Wunderwaffe: Bluff or Third Reich Superweapon?
“We had flying guided projectiles, a rocket glider, which had an even greater speed than a jet plane, an anti-aircraft missile homing from thermal radiation, a sea torpedo capable of pursuing a ship, guided by the noise of propellers. Aircraft designer Lippish prepared the drawings of a jet plane, far ahead of the current level of aircraft construction - the flying wing. We can say we experienced difficulties from the abundance of projects and developments ... ”- wrote in his memoirs the Minister of Industry of the Third Reich Albert Speer.
Herr Speer, we know that you had superheavy Tanks, highly autonomous submarines, infrared sights, ballistic missiles, Dr. Zenger's suborbital bomber, secret “disks” and bases in Antarctica ... the fascist bastards even sent an expedition to Tibet and came into contact with the extraterrestrial civilization of Alpha Centauri.
And we also know that among the ruins of the Third Reich, not a single operating nuclear reactor was discovered. The head of the German atomic project Werner Heisenberg (winner of the 1933 Nobel Prize) acknowledged that German scientists have no idea about the technology for obtaining weapons-grade plutonium. Wasserfal anti-aircraft missiles did not shoot down a single aircraft, while German super-heavy tanks remained forever in the world stories, as a result of the victory of technology over common sense. "Vundervafli", in a word.
After the victory, the allies of the anti-Hitler coalition got rich trophies. Including - fantastic technical innovations, items from the future. In many designs, the laws of nature were completely ignored, the units of the “vundervaffe” managed to take part in the hostilities, proving their total inconsistency in front of the less revolutionary, but well-established and mass-produced technology of the allies. However, the very fact of the existence of such projects struck and suggested that the Third Reich was close to a revolutionary breakthrough in technology. The myth of the great achievements of the fascists was eagerly picked up by the press, who knew how to make money on unhealthy sensations.
In fact, there is no reason to talk about the technical superiority of the Third Reich; on the contrary, it is fair to admit that at the end of the war, German science seriously lagged behind its opponents. Most of the fantastic German projects “super-weapons»Reflected intentions, not opportunities. At the same time, at the allies appeared at least advanced models of equipment, which, unlike the German "vundervaffe", were put into mass production and proved their high efficiency in battle. This is easily seen in a few examples.
Luftwaffe
25 February 1945 of the year. In the vicinity of the Hilberstadt airbase, the jet Me.262 fell with a howl and a crash - the American Mustangs lurched a group on take-off and shot six people who had not managed to pick up speed, the helpless Messerschmitts, were shot at close range ...
For the first time, the Allies met with a German fighter jet in 25 on July 1944: on that day, Me.262 unsuccessfully attacked the reconnaissance Mosquito of the Royal Air Force. It is noteworthy that two days later - on July 27 1944, the Gloucester - Meteor jet flew its first combat sortie, intercepting the cruise missile V-1 over the Channel Tunnel. The British aircraft turned out to be much more perfect than its German counterpart, the Meteors took part in the Korean War and were operated around the world until the end of the 70s. But the public loves loud sensations - all the fame went to Messerschmitt.
In addition to the 262, the German aircraft industry has prepared a number of jet aircraft projects:
- Arado-234 blitz bomber
- "people's fighter" Henschel-162 "Salamander"
- bomber with a backward-swept wing "Junkers-287"
- "Flying Wing" Horten brothers Ho.229
The only problem was the lack of reliable and high-powered jet engines. In the presence of the Germans were only two types of power plants: BMW 003 and Jumo 004 - they kept all the projects of "super-aircraft". Both were extremely fire hazardous and did not provide the required flight characteristics. And without normal engines, all plans became meaningless - and indeed, most of the German "super-aircraft" did not go beyond the experimental models.
Silver bird
9 May 1946, Berlin-Gatov airbase. Along the slender rows of the Me.262, the Maybach limousine train is moving - Hermann Goering himself will be present at the launch of the America-Bomber. A huge overpass is visible in the spotlight - the interlacing of steel trusses originates in the eastern part of the landfill, and rapidly goes up, rests on the overcast sky in the West. There, where over the horizon spread out the hated America. On the overpass installed orbital ship with a booster block. After a moment, the fire-breathing harness from the 5 engines, the total 600 tons of tons, would tear the spacecraft off, like a hurricane tearing down billboards, and taking it to the velvet blackness of space.
