In article , Eunometic
writes
Dave Eadsforth wrote in message news:3J4OP5A0ETHAFw1O
...
In article , The
Enlightenment writes
Dave Eadsforth wrote in message
news:s9BISHBVA3GAFw82
...
In article , WaltBJ
writes
Slightly off track - the Germans did not seem to place the same level
of importance on recce that the Brits and USAF did. Me109s could (some
did) carry a camera in the aft fuselage like the recce P51s (F6?). A
lightened waxed Me109F or G would have a very good chance of
completing a recce pass on an in-and-out basis flown at max speed on a
curving descent or in-and-out at naught feet (prop tips above the wave
tips). It appears to me that the 86R was declared a 'clay pigeon' when
the LW found out Spits and Mosquitoes, appropriately modifed, could
get up that high. Why the LW didn't use 'hot-rodded' photofighters is
beyond me. Maybe they swallowed the 'XX' turned spies' reports as
gospel.
Walt BJ

Yes, the success of agents like 'Garbo' in feeding duff stuff to the
German High Command was remarkable.

Without wanting to go wildly off-topic, there was a programme on UK TV a
few nights ago ('Spitfire Ace') that had some very useful stuff on the
mentality of the RAF versus the that of Luftwaffe in 1940. The RAF
(through the vision and efforts of Dowding) had created a parless air
defence system, while the Luftwaffe had concentrated overmuch on the
lionisation of its individual pilots.

Honestly this sounds like Brits patting themselves on the back while
not looking at the strategic and tactical issues the Germans faced.
(sadly this is a sort of anasthetic as the UK goes down a sewer)

While I agree that we, as a nation, should be organising our lives
better these days, there is no doubt that the British air defence system
of 1940 was unmatched anywhere else in the world, and no-one, not even
the Germans, dare to claim that Goering's boasts of 1940 held water.

The Britsh radar at the time was inferior. It used a laege omni
direction arial at about 10 years waverlenth wid radio direction
finding loops. the German Freya searh radars and Wurzburk radars were
at this time mobile, more accurate. They were too goog in that they
**** caned their micrwave developement on the basis that their radars
were more than good enough.

However as far as a system goes you are right. The Germans lacked IFF
(indentifiucation fried or foe) untill "erstling" came along and they
did not integrate the air defenses. Luftwaffe, Army, Navy and various
regions simply were not integrated properly and respnded with
confusion to a raid.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/docs/97-0609F.pdf:
DEFLATING BRITISH RADAR MYTHS OF WORLD WAR II
A Research Paper
Presented To
The Research Department
Air Command and Staff College
In Partial Fulfillment of the Graduation Requirements of ACSC
by Maj. Gregory C. Clark
March 1997



I think that by 1944 the Allies
had developed a war machine that was thorough enough to filter out most
flakey thinking and to concentrate on the real issues. If the Luftwaffe
in 1944 was still relying on the whims of 'gifted individuals' (Hitler,
Goering), who would have prided their own (uncriticised) judgement then
a lot of bad ideas would have good through and a lot of good ideas would
have been turned away.


German thinking was predicated on the need to fight a short and sharp
war as a nation sourunded by hostile countries. Avoiding a war of
attrition was essential and avoiding a war on German territory was
also essential.

The surrounding countries were only hostile because of Hitler's
belligerence - he could have been a peaceful leader had he so chosen.
As for laying odds on a short war - having contingency plans in case
your lightning strike does not work is fundamental to military planning.

I don't blame Hitler for it all. Hitler was a symptom of severe
patholgies in Eruopean statecraft, ethics and nationalism. Nor do I
blame the Germans. They were up untill WW1 among the most passive of
nations. Even the Prussian beligerance is a myth when the number of
wars and/or their size is compared to the other Eruopean nations.

France untill recent EU integration has always been beligerant towards
Germany and its states over hundreds of years this goes back before
the Franco-Prussian war and even before Napoleon (when Pussians and
English fouth together). Preventing a unified Germany has always been
a French policy. Poland was rather beligerant towards Germany as well
as often shamefully discriminatory Germans who had come under Polish
rule.

Poland went to war with almost all the neighbours in 1919/20 and had
annexed Wilna from Lithuania, large parts of Germany, the Olsa area
from the CSR (in October 1938!) and large parts of the Ukraine and
Bjelorussia from the USSR. A country with considerable problems with
large ethnic minorities which made up almost 50% of the population.
And a country between Germany and the USSR. And a country armed for
more heavily than germany was in 1935.



