• tal@lemmy.today
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    11 hours ago

    The US definitely had a bigger stick there, but I think that I’d have listed different weapons for Germany. If Germany intended to build a weapon to specifically hit the US, it’d have probably been more like the Amerikabomber or their suicide multistage ballistic missile. Heavy tanks were important to fight the Soviet Union on open terrain.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerikabomber

    The Amerikabomber (English: America bomber) project was an initiative of the German Ministry of Aviation (Reichsluftfahrtministerium) to obtain a long-range strategic bomber for the Luftwaffe that would be capable of striking the United States (specifically New York City) from Germany, a round-trip distance of about 11,600 km (7,200 mi).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aggregat

    The Aggregat series (German for “Aggregate”) was a set of ballistic missile designs developed in 1933–1945 by a research program of Nazi Germany’s Army (Heer).

    It was proposed to use an advanced version of the A9 to attack targets on the US mainland from launch sites in Europe, for which it would need to be launched atop a booster stage, the A10.

    It was considered that existing guidance systems would not be accurate enough over a distance of 5,000 km, and it was decided to make the A9 piloted. The pilot was to be guided on his terminal glide towards the target by radio beacons on U-boats and by automatic weather stations landed in Greenland and Labrador.

    Maybe the rocket U-boat:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_U-boat

    Plans for the rocket U-boat involved an attack on New York City using newly invented V-2 rockets; Unmanned and unpowered containers with V-2 rockets inside were to be towed within range of the target by a conventional U-boat then set up and launched from its gyro-stabilized platform. With thoughts of hitting targets in the United States and in the United Kingdom, a 32 m (105 ft)-long container of 500-tons displacement was to be towed behind a submerged U-boat.

    Of course, Germany never got around to actually building those, but then, the US didn’t get its portable star done by V-E Day either and wound up just using it on Japan.

    Probably just as well, given the combination of the US intending to ramp atomic bomb production up to dozens a month, and Hitler refusing to surrender under any circumstance. That combination could have wound up getting pretty dark.

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      One of the nazi missiles were so effective at piercing armor that they consistently failed to sink ships: they passed through the hull and out the other side before exploding, dealing minimal damage.

    • weeeeum@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      I still think heavy tanks were largely a blunder due to how expensive building them was, and how difficult it was to transport, tow and repair them.

      They were so heavy their engines were constantly giving out and they were dead in the water.

      • Aqarius@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        Not a blunder, just a very specialised tool with a very niche purpose of “being the tip of the spear in a setpiece assault on a heavily fortified strongpoint”. Now, them trying to convert their entire tank force to heavy tanks, that a different issue.

  • mmddmm@lemm.ee
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    17 hours ago

    You know, many of the people that created the portable star were happily working in Germany by the time Hitler decided that Quantum Mechanics was a Jew plot against the country…