Roxannna I think you're just failing to realize how ineffective a weapon
the Vengeance Weapons were. Given that the entire V-2 factory was staffed
by 12,000 Jewish slaves, you can imagine how well motivated they were to
produce a quality product. I've heard numbers around 1/3rd of V-2s didn't
even make it much past the launch site and another 1/3rd didn't even kill
anyone. The average kill rate of a V-2 rocket on the English was two people
per rocket and with every rocket the UK Government were able to use it as a
galvanizing propaganda event. The V Missiles couldn't target war specific
industries, they simply didn't have the guidance. You could have sent 10x
the V-2's and the English would have only resisted harder. The majority of
V-1's were shot down by English Spitfires.
The really interesting thing about the V-2 is that it likely shortened the
war substantially. In 1942 the Germans tested a six engine trans-atlantic
bomber they called the "Amerika Bomber" that came within 12 miles of NYC
harbor before successfully returning to Germany undetected. I've read in
Neal Tyson's newest book what Henery's already mentioned. The vengence
weapons program cost roughly the same as the Manhattan project. Imagine how
1943 would have looked vastly different had that money been spent turning
New York and Boston into giant structure fires or a Me 262 jet fighter in
full production.
On Mon, May 13, 2019 at 1:44 AM Uwe Klein <uwe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Am 13.05.2019 um 05:55 schrieb Henry Spencer:
On Sun, 12 May 2019, Ken wrote:insane leader and the lamp shade thing are hard connected.
...Very quaint but informative. Good thing they had an insane leader
or we would be speaking German or be a lamp shade.
In fairness, the V-2 was a product of the insanity: Germany spent
nearly as much on it as the US spent on the Manhattan Project, and the
V-2's military value was zero. The same amount of money and effort
spent on almost anything else -- e.g., faster development and higher
production volume of the much-cheaper V-1 -- would have accomplished
much more.
V2 ( or any like design ) really only made sense with a nuclear warhead.
cue post 1945 :-)
One consequence of the political insanity was that Nazi Germany had no
systematic process for deciding whether a new idea was worth pursuing.
If you could catch the attention of somebody big -- ideally Hitler --
you were golden even if your idea was garbage, and there was way too
much of that.
Attention competition and topping each other in depravity to have the
Fuehrers ear and eye ...
One could make a point by observing that von Braun "uber"insaned AH.
( Monomaniac wanting to go to space. .. or just a "turn where the wind
goes" guy. you decice.
Uwe