The nation was physically to small and to devoid of
materials to handle a war in any other way and not loose thus
substantial offensive capability was emphasised but it was all up
front: resources were not devoted to reinforcements. This was the
thinking even before the Nazis came to power.

Germany had many resources to spare in the early years of the war.
Their industry was still working single shifts until things got really
bad. While Hitler was telling the German people about how well things
were going, Churchill was telling the British that we had to get a
wiggle on or lose - and our industry went to 100 percent from 1940
onwards.

I believe Nazi ideology was grounded into keeping a happy home life
and keeping the Birth rate high and they did not want to take mom away
from her role as mother. It took them a while to turn around their
ideology and their propaganda effort to spread this. In the long term
they were probably right though obviously it was part of their
contribution to their defeat: unless you regard a nation as only an
abstract concept that is equivalent to a state if your population
declines below a crical level your nation is lost and they were
obsessed with this. In 200 years the memories of "White English" and
"White Germans" will surely only footnotes in history books the
decline in Birth rates per 20 year generation is so dramatic.

The Nazis had a "volkish concept of the nation" that focused
obsessively on the survival of its people/race or nacestors not its
institutions.


Much of the German work on Microwaves and Proximity fuses (which
inspired British research)

Um...they told us about their work in these fields?

They did have a Magnetron team, this was disbanded and the engineers
and technicians drafted into the Army. They were hurridly recalled
when the Rotterdam (H2S device) was discovered in a crashed RAF
bomber. Some of the Magnetrons were of apparently good quality. The
Brits Randle and Boot invented the Muliticavity Magnetron not to work
on Radar but as a cheap source of microwaves for their work which was
in direction finding. Single cavity manetrons like the Germans were
using probably would remain stable up to about 30-50 watts output
after which they would refuse to give more power and start becoming
unstable due to thermal effects. This would give an night fighter a
detection range of only 1.5km as apposed to an 8km range in a 16kW
Magnetron. The Germans were ahead in microwave research having
developed microwave radars of 1.3 watt output in 1933 that detected
destroyers up to 1.5km away and could send radio messages 60 km.

http://www.ieee.org/organizations/hi...anscripts/schw
an.html

SCHWAN: Oh, yes. As a matter of fact, when the war started in
1939, the Germans developed the fairly well-known Wurzburg type of
equipment which operated at a wavelength of about one and one-half
meters. They were operating at a rather low frequency by comparison
with the 2400 megahertz which the United States used later in
'forty-three. They never made it to higher frequencies than that. They
operated at lower wavelengths where, of course, resolution is not as
good as it is at the higher frequencies.

They developed some good magnetrons. It's an irony of history that a
few months after the war started in thirty-nine the Nazis closed the
Magnetron Development Laboratory since they thought it unnecessary for
the war. Can you imagine that?
**************************************

The Engineer Nakajima of japan had developed Multicavity resonant
Magnetrons 1 year beofore the British. Ironicaly he worked in Germany
before the war and if the Germany and Japanese had of shared as well
as
the US/UK did things could have turned out different.

http://www.star-games.com/exhibits/j...neseradar.html
Nakajima: In 1953 I traveled around the world without a translator. At
that time I went to London, and at the museum I found exactly the same
thing, which was explained as: "This was invented by some Birmingham
University people in 1940." 1940 means one year later than our
invention.

*******************************
Yes, the Germans were working on radar proximity fuses first and the
British had espionage data of German tests. This induced them to do
start their own effort which yielded good results. I believe a German
engineer disaffected with the Nazis (he had resettled in Norway)
revealed the work to British intelligence. "Oslo Report" was the
name of the intelligence report.

The German work was **** canned as low priority becuase the Germans
researchers could not guarantee that their efforts would come to
deployment within two years.

Presumably it was possible to make fuses that might handle several
hundred G acceleration without to much difficulty but to go beyond
this would presumabluy require speciual efforts in valve technogy
fundementals.