For 8 minutes, “America-Bomber” rose to an altitude of 260 kilometers and headed for New York at a speed of 22 thousand km / h. After 3500 kilometers from the starting point, the suborbital bomber makes the first descent, and, pushing off from the dense layers of the atmosphere at an altitude of 40 km, again rises to a low near-earth orbit. An hour later, radio operators heard the intermittent voice of the pilot: “My Führer, by your name! .. US territory! .. diving! .. goodbye, dying with honor! ..”. The fiery meteorite drew the horizon and crashed into the skyscrapers of Manhattan ...
From the first day of the war, the Reich leadership gnashed its teeth in impotent rage, trying to find a means to strike in New York, Washington, other major US cities, military-industrial complexes of the Urals and Siberia - unattainable goals for the German aviation. “The operational-tactical complex Fau-2, possessing a range of about 300 km, was useless for solving this problem. Werner von Braun worked on the creation of an intercontinental ballistic missile under the A-9 / A-10 project throughout the war, alas, the technological level of German industry in those years did not allow the creation of anything larger than the V-2, and regular bombing of research centers and Peenemuende missile range further slowed down the work. The Ta.400 four-engine long-range bomber did not live up to expectations either - by all accounts, he had no chance of reaching the coast of America.
The last hope of the fascist leadership was a doctor Zenger suborbital bomber. Enchanting project even now is amazing.
“100 tons of solid fire! The plane is thrown by its hellish engine to a terrible height and falls supersonic down, but does not cut into the atmosphere, and ricochets about it, like a flat stone from the surface of the water. Hit, jumps and flies on! And so two or three times! A strong idea! ”- Designer Alexey Isaev, the creator of the first Russian BI-1 rocket plane, was telling about the German project Silbervogel. Fortunately, the complete unrealizability of this project was clear even to the most stubborn schizophrenics from the then leadership of the Reich.
From the point of view of innovation, Dr. Zenger's bomber could be a good plot for a science fiction novel. Just a beautiful idea-dream. Zenger’s apparatus is no more realistic than a spaceship from the novel “Andromeda Nebula” - with seeming practicality, no detailed calculations have been made.
Kriegsmarine
30 on April 1945 of the year, the submarine U-2511 under the command of ace A. Shney (on his career sank the 21 ship) went on a military campaign. In the region of the Faroe Islands, the boat met with a group of British cruisers and destroyers, but for some reason refused to attack and returned to base several days after the announcement of the end of the war.
Thus ended the first and last combat march of submarines of the type XXI, better known as the "Electric Boat". Despite its advanced radio-electronic equipment and rechargeable batteries of a new type, which allowed them to move for many hours in a submerged position at the speed of 15 nodes, the Electric Boat in a real battle was frightened by destroyers and submarine-hunters. Sometimes there is an excuse that the U-2511 Electroboat refused a torpedo attack due to good intentions - on May 4 of 1945, Admiral Doenitz ordered the cessation of hostilities. Maybe so ... although this story has a tragicomic continuation: ten "Electroboats" trying to break into Norway in early May 1945 were discovered and sunk by Allied aircraft. The Germans didn’t help their latest developments ... Only a nuclear reactor aboard a boat could solve the problem, but before it was created the Germans needed a few more years.
German submariners achieved tremendous success during the Second World War - they accounted for 50% of naval victories. In total, submarine killers sank 2759 vessels with a total tonnage of 14 million gross register tons and 123 warships (of which 60 were oil vessels, minesweepers and trawlers formally assigned to the military the fleet).
Here an interesting situation arises: in the early years of the war, German submariners, who had only 50-60 boats in service, managed to sink enemy ships with a total displacement of 2 million tons. In the 1944 year, having 500 combat-ready boats, Kriegsmarine managed with great difficulty to sink the ships with a total displacement of "only" 700 thousand tons! At the same time, in 1940, the Germans lost the submarine 21, in 1944 they lost 243 submarines in a year! It seems that fifty escort aircraft carriers, constant air patrols and British Asdic sonar have become more formidable "super-weapons" than all the advanced developments of German shipbuilders.
Note. In total during the war years, the Kriegsmarine lost 768 submarines. 28 000 German submariners forever sunk into the ocean.
Fritz and daughter Rhine
The Germans have really achieved great success in all that relates to rocket technology (perhaps this is the only area where they succeeded) In addition to the well-known V-1 and V-2, in Fascist Germany, the development of anti-ship missiles and guided air bombs "Fritz X ”and“ Henschel-293 ”, X-4 air-to-air guided missile, as well as Wasserfal-type 3 missile systems (German waterfall), Schmetterling (German butterfly) and Reintochter (German daughter of the Rhine).
