Bad ideas in war

[jimbob]

To say nothing of the resources that the campaign kept tied down in Germany rather than on the Eastern or Western fronts.

10,000 88mm flak weapons being kept in Germany was significant, for example

 

[Wudang]

10,000 88mm flak weapons being kept in Germany was significant, for example

I know the scale of WWII was massive but sometimes a single number like that hits home.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Also millions of tons of artillery shells lost to AA shell production, the training and resources for all the artillery crews manning the AA guns and resources put in to millions of tons of re-enforced concrete U-boat pens, deep shelters and bunkers
Not forgetting the production lost to air raid damage.
Before the war the Germans didn't distribute or diversify production. If a factory was hit and work stopped until it was repaired entire supply chains could be disrupted.*
In contrast , by the time the war started the British government had paid for the building and equipping of 'shadow' factories for production of vital weapons and equipment including aircraft and aero engines. Some were even underground, the most famous being the Merlin engine factory built under Box Hill and accessed via the existing railway tunnel.
It had its own underground railway station. Trains entering the tunnel with materials were timed to coincide with trains of finished engines leaving at the other end to help hide the factory.
German aircraft production never got close to British numbers.


*A good example is the Focke-Wulf Ta154. It was going to be the German equivalent of the Mosquito, a plywood nightfighter.
It's construction relied on a particular synthetic adhesive called Tego-Film. It was produced in one factory owned by A company called Goldschmidt and its production process was s trade secret. It's factory was destroyed in an RAF night raid in 1943. No other glue was available with enough strength so all the effort and resources put in to the Ta154 were wasted.

 

[jimbob]

Also millions of tons of artillery shells lost to AA shell production, the training and resources for all the artillery crews manning the AA guns and resources put in to millions of tons of re-enforced concrete U-boat pens, deep shelters and bunkers
Not forgetting the production lost to air raid damage.
Before the war the Germans didn't distribute or diversify production. If a factory was hit and work stopped until it was repaired entire supply chains could be disrupted.*
In contrast , by the time the war started the British government had paid for the building and equipping of 'shadow' factories for production of vital weapons and equipment including aircraft and aero engines. Some were even underground, the most famous being the Merlin engine factory built under Box Hill and accessed via the existing railway tunnel.
It had its own underground railway station. Trains entering the tunnel with materials were timed to coincide with trains of finished engines leaving at the other end to help hide the factory.
German aircraft production never got close to British numbers.


*A good example is the Focke-Wulf Ta154. It was going to be the German equivalent of the Mosquito, a plywood nightfighter.
It's construction relied on a particular synthetic adhesive called Tego-Film. It was produced in one factory owned by A company called Goldschmidt and its production process was s trade secret. It's factory was destroyed in an RAF night raid in 1943. No other glue was available with enough strength so all the effort and resources put in to the Ta154 were wasted.

Yup.

And the dispersal at that stage imposed far worse costs on production than the pre war prep that the British did. Often weapons don't directly cause too much harm, but that is because their existence and threat causes costly countermeasures that have an impact.

And as you said, there were many German weapons programmes that were delayed or abandoned when their engineering sites were hit.

Further to your point about aircraft production, they also weren't equivalent. No proper heavy bombers, for example. Also, if you are producing defensive night fighters, and manning them, you're not using those pilots to protect convoys between Italy and North Africa, or to interdict allied convoys in the same theatre for example.

 

[Andy_Ross]

Yup.

And the dispersal at that stage imposed far worse costs on production than the pre war prep that the British did. Often weapons don't directly cause too much harm, but that is because their existence and threat causes costly countermeasures that have an impact.

And as you said, there were many German weapons programmes that were delayed or abandoned when their engineering sites were hit.

Further to your point about aircraft production, they also weren't equivalent. No proper heavy bombers, for example. Also, if you are producing defensive night fighters, and manning them, you're not using those pilots to protect convoys between Italy and North Africa, or to interdict allied convoys in the same theatre for example.

Or supply close support of troops on the ground.
For example, Between December the 16th and January 1st The Luftwaffe flew 6421 sorties over the Ardennes battlefield to support their attack, the Americans flew 10,250. In addition the RAF diverted Typhoon and Tempest squadrons to provide 9,250 sorties.
Altogether in the full month 16 December to 16 January the Allies flew 63,741 sorties over the Ardennes battlefield, the Germans flew no more after the 1st of January.
January 1st was the day of operation Bodenplatte, the German all out attack on Allied airfields in Belgium to try and ease the pressure on the front. That accounted for over 1000 of their sorties in the battle.
They lost 300 aircraft shot down in a single morning, the allies lost 280 on the ground which were replaced in less than 2 weeks.
Altogether the Luftwaffe lost over 800 aircraft in two weeks, more than 10% of their total air force, mainly fighters. They took months to replace and build numbers up again.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I've never seen anything like that.
Are you sure it wasn't supposed to be a safety device like a grip safety on a Luger or 1911?

View attachment 76137

Which actually brings me to another bad idea. The Soviet TT (Tokarev Tula) pistol had NO safety at all. Not grip, not a switch, nothing. The ONLY way to make it safe was to take out the magazine, rack the slide (and presumably retrieve the round), manually decock it, then put the magazine back in. There are records of officers shooting themselves when their car hit a pothole and they dropped it. One of them literally shot himself in the head. Probably more, but that's the only account I've read where it went THAT dramatically south.

And it's not like they were trying to invent some reliable safety, like was the case with early-ish SMGs. Their design literally copied the 1911, in a different calibre. They just wanted it as cheap as possible. So how do you make a milled steel pistol cheaper, while still having to mill it? Remove those silly safety features. D'oh.

And again, I'm not talking about some experimental prototype, which I'm willing to overook. Those things were issued by the millions, not only in the USSR, but all over the Eastern bloc.

 

[sackett]

The TT had a half-cock notch on the hammer. It was safe to carry the pistol
w/ a round in the chamber and the half-cock engaged -- not that I'd do it, but
I wouldn't carry any single action auto pistol locked and loaded with an external safety on
either.

I suspect that TT accidents occurred 1) to fools and 2) in rare cases where
the half-cock notch on the hammer was not quite engaged with the sear
-- as will happen with half-cock notches; always has & always will.

A few modern gun bugs (pistoleros, whom I regard with some nervousness) think
the TT was safe 'nuff for wartime. Okay. Let 'em go off to war packing one.
I'll chip in to buy flowers for their graves.

Not that the pistol is likely to do them harm, but enthusiasts who face modern
war with confidence in their sidearms justify that nervousness I mentioned.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I suspect that TT accidents occurred 1) to fools and 2) in rare cases where
the half-cock notch on the hammer was not quite engaged with the sear
-- as will happen with half-cock notches; always has & always will.

I think that firearm design should be for fools. Doubly so those who just came out of a firefight, and have their brains marinated in adrenaline. Failing to engage a half cock sear is probably the least of your problems there.

But, nevertheless, there were officers who shot themselves with it. Were they fools? MAYBE. Nobody can dig them up and give them an IQ test

Were they insufficiently trained? PROBABLY. The Red Army was going through soldiers like crazy. Including officers. Sixteen year olds had their first combat or maybe second, and were given a promotion and a pistol. Nobody was going to send them back for officer training when they needed to stop the Wehrmacht RIGHT NAO,

Which brings me back to the original point: design your military weapons for idiots, because some of them will be. FSM knows I've seen some of the... intellectual proletar, even operating an AA autocannon