And not all fuel is created equal. Americans produced a significantly better grade of aviation fuel which meant their planes performed better.
The Nazis did have a nuclear weapon program. It lagged behind the U.S. Manhattan Project, though exactly how far along they were is debated. There have been a lot of books published in recent years that claim the Nazis were a lot farther along than has been commonly believed, but the accuracy of those books is questionable. The most accepted answer is that, by the end of the war, Germany still had a long way to go in their quest to make a working nuclear weapon.
Germany made a lot of different synthetic fuels during the war, out of necessity, as the Allies kept bombing their fuel supplies. A lot of vehicles were converted to run on “wood gas”.
Wikipedia article on wood gas:
A couple of cars that were converted to run on wood gas (one is a Beetle):
Germany also synthesized fuel from coal using a couple of different processes.
The Germans did make the MG-42 which was simpler and cheaper.
Is this simply because of the greater availability of anti-tank guns or are there other factors?
How effective was infantry-tank cooperation at countering anti-tank guns?
Yes Germany made a lot of synthetic fuel during the war. The also invaded Russia to get control of their oil reserves.
so doesn’t anyone make synthetic fuel today and then you don’t have to defend arab countries to stay in their good graces and get their oil
the usual reason? it costs too much to make?
Actually, in Fighters the Nazis may have had a slight edge with the Me 109 and FW. Pretty good attack planes too. But the transports and heavy bombers of the Luftwaffe were poor.
When the -109 and -190 came out they were among the best but they were soon surpassed* by Allied (mainly US) fighters.
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- With the acknowledgement that comparing WW II fighters will generate an argument in any room with an occupancy > 1.
The later versions, at least, were always at least in the same league as the allied Fighters, IMHO. As you pointed out, endless debates could be held on the FW190 vs Mustang.
No such debate could be held on the merits of the B17 vs the He177 even tho the He looked Ok on paper. And even then, the Allies also had the B24, the Lancaster, etc.
Like the first generation P51 mustangs with American engines? It only became a good plane when fitted with rolls Royce Merlin engines.
I just had a very funny image of two radarmen watching German jets bearing down on them across the Channel, and one of them says, “Bollocks, those planes we’re about to shoot down sure are moving fast!”
The greater availability of anti-tank guns. Tanks on the offensive may or may not have run into other tanks; they were certain to run into anti-tank guns. No nation in WWII ever had more than ~15% or so of its ground forces in tank/armored/panzer/motorized/mechanized/panzer grenadier or such mobile formations. The remaining 85% or so were infantry, whose primary anti-tank weapon was the towed anti-tank gun.
It could be very effective, but anti-tank guns were going to take their pound of flesh regardless. It is noteworthy that the ratio of tanks to infantry in armored divisions of all nations moved heavily in the direction of more infantry during the war though; armored divisions at the start of the war generally proved to be tank heavy without enough supporting infantry and artillery. The 1939 Panzer Division Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E) had 8 panzer battalions, 2 motorized infantry battalions and a motorcycle battalion. The 1941 Panzer Division TO&E had drastically changed this ratio; there were now only 2 panzer battalions and 4 motorized infantry battalions (now stylized as panzer grenadiers).
Pretty much, yeah, although the economics may be shifting toward it being more practical. It’s called the Fischer-Tropsch process, if you want to look into it. South Africa used the technology to deal with apartheid-era trade embargoes, since they had a lot of coal.
That was more true in comparison to Japan than Germany, but yes, especially later in the war, lack of access to key alloying elements not available in their areas of control probably did hurt the quality of German steel. But the main reason was that the Americans had 100-octane gasoline (Jimmy Doolittle was chiefly responsible, in his work with Shell), for more power per pound of gas.
It really boils down to what trips your “ooh, shiny!” button. The Germans didn’t invent rockets (or even liquid-fueled rockets) or jets, they just mass-produced them.
The Germans made synthetic fuel, but the Americans made synthetic rubber. That’s at least a technological draw.
On the other hand, Henry Kaiser figured out how to build a ship with welds instead of rivets, that (usually) wouldn’t break apart, held more than 10,000 tons of cargo, get it from keel to launch in 24 days. . . and crank out more than 2,700 of them. The British developed the proximity fuze, and the Soviets built the T-34 tank. Overall I’d say Allied technology kicked Axis technology’s ass.
oh lordy no. They were clearly ahead of the curve on rockets. By quite a bit. The V2 was a supersonic suborbital gyro stable ballistic missile that reached 264,000 feet in altitude after a 65 second engine burn. It was WAAAAY beyond anything the Allies had.