Guided bombs achieved the greatest success - their use caused the death of dozens of ships and only the total superiority of the allies in the air made it possible to avoid a big pogrom on the days of the landing in Normandy.
The air-to-air guided missile was launched into mass production and, theoretically, could be used in the last weeks of the war, although there are no reliable references to this weapon. 1000 missiles of this type found in an underground vault.
The Schmetterling project is very interesting - it is not an anti-aircraft missile, but a whole unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with 35 kilometers range. However, the Germans did not manage to create the main thing - an accurate and reliable control system. Attempts to guide missiles on the acoustic noise of propellers and thermal radiation have completely failed. As a result, the Germans stopped on the radar guidance method using two ground-based radars, but there was not enough time to refine the system. By the way, during the tests conducted in 1944, 59 33 “butterfly” start-ups turned out to be emergency. The logical result is that not a single aircraft was hit by a German anti-aircraft missile.
Iron Capote
"If you are talking about the" Royal Tiger ", then I don’t see any real improvements - heavier, less reliable, less maneuverable." - from the book "Tigers in the Dirt," by Otto Carius (one of the best tank aces, to his credit more 150 armored vehicles destroyed).
Indeed, German tank building suffered a similar problem as the aviation industry. Germans could create any project:
- super heavy tank “Lion” with 105 mm gun, weight 76 tons
- anti-aircraft tank E-100 "Alligator" with two paired (!) 88 mm guns
- heavy tank destroyer “Jagdtigr” with 128 mm gun
The only problem was in the absence of a suitable transmission and suspension, the situation was aggravated by the excessive growth of the mass of combat vehicles - German tank builders did not learn how to create compact designs and save forces and resources until the end of the war.
Of all the above, “vundervaffe” in small-scale production was launched only heavy self-propelled gun “Jagdtigr” on the chassis of the same name tank (released from 70 to 79 machines), which became the heaviest type of German armored vehicles. 75 tons - such a mass could hardly withstand even the powerful Tiger chassis, the car was clearly overloaded and even enormous firepower (Yagdtigr punched the Sherman tank in the forehead from the 2500 distance m) could not save the situation. The Jagdtigr was falling apart right in front of his eyes. After a short march the weapon was unbalanced, the suspension broke, and the gearbox could not withstand enormous loads. It's funny, but in each car 2 charge of explosives was originally provided for the destruction of a defective ACS. The Germans correctly guessed that the Jagdtigr would not sustain any bridge, so they immediately equipped all vehicles with a snorkel for movement along the bottom of the rivers. This "vundervaflya".
Investigation results
Having robbed dozens of countries and peoples, the Aryans who have been hardened have not created a single revolutionary sample of technology, nothing fundamentally new and unusual. All projects of "super-weapons", at best, had dubious combat value, and at worst, were a collection of unrealistic fantasies.
War is the engine of progress. And German industry, in essence, did what it was supposed to do. Another issue is that the pace of development of the military-industrial complexes of the countries of the Anti-Hitler Coalition exceeded the pace of development of the military-industrial complex of fascist Germany. The Germans have learned how to make complex, but useless rockets. They were able to produce high-quality optics, gyroscopes and radio electronics. Engine-building was well developed (jet engines were not counted), the aviation industry, electrical engineering, chemical industry were at a high level; built a huge number of submarines. The Germans had an amazing organization and efficiency, all German products were distinguished by high quality and attention to detail. But! There is nothing fantastic here - the industry of a highly developed industrial country was supposed to work.
In fact, at the beginning of the war, the Germans managed to create a number of successful types of weapons, an order of magnitude superior in effectiveness to the weapons of all their opponents. Junkers-87 “Stuka” dive bomber, heavy “Tiger” tank - despite its complexity and high cost it was a powerful, well-protected and maneuverable vehicle. Good self-propelled artillery mounts based on medium tanks - Stug III, Stug IV, Hetzer (based on a Czech tank), Jagdpanther ... The outstanding achievements of German designers were the creation of a single MG34 machine gun and an intermediate cartridge 7,92х33 for the first assault rifle. Absolutely simple and ingenious weapons "Panzerfaust" cost the lives of thousands of tanks. As you can see, there is no “vundervaffe” in this list - the most common types of weapons that, with quality performance and proper use, have become masterpieces.
