Crazy german stealth fighters from WW2.

[ECA]

A replica on which a documentary has also been a part of:

Crazy!

Never made it into mass production or finished development but this would have given the germans 1960s/1970s type US jet equivalents back at the end of WW2.

 

[Ctuchik]

aye, if they had managed to get even half of the shit they were working on into mass production we'd have been in some deeeeep shit

 

[Raven]

Never made it into mass production or finished development but this would have given the germans 1960s/1970s type US jet equivalents back at the end of WW2.

Weren't they pretty much unflyable though? I saw a documentary about stealth bombers which said they needed tons of computers and gyros to keep them from flipping over.

 

[DaGaffer]

Wasn't really a stealth design though, the idea behind radar invisibility was poorly understood back then. And no, it probably wouldn't have worked anyway, Northrop had a flying wing jet in 1947 (follow on from a prop design that flew in 1942), and so did Armstrong-Whitworth in the UK, neither was successful because as Ctuchik says, without fly-by-wire they were pretty uncontrollable (the Northrop design got around the problem by being absolutely massive - 172 foot wingspan).

A lot of these German jet ideas looked very cool but were toys - the Germans kept looking for war-winning super-weapons while the Americans and Russians just pumped out thousands of cheap and reliable designs, and as Stalin said "quantity has a quality all of its own".

(edit - as you might have guessed, I'm a bit a plane geek, goes back to my BAe days).

 

[Trem]

I think theres an old Nazi missile type thing on display at Cosford, they never got it ready in time but my dad said if the Germans had we would all be speaking a different language now.

Didn't they almost make a huge fuck off cannon that could reach England from France as well?

Scary, well, would of been scary if we were alive back then. Mind you we might all be in a better bloody state if they had won the war.

 

[DaGaffer]

Scary, well, would of been scary if we were alive back then. Mind you we might all be in a better bloody state if they had won the war.

You don't really mean that.

 

[Insane]

I think theres an old Nazi missile type thing on display at Cosford, they never got it ready in time but my dad said if the Germans had we would all be speaking a different language now.

I always thought the reason most of the superweapons never got completed was due to the saturation bombings destroying key facilities in germany?

Didn't they almost make a huge fuck off cannon that could reach England from France as well?

Those "Superguns" like Dora and Schwerer_Gustav?
(Wiki article here )

Scary, well, would of been scary if we were alive back then.

Should we not just ask Jup?

 

[Trem]

Mind you we might all be in a better bloody state if they had won the war.

Just to clarify on that comment.

I meant our government, I meant could it be any worse than who is in charge now, watching, wanting to know everything we do, trying to control everything we wish to be or do etc. Are who is in charge throughout the world now really any better than them back then?

It was tongue in cheek and in no way aimed at any race of people.

Honestly do you really think I meant anything nasty by it?

Oh wait, is it because I said "state" does that read like I mean the state as in our country? I meant state as in status "look at the bloody state you are in...." etc. Or is that just a Stoke phrase?

 

[Dark Orb Choir]

my brother worked at british aerospace in rainham/chatham/medway or some other weirdly named place, he worked on the fly by wire project for the harrier jumpjet, he now he writes software for a firm that makes full flight simulators.


on topic, the space race/rockets/jet engines were mostly created using the german scientist brians that were behind this type of stuff in WW2

 

[00dave]

Brians, I thought they were mostly called Hans or something.

 

[Jupitus]

Should we not just ask Jup?

My Dad also work for British Aerospace a while back... he was coding early CAD systems for them, and earning more than Barnes Wallace who still worked there :kissit:

 

[Dark Orb Choir]

its the newly acquired website


www.weshouldjustaskjup.com

 

[Trem]

My dad was obsessed with this sort of stuff, I did love going Cosford air show etc but I was never really *that* interested. I don't know if its because I'm getting older now but this stuff is starting to interest me. It really is scary what could of happened.

My nan has some horrible stories from the war, she once saw a german pilot impaled on some railings after he had ejected from his plane.

