"Bill Silvey" wrote in message . com...
"The Enlightenment" wrote in message

"Bill Silvey" wrote in message
. com...
Why didn't it have an internal bomb-bay? It certainly looks like it
had the capacity. The only photos I've ever seen have it hauling
two bombs underwing...

The book "Arado 234 Blitz" by J Richard Smith, & Eddie J Creek
(Monogram Monarch 1) provides a lot of detail.

snip

Fascinating.

Along the same lines, have any of you ever visited the Luft'46 website?


Yes,

I like luft46. It seems to be mirrored in multiple languages now
including chinese and russian. A mecca for model builders in
particular with some beautifull art.

You won't find anything on it regarding such aircraft as the Me 262 or
Arado 234 unfortunately.

Luft46 is nowhere near complete yet. There are for instance ranges of
Blohm and Voss aircraft that were all steel not included. (they were
suprisiingly light)


It's possible to conjecture on a number of situations where
overlord/D-day may have been delayed such that some of the luft 46
aircraft came into being.

On a technical level I can think of abandoning their magnetron work in
1940 (they had stable magnetrons that were limited to about 80W ie
only enough power for about 1km detection range) and far worse than
that disbanding those high frequency experts into the army becuase
they though that their excellent freya/worzburg radars were adaquete.
When they rediscovered the British magnetrons they couldn't even
analyse them properly till they got these personal back together
again.

After detecting submarine conning towers in 1935 using their radars
the Germans failed to develop submarines which emphasised submerged
performance and endurance soon enough. Type XXI u-boats could have
changed the course of the war if they had of been available 12-14
months earlier.

The Jet engines were delayed by a year by the need to develop low
nickel and chrom alloy usage engines. (Essentialy the Jumo 004A to
Jumo 004B was a conversion of materials). The important Heinkel HeS
011 engine was however meant to not require any strategic materials at
all. Ernest Heinkel wasted much of the engineering talent available
to him by dispersing it in all sorts of parrallel developments such as
ducted fans that distracted development of jet engines.

Even in the case of the the atomic bomb, which would have rendered
many of these developments mute, might have fallen into German hands
early enoough to provide a crude deterent to the threat of an allied
bomb. The Germans tested graphite as a moderator but found that it
was poor. This was due to contaminated graphite however. This meant
they set of on a tangent of extracting heavy water as their moderator
which delayed their progress.

At they end of the day, despite some flawed procurement structures and
excessive secreacy they however lacked the resources in both people
and material of the allies to engineer all of these things and in the
end that wins out in most cases.