Sure, but I was meaning more that it wasn’t just fighter aircraft that were defending the ships, beaches and port at Dunkirk.
Let’s not forget that Bagration was being fought at the same time as Overlord. The Soviets pretty much destroyed the German army in the east. After that, there was nothing anyone could have done that was going to stop the Soviets from overrunning Eastern Europe short of sending American and British troops into Eastern Europe to fight the Soviets (and even that would have been far from certain).
I mean the optimal play was to not encourage the Soviets from getting involved in the Far East so post-war there would be no CCCP or Communist North Korea to give us headaches.
The Spitfire was the UK’s highest performing fighter at the start of the war and it had a very limited range. The soldiers fleeing Dunkirk weren’t even aware of it because it was flying high altitude battles. This took fuel to get there. It just wasn’t the plane for the task and as all the other planes of the war it went through many modifications to meet their needs.
The plane they needed early in the war was the Mosquito which almost didn’t make it into production. it had a much further range.
This was an exploitable window that Germany failed to recognize. Had they taken the V3 plans from France in 1940 and put it into production earlier then they had a much better chance of forcing UK to sue for peace. Instead Hitler consistently pissed away time and resources on the other vengeance weapons and then doubled down on stupid with the underground factories for those weapons as well as the ME-262.
War is all about strategic use of resources. They could have abandoned the 262 and built the ME-163 rocket plane to bring down the bombers. That plane was a fairly simple design that could have been built anywhere. It would leave the ME-109 and FW-190 free to cover the 163 return glide. Toward the end of the war they came up with a 10 round 50mm mortar system for the 163 that was auto-triggered with a light sensor. As it flew under the bombers the sensor would trigger them. All the pilot had to do was fly under a wing and it would do immense damage. As with everything else it was too little too late.
Instead on focusing on a plane that was easy to build without the use of massive factories Hitler huge resources on projects that were not productive.
that should say 6 50 mm mortars and not 10.
We’ve already addressed this but you keep ignoring my posts:
Similar stats cover the Hurricane.
The point being that the RAF not giving much cover to the Dunkirk evacuation was nothing to do with range or on-station time; it was a calculated husbanding of planes and pilots for the upcoming BoB. Which turned out to have been correct and justified.
The V1 and V2 and ME262 were built from 1943 onwards and are nothing to do with the fantasy scenario of building the V3 in 1940.
But let’s explore that further; the Germans somehow build hundreds or thousands of V3s in 1940 and force the UK to the peace table (I dispute that would happen, but let it pass). What do they NOT build in order to do that? They need more tanks, planes, and trains to invade Russia successfully, not fewer.
And you’ve still not said from where Germany magics up triple the number of soldiers they had historically.
This’ll be my last comment on the subject. The facts are well established and have already been stated. Combat time of fighter aircraft was not a deciding factor at Dunkirk and the V3 was not a weapon that could’ve taken Britain out of the war.
The RAF, including Spitfires, Hurricanes and many, many other aircraft provided a huge amount of support at Dunkirk. The fighters weren’t patrolling the port and beaches where the troops were, they were intercepting the Luftwaffe further inland, for which they were well suited. Other aircraft were bombing ground and sea targets and providing other services.
The cover provided by the RAF did not establish air-superiority, that was impossible, but it did make it possible for the navy to provide the vessel capacity to lift as many troops as possible.
The V3 had no chance of being to put into service prior to Dunkirk and Dunkirk was the only meaningful chance that Germany had of forcing Britain to come to the table.
It was an interesting but very limited idea. To quote Blackadder
Sir Walter: Why, ’round the Cape, the rain
beats down so hard it makes your head bleed!Edmund: So, some sort of hat is probably in order.
and had it been implemented in anything like the numbers needed to cause concern it would have diverted resources from other, more critical programs. (a common theme in Nazi germany)
they don’t waste assets building the V1, V2 Me-262 and Schwerer Gustav Rail gun. Hitler was obsessed with making the production facilities for these impenetrable with underground factories . The V3 was a much easier weapon to construct.
In order to utilize it for the purpose it was intended it needed to be built early in the war when they could defend the locations. they could have bombed London continuously with it.
With the UK out of the way there is no US involvement in the war. All the assets used to fight the UK (and the United States) are now directed toward Russia.
