“We had flying guided missiles, a rocket plane that had even greater speed than a jet plane, an anti-aircraft missile homing by thermal radiation, a sea torpedo capable of chasing a ship, guided by the noise of the propellers. Aircraft designer Lippisch prepared drawings of a jet aircraft that far surpassed the then level of aircraft construction - a flying wing. We can say that we experienced difficulties from the abundance of projects and developments …”- wrote the Minister of Industry of the Third Reich Albert Speer in his memoirs.
Herr Speer, we know that you had super-heavy tanks, highly autonomous submarines, infrared sights, ballistic missiles, Dr. Zenger's suborbital bomber, secret "discs" and bases in Antarctica … the fascist bastards even sent an expedition to Tibet and made contact with the outside the civilization of Alpha Centauri.
We also know that not a single operating nuclear reactor has been found among the ruins of the Third Reich. The head of the German atomic project Werner Heisenberg (Nobel laureate in 1933) admitted that German scientists have no idea about the technology for producing weapons-grade plutonium. Anti-aircraft super-missiles "Wasserfall" did not shoot down a single aircraft, and German super-heavy tanks forever remained in world history as a result of the victory of technology over common sense. Wunderwafele, in one word.
After the victory, the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition got rich trophies. Including fantastic technical innovations, objects from the future. In many designs, the laws of nature were completely ignored, units of the "wunderwaffe" managed to take part in hostilities, proving their complete inconsistency in front of the less revolutionary, but well-debugged and mass-produced equipment of the allies. However, the very fact of the existence of such projects was striking and suggested that the Third Reich was close to a revolutionary breakthrough in technology. The myth of the great achievements of the fascists was eagerly taken up by the press, which knew how to make money from unhealthy sensations.
In fact, there is no reason to speak of the technical superiority of the Third Reich, on the contrary, it is fair to admit that at the end of the war German science seriously lagged behind its opponents. Most of Germany's fantasy "super-weapons" designs reflected intentions, not capabilities. At the same time, the allies had no less advanced models of equipment, which, unlike the German "wunderwaffe", were put into mass production and proved their high efficiency in battle. This is easy to verify with several examples.
Luftwaffe
February 25, 1945. In the vicinity of the Gilberstadt airbase, jet Me.262s are falling with a howl and roar - American Mustangs trapped the group on takeoff and shot six helpless Messerschmitts that did not have time to pick up speed …
For the first time with a German jet fighter, the Allies met on July 25, 1944: on that day, the Me.262 unsuccessfully attacked the Royal Air Force reconnaissance Mosquito. It is noteworthy that two days later, on July 27, 1944, the Gloucester-Meteor jet rocket made its first combat mission, intercepting the V-1 cruise missile over the English Channel. The British aircraft turned out to be much more perfect than its German counterpart. Meteora took part in the Korean War and were operated all over the world until the end of the 70s. But the public loves loud sensations - all the glory went to Messerschmitt.
In addition to the Me.262, the German aviation industry has prepared many jet aircraft projects:
- blitz bomber Arado-234
- "people's fighter" Henschel-162 "Salamander"
- bomber with a forward-swept wing "Junkers-287"
- "flying wing" of the Horten brothers Ho.229
The only problem was the lack of reliable and high-thrust jet engines. The Germans had only two types of power plants available: BMW 003 and Jumo 004 - they supported all projects of "super-aircraft". Both were extremely fire hazardous and did not provide the required flight characteristics. And without normal engines, all plans became meaningless - and indeed, most of the German "super-aircraft" did not go beyond experimental models.
Silver bird
May 9, 1946, Berlin-Gatow airbase. A cortege of Maybach limousines is moving along the slender rows of the Me.262 - Hermann Goering himself will be present at the launch of the America Bomber. In the light of the searchlights, a huge overpass is visible - the interlacing of steel trusses originates in the eastern part of the landfill, and rapidly going up, rests against the cloudy sky in the West. Where the hated America stretches beyond the horizon. An orbital ship with an upper stage is installed on the flyover. In a moment, a fire-breathing team of 5 engines with a total thrust of 600 tons will tear off the spacecraft, like a hurricane rips off billboards, and carry it into the velvet blackness of space.
