What if...

[phylo_roadking]

it has been my experience in talking to Americans and Europeans that we do tend to over state the importance of lend lease.

If you drill down carefully - particularly in the RAF - you'd be amazed how much of what was sent wasn't used, or wasn't liked.

Some of this was down to it being a "way" of getting some use out of fast-becoming-obsolete equipment...Lockheed Hudson as a day bomber anyone? Bell Airacobra? P40 versus Me109 in the Battle of Britain??? C-class four-stacker destroyers?

Its REAL use in a lot of locations was releasing other equipment for more "front line" use - intelligent planning put slower ships in convioys that the fourstackers could protect, releasing the new corvettes and faster RN destroyers for better defence of "priority" convoys. As 1940 went into 1941, lend-lease equiped squadrons in RAF Groups north of the Thames allowed Fighter Command to group its more-combative aircraft for "Circuses" over France. Hudsons, Venturas etc, allowed Bomber Command to recoup some Whitleys and Wellingtons from maritime patrolling with Coastal Command for the first massed raids.

Certainly there are tales of Ex-Soviet nuclear boomers sitting rusting beside concrete piers in Archangel and Murmansk...and as the old period concrete crumbles away, the rusty tangles of old Allied materiel that was just bulldozed in as "fill" is starting to show thru!

BUT

The GREATEST contribution of Lend-Lease in Western Europe - Britain, France, the US versus Germany - was actually in the INFRASTRUCTURE set up to support the aircraft. Lend-lease saw the huge Boeing european repair depot effort starting in 1940 with the establishment of Station 359 Langford Lodge in Northern Ireland, which received every Boeing aircraft - and a whole range of others who subcontracted from Boeing - later to fly into Western Europe, for final fitting and maintenance before unit allocation, and repair in the event of major combat damage. The Fortresses, Liberators, P-38 Lightnings etc of the USAAF in Europe were repaired there and fast....the whole establishment having set up - breaching ALL neutrality regulations! - to support/maintain Lend-Lease aircraft from when they began to arrive in the UK. The "RAF" Catalina that found the Bismark didn't actually fly from Castle Archdale on that recce mission as always said! LOL It was an RAF - BADGED aircraft being used to give AMERICAN crews experience of wartime operations! But on those few days it was "all hands to the tiller"...in other words, as the USAAF began its huge daylight bombing offensive of targets in Germany by four-engine'd heavies, and tragets in france by Mediums - there were thousands of Boeing or Boeing-trained fitters and mechanics ready at Langford Lodge and throughout the UK READY to service and support the assault!

There used to be a very small but excellent museum on part of the old Langford Lodge site given over to Station 359, but it closed a few years ago. Langford Lodge (the runway bit! LOL)is STILL a satellite field for Belfast International Airport, and the home of the Ulster Aviation Society and their museum. And also on the site is a world-wide construction company called Mivan - who have the contracts for the modular-construction KFC and McDonald's restaurants that they assemble around the world!!!

Lend-Lease has gone full circle!

....of course there are some who say that THAT is about as useful as it was originally! brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrpP!

[nebelwerferXXX]

What If Hitler had these weapons earlier in 1939, Hitler could have won WW II.
1) 1,000 jet fighters & 1,000 four-engined jet bombers
2) 9,000 Panzer Mark V 'Panthers' & 2,700 Panzer Mark VI 'Tigers'
3) 15,000 armored half-track personnel carriers fitted with Anti-tank weapons & grenade launchers
4) 750,000 MG 42 general purpose machine guns
5) 2-million Sturmgewehr assault rifles
6) several millions of 'infra-red' sniper rifles
7) 4 Graf Zeppelin-Class aircraft carriers with 60 aircraft each
5 Bismarck-Class battleships
9) 5 Scharnhorst-Class battle-cruisers
10) 5,000 LSTs, 4,000 LCIs & 2,000 ocean-going U-boats fitted with Schnorkel
11) 10,000 V-1 flying bombs & 10,000 V-2 rockets
12) 2 Atomic bombs
What If Hitler had invaded Great Britain in 1939 & the USA in 1940, We would all be speaking German.

[nebelwerferXXX]

What if the Germans have these forces to opposed the US Operation 'Cobra' of July 1944?
1,337,000 troops
20,220 guns & mortars
3,306 tanks & assault guns (Tigers, Panthers & Panzer Mark IVs)
2,650 aircraft

[Reb]

They would still have lost.

