Messerschmitt 109 - myths and facts

[Jukka O. Kauppinen]

"This article and its sub sections are put together to dispell some of
the persistent myths about the Messerschmitt 109 fighter. As the most
ever built fighter which was the mainstay of German Luftwaffe and
various other air forces, including Finnish, Spanish, Hungarian,
Romanian air forces, the plane is also victim of intentional
disinformation, many most persistent urban myths and just ignorance. Not
having first hand information or poor understanding of the subject leads
easily to absurd claims.

The attempt here is to look at the subject, Messerschmitt 109, through
the eyes of the 109 pilots.

This article is primarily a collection of pilot quotes that relate to
actual flying of the plane. The quotes are from interviews, articles and
books. They are complemented with some additional bits about other
topics. It is not a serious study - just bunch of pilot opinions that
might be conflicting to each other. Pilot's comments are always "their
facts". I do not guarantee 100% that the other materials are always
completely correct. Errors may and most likely remain."

Examples:

General comments on Me 109

Me 109 G:
"It was very advanced and equipped with new, more sophisticated
technology. Nicknamed Gustav, the 109G was well armed, but not as light
as the early E and F versions. Its more powerful engine meant higher
power settings whose initial climb rate sent it soaring to 18700 feet in
six minutes, but at low speed the plane was difficult to handle."
- Major Gunther Rall in April 1943. German fighter ace, NATO general,
Commander of the German Air Force. 275 victories. Source: Gunther Rall,
a memoir.

Me 109 G:
"Comparing the Curtiss and the Messerschmitt (109 G), which one was the
more pleasant to fly ?
Well, both were pleasant each in their own way. The Curtiss was as if in
your control all the time. More speed would have been necessary. The
Messerschmitt had speed, she climbed well and was well-armed. That was
it. Both types were good aircraft in their age."
- Kyösti Karhila, Finnish fighter ace. 32 victories. Source: Interview
by Finnish Virtual Pilots Association.

Me 109 G-6:
Me109 had good performance values for its time, the weapons (1 x 20 mm +
2 x 13 mm) were accurate and effective. The option for 3x20mm cannons
was well suited against IL-2s. I didn't regard the swerving during
take-offs as anything special. In my opinion, the accidents were caused
by poor training.
- Martti Uottinen, Finnish war bomber pilot, post war fighter pilot.
Source: Hannu Valtonen, "Me 109 ja Saksan sotatalous" (Messerschmitt Bf
109 and the German war economy), ISBN 951-95688-7-5.

Landing the 109

Me 109 E-4:
"I established a speed of 200 kmh to enter the downwind leg, 150 at the
end of the downwind, a curving final approach aiming to reduce speed to
130 kmh halfway around, 120 kmh with 30 degreed to go to the centreline
and a threshold speed of 110 kmh with a dribble of power to stabilise
the rate of speed decay.
Compare this with Black 6 (109 G) where I aimed to be at 200 kmh at the
end of the downwind leg and not less than 165 kmh at the threshold."
- Charlie Brown, RAF Flying Instructor, test flight of restored Me 109
E-4 WN 3579. Source: Warbirds Journal issue 50.

Me 109 G-6:
Landing was slightly problematic if the approach was straight, with
slight overspeed at about 180 km/h. Landing was extremely easy and
pleasing when done with shallow descending turn, as then you could see
easily the landing point. You had a little throttle, speed 150-160 km/h,
145 km/h at final. You controlled the descent speed with the engine and
there was no problems, the feeling was the same as with Stieglitz. If I
recall correctly the Me "sits down" at 140-142 km/h.
The takeoff and landing accidents were largely result from lack of
experience in training. People didn't know what to do and how to do it.
As a result the plane was respected too much, and pilots were too
careful. The plane carried the man, and the man didn't control his plane.
- Erkki O. Pakarinen, Finnish fighter pilot. Source: Hannu Valtonen, "Me
109 ja Saksan sotatalous" (Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the German war
economy), ISBN 951-95688-7-5.

Me 109 G:
"I didn't notice any special hardships in landings."
-Jorma Karhunen, Finnish fighter ace. 36 1/2 victories, fighter squadron
commander. Source: Hannu Valtonen, "Me 109 ja Saksan sotatalous"
(Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the German war economy), ISBN 951-95688-7-5.

Diving - structural rigidity of 109 in dives

Me 109 G:
"The maximum speed not to be exceeded was 750kmh. Once I was flying
above Helsinki as I received a report of Russkies in the South. There
was a big Cumulus cloud on my way there but I decided to fly right
through. I centered the controls and then something extraordinary
happened. I must have involuntarily entered into half-roll and dive. The
planes had individual handling characteristics; even though I held the
turning indicator in the middle, the plane kept going faster and faster,
I pulled the stick, yet the plane went into an ever steeper dive.
In the same time she started rotating, and I came out of the cloud with
less than one kilometer of altitude. I started pulling the stick,
nothing happened, I checked the speed, it was about 850kmh. I tried to
recover the plane but the stick was as if locked and nothing happened. I
broke into a sweat of agony: now I am going into the sea and cannot help
it. I pulled with both hands, groaning and by and by she started
recovering, she recovered more, I pulled and pulled, but the surface of
the sea approached, I thought I was going to crash. I kept pulling until
I saw that I had survived. The distance between me and the sea may have
been five meters. I pulled up and found myself on the coast of Estonia.
If I in that situation had used the vertical trim the wings would have
been broken off. A minimal trim movement has a strong effect on wings
when the speed limit has been exceded. I had 100kmh overspeed! It was
out of all limits.
The Messerschmitt's wings were fastened with two bolts. When I saw the
construction I had thought that they are strong enough but in this case
I was thinking, when are they going to break
- What about the phenomenon called "buffeting" or vibration, was there any?
No, I did not encounter it even in the 850kmh speed."
- Kyösti Karhila, Finnish fighter ace. 32 victories. Source: Interview
by Finnish Virtual Pilots Association.

