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aspqrz02 -> RE: Let's Talk Optional Rules (11/15/2013 7:36:04 AM)
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As I noted, Speer lied through his teeth. A lot of the supposed 'production' in 1944-45 was, in fact, repair of damaged/destroyed airframes.
Then, of course, there's the sad fact that, except in computer wargames (well, most of them, anyway, Grigsby's WaW:AWD takes a stab at it), factories set to produce aircraft and aero engines can't be retasked overnight to produce, say, tanks.
If you read the 'Wages of Destruction' and "Cry Havoc' you will note, again and again, that all sides had to make long lead time decisions about what would be needed down the track, as it took time to gear up production for whatever decision you did make. Some of these decisions turned out to be, with the benefit of 20:20 hindsight, suboptimal.
Some examples -
* The Allies found that they could not pull off major simultaneous amphibious invasions in both the ETO and the PTO because they simply didn't have enough of the various sorts of landing ships and landing craft ... and, in fact, had to physically transfer them between the two theaters.
It's also, for example, why Anvil-Dragoon was some weeks after D-Day and much smaller and why Anzio and Salerno were so limited, and why there weren't more such attempts.
Sure, the allies could have simply built more 'phibs, but that would have taken time, and diversion of resources, and they ultimately decided that they could live with it.
* The US decided to produce large quantities of a decidedly inferior tank - the Grant - for the simple reason that the piddling little turret on said tank was the largest single piece casting that they could produce at the time.
* The Brits never upgunned the excellently armoured Matilda Mk II ... because the size of the turret was limited by the size of the turret ring in the hill and the size turret that they could fit couldn't take anything bigger than their 2 pdr gun.
* The reason that the Kriegsmarine was so far behind the 8-ball when the war broke out in all types of combatants was because they were allocated money by the gummint, but money didn't buy skilled manpower, factories, or, more importantly, raw materials, and the Kriegsmarine got whatever scraps weren't wanted by the Luftwaffe and the Heer.
Another reason was something as simple as slipways. There simply weren't enough, even if you allowed as how civilian ones could be used for vessels like Submarines and, for any vessel with any armour plate, they couldn't be. Even for Destroyers and subs they were suboptimal because of the substantial differences between warship and merchant construction. There had been enough ... during and before WW1 ... but the Versailles treaty banned most new naval construction and limited what was allowed, so most were either closed down/scrapped or converted to civilian use.
Armour for ships? All the specialised (and they had no other use other than rolling armour plate) plants for producing armour belt closed down except for one ... and it had limited capacity, hence the small number of major surface combatants ... even if they had the slips available, they didn't have the capacity to produce the plate needed ... and Fat Herman wasn't letting them get hold of any, either,
Subs are a particular bad example. Not only was initial production limited for the reasons noted, but they had lost a whole generation of skilled submariners because of Versailles ... the training of crews was a real bottleneck (it took about a year to train a crew up to combat readiness for their first deployment) ... and when they found ways of getting round the slipway bottleneck by producing sections of the Type XXIIIs inland and railing them to simple assembly plants they found that the lack of pre-production testing done, and the lack of experience of the manufacturers, led to major problems ... it was not uncommon for the different pressure hull sections to be found to be as much as 12" out of true, radius wise. You *could* weld this gap closed - but this was a *pressure* hull, mind, and it meant that the new boats often had a safe dive depth less than that of the older ones, and nowhere near their design specs.
Sure, they were getting decent ones coming off the production lines ... by late 1944 ... but none of them entered service, because they never got past the workup stage.
* Most of the SPGs the Germans produced were, in fact, remanufactured from clapped out tank hulls with a new superstructure, and yet are counted as new production.
* A perennial problem for the Germans was spare parts - Hitler insisted that lots and lots and lots of new *tanks* roll off the production lines ... but wasn't in the slightest interested in spares, so few were actually produced! It was not uncommon for more tanks to be OOS because of breakdown than because of enemy action and, as the tides of war shifted, the common practise of using broken down tanks to strip for parts to keep a few operational became less and less viable as any tank unable to move became a loss to the advancing Russians or Western Allies.
* An aircraft example - the Me262 wasn't, as received wisdom would suggest, delayed by Hitler's decision to have it turned into a Fighter Bomber ... but by the simple fact that its engines were high tech crap. The initial pre-production versions self-destructed, for example, after 30 *minutes* run time. By the time they decided to put her into service, they had them up to 25 hours run time, after which they had to be removed, torn down and basically rebuilt. Even then, there's a reason the engines were under the wings ... it was so that *when* they shed turbine blades, which could happen *at any time*, even in a brand new engine ... the wings would help protect the pilot,
The reason for this? The turbine blades needed tungsten to withstand the high operating temps ... but Germany had had to cease production of AP penetrators in 1942 because they were depleting the pre-war stockpiles, and there was nowhere else Germany could get the metal from. They eventually used Chromium to get the reliability (!) up to where it ended, but that was the best they could do.
There's lots more things like that.
There's a good line from John Birmingham's 'Axis of Time' trilogy, uttered by Prince Harry, IIRC, when the Germans stage Sealion - and it fails miserably - "Dictators are great at getting **** done, but they aren't that great at deciding whether **** should be done in the first place" (more or less) ... and this sums up the problems facing the Nazis.
While they weren't quite as bad as the IJN and the IJA, the Luftwaffe, Heer, SS and Kriegsmarine were all semi-independent fiefdoms competing for attention and resources ... worse, even *within* the four services, there were competing fiefdoms vying for the resources and attention the larger body had ... and it was complete shemozzle. So, while you can say that you, the player, have replaced Hitler, you're still saddled with all the idiots that made the whole Nazi state a giant cock up.
Phil
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