 

[Dark Orb Choir]

i lolled as i miss-read ejected,

i too am fascinated by all this stuff, reading about it now on wikipedia

 

[Jupitus]

Am I the only one looking at the first picture and thinking Independance Day?

 

[JingleBells]

Wasn't really a stealth design though, the idea behind radar invisibility was poorly understood back then. And no, it probably wouldn't have worked anyway, Northrop had a flying wing jet in 1947 (follow on from a prop design that flew in 1942), and so did Armstrong-Whitworth in the UK, neither was successful because as Ctuchik says, without fly-by-wire they were pretty uncontrollable (the Northrop design got around the problem by being absolutely massive - 172 foot wingspan).

A lot of these German jet ideas looked very cool but were toys - the Germans kept looking for war-winning super-weapons while the Americans and Russians just pumped out thousands of cheap and reliable designs, and as Stalin said "quantity has a quality all of its own".

(edit - as you might have guessed, I'm a bit a plane geek, goes back to my BAe days).

Fun fact of the day, that 1947 Northrop flying wing (YB-49) has exactly the same size wingspan as the B2 bomber (another flying wing)

 

[Lazarus]

My Dad also work for British Aerospace a while back... he was coding early CAD systems for them, and earning more than Barnes Wallace who still worked there :kissit:

did he bring lots of ticker tape back for you to play with?

 

[Jupitus]

Yeah - and a few years later punch cards

 

[fettoken]

Wonder what would have happend if they got their hands on a few nukes, and implemented the technology into their crazy superweapons. I am thinking Red Alert scenarios with Einstein etc.

 

[ECA]

Just a bump to say the documentary is available on most good streaming/torrent sites how naughty of them

 

[throdgrain]

The Germans were a lot closer to nukes than we gave them credit for.

Had they been allied to the first real balistic missile (i.e the V2) there would of course been hell to pay

Thing with the Germans though, they had to have the best stuff and give it "look we are the master race look at my huge tank" etc.

Truth of the matter is, they may well have been better off building a lot more Pzr IVs instead. They were a tank comparable to the Sherman (though not the Sherman Firefly) and if they hadnt spent such a lot of money on Panthers and Tigers (and indeed King Tigers) they sure would have had a LOT more usable tanks for the battles in Normandy and in Russia. The T34 was a much better tank than the Panzer IV of course, and better than the Sherman too, but the German crews were far superior to the Russians, which could have levelled things out quite a lot.

I went to Bovington the other day to see the only running Tiger in the world driving about, certainly impressive, I love all that, but I wonder whether 6 Panzer IVs against 6 Shermans might have been better odds for the Germans than 6 Shermans against 1 Tiger. Because we know what happened then - 4 or 5 knocked out Shermans, one knocked out Tiger, but - crucially - 6 more Shermans in replacement next day, and no replacement Tiger

From a strategic point of view I'm sure Hitler would have been better off continuing his attacks on us rather than beginning the assault on Russia. He had a nice deal going on with the commies and would have been the master of the greater part of Europe, and would of had time to consolidate with more Tigers and later more Panthers too, plus the 262 jet fighters and all the other stuff. Would we have still won? Who knows? I suspect it would have ended a draw.

Also remember the Germans still claimed a kinship to us, and especially towards the end of the war hoped we would join them against Russia. I know that sounds rediculous now.

Lets face it, they were both as bad as each other. Hitler killed 6 million jews, Stalin killed 5 million of his own people.

 

[ECA]

Lets face it, they were both as bad as each other. Hitler killed 6 million jews, Stalin killed 5 million of his own people.

Stalin was FAR worse than hitler in terms of # of deaths.

The number is generally estimated to be 20-50 million, with around 20-30 of those attributed to the Stalin era.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

We've never had an Independance Day I don't think?

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Stalin was FAR worse than hitler in terms of # of deaths.

The number is generally estimated to be 20-50 million, with around 20-30 of those attributed to the Stalin era.

Aye he was merciless to his own people, though he did pull off one of the cleverer uses of territory as a weapon in WWII at a massive cost of life.