Me 109 G:
"Me 109 had good and accurate weapons, but those were the only good
points of it. To me, it's unacceptable that somebody had built a fighter
plane that couldn't be dived without limits. Me109 had a dive limit of
880km/h - you weren't to exceed it or the plane would break up. Just
this happened to Sgt Mäittälä. I (and Pokela) was forced to exceed this
limit twice, I can't describe how it felt just to sit in the cockpit
waiting, if the plane would break up. I have never gotten rid of that
feeling, of being trapped."
-Heimo Lampi, Finnish fighter ace. 13 1/2 victories. Source: Hannu
Valtonen, "Me 109 ja Saksan sotatalous" (Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the
German war economy), ISBN 951-95688-7-5.

Me 109 G-2/G-6:
"The Russkies never followed to a dive. Their max dive speeds were too
low, I suppose. It was the same in the Continuation War, their La-5's
and Yak-9's turned quickly back up. "
- How heavy did the Me controls get at different speeds?
"It got heavy, but you could use the flettner. It was nothing special,
but a big help.
Once in '43, there was a Boston III above the Gulf of Finland. I went
after it, and we went to clouds at 500 meters. Climbing, climbing,
climbing and climbing, all the way to seven kilometers, and it was just
more and more clouds. It got so dark that I lost sight. I turned back
down, and saw the Russkie diving too. Speed climbed to 700 km/h. I
wondered how it'd turn out. I pulled with all my strength when emerging
from the clouds, then used the flettner. I was 50 meters above sea when
I got it to straighten out. I was all sweaty. At that time the Me's were
new to us."
- Did the roll capabilites change?
"Not so much. It got stiffer, but you still could bank."
- Were you still in full control at high speeds, like at 600-700 km/h?
"Yes. "
- Mauno Fräntilä, Finnish fighter ace. 5 1/2 victories. Source:
Interview by Finnish Virtual Pilots Association: Chief Warrant Officer
Mauno Fräntilä.

Full article available at the Finnish Virtual Pilots Association web site:
http://www.virtualpilots.fi/feature/articles/109myths/

Other recent English language articles:

Martti Lehtovaara
Martti Lehtovaara was interested on aviation already at a young age. He
was trained as pilot in the military pilot course #2. During the
Continuation War first at Reserve Squadron 35, then as fighter pilot in
Squadrons 32, 24 and 26.
"A couple of Russians spotted him and came after. Bruun called to
mechanics in the tent to come and see how Cassu gets shot down. Everyone
thought that's what would happen. " ...read the whole story.
http://www.virtualpilots.fi/hist/WW2History-MarttiLehtovaaraEnglish.html

Chief Warrant Officer Mauno Fräntilä
Chief Warrant Officer Mauno Fräntilä "began the flight business in
1936". He was one of the few who piloted the Fokker D.XXI fighter in the
Winter War sorties. Subsequently Fräntilä served in Squadron 32 and was
one of those who were assigned to the new Squadron 34 that was equipped
with the new Me-109 fighters. After the war Fräntilä continued as an Air
Force pilot, working as a flight teacher.
"Speed was essential and should never be lost in combat. Never become a
cross in the sky. The Messerschmitt was exellent. You got always away
when you pushed your nose down, and it then rose like an elevator. You
soon had upper hand again.
http://www.virtualpilots.fi/hist/WW2History-MaunoFrantila2English.html

[Dave Eadsforth]

In article <d17gjc$86f$1...@phys-news1.kolumbus.fi>, Jukka O. Kauppinen
<jukka.NOSP...@jmp.SPAMMITPOIS.fi> writes

Thanks for a fascinating post, Jukka. Just one question at this point -
what is a flettner? Is it the trim control? (A 'flattener'?!)

Cheers,

Dave

--
Dave Eadsforth

[Jukka O. Kauppinen]

> Thanks for a fascinating post, Jukka. Just one question at this point -
> what is a flettner? Is it the trim control? (A 'flattener'?!)

A Flettner tab is usually kind of trim tab, that is on aeleron or
rudder. Sorry I can't describe this in English well enough. The veteran
pilots often refer the trim as flettner as well, so the reader must at
times know how to read between the lines to see if he means a flettner
tab or stabilizer trim.

jok

[Peter Stickney]

In article <bH$l8gACu...@magnum.demon.co.uk>,

Dave Eadsforth <da...@magnum.demon.co.uk> writes:
> In article <d17gjc$86f$1...@phys-news1.kolumbus.fi>, Jukka O. Kauppinen
> <jukka.NOSP...@jmp.SPAMMITPOIS.fi> writes
>
> Thanks for a fascinating post, Jukka. Just one question at this point -
> what is a flettner? Is it the trim control? (A 'flattener'?!)

A Flettner Tab is a method of reducing control forces for, say, a
rudder. It's a movable tab, like a Trim Tab, that's deflected by a
linkage when the control surface moves. This deflection is used to
amplify the motion of the control surface.

