From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Mar 23 2003 - 11:48:18 MST
--- Technotranscendence <neptune@mars.superlink.net> wrote:
> On Sunday, March 23, 2003 2:31 AM Reason reason@exratio.com wrote:
> >> The US and the Russians ended up in a race to develop
> >> sea launched nukes. They ended in a tie, with both
> >> nations fielding a semi-workable system in 1960. But
> >> the Nazis demonstrated a missile that could be launched
> >> from a submerged U-boat, fly to a distant target and
> >> hit with great accuracy, way back in 1943. Given
> >> they had no computers, that was one hellll of an
> >> accomplishment for those days. Grandpa was smart.
Depends on what you consider 'great accuracy'. Remember that the Norden
bombsight was considered so state of the art that its existence was a
secret, yet it still required the dropping of hundreds of bombs to hit
one target. The V-2, armed only with a TNT warhead, needed accuracy of
a hundred meters or so to have any hope of effectiveness, while nuclear
armed ICBMs had little need even of that degree of accuracy, since they
had blast radii measured in miles.
Weapon accuracy only became a desirable trait in the Vietnam era, when
the first laser guided bombs were deployed and with the propaganda war,
collateral damage started to become an issue. There was also an
accuracy contest in the area of air-to-air missiles, since so few
Vietnam era US fighters were armed with internal cannon, and the
air-to-air missiles tended to be so unreliable.
The MacNamara 'whiz kids' did the first studies of cost effectiveness
of weapons systems and turned around the existing paradigm, from one of
mass collateralism with heavy weapons and high accuracy with infantry
weapons to high accuracy with heavy weapons and mass force
multiplication with infantry weapons.
The German U-boat launched missile could not be launched from a
submerged position, either. They required that the sub be surfaced,
while the US and Soviet systems launched while submerged.
However, the V-1 was used as a cruise missile platform by the US and
the Soviets in the post-war era for a number of years until domestic
designs were fielded that were usually supersonic.
> >
> > The British developed applications of electromagnetism
> > and information theory (radar, the first computers,
> > degaussing techniques, etc) while the Germans were
> > building on materials science and industrial production
> > (better tanks, submarines, guns, rocketry, jet engines,
> > etc).
> >
> > Russian tanks were better than German tanks by 1944.
>
> I think part of this was that the Germans got comfortable being in
> the lead and didn't think the war would last that long.
Actually, Hitler specifically ordered that new weapons systems be
cancelled in late 1940, thus delaying the introduction of many of the
wonderweapons we now associate with the Nazi war machine until a point
at which they could have absolutely no significant impact on the
outcome of the war. He thought that the war would be over by 1942 with
Germany victorious, and he wanted to focus resources on finishing the
war and getting prepared for construction of his Germania european
socialist state capital.
> The Allies, on the
> other hand, seemed to go whole hog. I guess a generalization can be
> made here: nothing fails like early success.
>
> Also, for many advances, the Germans did rely on espionage, sometimes
> in very tricky ways.
True. All of the systems that Von Braun integrated into the V-2 system
were originally invented by Goddard here in the US, and Von Braun
admitted that German embassy staff was employed in obtaining US patent
reprints of such technologies.
=====
Mike Lorrey
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
- Gen. John Stark
"Pacifists are Objectively Pro-Fascist." - George Orwell
"Treason doth never Prosper. What is the Reason?
For if it Prosper, none Dare call it Treason..." - Ovid
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