In Normandy, where the Germans actually had some pretty well equipped units, the allies had countered the German tactic of massing at the schwerpunkt for big attacks by inderdicting all movement with air and artillery so they couldn't really form up for big attacks like they did in the east. Interdicted movement also meant that already scarce fuel supplies couldn't get to the front. More tanks? Would probably have meant more tanks abandoned when they retreated.

Normandy didn't happen in a vacuum. Army Group Center collapsed at that same point in time. By the end of the year the Russians were laying siege to Budapest and the Terror Bombers had leveled much of Germany. The Synthetic fuel plants and railroads were priority targets.

Guns need bullets. Vehicles need petrol. There were lots of panther tanks, jet planes and pz IV / L70 sitting around, unused, in 1945. Transportation and petrol - need 'em both, had neither. Once the fuel supplies ran out it didn't matter how many tanks they had.

(See Armoured Battles of Waffen SS for an account of 502 SS sPz casually shooting up several squadrons worth of M262 jets abandoned for lack of fuel.)

cheers
Michael (Reb)

[lwd]

What If Hitler had these weapons earlier in 1939, Hitler could have won WW II.

Possibly but to really know you'ld have to know what the allies had. Indeed if the German economy could have produced all this would Hitler even have come to power?

1) 1,000 jet fighters & 1,000 four-engined jet bombers

If you are talking Me-262 they'll have to devote most of their economy into just keeping them flying.

2) 9,000 Panzer Mark V 'Panthers' & 2,700 Panzer Mark VI 'Tigers'
3) 15,000 armored half-track personnel carriers fitted with Anti-tank weapons & grenade launchers

Where do they get the fuel to keep them running. Also looks like a huge drain on the economy keeping them operational.

7) 4 Graf Zeppelin-Class aircraft carriers with 60 aircraft each

The Graf Zeppelins weren't designed to handle that many planes so either you have greatly overcrowded them or they are using very small and antiquated planes. Consider that operationally a GZ would have been little better than a US CVE and inferior to a US CVL and that it would have taken the Germans a fair amount of time to learn how to use them.

5 Bismarck-Class battleships
9) 5 Scharnhorst-Class battle-cruisers

The Scharnhorst class ships were battleships. This fleet is still inferior to the British and US historical fleets but the latter would be much stronger if Germany was building these.

...
What If Hitler had invaded Great Britain in 1939 & the USA in 1940, We would all be speaking German.

If Hitler had invaded GB in 1939 it would have been a spectacular failure and might even have resulted in the fall of his regime. Even with the force you mention above and the Historical US forces an attmepted invasion of the US in 1940 would be well beyond what Germany would have been capable of. Then there's the question of what the Soviets do when the German forces are tied up with all this (or resting at the bottom of the ocean).

[nebelwerferXXX]

What If Hitler had these weapons earlier in 1939, Hitler could have won WW II.

Possibly but to really know you'ld have to know what the allies had. Indeed if the German economy could have produced all this would Hitler even have come to power?

1) 1,000 jet fighters & 1,000 four-engined jet bombers

If you are talking Me-262 they'll have to devote most of their economy into just keeping them flying.

2) 9,000 Panzer Mark V 'Panthers' & 2,700 Panzer Mark VI 'Tigers'
3) 15,000 armored half-track personnel carriers fitted with Anti-tank weapons & grenade launchers

Where do they get the fuel to keep them running. Also looks like a huge drain on the economy keeping them operational.

7) 4 Graf Zeppelin-Class aircraft carriers with 60 aircraft each

The Graf Zeppelins weren't designed to handle that many planes so either you have greatly overcrowded them or they are using very small and antiquated planes. Consider that operationally a GZ would have been little better than a US CVE and inferior to a US CVL and that it would have taken the Germans a fair amount of time to learn how to use them.

5 Bismarck-Class battleships
9) 5 Scharnhorst-Class battle-cruisers

The Scharnhorst class ships were battleships. This fleet is still inferior to the British and US historical fleets but the latter would be much stronger if Germany was building these.

...
What If Hitler had invaded Great Britain in 1939 & the USA in 1940, We would all be speaking German.

If Hitler had invaded GB in 1939 it would have been a spectacular failure and might even have resulted in the fall of his regime. Even with the force you mention above and the Historical US forces an attmepted invasion of the US in 1940 would be well beyond what Germany would have been capable of. Then there's the question of what the Soviets do when the German forces are tied up with all this (or resting at the bottom of the ocean).