--
Pete Stickney
p-sti...@nospam.adelphia.net
Without data, all you have are opinions

[Thom]

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 22:24:23 +0200, "Jukka O. Kauppinen"
<jukka.NOSP...@jmp.SPAMMITPOIS.fi> wrote:

>"This article and its sub sections are put together to dispell some of
>the persistent myths about the Messerschmitt 109 fighter. As the most
>ever built fighter which was the mainstay of German Luftwaffe and
>various other air forces, including Finnish, Spanish, Hungarian,
>Romanian air forces, the plane is also victim of intentional
>disinformation, many most persistent urban myths and just ignorance. Not
>having first hand information or poor understanding of the subject leads
>easily to absurd claims.
>
>The attempt here is to look at the subject, Messerschmitt 109, through
>the eyes of the 109 pilots.
>
>This article is primarily a collection of pilot quotes that relate to
>actual flying of the plane. The quotes are from interviews, articles and
>books. They are complemented with some additional bits about other
>topics. It is not a serious study - just bunch of pilot opinions that
>might be conflicting to each other. Pilot's comments are always "their
>facts". I do not guarantee 100% that the other materials are always
>completely correct. Errors may and most likely remain."
>
>Examples:

thanks for posting that. Quite interesting. A few things to be
added. The spitfire had 6" less wheel span than the ME-109! Yet you
don't hear stories about how bad the landing gear was on it. Good
consors me thinks.

If I can add a few of my own notes. I got to log 50 minutes in one of
the Spanish ME-109G-12's as a young lad in summer of 1965. I had
never flown anything that hot before and it took a bit to learn to
stay ahead of the plane. It also had no rudder trim and I landed with
one leg shorter than the other! :-) The pilot in the back seat told
me that he thought the HE-100/112 was a better plane than the 109.
Further to that he said that the 109 could keep up in a turn with the
Spit despite all the British propaghanda. This jived with what some
Luftwaffe people told me at the USAF Museum in Dayton including
Galland in 1980. They all basically said that you could dog fight the
Spit but expect your crew chief to climb all over you for popping
rivits in the wings of "His Airplane". :-)

But at the end of the day I shall remain a lover of the FW-190D-9 and
the fact you can buy brand new FW-190A-8's and D-9's from Fluge Werks
is why I keep buying lottery tickets!

Good weather to all
Thom

[The Enlightenment]

Any idea of how much this increased roll rate and how usable it was in
combat? I mean taking your had of the joystick or throttle to adjust
a trim tab must have been a bit distracting? The Fw 190 had Friese
ailerons where the leading edge juted into the oncomming stream to
reduce workload. In the Heinkel He 162 Volksjaeger, a small 'cheap'
aircaft, the ailerons were actually hydraulically opperated to help
avoid 'lockup'.

[The Enlightenment]

Due to the cirulation effects of the propellor the airflow on one wing
of the Me 109 seperated at approximetly 12 degrees. This angle
coincided with the angle the Me 109 sat on the ground.

The solution in the Me 109K series was to increase the tail yoke length
to reduce the siting angle. The ground looping problems more or less
disappeared and the improved visibilly eliminated taxiing collisions.
You will find that some Me 109G-10 and G-14 received the extended tail
yoke as well. It appears to have been retractable in some instances.
The G-12 you flew would have been an G-6 derivative and I don't think
likely to have had that modification.

The ground looping problem was identified but blamed on the test pilot
who after a perfect 3 point landing observed by witnesses was sacked by
Messerschmitt. Most of the German aeronautical engineers of the time
find the events sourounding this extra-ordinary. Willy could by
brillaint but Willy was sometimes Silly. Nearly 50% of luftwaffe
aircraft losses and a sizeable portion of casualties were accidents and
the Me 109 ground looping problem was a part of that.

>
> If I can add a few of my own notes. I got to log 50 minutes in one
of
> the Spanish ME-109G-12's as a young lad in summer of 1965. I had
> never flown anything that hot before and it took a bit to learn to
> stay ahead of the plane. It also had no rudder trim and I landed
with
> one leg shorter than the other! :-) The pilot in the back seat told
> me that he thought the HE-100/112 was a better plane than the 109.
> Further to that he said that the 109 could keep up in a turn with the
> Spit despite all the British propaghanda. This jived with what some
> Luftwaffe people told me at the USAF Museum in Dayton including
> Galland in 1980. They all basically said that you could dog fight
the
> Spit but expect your crew chief to climb all over you for popping
> rivits in the wings of "His Airplane". :-)

The Me 109 had a single main spar in each wing attached by bolts to the
fueselage. If the wings were damaged they would be detached and new
one reattched all while siting on it wheels.

The Fw 190 had two spars that carried through. Not only its strength
but its aeroelastic rigidity was higher and this effected behaviour at
high speed.

>
> But at the end of the day I shall remain a lover of the FW-190D-9 and
> the fact you can buy brand new FW-190A-8's and D-9's from Fluge Werks
> is why I keep buying lottery tickets!

Was recently reading Willy Heilmann's book on his experience as a Fw
190 D-9 pilot flying cover for Novotny's Me 262 opperations. On one
occaision he and five others rescue a pair of Me 109s dueling (shiting
themselves no doubt) with a squadran of P-51's. (Common for Luwtwaffe
Pilots in the those days). He seems to have rather pitied the Me 109
pilots for their inferior machine though I think it is a matter of
preferences and was qite happy with his performance against the P-51.

