GoodGuy
Posts: 1506
Joined: 5/17/2006
From: Cologne, Germany
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The Greyfalcon site collects tons of theories, half-arsed assembled facts, hearsay, sprinkled with quotes from newspaper articles which have to act as "sources".
While German scientists and developers had quite some interesting - albeit deathly - ideas, the general lack of resources, or - quite surprising for some secret weapon fanboys - scientists who were simply barking up the wrong tree, used to prevent major breakthroughs in quite some fields.
Atomic bomb: After the war, Heisenberg & Co and other scientists were imprisoned in a mansion (in the UK) for a while (Farm Hall), in what I'd call a luxury environment, being told by the Brits that they'd be either interrogated or shipped to another location some time. The mansion was packed with wires (bugging devices), and all conversations that unfolded during that time were recorded. The Germans didn't suspect to be recorded, so they had some heated and detailed discussions about the way/procedures to get to a working atomic bomb.
The Brits gathered that the Germans were nowhere near finishing their first bomb, nor anywhere near enriching uranium.
One of the reasons here was the fact that the Allied Bomber command (USAF in this case, IIRC) ordered to bomb the heavy water (deuterium oxide) production in Norway and Germany, besides other facilities that could serve to deliver material needed for the German experimental plant.
I'm not a physicist, but from what I understand, you need heavy water to run an experimental reactor, which, in turn, would be the first step on the way to understand the process and get enough plutonium for a bomb. The Germans had some Uranium in East Germany (not sure whether that had been mined before the end of the war), but, quite more realistic, they could have used the uranium they had collected during their Blitz through European countries, plus they had access to uranium in France.
Today's historians and scientists still doubt that the uranium at hand would have been sufficient for the entire process, let alone the number of centrifuges they would have needed to enrich enough material.
Whatsoever, if you think about how BIG the LOS ALAMOS/Manhattan project was, which involved thousands of scientists, workers etc, and that it took more than a year (IIRC) to enrich enough uranium for 2 bombs (not including the test bomb), then you know that the German effort was way below the American effort:
It was mainly still a theoretical excursion/discussion, with a tiny experimental plant in South Germany, that had been moved to that location (due to the continuing bombing raids over the Reich) some months before the scientists were captured by Allied investigators.
In order to deliver results, they had to solve the theoretical problems first, before even thinking about moving this to a fully fledged production level with mass enrichement of uranium and a proper mechanical/technical solution for the question of how such a bomb could be ingnited.
The Brits figured the Germans still had to go a long road, probably 2-3 years (or even more) just to solve the theoretical approach, as they in fact had moved to a blind alley - with their computations.
The Website mixes facts and fiction on quite a few other topics:
Submarines:
Not a single German submarine's hull was coated with synthetic rubber (Buna), and afaik it was never planned to do that, since Buna would not absorb sonar signals. Buna wasn't a secret anti-radar paste, it was just rubber that had been put on the "schnorchel" (snorkel) devices, in order to reduce the radar signature. The paste did not make the snorkel invisible to radar, but it made it somewhat harder to detect it. But even the use of Buna had been limited, pretty much like the Zimmerit paste (an anti-magnetic coating supposed to shield armour plates from magnetic mines or magnetic hollow-charges), due to lack of resources. Initially, it was planned to coat the hulls of XXI submarines with Zimmerit, as protection against sea-mines with magnetic detonators.
Torpedos:
Yes the Germans were working on wire-guided torpedos, but the only working homing-torpedo was the famous acoustic torpedo, which was hard to use, as it had a tendency to turn and "lock on" the German submarines while they were diving. A common procedure was to fire the torpedo then dive to a depth of 50 meters (minimum), in order not to get hit by their own torps. This, of course, made multiple attacks - from different angles - impossible. Later on, the mechanism that would arm the torpedo had been upgraded, which allowed for an extended "unarmed" run-time. I doubt that there were projects that envisaged Torpedos using magnetic-electric homing devices, because the technical requirements for such devices did not exist:
The first working transistor was developed in late 1945 by 2 Germans (Mataré and Welker), the first bipolar transistor in December 1947, by Bell Labs ... it seems that in a french company, who then employed those 2 German developers in 1947, Mataré and Welker, the same idea came up in mid-1947, but they did not apply for a patent before August 1948.
Conclusion: Such homing-devices could not be produced.
Flying saucers:
Well, there is a picture of the wooden Saucer and there are some sources who claim the prototype (made of wood) flew once. I could imagine that this is true, as its creator had some interesting ideas (and skills). The wooden version had propeller engines, while the final version was supposed to receive jet-engines. But the designer of the saucer faced various problems, even more serious ones than with the flying wing - the HO IX A (later designated Go 229) - , problems which had not been solved before the fully computerized american B-2 Stealth Bomber came up, a "machine" that can't be controlled without the help of a computer, as its flight characteristics rather resemble the specs of a brick than a plane, or should I say the specs of a boomerang? 
I could imagine that the USAF experimented with the blueprints of the saucer (and maybe the saucer itself) on some airfield in the US (Area 51? *grin*), but if US pilots ever flew the original saucer or a prototype copy of it, I imagine them to run into the very same problems regarding aerodynamics and flight control, and these simply couldn't be solved before computers were powerful and small enough to make it into such planes.
It was different with the German flying wing, the characteristics allowed for careful flight manoeuvres at least, without sophisticated computers. But even the 1950s/1960s flying wings created in the US were all scrapped, because the problems could not be solved with only a pure mechanical solution.
I could go on and on about so-called Secret Weapons that could have turned the tide, but I gotta hit the hay now. These types of webpages are nowhere near being proper sources.
Oh, btw, even the Germans had to put their pants on one leg at a time.
My 2 cents.
< Message edited by GoodGuy -- 9/17/2009 6:16:54 AM >
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December 22nd, 1944
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