In 8 minutes "America-bomber" climbed to an altitude of 260 kilometers and at a speed of 22 thousand km / h headed for New York. After 3500 kilometers from the launch point, the suborbital bomber makes the first descent, and, pushing off the dense layers of the atmosphere at an altitude of 40 km, rises again into low-earth orbit. An hour later, the radio operators heard the intermittent voice of the pilot: "My Fuhrer, in your name!.. US territory!.. dive!.. goodbye, dying with honor!..". A fiery meteorite swept across the sky and crashed into the skyscrapers of Manhattan …
From the first day of the war, the Reich leadership gnashed its teeth in impotent rage, trying to find a means to strike at New York, Washington, other major US cities, the military-industrial complexes of the Urals and Siberia - unattainable targets for German aviation. “The operational-tactical complex“V-2”, having a range of about 300 km, was useless for solving this problem. Werner von Braun worked on the creation of an intercontinental ballistic missile for the A-9 / A-10 project throughout the war, alas, the technological level of the German industry of those years did not allow the creation of anything larger than the "V-2" Peenemünde missile test site further hampered the work. The four-engine long-range bomber Ta.400 did not meet expectations either - by all accounts, it had no chance of reaching the American coast.
The last hope of the fascist leadership was Dr. Zenger's suborbital bomber. The enchanting project even now boggles the imagination.
“100 tons of solid fire! The plane is thrown by its hellish engine to a terrible height and falls down in supersonic, but does not cut into the atmosphere, but ricochets against it like a flat stone from the surface of the water. It hits, bounces and flies on! And so two or three times! Strong idea! " - the designer Alexey Isaev, the creator of the first domestic rocket plane BI-1, told about the German project "Silbervogel". Fortunately, the complete unfeasibility of this project was understandable even to the most stubborn schizophrenics from the then leadership of the Reich.
In terms of innovation, Dr. Zenger's bomber could be a good storyline for a science fiction novel. Just a beautiful dream idea. Zenger's apparatus is no more realistic than the starship from the Andromeda Nebula - despite its apparent practicality, no detailed calculations have been carried out.
Kriegsmarine
On April 30, 1945, the submarine U-2511 under the command of ace A. Schnee went on a military campaign (he sank 21 ships during his career). In the Faroe Islands, the boat met with a group of British cruisers and destroyers, but for some reason refused to attack and returned to the base a few days after the end of the war was announced.
This was the end of the first and last military campaign of the XXI type submarines, better known as the "Electrolodka". Despite its sophisticated electronic equipment and new-type storage batteries, which made it possible to move for many hours in a submerged position at a speed of 15 knots, the "Electrolodka" in a real battle was frightened by destroyers and submarine hunters. Sometimes an excuse is given that the U-2511 "Electrolodka" abandoned the torpedo attack due to good intentions - on May 4, 1945, Admiral Doenitz ordered the cessation of hostilities. Maybe so … although this story has a tragicomic continuation: ten "Electric boats", trying to break through to Norway in early May 1945, were discovered and sunk by Allied aircraft. Their latest developments did not help the Germans … The problem could be solved only by a nuclear reactor on board the boat, but before its creation the Germans needed several more years.
German submariners achieved tremendous success during the Second World War - they accounted for 50% of naval victories. In total, the underwater killers sank 2,759 vessels with a total tonnage of 14 million gross register tons and 123 warships (of which 60 were oil tankers, minesweepers and trawlers, formally assigned to the navy).
An interesting situation arises here: in the first years of the war, German submariners, who had only 50-60 boats in service, managed to sink enemy ships with a total displacement of under 2 million tons. In 1944, having 500 combat-ready boats, the Kriegsmarine with great difficulty managed to sink ships with a total displacement of "only" 700 thousand tons! At the same time, in 1940, the Germans lost 21 submarines, in 1944 they lost 243 submarines in a year! It seems that fifty escort aircraft carriers, constant air patrols and the British Asdic sonar have become more formidable "super-weapons" than all the advanced developments of German shipbuilders.
Note. During the war years, the Kriegsmarine lost 768 submarines. 28,000 German submariners have sunk into the ocean forever.
Fritz and daughter Reina
The Germans really achieved tremendous success in everything related to missile technology (perhaps this is the only area where they succeeded) In addition to the well-known "V-1" and "V-2", Nazi Germany was actively developing anti-ship missiles and guided aerial bombs "Fritz- X "and" Henschel-293 ", guided air-to-air missile X-4, as well as 3 types of anti-aircraft missile systems" Wasserfall "(German waterfall)," Schmetterling "(German Reina's daughter).