Herr Speer, we know that you had superheavy Tanks, highly autonomous submarines, infrared sights, ballistic missiles, Dr. Zenger's suborbital bomber, secret “disks” and bases in Antarctica ... the fascist bastards even sent an expedition to Tibet and came into contact with the extraterrestrial civilization of Alpha Centauri.
And we also know that among the ruins of the Third Reich, not a single operating nuclear reactor was discovered. The head of the German atomic project Werner Heisenberg (winner of the 1933 Nobel Prize) acknowledged that German scientists have no idea about the technology for obtaining weapons-grade plutonium. Wasserfal anti-aircraft missiles did not shoot down a single aircraft, while German super-heavy tanks remained forever in the world stories, as a result of the victory of technology over common sense. "Vundervafli", in a word.
Layout of nuclear reactor B VIII in the city of Haigerloch. The only more or less realistic design of the German reactor. Alas, when it was collected, it turned out that the amount of uranium needed to be increased by 750 kg, the Germans miscalculated.
After the victory, the allies of the anti-Hitler coalition got rich trophies. Including - fantastic technical innovations, items from the future. In many designs, the laws of nature were completely ignored, the units of the “vundervaffe” managed to take part in the hostilities, proving their total inconsistency in front of the less revolutionary, but well-established and mass-produced technology of the allies. However, the very fact of the existence of such projects struck and suggested that the Third Reich was close to a revolutionary breakthrough in technology. The myth of the great achievements of the fascists was eagerly picked up by the press, who knew how to make money on unhealthy sensations.
In fact, there is no reason to talk about the technical superiority of the Third Reich; on the contrary, it is fair to admit that at the end of the war, German science seriously lagged behind its opponents. Most of the fantastic German projects “super-weapons»Reflected intentions, not opportunities. At the same time, at the allies appeared at least advanced models of equipment, which, unlike the German "vundervaffe", were put into mass production and proved their high efficiency in battle. This is easily seen in a few examples.
Luftwaffe
25 February 1945 of the year. In the vicinity of the Hilberstadt airbase, the jet Me.262 fell with a howl and a crash - the American Mustangs lurched a group on take-off and shot six people who had not managed to pick up speed, the helpless Messerschmitts, were shot at close range ...
For the first time, the Allies met with a German fighter jet in 25 on July 1944: on that day, Me.262 unsuccessfully attacked the reconnaissance Mosquito of the Royal Air Force. It is noteworthy that two days later - on July 27 1944, the Gloucester - Meteor jet flew its first combat sortie, intercepting the cruise missile V-1 over the Channel Tunnel. The British aircraft turned out to be much more perfect than its German counterpart, the Meteors took part in the Korean War and were operated around the world until the end of the 70s. But the public loves loud sensations - all the fame went to Messerschmitt.
German machine again? No, this is the British fighter "Gloucester Meteor"
In addition to the 262, the German aircraft industry has prepared a number of jet aircraft projects:
- Arado-234 blitz bomber
- "people's fighter" Henschel-162 "Salamander"
- bomber with a backward-swept wing "Junkers-287"
- "Flying Wing" Horten brothers Ho.229
Jumo 004 TTRD in US testing
The only problem was the lack of reliable and high-powered jet engines. In the presence of the Germans were only two types of power plants: BMW 003 and Jumo 004 - they kept all the projects of "super-aircraft". Both were extremely fire hazardous and did not provide the required flight characteristics. And without normal engines, all plans became meaningless - and indeed, most of the German "super-aircraft" did not go beyond the experimental models.
Silver bird
9 May 1946, Berlin-Gatov airbase. Along the slender rows of the Me.262, the Maybach limousine train is moving - Hermann Goering himself will be present at the launch of the America-Bomber. A huge overpass is visible in the spotlight - the interlacing of steel trusses originates in the eastern part of the landfill, and rapidly goes up, rests on the overcast sky in the West. There, where over the horizon spread out the hated America. On the overpass installed orbital ship with a booster block. After a moment, the fire-breathing harness from the 5 engines, the total 600 tons of tons, would tear the spacecraft off, like a hurricane tearing down billboards, and taking it to the velvet blackness of space.
