Cybvep wrote:
The V-2 development program cost approximately 2 billion 1944 $. The cost of the Manhattan project was similar! Obviously, the Germans were much more advanced in rocketry than the Allies. No wonder why the Allies were trying to steal as much as they could from them...
The reason they couldn't do a full-scale (cover all approaches) Manhattan Project copy was because it took huge amounts of electricity that wasn't available in Europe (no TVA for example). Building more capacity would've upped the costs for a Manhattan scale project. BUT they don't have to do it that way, since some methods took significantly less electricity. So, a slightly smaller scale project could be done with V2 fundings.
BTW despite the V2's shortcomings, it was practically impossible to stop that rocket from reaching its target by technical countermeasures. The Allies relied on deception, but it was a huge gamble. They still had to disable the launch sites eventually.
That's very true. Good thing German operatives on British Isles had been rooted or turned way back or they could've caused more devastation by giving accurate targeting info. In the end though, without NBC warhead it's an expensive onetime bomber. I guess it comes down to whether the Allied efforts to disable V2 took as much effort as building & developement.
Rockets? Bombers?
Only ONE bomber/rocket needs to get through in order to bomb a city into oblivion if you have a nuke. And imagine what a great "surprise" it would be if London suddenly got nuked.
If they axe V2 to have funds for an A-bomb obviously no rockets for delivery. 1st generation weapons are too heavy for a V2 anyway.
Assuming things otherwise go roughly as in reality, by the time they can build the Bomb (if they manage to beat MP, '44 would still be extremely generous more likely sometime '45) bombers are facing so much opposition in the air that most targets are extremely hard to reach (they didn't have many heavy bombers either). Moscow would probably make most sense since Soviets had limited high altitude interceptors and no radar. London would require come serious luck.
They were also working on strategic bombers that could reach America ("America Bomber"). They also had TONS of biochemical weapons but were too afraid to used them because of the risk of retaliation and overwhelming Allied air superiority. However, the Germans were producing gas masks at an astonishing rate in 1944-1945, so you never know...
ABomber has to be built too... in time preferably.
Thank god they weren't nutty enough to use those chems or Central Europe would have an anthrax (infinetly worse than anything in German arsenal) coating TODAY. *shudder*
. But the relative amounts between napkin vs useful in Nazi Germany has always struck me as quite bad.