Problems with German Forces

[Desiree Clary]

Originally Posted by Hetzer 15

They were having trouble with the engines...there was a few of them out there, but only a rare few. IIRC, the british had to help them a little with the issues?

Yes, the Gloucester Meteor was in advanced stage, not so?

[Michele]

Originally Posted by Hetzer 15

They were having trouble with the engines...

Like everyone else. Just because the Germans did use jet aircraft operationally, it doesn't mean they had no problems with the engines. They were just more desperate.

[T. A. Gardner]

Originally Posted by Hetzer 15

They were having trouble with the engines...there was a few of them out there, but only a rare few. IIRC, the british had to help them a little with the issues?

The US and Britain both had reliable jet engines running in 1944. In fact, the ones available out performed any German jet engine in terms of thrust to weight, reliability, and fuel consumption. The problem the US and Britain had was developing high speed airframes to go with them.
The US was flying the P-59 in fighter group strenght in late 1944. That is better in terms of operational performance than the Luftwaffe was doing at that time. The British also had the Meteor in service in squadron strength but retained the planes for home defense rather than letting them go to the continent.

The only thing the Me 262 has to recommend it as "better" is that the airframe is somewhat better designed for high speed flight. The engines on it were, to put it mildly, crap. It also burned about 3 to 4 times the fuel an Me 109 or Fw 190 did at a time when Germany couldn't afford it. For the Germans, the Me 262 was a self-defeating airplane.

[Hetzer 15]

Originally Posted by T. A. Gardner

The US and Britain both had reliable jet engines running in 1944. In fact, the ones available out performed any German jet engine in terms of thrust to weight, reliability, and fuel consumption. The problem the US and Britain had was developing high speed airframes to go with them.
The US was flying the P-59 in fighter group strenght in late 1944. That is better in terms of operational performance than the Luftwaffe was doing at that time. The British also had the Meteor in service in squadron strength but retained the planes for home defense rather than letting them go to the continent.

The only thing the Me 262 has to recommend it as "better" is that the airframe is somewhat better designed for high speed flight. The engines on it were, to put it mildly, crap. It also burned about 3 to 4 times the fuel an Me 109 or Fw 190 did at a time when Germany couldn't afford it. For the Germans, the Me 262 was a self-defeating airplane.

All good points, which I agree with, I just was pointing out, that they (US and British) when they first started out had teething troubles but they were working out pretty quickly. They had access to high strength steels and alloys, the germans did not. They also had a tendancy to flame out or exploded if you were not very carefull with them...even then the service life was short...self deafeting, absolutely!

Dont even get started on the ME-163, it was a flying deathtrap...fueled by A-stoff, and T-stoff...if it got on you, look out!

[iron]

And away we go again...spinning off on a tangent about weapons systems and such.

The "problems" with "German forces" (i.e. the composition of the Wehrmacht's actual force structure) are very much as I described in my first post to this thread.

ADHD much, people?

Anyone care to actually carry on a coherent discussion about this topic?

No...it's much more "fun" to talk about the Me 262's and the Tiger tanks...



The problems were inherent in the path taken during the early period of German rearmament from 1932-1939. Once Hitler gained power, the existing army plans were expanded upon by a significant degree but the focus remained as per the initial objectives: create a "conventional army" of sufficient strength so as to be able to hold the borders in the event that France wanted to get hostile about that whole "Versailles thing" and coerced the Poles into joining in. This mandate was the initial plan followed during the early years of the Third Reich and it was the ARMY'S plan, NOT Hitler's.
As I already said (upthread), this put Germany into a position of considerable strength (continentally) but one of significant weakness when we blow it up to the global level.
Hitler was truly "gobsmacked" when the "English " declared war on him in September 1939. This wasn't in the plan at all and hence the shift of Naval focus (production wise) to assets suitable for "blockade" warfare against the British Isles...i.e.: "Blue water "U-boats" and commerce raiders. The KM would have to get by with what it had in service/working up/fitting out vis-a-vis surface combat with the RN.

This was a huge "problem with German Forces".

Then there's the Luftwaffe.

This element was the one that was the "outlier" in the traditional military sense. Yes, air combat had been explored during the "Great War" and theorists had been busy throughout the intervening years predicting all sorts of nihilistic outcomes with respect to the role of airpower in any subsequent conflict. The "lessons" learned in Spain seemed to support these theories (if the sensationalism surrounding Guernica is to be accorded any credence) and at the onset of war, the Germans were in possession of the best trained/equipped airforce that had ever existed...to this point.

