6 weeks, including Luxemburg, Belgium and the Netherlands; Denmark - 1 day; Norway - few weeks; Yugoslavia, Greece, later the former ally Italy; not to forget most of the European part of Russia, all of the Ukraine, Belorus, the Baltic States; troops deployed to North Africa.

All of that with axis partners that were less than top notch (Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy - Japan was no help at all), more like last notch.

 

So, Nazi-Germany did that because it had a well equipted army. But when you have to fight the whole world , you will soon find out that the German proverb "Viel Feind', viel Ehr'!" (More enemies, more glory!) is only true as long as you can COUNT your enemies! And even good equipment breaks, is used up, falls into the hands of the enemy - and when bombs rain down on your cities, and soldiers die in the hundreds of thousands on the eastern front, and you have to send in boys and grandfathers to fight the war, you have lost the war. And no miracle weapon will save the day. And no other weapon either.

[Susano]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

This boils down into the "Germany should have never invaded Russia" territory (as well as "Don't have Hitler decide your objectives" territory), which is best kept as an argument for military historians. So let's not start down that path. Please?

 

Instead, let's see about finding and posting more WWII weird warmachines! Anyone seen anything from the Allies? Japan?

 

Anyone?

[megaplayboy]

Re: Wunderwaffen!!! - Secret German Warmachines of WW 2

 

This boils down into the "Germany should have never invaded Russia" territory (as well as "Don't have Hitler decide your objectives" territory), which is best kept as an argument for military historians. So let's not start down that path. Please?

 

Instead, let's see about finding and posting more WWII weird warmachines! Anyone seen anything from the Allies? Japan?

 

Anyone?

well, there's always the I-400 class japanese sub-carriers. 400 feet long, 8 torpedo tubes, a 140mm deck gun, several 25mm AA guns, and 3 floatplane fighter-bombers. Not to mention it could sail around the world.

There was a French sub, the Surcouf, IIRC, which mounted a pair of 8in. deck guns!

 

The Italians built a biplane fighter, the CR-42, and upgraded its engine with the CR-42 bis version to the point that it was actually somewhat competitive with monoplane fighters.

 

BTW, had Germany been able to enlist Turkey in the war, life would have been difficult for both Stalin and Churchill--they could open up another front against both the USSR and the UK.