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| V-2 Rocket was the most well known German wonder weapons (Picture I) |
Kimmo Huosionmaa
This is the text, what I sometimes wanted to write for explaining, why Nazi wonder weapons ("Wunderwaffe") were the biggest flops in history? There is one very good reason, why those weapons ever got effect against allied forces, and that was that they were produced so little number, that they would not have any kind of effect against allied forces. Another reason for those flops was that they were produced and drawn by very big hurry, what caused the situation, that there were many mistakes in planning and production of those in paper very good airplanes and submarines. One of the best examples of the good ideas, but in real life, bad and dangerous product was Heinkel 117 "Greif" what motors had got too little coolers, and they made that airplane very easy to burn in airborne.
And because of the Nazi-bureaucracy, nobody changed the drawings, and production of the aircraft, what had two V-motors with a double number of cylinders, but the coolers were metered for half size motors continued even if many of those aircraft were actually started to burn in airborne because of engine overheating. Also, the famous V-2 rockets had one problem, those rockets were actually planned for scientific purposes, and that made them very difficult to a product. The missiles must be the large number, and that's why almost every missile in the world uses solid fuel because that allows manufacturing a large number of missiles. V-2 could be effective if there would be used biological or chemical warhead, but luckily those plans were disbanded.
When we are talking about "real weapons" the problem with those real weapons was that they were ineffective against allied forces. And because of Focke-Wulff and Messerschmitt fighters problems with allied aircraft the Nazi government wanted to make new kind of weapons. One of those weapons what were effective was FX-1400 ("Fritz X"), what was first used in 1943 against Italian battleships and one of the DO-17Z-3 bombers was able to get direct hit to one Italian battleships gun tower. One thing makes me think, that maybe some of those problems with bombers were caused in purpose are involving in this weapon. Why the survivability of those bombers didn't make better by using laughing gas or some other oxygenase in the motors of those bombers, what would allow them to fly higher altitude. And avoiding the air defense and some fighters of allied forces.
That was shown how effectively guided missiles could be worked, but the problem was that the Luftwaffe had to transfer the production of bombers to the fighters, and that caused the loss of a number of bombers, what had the capacity to carry those glide bombs. Also, the training of airmen to use that weapon was difficult, because allied fighters disturbed those pieces of training, and loss of fuel caused problems for flight operations. When we are talking about German submarines and their weapons, there were made new kind of torpedoes, what could guide to the target by using electric wires, what was in the spinning rod, and the captain of the submarine could drive those torpedoes to the target by using two circuit breakers. Those weapons were ineffective because if the captain of the submarine made the wrong move while losing the sight of the torpedo, would those torpedoes destroy own submarine.
The "Walter turbine", what allowed to drive submarines underwater with high speed flopped because the fuel was too exotic. And the principle, where steam for turbines was created by mixing hydrogen peroxide and water was very good, but those submarines were ready for their first patrol in May 1945, and they couldn't make an influence for the World War II. But those submarines were the very good vision and technically advanced. And some bad rumors tell or claims that they were produced for allied forces as the commercial card, what kind of things the German military engineers could do. One of the reasons for the failure of those wonder weapons was that their users could not wait for the sign of their effectiveness against the enemy.
If some of those wonder weapons were not hit the target, that meant the delaying of the production of that system. And of course, German factories were gone under the heavy bombings, and that made impossible to the product of those new weapons, and that made them ineffective against any target. They were very technical and difficult to the product. But the air superiority of allied forced Germans to make those weapons, what was not very effective, sometimes because of the small production numbers. Of course in German political culture was very many cases, were the engineer, who made mistakes just executed, and that's why those people hide mistakes, what they made in very high pressure and for those projects were given very short time. That made those machines dangerous for their users.
Sources:
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/sinking-tirpitz-eu-battleship.html
Picture:
https://www.historyanswers.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/V-2_lift-off-2-e1396520167626.jpg
https://pimeakronikka.blogspot.fi/p/why-were-german-wonder-weapons-so-big.html