Evolution is a total b*tch though; things don't happen in a vacuum.

The "problem" with Germany's airforce only manifested itself during the Campaign in the West during the Spring/Summer of 1940.
Replacement levels were inadequate to deal with the attrition brought about during a campaign of such scale. This hit hard on the extant system of aircraft production and even harder on the pipeline feeding trained crewmen into the frontline units...and this is BEFORE the "Kanalkampf/Angriff auf England" period of ops.

So with perfect hindsight, what do you do?

I would support for more induction/training units and an earlier investment in the DB plant at Genshagen, which would provide the manpower and the aeroengines required to overcome this "problem".

The "problem" is? Things don't happen in a vacuum...take from one, give to another. 5000 machinists don't grow on trees. Neither do the Corps Staff/instructors/airframes/infrastructure for the additional pilot schools.

This is what I'd like to discuss in such a topic.

The Army? They were fine. The historical record kind of points in that direction...Right?

All for now, Ron

[T. A. Gardner]

Originally Posted by Hetzer 15

All good points, which I agree with, I just was pointing out, that they (US and British) when they first started out had teething troubles but they were working out pretty quickly. They had access to high strength steels and alloys, the germans did not. They also had a tendancy to flame out or exploded if you were not very carefull with them...even then the service life was short...self deafeting, absolutely!

Dont even get started on the ME-163, it was a flying deathtrap...fueled by A-stoff, and T-stoff...if it got on you, look out!

The various models of the Whittle engine like the W2B that went into the Meteor had a run life expectancy of several hundred hours at a minimum. It was an extremely reliable design by 1944 once Rolls Royce took over production from the endless tinkering Rover did on it. That was the big bottleneck with that engine: Rover. They produced a few of about half a dozen models each with some minor improvement over previous ones and never solidified production to a single design. RR did that almost immediately and production began in earnest afterwards. That wasted about two years for the British.

Metrovick (Vickers subsidary for jet engine development) concurrently developed the F2 Freda that became the post war Beryl. This was a very successful line of development in British jets. It was also the first axial design they put out.

DeHavilland produced the H1 Goblin at the same time; it being a take off of the Whittle design. The follow on H2 Ghost had a very successful post war run.

The US Allison and GE developed and British copied engines were extremely successful. Allison's I40 / J33 was a very good end of war design that went on in many post war jet aircraft.

In fact, the only two real failures in jet engines in the US were Westinghouse and Lockheed. Westinghouse had some initial success then had a string of costly and embarrasing failures mostly due to poor design of components. Lockheed tried one engine originally intended for the L 133 but in the end the J 37 proved horribly complex and unworkable with its dual 16 stage compressors and 4 or 5 stage axial turbine.

On the German side the original Von Ohan designs were very good being very light weight, compact, and having good thrust for weight. The problem was they were horribly unreliable, leaked like sieves and were generally a major fire hazard. Their combination centrifugal and axial design was unique.

The BMW 003 wasn't bad either. It had a run time of about 100 hours. The thrust to weight was okay but nothing spectacular. The Jumo 004 had little to recommend it other than it went into production earlier than any of the other units available and didn't catch fire regularly. It's run time was mediocre at about 12 hours, often less.

To give you some idea of just how bad it was the 004 weighed 1669 lbs and produced 1980 lbs thrust. The RR W2B 23 Weilland I used on early Meteors weighed 850 lbs and produced 1700 lbs thrust.
What that shows is just how bad the airframe design of the Meteor was in terms of high speed air flow. The RR W2B 26 Dewent I weighed 975 lbs and produced 2000 lbs thrust.

If you look into 1946 it gets way worse for the Germans. Their next generation design the HeS (Henkel) 011 weighs 2090 lbs and produces 2860 lbs thrust. The DeHavilland H1 Goblin II is 1500 lbs and 3000 lbs thrust. The US GE TG 180 or J35 is 2850 lbs and produces 4000 to 5600 lbs thrust depending on model. Metrovick's F2/4 Beryl is 1750 lbs and produces 3850 lbs thrust.

All the Allies needed was better airframes that could handle higher speeds. They were on the brink of getting those in 1945. The Germans had the airframes but they were falling behind on engines to put in them quickly. It is one more race the Germans were definitely going to lose having started at a sprint and then became winded as the Allies with a more even pace passed them mid-way through the war.