[Jukka O. Kauppinen]

> If I can add a few of my own notes. I got to log 50 minutes in one of
> the Spanish ME-109G-12's as a young lad in summer of 1965. I had
> never flown anything that hot before and it took a bit to learn to
> stay ahead of the plane. It also had no rudder trim and I landed with
> one leg shorter than the other! :-) The pilot in the back seat told
> me that he thought the HE-100/112 was a better plane than the 109.
> Further to that he said that the 109 could keep up in a turn with the
> Spit despite all the British propaghanda. This jived with what some
> Luftwaffe people told me at the USAF Museum in Dayton including
> Galland in 1980. They all basically said that you could dog fight the
> Spit but expect your crew chief to climb all over you for popping
> rivits in the wings of "His Airplane". :-)
>
> But at the end of the day I shall remain a lover of the FW-190D-9 and
> the fact you can buy brand new FW-190A-8's and D-9's from Fluge Werks
> is why I keep buying lottery tickets!

That's very fascinating. Thanks a lot. Maybe you could tell more about
this flight? Your feelings? What the plane and cockpit felt like? What
it was like to fly it?

How fast did you fly? If you came back "one leg shorter", doesn't that
mean the plane was incorrectly trimmed? The rudder was usually set so
that the plane would fly straight in normal cruise and higher speeds,
and the Finnish veterans I've talked with haven't mentioned any bigger
need to push rudder to go straight in higher speeds. The only specific
mentions about hard listing to either direction were in planes of poor
shapes, when the planes just wouldn't go straight on its own.

Your instructor had flown HE-100/112? Amazing. Anything else he maybe said?

Cheers,
jok

[Rob Arndt]

The German Me Bf 109 pilots were "shitting themselves" when up against
P-51s?
That's "why" the Me Bf 109 is the greatest killing machine in aviation
history with the most combat kills and producing the most aces in
history.
ISTR, that despite being considered "obsolete" by the Allies that the
German Experten preferred to keep fighting in the 109, racking up kills
until the last day. Me Bf 109 never lacked lethality either as field
conversion packs kept them up to date. The Gs and Ks still had teeth
and their pilots the tenacity to fight to the death.
And what did Hartmann have to say about the formidable P-51 Mustang
(NOTE: designed by a German-American)- to paraphase, "it was nothing
special". Seems to sum it all up.
The only advantage the Allies had in the air was plain old math-
superior numbers. The Luftwaffe could not fight forces of 5+ to 1 in
the air no matter how good the pilot, machine, or technology. But they
went up anyway against a wall of firepower and still made kills until
the last day.
The Me Bf 109 has not been surpassed since then as the greatest aerial
killer of all time. No F-15 pilot nor naval aviator compares to the
German Experten. Neither do Allied pilots of WW2. They are pathetic by
comparison- having every luxury, were rotated, had an arsenal of
democracy that was never bombed continuously, had vast resources, and
strength in numbers. Hell, America should have built hypersonic
aircraft in WW2 with its manpower and resources... but they did'nt. The
Germans, under total bombardment, kept producing more and more advanced
weaponry that postwar fills every major power inventory in the world.
Get a clue, home patriot morons.

Rob

[Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired]

Must you keep trying to play this game? You have been proved wrong so
many times it's a wonder you ever show up here anymore.

Get over it, you lost the war, the wonder weapons, "experten," etc were
all proved to be flops. How? The Nazis got their butts handed to them
like the inferior fools they were should have.

Stop bringing your lies, mistatements, insecurities etc. to this NG.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

[Geoff May]

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired wrote:
> Rob Arndt wrote a load of drivel that got snipped

>
> Must you keep trying to play this game? You have been proved wrong so
> many times it's a wonder you ever show up here anymore.
>
> Get over it, you lost the war, the wonder weapons, "experten," etc were
> all proved to be flops. How? The Nazis got their butts handed to them
> like the inferior fools they were should have.
>
> Stop bringing your lies, mistatements, insecurities etc. to this NG.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4339983.stm

... and the government are talking about more laws restricting spreading
of Nazi shite. Also, prison sentences of up to 3 years are being discussed.

Perhaps we should invite Mr. Arndt to Germany. No USENET access from the
German prisons so it would improve things round here a bit...

MfG

Geoff.

--
Unofficial F1 Database: http://glibs.ssmmdd.co.uk/
Update: 15th March, 2005
USENET Email address is a spam trap, send Emails to address in the DB

[Grantland]

Geoff May <BeateU...@t-online.de> wrote:

>Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired wrote:
>> Rob Arndt wrote a load of drivel that got snipped
>>
>> Must you keep trying to play this game? You have been proved wrong so
>> many times it's a wonder you ever show up here anymore.
>>
>> Get over it, you lost the war, the wonder weapons, "experten," etc were
>> all proved to be flops. How? The Nazis got their butts handed to them
>> like the inferior fools they were should have.
>>
>> Stop bringing your lies, mistatements, insecurities etc. to this NG.
>
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4339983.stm
>
>... and the government are talking about more laws restricting spreading
>of Nazi shite. Also, prison sentences of up to 3 years are being discussed.
>
>Perhaps we should invite Mr. Arndt to Germany. No USENET access from the
>German prisons so it would improve things round here a bit...
>
>MfG
>
>Geoff.

Return to the Dark Ages

Censorship is on the rise.
Is it coming to America?
by Jared Taylor

Americans think of Europeans as essentially like themselves. They
believe European societies are like their own-rooted in the rule of
law, freedom of religion, democratic government, market competition,
and an unfettered press. In recent years, however, Europeans have
given up an essential liberty: freedom of speech. It is true that in
the United States prevailing orthodoxies on some questions are
ruthlessly enforced but it is still legal to say just about anything.
Not so in much of Europe. In the last decade or so countries we think
of as fellow democracies-France, Germany, Switzerland and others-have
passed laws that limit free speech for the same crude ideological
reasons that drove the brief, unsuccessful vogue of campus speech
codes in the United States.

