further to
oh-kay , ı have read another one book and am now an expert on the development history of V-2 , as debated in this thread sometime back .
ı have now finished Dornberger's V-2 , some book from 1952 or 54 . Of course he says missile bombarment was the way to go :
"Ever since the huge bomber losses during the attack on England in 1940, my colleagues and I had been firmly convinced that defeat in the air on the western front could be prevented, if at all, only by the employment of guided missiles of very great range and effect In the long run the Luftwaffe would not be able to afford the continued loss of valuable flying crews.
The threadbare argument that our A-4 was too costly in comparison with the heavy bomber became more and more difficult to uphold in the light of experience over England. If, as accurate statistics showed, a bomber was shot down after an average of five or six flights over England, if it could carry only a total of six to eight tons of bombs during its active existence, and if the total loss of a bomber, including the cost of training the crew, were estimated at about thirty times the price of an A-4 (38,000 marks), then it was obvious that the A-4 came off best. It should have been only a question of time before this was recognized even at top level."
not forgetting to add that there were thousands of fighters on the ground but no fuel to fly them in 1945 , too ... Now that being able to provide CAS in 1944/45 could have still the "won" the war for Germany , by forcing the Allies to a standstill , however hard it might be argue to that end .
books by Military people tend to be self serving , especially those by people who have lost . But having the benefit reading some previous book , ı can confidently , you know , rant . In the first place the desire for Peneemünde to become "profitable" post-war is seriously apparent , trying to achieve a monopoly situation in "space" travel . One can understand a remote test site counter-espionage wise , but one day Adolf would want to invade Sweden and what would stop Swedes to bomb the centralized factory ? This is also a probable basis for the reference that there would a winged V-2 (later with pilots on board) and its A-10 first stage would have parachutes to make it land in the sea , with my really limited research never seeing anything like this before . V-2 as a warloser ? The first book had given the idea of Inertial guidance was a "thing" , with some Austrian expat having very high offers that could not be fielded in a weapon , even if his torpedo stuff were still deadly . This book offers some "not-one-of-Peneemünde" guy (a German general assigned later) suspecting it was heat that made the V-2s break up , only noticed when the tests were taken to Poland . So he wants glass wool covering for the Oxygen tanks and it adds some rigidity which helps , so they reinforce the missile shells . Had the RAF not bombed Peneemünde , they might have saved a couple thousands of lives ; and one can only suspect the raid happened because London received intelligence Hanna Reitch was visiting !
it being 1950s one must indeed forgive Dornberger for omissions . When V-2 starts to show promise , people try to take it from Peneemünde :
"We would transform Peenemunde into a stock company with limited liability. The entire capital of the company would remain for the present in the hands of the state, while the firm would be managed by a large concern acting as trustee -for instance, General Electric, Siemens, Lorenz, or Rheinmetall- with a view to transferring the plant, after amortization of the capital invested, to the possession of the firm"
A truly monstrous scheme!
"Are you aware," I inquired innocently, "that the value of Peenemunde, including everything spent on the place so far, is several hundred million marks? The interest payments and amortization quotas could hardly be a temptation to industry."
"We already have acceptable tenders ... We would make a cut in capital and declare assets of between one and two millions, letting the rest go."
What a charming idea! You take an investment running into several hundred million marks and turn it, by a "cut in capital," into a bargain of between one and two millions. Good business!
"Is it your opinion, then," I replied, "that this purely experimental plant, which has done nothing but cost money so far and has no facilities for mass production, will ever show any sort of profit or even pay for itself?"
"If it were associated with a big concern which could manufacture elsewhere as well, I consider it perfectly possible. Development costs would then be allowed for in the figures for quantity production and charged up."
It was incredible that I was dealing with officials and not ordinary swindlers. Public funds are of no account if you are set on doing the state, that is, the people, out of control of a business!
you know , Peneemünde does not have a factory despite the years long insistence , denying Dornberger what he wants and he is nicely accusing people trying to do what he couldn't as a not-yet-retired officer . To deny that he proposes to start a company , Adolf Hitler Limited ... Adolf does not bite and Peneemünde will indeed become a private company later , to prevent SS swallowing it in whole . People interested enough will know SS once arrested von Braun for working on space travel and not the war ...
oh , General Electric ? A couple of pages later that will turn out to be AEG , the German equivalent . As one can never follow the money and stuff , ı actually checked wikipedia if AEG was a subsidiary of GE . Turned out AEG was established to sell Edison lamps before diversifying and stuff . It gets better as the AEG guy arrives to check Peneemünde , discovers the rocket people know electricity better than AEG , making him say : "Now, after seeing the work you have done and the problems you have tackled, I shall ask you to help the German electrical industry! " As these are the times the locomotive czar of the Reich is busy trying to grab the V-2 from its inventors , Dornberger is perhaps agitated in remembering a decade later ? Or is it bitterness or something as GE (through Project Hermes) sits tight on the Nazi rocketmen while American industry learns stuff on its own , decreasing the "power" of the von Braun team ? ı understand the early years were not exactly glorious for the German emigrees in Alabama and stuff . Or is it even real , Nazis reaching out to Corporate America , offering all them patents if America quits the war , just as the Allies are getting into the stride ? As an example of sorts , the SS finally collected all the biggest engineers down to South Germany where they could be captured by Americans or maybe shot as a last resort .
and of course , one indeed has to explain why they were all SS in the end , with the Mittelwerke and death camps and the whole thing . This is provided by pages and pages of talks with Himmler . Who strangely doesn't "sound" that insane in Dornberger's reminisence ; with gems like Russian worker loves his status while the Westerners are just lazy . If Stalin makes butter instead of cannon there is no way the West can cope with the cheap imports , you know the China model since the 1980s . So them Russians perhaps must be forced to stay in arms production , perhaps helped by giving Peneemünde experts far more visible and profitable jobs ? Yeah , my fault that Sputnik , without it von Braun would be a nobody by 1970 ...