For 8 minutes, “America-Bomber” rose to an altitude of 260 kilometers and headed for New York at a speed of 22 thousand km / h. After 3500 kilometers from the starting point, the suborbital bomber makes the first descent, and, pushing off from the dense layers of the atmosphere at an altitude of 40 km, again rises to a low near-earth orbit. An hour later, radio operators heard the intermittent voice of the pilot: “My Führer, by your name! .. US territory! .. diving! .. goodbye, dying with honor! ..”. The fiery meteorite drew the horizon and crashed into the skyscrapers of Manhattan ...
From the first day of the war, the Reich leadership gnashed its teeth in impotent rage, trying to find a means to strike in New York, Washington, other major US cities, military-industrial complexes of the Urals and Siberia - unattainable goals for the German aviation. “The operational-tactical complex Fau-2, possessing a range of about 300 km, was useless for solving this problem. Werner von Braun worked on the creation of an intercontinental ballistic missile under the A-9 / A-10 project throughout the war, alas, the technological level of German industry in those years did not allow the creation of anything larger than the V-2, and regular bombing of research centers and Peenemuende missile range further slowed down the work. The Ta.400 four-engine long-range bomber did not live up to expectations either - by all accounts, he had no chance of reaching the coast of America.
The last hope of the fascist leadership was a doctor Zenger suborbital bomber. Enchanting project even now is amazing.
“100 tons of solid fire! The plane is thrown by its hellish engine to a terrible height and falls supersonic down, but does not cut into the atmosphere, and ricochets about it, like a flat stone from the surface of the water. Hit, jumps and flies on! And so two or three times! A strong idea! ”- Designer Alexey Isaev, the creator of the first Russian BI-1 rocket plane, was telling about the German project Silbervogel. Fortunately, the complete unrealizability of this project was clear even to the most stubborn schizophrenics from the then leadership of the Reich.
From the point of view of innovation, Dr. Zenger's bomber could be a good plot for a science fiction novel. Just a beautiful idea-dream. Zenger’s apparatus is no more realistic than a spaceship from the novel “Andromeda Nebula” - with seeming practicality, no detailed calculations have been made.
Kriegsmarine
30 on April 1945 of the year, the submarine U-2511 under the command of ace A. Shney (on his career sank the 21 ship) went on a military campaign. In the region of the Faroe Islands, the boat met with a group of British cruisers and destroyers, but for some reason refused to attack and returned to base several days after the announcement of the end of the war.
"Vundervaflya" Kriegsmarine
Thus ended the first and last combat march of submarines of the type XXI, better known as the "Electric Boat". Despite its advanced radio-electronic equipment and rechargeable batteries of a new type, which allowed them to move for many hours in a submerged position at the speed of 15 nodes, the Electric Boat in a real battle was frightened by destroyers and submarine-hunters. Sometimes there is an excuse that the U-2511 Electroboat refused a torpedo attack due to good intentions - on May 4 of 1945, Admiral Doenitz ordered the cessation of hostilities. Maybe so ... although this story has a tragicomic continuation: ten "Electroboats" trying to break into Norway in early May 1945 were discovered and sunk by Allied aircraft. The Germans didn’t help their latest developments ... Only a nuclear reactor aboard a boat could solve the problem, but before it was created the Germans needed a few more years.
German submariners achieved tremendous success during the Second World War - they accounted for 50% of naval victories. In total, submarine killers sank 2759 vessels with a total tonnage of 14 million gross register tons and 123 warships (of which 60 were oil vessels, minesweepers and trawlers formally assigned to the military the fleet).
Here an interesting situation arises: in the early years of the war, German submariners, who had only 50-60 boats in service, managed to sink enemy ships with a total displacement of 2 million tons. In the 1944 year, having 500 combat-ready boats, Kriegsmarine managed with great difficulty to sink the ships with a total displacement of "only" 700 thousand tons! At the same time, in 1940, the Germans lost the submarine 21, in 1944 they lost 243 submarines in a year! It seems that fifty escort aircraft carriers, constant air patrols and British Asdic sonar have become more formidable "super-weapons" than all the advanced developments of German shipbuilders.
Note. In total during the war years, the Kriegsmarine lost 768 submarines. 28 000 German submariners forever sunk into the ocean.
Fritz and daughter Rhine
The Germans have really achieved great success in all that relates to rocket technology (perhaps this is the only area where they succeeded) In addition to the well-known V-1 and V-2, in Fascist Germany, the development of anti-ship missiles and guided air bombs "Fritz X ”and“ Henschel-293 ”, X-4 air-to-air guided missile, as well as Wasserfal-type 3 missile systems (German waterfall), Schmetterling (German butterfly) and Reintochter (German daughter of the Rhine).