The German Normandy-style landings in USA:
What might happened, might be like these, it's the combination of the following:
1) might be a German Dieppe landing.
2) for the 4 Graf Zeppelin-Class carriers, might be a German Battle of Midway.
3) if some Germans have succeeded in landing and then evacuated in a German Dunkirk-style retreat.
4) as for the 1,000 jet fighters and the 1,000 four-engined jet bombers, just like a German Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.
5) as for the 5 Bismarck-Class and 5 Scharnhorst-Class ships, just like the Kamikaze-attack of the Yamato in Okinawa.
6) the 9,000 'Panther' tanks, 2,700 'Tiger' tanks and 15,000 APCs fitted with PAK weapons & grenade launchers were either at the bottom of the sea or abandoned.
7) German prisoners might look as if German Bialystok-Minsk, Smolensk and Kiev pockets.

[lwd]

The German Normandy-style landings in USA:
What might happened, might be like these, it's the combination of the following:
1) might be a German Dieppe landing.

I'm not sure what you are trying to say here but it would be a lot harder than that. Look at the difference in distances between England and France and then between Europe and America. Also consider the range of the German ships and how far damaged ones might have to go to find a friendly port.

2) for the 4 Graf Zeppelin-Class carriers, might be a German Battle of Midway.

With their minimal strike groups and inexperiance in carrier operation. It's more likely to resembe the Battle of the Phillipine sea with the US on the winning side again but of course the Germans wouldn't have as many planes so couldn't loose as many.

3) if some Germans have succeeded in landing and then evacuated in a German Dunkirk-style retreat.

They didn't have the transport to do this and pulling it off over the length of the Atlantic would have been beyond even GB.

4) as for the 1,000 jet fighters and the 1,000 four-engined jet bombers, just like a German Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.

How so? The German planes can't reach the US. If you are talking about vs GB they can't keep that many Me-262s flying. Not with the engine reliability they had. And of course this neglects just what the British and US would be fielding. Certainly they are going to react in some way to such a massive German build up. Which brings up the point again that the German economy was at least an order of magnitude to small to acomplish this not to mention they didn't have the technology. I can't see Hitler even coming to power in a world where Germany could accomplish this.

5) as for the 5 Bismarck-Class and 5 Scharnhorst-Class ships, just like the Kamikaze-attack of the Yamato in Okinawa.
6) the 9,000 'Panther' tanks, 2,700 'Tiger' tanks and 15,000 APCs fitted with PAK weapons & grenade launchers were either at the bottom of the sea or abandoned.
7) German prisoners might look as if German Bialystok-Minsk, Smolensk and Kiev pockets.

?????

[nebelwerferXXX]

Re-planning and Up-grading of the German 'Z-Plan'
---1 super battleship of 700,000 tons
---18 battleships of 56,000 tons
---6 battleships of 42,000 tons
---18 pocket-battleships of 32,000 tons
---12 aircraft-carriers
---15 heavy cruisers
---132 light cruisers
---204 destroyers
---270 torpedo-boats
---747 U-boats

[lwd]

I'm really curious as to why you keep adding noise rather than signal to these boards. Fantasy lists with no rational or comment are worse than useless.

[nebelwerferXXX]

Programming the German 'Z-Plan'
---1 super battleship of 700,000 tons
---20 battleships of 56,000 tons and 6 battleships of 42,000 tons
---20 pocket-battleships of 32,000 tons
---10 aircraft-carriers
---15 heavy cruisers
---130 light cruisers
---200 destroyers
---270 torpedo-boats
---750 U-boats

It is all Fantasy anyway, so it really does not matter. Heck, give him 2,500 ships with 150 carriers and 150 super battleships, If you want. It amounts to the same thing.

[nebelwerferXXX]

If Hitler had not built the 42,000-ton Bismarck, 42,000-ton Tirpitz, 32,000-ton Scharnhorst, 32,000-ton Gneisenau, 30,000-ton Graf Zeppelin, 12,000-ton Deutschland, 12,000-ton Admiral Scheer, 12,000-ton Graf Spee and 11 x 10,000-ton cruisers, that would come to about 282,000 tons, that steel could have been used to build more tanks...
---10-ton 'Light Tractor'
---20-ton 'Heavy Tractor'
---20-ton Neubaufahrzeug 'A'
---20-ton Neubaufahrzeug 'B'
---7-ton light tank
---20-ton medium tank
---5-ton 'Agricultural Tractor'

[lwd]

... It is all Fantasy anyway, so it really does not matter....

No. A good "what if" is constructed from something that was possible not some fantasy you are picking out of thin air. A well crafted one has a single POD and can be used to increase understanding of real events as one analyzes and debates how it would work out. Throwing out lists such as you have been doing is of minimal utility.