The Germans had an air to air TOW missile (Ruhrstahl X-4) with an acoustic proximity fuze. It could be steered by the pilot toward B-17’s where it would explode at the sound of the B-17’s engines. It could be launched 2 miles from the planes making it a true stand off and deliver weapon. luckily the war ended before it officially went into service although it may have seen use in the closing weeks of the war.
You mean wire-guided. TOW, the BGM-71 Anti-tank Guided Missile, stands for Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire-guided. I’d stack the record of the Mark 24 mine (a deliberately deceptive name to conceal what it really was, an air dropped acoustic homing anti-submarine torpedo, much like the proximity fuze was called the VT or Variable Time fuze) up against the X-4 any day. On the one hand, an air-to-air missile that never saw service, was never delivered to the Luftwaffe, never became operational, never shot down a single plane and would have benefitted greatly from an actual radar proximity fuze like the kind the Allies had been blowing Japanese planes out of the skies with since 1943 and V-1 rockets out of the sky since 1944. On the other, an actual air dropped weapon that homed in on the sounds being produced by submarines that sank 37 submarines and damaged another 18.
Yes, the Americans and Allies invented or refined the design of a number of technologies. Bombsights, atomic bomb construction, even the design and mass production of pressurized, high flying giant aircraft capable of carrying a huge load of bombs compared to the crappy little things at the start of the war. There was radar, code breaking, and so on.
As mentioned, they did not get carried away with, for example, jets - because it was a new and unproven technology without a real mission. The Germans wanted something that could attack and pass through a bomber squadron before they knew what hit them. Range was much less relevant than speed. The Allies needed a fighter that could pace with the bomber squad in range and speed - jets were either too fast or took too much fuel, and were not necessarily effective defense fighters for the squadron. (As it was, IIRC, on some missions fighters had to abandon the squadron part-way to target, and risked running out of fuel over the channel on return; until the Allies could send up the covering fighters from the liberated French bases.)
Similarly, V1 and V2 were expensive terror weapons but militarily ineffective due to targeting problems. Presumably Hitler and his inner circle assumed that reigning terror on the helpless population would create a groundswell demand to end the war - since it worked so well during the Battle of Britain.
There is only one answer.
Your army is only as good as your slowest mode of transportation:
https://www.google.ca/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&docid=O_wwr65ATCboNM&tbnid=D5WE4mgPLLLOyM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fm.iwm.org.uk%2Fcollections%2Fitem%2Fobject%2F205195383&ei=Cn-1U9SIEJGKyASl2YK4DQ&bvm=bv.70138588,d.b2U&psig=AFQjCNEFl4z-EvBtIMuHwCM0yjvWPdPE3Q&ust=1404489852634399
Couple of points…
The marked German superiority in rocketry was largely due to one man, Werner von Braun, who also proved essential to the post-war US pursuit of the moon landing. I think it’s a historical fluke; whoever happened to have Werner von Braun in their population would have the chance to make V-2-like weapons if they wanted to pursue that course, and nobody else would. It’s a rare example of the difference one individual can make.
Also, I always caveat discussions about tank superiority with the thought, “superior for what purpose?” The Tiger was significantly better at tank-vs-tank duels, but drastically worse at traversing muddy or snowy terrain at speed (for which you’d want the Soviet T-34) or for long-distance high-speed advance without breaking down (for which you’d want the US M-4 Sherman). And Shermans were plenty good at fighting infantry, bunkers, and anything that wasn’t a specialized tank-killer.
And note that the whole point of the V1 and V2 was to drop a bomb on a city. They weren’t any more accurate than that. If you measure the success of a technology by how many bombs you can drop on a city, the V2 is nearly worthless compared to a B-17 or B-24. “High tech” is supposed to be an IMPROVEMENT on the old technology. If it costs more, doesn’t work as well, can’t be produced in the same numbers, and never gets to the front, then it isn’t a better weapon, it’s a worse weapon. If you had a choice between a factory cranking out V2s or a factory cranking out B-17s, you’d be an idiot not to choose the B-17s.
No, it really wasn’t. It’s more like an example of confusing shininess for utility. A V2 could deliver a 1000 kg payload to a random target in England. Once.
A B-17 could deliver a 2000 kg payload over a longer distance and drop it more accurately on a target. And it could keep doing it day after day.