Guided bombs achieved the greatest success - their use caused the death of dozens of ships and only the total superiority of the allies in the air made it possible to avoid a big pogrom on the days of the landing in Normandy.
The air-to-air guided missile was launched into mass production and, theoretically, could be used in the last weeks of the war, although there are no reliable references to this weapon. 1000 missiles of this type found in an underground vault.
The Schmetterling project is very interesting - it is not an anti-aircraft missile, but a whole unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with 35 kilometers range. However, the Germans did not manage to create the main thing - an accurate and reliable control system. Attempts to guide missiles on the acoustic noise of propellers and thermal radiation have completely failed. As a result, the Germans stopped on the radar guidance method using two ground-based radars, but there was not enough time to refine the system. By the way, during the tests conducted in 1944, 59 33 “butterfly” start-ups turned out to be emergency. The logical result is that not a single aircraft was hit by a German anti-aircraft missile.
Iron Capote
"If you are talking about the" Royal Tiger ", then I don’t see any real improvements - heavier, less reliable, less maneuverable." - from the book "Tigers in the Dirt," by Otto Carius (one of the best tank aces, to his credit more 150 armored vehicles destroyed).
Super heavy tank Maus weighing 188 tons. Apotheosis of insanity.
Indeed, German tank building suffered a similar problem as the aviation industry. Germans could create any project:
- super heavy tank “Lion” with 105 mm gun, weight 76 tons
- anti-aircraft tank E-100 "Alligator" with two paired (!) 88 mm guns
- heavy tank destroyer “Jagdtigr” with 128 mm gun
The only problem was in the absence of a suitable transmission and suspension, the situation was aggravated by the excessive growth of the mass of combat vehicles - German tank builders did not learn how to create compact designs and save forces and resources until the end of the war.
Of all the above, “vundervaffe” in small-scale production was launched only heavy self-propelled gun “Jagdtigr” on the chassis of the same name tank (released from 70 to 79 machines), which became the heaviest type of German armored vehicles. 75 tons - such a mass could hardly withstand even the powerful Tiger chassis, the car was clearly overloaded and even enormous firepower (Yagdtigr punched the Sherman tank in the forehead from the 2500 distance m) could not save the situation. The Jagdtigr was falling apart right in front of his eyes. After a short march the weapon was unbalanced, the suspension broke, and the gearbox could not withstand enormous loads. It's funny, but in each car 2 charge of explosives was originally provided for the destruction of a defective ACS. The Germans correctly guessed that the Jagdtigr would not sustain any bridge, so they immediately equipped all vehicles with a snorkel for movement along the bottom of the rivers. This "vundervaflya".
Heavy tank IS-3. What a super-weapon should look like
Investigation results
Having robbed dozens of countries and peoples, the Aryans who have been hardened have not created a single revolutionary sample of technology, nothing fundamentally new and unusual. All projects of "super-weapons", at best, had dubious combat value, and at worst, were a collection of unrealistic fantasies.
War is the engine of progress. And German industry, in essence, did what it was supposed to do. Another issue is that the pace of development of the military-industrial complexes of the countries of the Anti-Hitler Coalition exceeded the pace of development of the military-industrial complex of fascist Germany. The Germans have learned how to make complex, but useless rockets. They were able to produce high-quality optics, gyroscopes and radio electronics. Engine-building was well developed (jet engines were not counted), the aviation industry, electrical engineering, chemical industry were at a high level; built a huge number of submarines. The Germans had an amazing organization and efficiency, all German products were distinguished by high quality and attention to detail. But! There is nothing fantastic here - the industry of a highly developed industrial country was supposed to work.
In fact, at the beginning of the war, the Germans managed to create a number of successful types of weapons, an order of magnitude superior in effectiveness to the weapons of all their opponents. Junkers-87 “Stuka” dive bomber, heavy “Tiger” tank - despite its complexity and high cost it was a powerful, well-protected and maneuverable vehicle. Good self-propelled artillery mounts based on medium tanks - Stug III, Stug IV, Hetzer (based on a Czech tank), Jagdpanther ... The outstanding achievements of German designers were the creation of a single MG34 machine gun and an intermediate cartridge 7,92х33 for the first assault rifle. Absolutely simple and ingenious weapons "Panzerfaust" cost the lives of thousands of tanks. As you can see, there is no “vundervaffe” in this list - the most common types of weapons that, with quality performance and proper use, have become masterpieces.
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