Guided bombs achieved the greatest success - their use caused the death of dozens of ships, and only the total superiority of the allies in the air made it possible to avoid a big pogrom during the landing in Normandy.
The guided air-to-air missile was put into mass production and, in theory, could be used in the last weeks of the war, although there is no reliable mention of this weapon. 1000 missiles of this type were found in an underground storage.
The Schmetterling project is very interesting - it is not an anti-aircraft missile, but a whole unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a flight range of 35 kilometers. However, the Germans did not manage to create the main thing - an accurate and reliable control system. Attempts to guide missiles based on the acoustic noise of propellers and thermal radiation have completely failed. As a result, the Germans settled on a radar guidance method using two ground-based radars, but there was not enough time to refine the system. By the way, during tests carried out in 1944, out of 59 launches of "butterflies" 33 were emergency. The logical result is that not a single plane was shot down by a German anti-aircraft missile.
Iron kaput
"If you are talking about the" Royal Tiger ", then I do not see any real improvements - heavier, less reliable, less maneuverable." - from the book "Tigers in the Mud", by Otto Karius (one of the best tank aces, on his account more than 150 destroyed armored vehicles).
Indeed, the German tank industry suffered from a similar problem to the aviation industry. The Germans could create any project:
- super-heavy tank "Lev" with a 105 mm gun, weight 76 tons
- anti-aircraft tank E-100 "Alligator" with two paired (!) 88 mm guns
- heavy tank destroyer "Jagdtigr" with a 128 mm gun
The only problem was the lack of a suitable transmission and suspension, the situation was aggravated by the immoderate growth in the mass of combat vehicles - until the end of the war, the German tank builders did not learn how to create compact structures and save forces and resources.
Of all of the above "wunderwaffe", only the heavy self-propelled gun "Jagdtigr" on the chassis of the tank of the same name (produced from 70 to 79 vehicles) was launched into small-scale production, which became the heaviest type of German armored vehicles. 75 tons - even the powerful chassis of the Tiger could hardly withstand such a mass, the vehicle was clearly overloaded and even the colossal firepower (the Jagdtiger penetrated the Sherman tank head-on from a distance of 2500 m) could not save the situation. "Jagdtiger" was falling apart right before our eyes. After a short march, the gun was unbalanced, the suspension broke, the gearbox could not withstand the colossal loads. It's funny, but each car was originally provided with 2 charges of explosives to destroy a faulty ACS. The Germans guessed correctly that the "Jagdtigr" would not be able to withstand a single bridge, so they immediately equipped all the vehicles with a snorkel to move along the river beds. A real "wunderwaffle".
Investigation results
Having robbed dozens of countries and peoples, the Ubermenshi Aryans did not create a single revolutionary model of technology, nothing fundamentally new and unusual. All "superweapons" projects were, at best, of dubious combat value, and at worst, a set of unrealistic fantasies.
War is the engine of progress. And German industry was essentially doing what it had to do. Another question is that the rate of development of the military-industrial complexes of the countries of the Anti-Hitler Coalition exceeded the rate of development of the military-industrial complex of fascist Germany. The Germans have learned to make sophisticated but useless rockets. They were able to produce high-quality optics, gyroscopes and radio electronics. The engine building was well developed (jet engines do not count), the aviation industry, electrical engineering, and the chemical industry were at a high level; a huge number of submarines were built. The Germans had an amazing organization and efficiency, all German products were of high quality and attention to detail. But! There is nothing fantastic here - this is how the industry of a highly developed industrial country should have worked.
In fact, at the beginning of the war, the Germans managed to create a number of successful types of weapons that were an order of magnitude superior in effectiveness to the weapons of all their opponents. The Junkers-87 "Stuka" dive bomber, the "Tiger" heavy tank - despite its complexity and high cost, it was a powerful, well-protected and maneuverable vehicle. Good self-propelled artillery mounts based on medium tanks - Stug III, Stug IV, Hetzer (based on a Czech tank), Jagdpanther … The outstanding achievements of German designers were the creation of a single MG34 machine gun and an intermediate cartridge 7, 92x33 for the first assault rifle. A completely simple and ingenious weapon "Panzerfaust" cost the lives of thousands of tanks. As you may have noticed, there is no "wunderwaffe" in this list - the most common types of weapons, which, with high-quality performance and competent use, have turned into masterpieces.