Today in Europe there are laws as bad as anything George Orwell could
have imagined. In some countries courts have ruled that the facts are
irrelevant, and that certain things must not be said whether they are
true or false. In others, a defendant in court who tries to explain or
defend a forbidden view will be charged on the spot with a fresh
offense. Even his lawyer can be fined or go to jail for trying to
mount a defense. In one case a judge ordered that a bookseller's
entire stock-innocent as well as offending titles-be burned!

Just as Eastern Europe is emerging from it, Western Europe has entered
the thought-crime era, in a return to the mentality that launched the
Inquisition and the wars of religion. It is a tyranny of the left
practiced by the very people who profess shock at the tactics of
Joseph McCarthy, an exercise of raw power in the service of pure
ideology. The desire not merely to debate one's opponents but to
disgrace them, muzzle them, fine them, jail them is utterly contrary
to the spirit of civilized discourse. It is profoundly disturbing to
find this ugly sentiment codified into law in some of the countries we
think of as pillars of Western Civilization. At the same time, these
laws cannot help but draw attention to the very ideas they forbid.
Truth does not generally require the help of censors.

There are two subjects about which Europeans can no longer speak
freely. One is race and the other is Nazi Germany. “Anti-racism” laws
generally take the form of forbidding the expression of opinions that
might stir up “hatred” against any racial or ethnic group. In some
countries, it is now risky to say that genetic differences explain why
blacks have, on average, lower IQs than whites or to say that
non-white immigration should be prevented so as to preserve a white
majority. There are probably parts of every issue of American
Renaissance that could be banned in some European country, and we have
an obvious interest in opposing censorship of this kind.

In one case a judge ordered that a bookseller's entire stock -
innocent as well as offending titles - be burned!

Far more prosecutions have taken place, however, in connection with
what is called “Holocaust revisionism” or “Holocaust denial.” This
appears to cover any skepticism about the generally-accepted view that
the Nazis had a plan to exterminate Jews and managed to kill some six
million, mostly by gassing. There is considerable variety in the laws
that forbid disagreement on this matter (see sidebar, page 6), but the
Jewish Holocaust has become the one historical event on which people
in France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Holland, Poland, Austria,
Lithuania (and Israel) can be legally compelled to agree. It is still
legal to dissent from Holocaust orthodoxy in Italy, Sweden, Denmark,
Norway, Britain, Ireland, and Croatia, but there is powerful pressure
in some of these countries to join the censors. Third Reich Jewish
polices are of no special interest to AR, but it is outrageous that
any point of view on any question be forbidden.

In the United States there is widespread complacency over this blatant
thought control practiced by our closest allies. This complacency
proves the utter lack of integrity of those who make principled
free-speech claims for Communists, pornographers, rap “artists,” and
flag-burners, but who will not lift a finger to stop the persecution
of “racists” and “Nazis.” Liberals get dewy-eyed over the First
Amendment only when it suits them, and are quietly delighted to see
their opponents dragged off to jail because of their opinions. Indeed,
several thousand Europeans are arrested every year who, if they were
leftists, would be lionized as “prisoners of conscience.”
Indifference, even joy, over their fate is the contemptible sentiment
that prevails across the political spectrum even in America.

France has had perhaps the most colorful history of modern European
censorship, perhaps because it has the longest history of Holocaust
revisionism. The leftist Paul Rassinier cast doubt on accepted views
as early as the 1950s, but it was in 1978 that revisionism came to the
attention of a larger European public. In that and the following year
Prof. Robert Faurisson of the University of Lyon published two
articles in the newspaper Le Monde asserting that there were no
execution gas chambers in the Nazi concentration camps. Mr. Faurisson,
an expert at textual analysis who made his case from original
documents, provoked a storm of opposition.

Nine anti-racist and concentration-camp survivor organizations brought
civil and criminal suits against Prof. Faurisson for “falsification of
history in the matter of the gas chambers,” a curious charge brought
under the French anti-racial-discrimination law of 1972. In April
1983, the Paris Court of Appeals found Prof. Faurisson innocent of
“falsification of history” but found him guilty of the equally curious
crime of “reducing his research to malevolent slogans,” and made him
pay a small fine. At the same time, the court upheld the right to
express any opinion on the existence of Nazi gas chambers (presumably
so long as it was not expressed “malevolently”), concluding that “the
value of the conclusions defended by Faurisson rests therefore solely
with the appraisal of experts, historians, and the public.”

This was a setback to the suppressers of free speech, who responded
with what is known as the Gayssot law-named for the Communist deputy
who promoted it-signed into law in 1990 by President François
Mitterand. This law made it a crime punishable by up to 250,000 French
francs (at that time approximately $50,000) or one year in prison or
both to dispute the truth of any of the “crimes against humanity” for
which Nazi leaders were charged at the Nuremberg trials. Prof.
Faurisson, who had continued to publish views on the Holocaust, was
the first to be convicted under this law, and was fined 100,000 francs
in April, 1991, a penalty reduced on appeal to 30,000 francs. He has
not given up his work and has been repeatedly found guilty of the same
crime. At last count, he has also been physically assaulted ten times
and on at least one occasion was nearly killed.