And all the assets the UK and US could produce were given to the Russians to stop the Nazis while conveniently also trashing all of the western USSR where the fighting was going on. And killing vast number of Russians.
Yes but if you take the UK out of the picture then there is no reason to back Russia and there is no northern route to supply them. Russia was not our friend.
Even with a 2-front war and support from the US Russia took a massive beating from Germany.
They were in development prior to the beginning of the war as was the ME-163. They took assets away that could have produced more of their already well designed aircraft. What it comes down to is the best use of resources. They started the war with inferior tanks but they were still deadly when used as part of the Blitzkrieg.
The northern route may have been eliminated, but almost half of the Lend-Lease matériel supplied to the Soviet Union went via the Pacific Route. It was a somewhat arcane process, especially after the US entered the war against Japan — since Japan and the Soviet Union were not at war until August 1945 — but it did move vast quantities of food, raw materials and logistical equipment such as trucks and railroad stock (Stalin did call out the value of US-supplied transportation, particularly the Studebaker “Victory Truck,” on at least one occasion). While these weren’t weapons per se, providing them freed up Soviet manufacturing that would otherwise be dedicated to producing them.
It is true that “Russia was not our friend” in a geopolitical sense (and everyone from Roosevelt on down knew it), but especially after Hitler declared war on the US it was in our strategic interest to keep them in the war.
Yes, but we could have gotten to Berlin first, etc.
Yeah, it has been shown that none of that stuff makes people sue for peace.
Mind you, the U-Boat war made Churchill worried.
Right, good points.
Sure, but Hitler likely would not have declared if the UK was out of the picture. The USN was fighting an undeclared war vs the German U-boats.
No, actually it hasn’t been shown because it never came to pass. If London was hit with a bomb every 6 seconds with no end in sight then you could make that statement.
The V3 was low tech, easy to manufacture, modular in assembly, did not require sequential triggers, and the gun barrels did not wear from firing because it used sabots to seal the projectile. It was already a developed weapon that required little manpower to operate and no direct invasion of England. It’s literally all the other terror weapons wrapped up in a bow with a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the resources needed.
That’s very doubtful. The Soviets were closer to Berlin and had substantially more troops. If it had become a race, they would most likely have won.
Again - all those came out AFTER the invasion of Russia. They could not possibly have helped it. The development effort put into them before then could not possibly have been converted into a tripling of German resources in Russia. Flat out impossible.
AND your proposal is to build hundreds of V3s which would have been utterly useless in the Russian campaign, and taken resources away from what they actually need there - planes, tanks, and trains. And of course men.
I’m with you I think, we’re obviously talking to a brick wall here.
But the agreements about occupation zones had already been made. An earlier arrival of the Western Allies wouldn’t have changed what happened subsequently, unless one supposes they would have broken those agreements.
And again, they were all started before the war and the resources used on them were substantial. Really, how hard is this to understand. And unless you’re disagreeing that a 2-front war was a drain on Germany that means they needed to make it a 1 front war by removing the UK. The ONLY vengeance weapon capable of doing that early in the war was the V3.
By removing the UK and the 2-front war then it’s now a 1 front war. If the Russians lost 15% of it’s population on a 2 front war with support from the US it’s not going to be far worse with the full weight of the German forces.
I’m skeptical about the V-3. According to Wikipedia, it was projected to have a rate of fire of 1 shot every 5 minutes. That’s slow. The projectile weighed 310 pounds; nothing terribly destructive about that. It looks difficult to correct it’s aim, even if you could spot fall of shot—and firing across the Channel, spotting is impossible. Even if the Brits were cooperative and reported where each shell landed, a relatively light 310 pound shell will drift a lot while in the air for what, 5 minutes? The spread from one shot to the next would be huge. They’d be lucky to hit London.
And barrel wear would be off the charts, another source of inaccuracy. The shell doesn’t contact the barrel, but the sabot does. Muzzle velocity was 4900 ft/sec, where 3000 ft/sec was near the upper limit for accurate artillery. The barrel sees a lot of whipping at high velocities, so yet another source of inaccuracy.
Enough to triple Germany’s effort on the eastern front? Including manpower? No.
No it wasn’t. And why would that effort not drain the same or more resources as work on the V1, V2 and Me262 did historically?
Which didn’t arrive in any quantity until the Russians had already beaten the Germans, by not losing to them.
What?