Let’s bomb someone who deserves it; Nazis. I’m sending one of these, an MQ-9 Reaper back to May 1st, 1943, somewhere over the skies of Europe with you at the helm.
It’s armed with 2 AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and 2 500lbs GBU-12 Paveway bombs. It’s capable of precision the Allies could only have dreamed of and the Germans have no defence against it. Once its ordinance has been deployed I’ll return it to the present.
Out goal is to end the war slightly quicker. What do you want to bomb? I’ve included major allied targets and a few other suggestions. Of course I had to include the Fuhrer, but turning him into charred giblets may backfire as he was a terrible general and you might make him into a martyr. The choice is yours, though.
The Germans have quite a lot of defences against it. The Reaper is completely helpless against a Luftwaffe fighter, not to mention the scads of AA guns Germany deployed.
It operates at 50,000 ft. Operation ceiling of an Me 109 is 39,000 ft. So good luck. AA is inaccurate enough against contemporary tech.
In any case, what kind of primitive time travel operation do you think I’m running? I’ll materialise over your target, deliver the payload and be back in Afghanistan before afternoon tea.
I would kill Hitler as it is not at all certain that the Nazi regime could out last his death, in particular it could’ve allowed anti-Nazi elements in the Wehrmacht, who had long been plotting against Hitler, to fill the power vacuum or even a more moderate Nazi who might try to sue for peace. In the very worse case scenario in the event of Hitler’s death there would be a smooth transition of power to an equally fanatical Nazi and the effects of killing Hitler are mostly nullified, but IMO killing Hitler would be the most effective way of bringing the war in Europe to a swift conclusion.
What if people didn’t realize that it was an enemy attack that zapped Der Furher but thought it was an assassins bomb? Would this make a difference?
Also, like the OP suggested, taking out Hitler may not be effective at ending the war. More competant military leaders may actually gain power and prolong the conflict. Or at least get a better deal for Germany at the negotiating table, resulting in Germany retaining some conquered lands.
How far had the holocaust proceeded by May '43? If Germany negotiates an end to the war, it might curtail much of the worst parts of the death camps. Or it might allow that system to continue functioning in the dark with no liberation ever coming.
In any case, I just don’t see any single (non-nuclear) bomb being able to end the war. The entire German nation had to be worn out and exhausted to the point of not being able to fight for the allies to achive victory. Even if Hitler is dead, they’d still fight to save their homes from the Soviets.
I’d probably just fly the thing around primarily as a recon drone and just not shoot the last missile or bomb. The IR cameras and synthetic aperture radar on those things would be WAY more valuable than the piddling weaponry that they carried.
Most of the targets listed are way too large to be seriously affected by 2 500 lb bombs and 2 20 lb warheads on the Hellfire missiles.
I think I’d try and figure out which communications systems were most vulnerable, and use 3 of the 4 weapons on them at critical moments- morning of June 6, 1944 and the like.
You mean wiki lies to me?! “an operational altitude of 50,000 ft (15,000 m), which makes it especially useful for long-term loitering operations, both for surveillance and support of ground troops.[35]”
In any case, stop fighting the hypothetical! Fighters aren’t scrambled instantly.
@Hypno-Toad; we’re not ending the war, just trying to finish it marginally quicker. I’d take out the Tirpitz as it took a whole lot of effort trying to sink that thing and even its presence was a major nuisance.
Sinking Tirpitz has no chance of significantly shortening the war, and that’s assuming a Reaper could sink it, which of course it could not. Its armamnents aren’t even close enough to sink a heavily armored battleship. Yu’re also not going to be able to do much to blow up Auschwitz, a Ruhr dam, or big targets like that. A Reaper’s armament may be accurate but it’s still small, relatively speaking; any heavy bomber carried far more destructive power, and a lowly dive bomber could drop at least as much armament with a pretty fair degree of accuracy. Stukas regularly took out individual tanks.
Reapers are best suited for high value small targets, like assassinations.
Kill Hitler. Sure, he might be replaced by another Nazi, but there is a chance it’ll shake things up enough to cause Germany to start looking for a way out.
As much as I’d love to missile Hitler, someone more intelligent might end up in charge, so it seems strategically more effective to kill off any good generals.
Sounds fine in principle. But how do you know any given effective general isn’t backed up by a deputy and a staff that make him effective? His deputy ascends to his rank and the unit performs even better. Congratulations on breaking it, Hero.
FWIW, the wiki does list a much higher service ceiling, so it’s understandable. And given most of the places its, well, Reaping dont have AAA or a/c that flying over 20k makes a difference in survivability. But could the Reaper, armed, and with a low fuel load, make it to 40-45 thousand or so? I get that endurance and maneuverability will go right into the toilet, but will the flight envelope permit an armed Reaper to get there?
Anyway, avoiding any A Sound of Thunder issues, and figuring out where Hitler even was 1 May 43—does anyone know? I couldn’t find out----I kill Hitler. And then I fly a thousand air miles or so to Moscow and send that evil fucker Stalin to hell 10 years early. Bonus points if I also kill that kiddie rapist Beria.
Maybe we can end WW2 a bit early, and head off some of the Cold War too.
But really, I don’t change a thing. Who knows would have happened if Hitler died then? Do we stop the Manhattan Project? Is Stalin, emboldened by discovering nuclear weapons first, inspired to “assist” Western Europe into embracing World Socialism? Do any of the near misses for exchanging nukes break the opposite way if Hitler croaks two years early? Too much risk, IMHO, in exchange for the good which might result.
I agree with the sentiments that a UAV doesn’t have sufficient armament to destroy more than a tank. So buildings, battleships, dams, etc. are all right out.
Hitler killed or otherwise sidelined enough of his own top generals and Nazi staff that I have a hard time believing any of those targets could be significant.
That really leaves Hitler alone as the only worthwhile target. I believe that Hitler was a lynch pin in the Nazi system. He commanded respect that no one else could get. (I’m reminded of a documentary made from Goebbel’s diaries in which he frequently writes about impressed he is with Hitler, and how much he detests Goering.) If anyone else had the political capital to keep the Nazis together, it’s not likely he’d achieve it without some kind of purge against his rivals.
One point that’s worth raising, though… Transporting a Reaper Drone back by itself is a pretty worthless tactic. Drones like that depend on a whole infrastructure of systems - remote control, GPS, etc. It’s like sending back a computer and forgetting to include the keyboard and monitor.
One of the conclusions drawn after the war was that the strategic bombing of Germany had been largely ineffective at cutting industrial production. The problem wasn’t that the targets weren’t getting hit, it was simply that the Germans could rebuild them faster than the Allies could bomb them. A single drone with about a quarter the bomb load of a single B-17 isn’t going to make even the slightest difference.
As for things like decapitating the Nazi leadership, by 1943 there was really no point in Europe at which the Allies couldn’t drop a few thousand pounds of high explosives if they needed to. The intelligence, not the capability of the drone, would be the major advantage of those particular options.
(Also, re: the service ceiling, my understanding is that they can send them up to very high altitude to reduce fuel consumption while in transit or loitering, but to actually do useful reconnaissance work or use their weapons they have to drop much lower.)