"The initial idea behind radar proximity fuses was suggested by the
Germans.
However, a Hitler dictat caused the device's development within
Germany to a
halt because its development was deemed to be destined to take too
long to
come to fruition; the war would be over by that time.

http://groups.google.com.au/groups?h...fe=off&threadm
=9iv8uk%24dsq%241%40nntp6.u.washington.edu&rnum=1 &prev=/groups%3Fhl%3Den%26lr%3D
%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26safe%3Doff%26q%3Dflak%2Bpredictor%2Bproximity% 26btn
G%3DGoogle%2BSearch

The British received as an invaluable gift a well-made tube, a part
of an
early attempted iteration of such a fuze, which measured electrical
potentials and could serve to trigger a detonator if the potential
detected
were high enough. The gift came as part of what came to be known as
the Oslo
Report, so-named because that was the city in which a German engineer
(IIRC)
disaffected with the Nazi regime, used to transmit this remarkable and
priceless document to the British. In it were described all of the
most
advanced technologies then under consideration by the Hitlerites,
including
the proximity fuse, in great detail.

Great Britain, however, lacked the capacity needed to research and
develop
the device. Along with the resonant cavity magnetron (itself a
development
of original US magnetron research) a diagram of a proposed circuit for
a
proximity fuse was sent as a part of Britain's Tizard mission of
September,
1940 to the US. While the diagram was useful, it proved necessary for
US
firms to pioneer a family of impact-resistant vacuum tubes (strong
enughto
survive being fired at hiigh velocities from a cannon tube) and for a
Canadian firm to pioneer batteries with indeterminate shelf-lives
before a
workable proximity fuze emerged."







was suspended because the anything that
could not be ready in 2 years would be a waste.

Not a waste, a strategic error - no-one to blame but themselves.

Indeed. However were they right? Did the liberated the resources
actualy help them?

Clearly disbanding the magnetron team and the proximity fuse efforts
were mistakes: more so when one cosniders that the magnetron team
ended up in the Army!

Would however the UK have prioritised magnetron work had US resources
not been available?



It seems that at
this point that many of the German might have beens got caned.
Examination of this period is perhaps where it might be said that
Germany's technical loss may be said to lie. It might also just lay in the
fact that Germany lacked the resources to develop them.

Poor prioritization - no-one to blame but themselves. The proximity
fuse was a small printed circuit that any small group of radio men could
have taken forward - there was no great industrial effort needed here.

The ciruit was simple: a doppler shift device. However Hardening the
tubes, inventing the printed circuit board and repeatedly manufaturing
shells, firing them and recovering them would have needed state help.

I expect you get reasonably far just dropping the sheells on their ass
onto corncret (wrecking the tubes and checking what broke) but then
you get battery problems, and the probem of handling 30,000 rpm.

The secret was apparently in placing the tubes in wax and oil to
equalise stress.




The Tiazard
commision handed the proximity fuse and magnetron on a platter for the
USA to develop. The Germans just culled.

Good prioritisation on Tizard's part - hand the designs over to the
people who can mass produce immediately.

Indeed but my point is who do the Germans hand their reserach over to?
The Italians? The Japanese? They did get the French to do some of
their engineering for them and that was their best bet but the Vichy
is hardly the USA.



The excelent Freya and Wurzburg Radars were not integrated into a
defensive system because the bomber naviagation aids were considered
more important.

Integration was a matter laying telephone connections and training a
limited number of staff.

Organisationaly it was more than that. Kammhubber eventualy created
such a system complete with TV to transmit the battle situation but at
the time Navy, Luftwaffe and Army FLAK units all had their fiefdoms
and much politics was involved.

The Freya/Wurburg system required a huge expensive number of radars
because of their limited range and the politicing involved in getting
the system up and running was huge.



If you have started a war, and it has gone
pear-shaped, and your efforts have simply created a hostile world around
you, air defence should then be recognised as a priority. After 1942
the allies were no longer fighting a war dictated by German initiatives
- they were fighting according to their own.

Cheers,

Dave

Thanks very much for your points - there are a number of things in your
summary that I did not know until now.

On the political side, I did know that there were some big stresses in
Europe in the 1930s, and any German leader would have to have exercised
sound judgement to keep things on an even keel. German rearmament alone
could have made the rest of Europe cautious in their dealings and
stability could have been maintained for decades. Where it all went
wrong was when Hitler started on his trail of conquest.

But having done so, he would have done better to adopt the 'ego free'
process of planning and execution of military operation. On the allied
side, good ideas stood a chance - on the German side it seems to have
been 'trust in the Fuhrer' and pull your neck in.

But once the genie was out of the bottle so many things were done in a
crazy manner; the treatment of the people in conquered territories by
the SS for one - the people of Russia would have turned against Stalin
in the early days; but not after the SS atrocities. Real vision, and
appreciation of consequences of action, seems to have been lacking in
Hitler's planning processes.

Cheers,

Dave

--
Dave Eadsforth