Although the Gayssot law was controversial when it was passed, the
French are now happy with it. According to a 1998 Sofres poll, 79
percent think it necessary “because one does not have the right to say
anything one likes about the extermination of the Jews.”

The extent of this sentiment explains why there were other convictions
for Holocaust-related comments before passage of the 1990 Gayssot law.
In 1987 the leader of the French National Front Jean-Marie Le Pen was
fined under anti-racism laws, not for denying the existence of Nazi
gas chambers but merely for describing them as a “detail” or “minor
point” in the history of the Second World War. Astonishingly enough,
not only must a Frenchman affirm a certain historical fact, he must
attribute to it a certain prescribed importance.

Another French celebrity-turned-thought criminal is Brigitte Bardot,
the former actress. In retirement she has become an ardent
animal-rights activist and has often denounced the ritual slaughter of
sheep by French Muslims during the festival that marks the end of the
Ramadan fast. She has also spoken in more general terms, lamenting
that “my country, France, my homeland, my land is again invaded by an
overpopulation of foreigners, especially Muslims.” Like Prof.
Faurisson, she is impenitent and has been fined at least three
times-in 1997, 1998 and 2000-under the 1972 anti-racism law. A judge
concluded that Miss Bardot was guilty of inciting “discrimination,
hatred or racial violence,” and that her condemnation of Muslim
practices went beyond any possible concern for animal rights.

There has been a host of other less-well-known Frenchmen convicted
under the censorship laws. In May, 1999, the editor of a
small-circulation magazine Akribeia was fined 10,000 francs ($2,000)
and given a suspended six-month sentence for writing favorably about
Paul Rassinier, the founder of French revisionism. At his arrest,
police strip-searched Jean Plantin and confiscated his two computers
and a dozen computer disks, destroying the results of several years’
research. In September 2000, a 53-year-old French high school teacher
in Lemberg in the Moselle region was fined 40,000 Francs ($8,000) and
given a one-year suspended sentence for telling his students that the
Third Reich gas chambers were used for delousing clothes and that the
concentration camps were not extermination centers.

Censorship cases now get little attention in France unless there are
unusual circumstances or the defendant is a celebrity. In July 2000, a
local National Front politician in the Rhône-Alpes region, Georges
Theil, was charged with “disputing the existence of crimes against
humanity.” In what he thought was a private e-mail exchange and using
a screen name, he had written, “Homicidal gas chambers never existed
for the simple reason that they were simply and profoundly
impossible.” Mr. Theil had not counted on the diligence of the French
police, who tracked him down through his Internet service provider,
Wanadoo, and hauled him into court where prosecutors asked for a
six-month suspended sentence. Cases of this kind, which show how
deeply the French police are willing to burrow into what people think
are their private lives, have been completely ignored in the United
States.

Two recent censorship trials that did receive international attention
were “the Garaudy affair” and the successful attempt to shut down
certain activities by the American Internet portal Yahoo. The Garaudy
scandal is particularly instructive because it shows how willingly the
left will sacrifice its own to the gods of Third Reich orthodoxy.
Roger Garaudy was born in 1913, served in the French army, joined the
wartime Resistance, and sat in the French National Assembly as a
Communist, first as a deputy and later as a senator. For 25 years he
was a major theoretician for the Communist Party, but broke with the
comrades over the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. He
continued to teach philosophy and promote anti-racism and socialism.
He converted to Islam, and enjoyed great prestige as one of France's
most influential public intellectuals.

Over the years he took an increasing interest in the Palestinian
cause, and came to believe Jews were exaggerating the horrors of the
Holocaust in order to squelch criticism of Israel. This and other
views expressed in his 1995 book The Founding Myths of Modern Israel
(published in English in 2000 by the California-based Institute for
Historical Review) unleashed not only a flood of criticism but
likewise brought the octogenarian into court for violation of the
Gayssot law. Prof. Garaudy's impeccable credentials as a leftist and
anti-racist were no defense. In February, 1998, he was duly fined the
equivalent of $40,000 after a trial that caused a sensation in France
and throughout the Islamic world. Probably no event has prompted more
interest in Holocaust revisionism among Arabs than the trial of this
French Muslim who defended Palestinians. Religious and political
leaders from Egypt to Iran denounced France for putting him on trial,
and the wife of the president of the United Arab Emirates contributed
$50,000 to his defense. Egyptian Nobel laureate in literature Naguib
Mahfouz wondered about the health of Western societies in which it is
commonplace to deny God but a crime to doubt the Holocaust.

The affair took on yet another tragi-comic dimension when Abbé Pierre,
one of the most popular and admired men in France, made a few offhand
remarks in support of Prof. Garaudy. Abbé Pierre is a Capuchin friar
whose real name is Henri Groulès. He came to be known as “the abbé”
during his work with the French Resistance smuggling Jews out of
occupied France. He has devoted his life to good works for the poor
and for immigrants, and has a reputation something like that of Mother
Theresa. He had become acquainted with Prof. Garaudy and shared his
concern about Israel's treatment of Palestinians. After a few comments
in favor of his old friend, he was horrified to discover that despite
much backtracking and many apologies his reputation had vanished. He
acknowledged he had not read the book, called on Prof. Garaudy to
correct any errors, and disavowed any association with Holocaust
denial. Even so, leftists whom he thought were lifelong friends turned
on him, kicking him out of the International League Against Racism and
Anti-Semitism, a French anti-racist organization of which he had long
been a member. Perhaps the cruelest blow was his expulsion from
Emmaus, the charitable organization he himself had founded. Although
not charged with violation of the Gayssot law, Abbé Pierre fled to
Italy and hid in a monastery until the controversy blew over.

