Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: udet on April 17, 2003, 06:32:50 PM
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Luftwaffe 1946 (http://www.luft46.com/)
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what a cool site!
there's some wild stuff there.
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dam..some of those look badd asssss
thx god hitler was an idiot sometimes..
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yeah lucky for the Allies they never managed to kill him and put someone like Rommel in charge
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Lucky for the Germans that he did live long enough to see Berlin overrun in April/May of '45. Had Germany held on til August we might (read that LIKELY) would have seen Germany being the victims of the world's first atomic bombs.
Not a nice thought, but remember, the USA, Britian, and the USSR had already decided that defeating Germany first was the goal.
Would the A-bombs have been used in Europe if the war there had lasted longer?
Much as I hate to say it, I think they would have. :(
Anyway, back to the website: Pretty interesting planes there.
Ya read a lot of speculation about "what if" Germany had lasted long enough to get the likes of the Ta-183 into production and service............folks who seem to do the speculating always just "assume" that the Allies would have been screwed.
Try this out:
"What if" the US had decided to pull their heads out of their rectums in, oh, 1937, and started pushing for the development of the planes that eventually became the P-51, F4-U, F6F, P-47, and when Germany got frisky back in the early war America had sent some of them over to the other side of the pond? Say, in 1940, the P-51B is already operational, the P-47D's are in service and operating in England, etc.............
Would Germany have been stopped in Poland, or Belgium, before they could conquer the remainder of Western Europe?
What if scenarios are amusing, but quite useless, other than for entertainment.
"What if" Stalin hadn't executed the majority of his best and most experienced officers? "What if" (and I am trying to remember this correctly) the designer of the La5 and La7 had not been locked up for political crimes, and had seen what was needed and the LW had been met on the Russian border by planes of equal quality? How far would the Germans have been able to advance into Russia before being chopped to ribbons?
Just curious.......... ;)
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Even with their obsolescent I-16 fighters, I-153 fighter-bombers, and slightly more modernized MiG-3s, LaGG-1s and LaGG-3s, the Russians didn't fair "that" badly. The problem wasn't really their planes at all, as most of them were nimble enough to evade the German aircraft- but the aforementioned purges is what really screwed Russia over. As you mentioned Eddie, they lost a LOT of good officers and pilots and this led to an abundance of "fresh out of training" pilots on the front lines. Not to mention these pilots fresh out of training had their training period cut severely short so that there would be enough pilots at the front lines to counter Hitler's threat.
The experienced pilots in I-16s really gave the German pilots a LOT of problems, they knew how to evade the German's initial attack and then get onto their tail just long enough to shoot the 109s up and force them to re-think their tactics or head home.
In any event, what-ifs are a neat scenario to play out. However, at the stage Germany was that late in the war (low on experienced pilots, running low on fuel, running low on ball bearings, etc) they were on their last leg anyhow. These wonder weapons would of advanced technology on the allied side significantly (US already had P80s by the end of the ETO war and Russia had some neat experimental aircraft too, Britain had the Meteor) so we would probably see some strange aircraft coming out from the allied side too.
War would of lasted a year more max, but "winning it" just wasn't in their cards.
-SW
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I have one of the books off the site called Alternate Luftwaffe. It skims along the timeline of the Luftwaffe that might have been if small things were different. http://www.luft46.com/jbbooks.html
There are some really nice models of the German X planes that can be purchased through the site as well.