The French case against the American Internet giant Yahoo, which is a
gateway to search engines, auctions, shopping and much else caused
only a brief murmur of disapproval in the United States, but is an
ominous first step in bringing the Internet under the control of
European censorship laws. The same International League Against Racism
and Anti-Semitism of which the abbé used to be member-known by its
French acronym LICRA-joined the French Union of Jewish Students in
suing Yahoo to stop Internet auctions of Nazi medals, arm bands,
photos, autographs and the like. France's anti-racism laws forbid
commerce in anything “racially tinged,” and the California-based Yahoo
promptly removed these auctions from its French web site.

This was not enough for LICRA and the Jewish students, who insisted
that Yahoo find a way to block French Internet users from reaching
Yahoo sites in the U.S., where auctions continued. Yahoo said it was
technologically impossible, and the court appointed a panel of three
computer experts-American, British, and French-to render a ruling. Two
of the experts said it could not be done, but Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez
chose to believe the Frenchman, who said it could. In May 2000, he
gave Yahoo two months to make it impossible for French Internet users
to reach the Nazi auctions. He said he would fine the American company
100,000 Francs (now $13,000) a day if it did not, since the sale of
Nazi souvenirs offended “the collective memory of the nation.” Judge
Gomez also ordered Yahoo to pay 10,000 Francs to the plaintiffs LICRA
and the Union of Jewish Students. A LICRA spokesman hailed the ruling
as a great victory for democracy, of all things.

The French case against Yahoo was an ominous first step in bringing
the Internet under European censorship laws.
The next month Jerry Yang, a co-founder of Yahoo, said his company
would ignore Judge Gomez’ order. “Asking us to filter access to our
sites according to the nationality of web surfers is very naïve,” he
said, adding, “we are not going to change the content of our sites in
the United States because someone in France is asking us to do so.”
Six months later, in January 2001, Mr. Yang ate crow when Yahoo
decided “voluntarily” to stop auctioning anything that bears a
swastika or any other “hate” symbol such as a KKK insignia. “Yahoo
recognizes that we were right,” exulted LICRA, and Ygal El Harrar,
chairman of he Jewish students, welcomed “the return to its senses by
the American company.” Incredibly, Yahoo claims daily fines had
nothing to do with its decision. Noting that it already bans auctions
of live animals, used underwear, and tobacco, it is pretending it is
was only adjusting its list of forbidden products.

No one is fooled. Lee Dembart wrote in the International Herald
Tribune on Jan. 15, 2001, that the precedent has now been set for any
country to try to control the Internet all over the world. China could
threaten to fine sites that promote the Falun Gong Buddhist cult,
which is illegal in China. Arab countries could fine Internet sites
that sell Jewish memorabilia, since such things no doubt offend their
“collective memory.” But by and large the American media have had
nothing to say about what amounts to the imposition of French law on
Americans. Needless to say, there would be a frenzy of denunciation if
it were not “Nazis” who were being shoved off the net but, say,
abortion-rights activists.

In the minds of Americans Switzerland is an orderly, sensible country
of decent, independent-minded people. It is also perhaps the only
country that has ever brought censorship upon itself through
referendum. Over the weekend of Sept. 24 and 25, 1994, the Swiss voted
by a majority of 54.7 to 45.3 percent to make it a crime, punishable
by fine and/or up to three years imprisonment, to “publicly incite
hatred or discrimination” or “deny, grossly minimize, or seek to
justify genocide or other crimes against humanity.” Half of all Swiss
cantons voted against the new law but thanks to the overall majority,
it went into effect Jan. 1, 1995.

Swiss authorities had not actually needed this law to censor
foreigners. In November 1986, the Geneva police stopped two French
Holocaust revisionists-Pierre Guillaume and Henri Roques-from giving a
press conference and banned them from speaking publicly in Switzerland
for three years.

The first Swiss citizen to fall afoul of the new law was Arthur Vogt,
an 80-year-old retired school teacher. On June 3, 1997, a court in
Meilen fined him 20,000 Swiss Francs ($15,000) for mailing copies of a
revisionist book to seven acquaintances and for publishing a private
newsletter in which he had written revisionist essays.

In December 1997, a court in Vevey sentenced Aldo Ferraglia, an
Italian citizen, to four months in jail and court costs of 15,075
francs. He was also made to pay 28,000 francs in “atonement” to three
Jewish organizations for having distributed a number of Holocaust
revisionist books, including Roger Garaudy's The Founding Myths of
Modern Israel. At the Ferraglia trial the judge defended the new law
by explaining it did not forbid opinion, only the public expression of
certain opinions-a distinction that may be a little too fine for
Americans.

By June of last year, there had been no fewer than 200 trials and 100
sentences based on the 1995 law. As in France, such trials no longer
attract much attention. Probably few Swiss heard about it when animal
rights activist Erwin Kessler went to jail for two months for writing
that Jews who practice ritual slaughter of cattle are no better than
concentration-camp guards.

The press took only slightly more notice of Gaston-Armand Amaudruz
whom a Lausanne court sentenced to a year in prison for articles he
wrote in his monthly newsletter Courrier du Continent, which he
started in 1946 and had only about 500 subscribers, mostly in France.
Mr. Amaudruz holds a doctorate in social and political sciences and
has been a teacher of French and German. These are the words for which
the 79-year-old paid with a year in prison: “For my part, I maintain
my position: I don't believe in the gas chambers. Let the
exterminationists provide the proof and I will believe it. But as I've
been waiting for this proof for decades, I don't believe I will see it
soon.” At sentencing, the judge criticized Mr. Amaudruz’ lack of
remorse and noted that he had continued to violate the law, writing
“Long live revisionism” in the issue of the newsletter that appeared
just before the trial.

Perhaps the most prominent Swiss to be found guilty under the
censorship law is 49-year-old school teacher Jürgen Graf. In March,
1993, after the publication of his 112-page book, The Holocaust on the
Test Stand, in which he cited reasons to doubt the accounts of
extermination, he was fired from his job as a teacher of Latin and
French at a private secondary school. The French banned the book in
1994. Before long Mr. Graf found himself in court, and in July, 1998,
he was sentenced to 15 months in jail for various revisionist
writings. Sentenced along with Mr. Graf was his 70-year-old publisher,
Gerhard Förster, who got 12 months. The court fined both men 8,000
Swiss francs ($5,500) and ordered them to turn over 55,000 francs
($38,000) in proceeds from book sales. Presiding Judge Andrea Staubli
said the defendants’ “remarkable criminal energy” and lack of remorse
justified harsh punishment.

Their defense counsel protested that he could not even try to explain
the reasons for Mr. Graf's statements without, himself, being
prosecuted under the same law. He also argued in vain that censorship
law violated the free-speech provisions of the European Human Rights
Convention which Switzerland has signed. Wolfgang Frölich, an engineer
called to vouch for the authenticity of Mr. Graf's findings, found
himself threatened with prosecution if he testified. Just as absurdly,
the court included The Holocaust on the Test Stand in its reasons for
finding Mr. Graf guilty even though he wrote it before the 1995
censorship law.

Mr. Graf decided to flee the country rather than spend 15 months in
prison. In November 2000, he ended up in Iran, where he planned to
stay for some time. He has been welcomed by scholars in Tehran, and
was invited to give lectures at Iranian universities. Mr. Graf does
not intend to return to Switzerland until the country restores the
right of free speech. As we will see, he is not the only European to
go into exile rather than face jail as a prisoner of conscience.

Since the end of the Second World War, beginning with de-Nazification,
Germany has had censorship laws unthinkable in the United States. Nazi
songs, salutes, and symbols are illegal even in private, and the
country has been as aggressive as any in trying to expand the effects
of its own repressive laws beyond its own borders. By now, thousands
of people have fallen afoul of anti-Nazi, and “incitement to racial
hatred” laws, which violate the German constitution's own guarantees
of freedom of expression. Any number of quite remarkable cases of
state-sponsored thought control have gone almost completely unreported
in the United States.

Fredrick Toben was born in Germany in 1944 but emigrated with his
parents to Australia when he was ten, and is an Australian citizen. He
studied at Melbourne University and at universities in Heidelberg,
Tübingen, and Stuttgart, and has a doctorate in philosophy. In 1994 he
established the Adelaide Institute, in the Australian town of that
name, to promote Holocaust revisionism. He sent some material to
Germany, and was arrested in Mannheim in April 1999 during a visit. He
was held without bail until his trial seven months later and was
charged with “incitement to racial hatred,” “insulting the memory of
the dead,” and “public denial of genocide.” The court sentenced Dr.
Toben to ten months in prison but let him off with a fine of 6,000
marks ($3,500) on the strength of time already spent in prison. As in
Switzerland, it is impossible to mount a defense against these
charges. Defendants and even lawyers who try to explain or justify
their statements have been immediately charged with additional
offenses right in the courtroom.

The prosecution tried to charge Mr. Toben on additional counts because
of articles on his Australia-based Adelaide Institute web page
(www.adelaide institute.org), but the court ruled that his only
violation of German law was to have sent printed matter directly into
Germany. Foreign Internet sites were not covered by the law even if
Germans could read them. As Deputy Interior Minister Brigitte Zypries
explained in July 2000, “That's life and that's the Internet . . . .
You can't build a wall around Germany.” Since the government could not
use the most serious evidence against him, Dr. Toben got off lightly;
the shortest previous sentence for his crimes had been two years, and
the prosecution was asking for two years and four months.

However, in December 2000, in a very significant ruling that went
virtually unnoticed in the United States, Germany's highest court, the
Bundesgerichtshof, reversed the lower court. It said German law
applies to any ideas or images Germans can reach from within Germany,
so someone who posts a swastika on a web page anywhere in the world is
a criminal under German law. Dr. Toben, whose case provided the high
court with the basis of this ruling, could presumably be the subject
of an extradition request. As we will see below, Dr. Toben faces
problems enough back home in Australia.

One of the few Americans to notice and comment on this extension of
German (and French) law to the Internet was Rabbi Abraham Cooper of
the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. “We commend the German
authorities for sticking to their commitment,” he said; “it's their
democracy, these are their laws.” He went on to praise the French,
too: “We have to commend the Germans and the French for basically
saying ’In our societies, this is how we deal with the problems of
hate, racism and Holocaust denial. You in America have your own laws,
but at least respect our values.’ “ Perhaps Rabbi Cooper would be
pleased to see European-style censorship in the United States.

The case of Germar Rudolf is likewise remarkable. Born in 1964, Mr.
Rudolf graduated summa cum laude in chemistry from the University of
Bonn and is a certified chemist. After serving in the German air
force, he entered a Ph.D. program at the prestigious Max Planck
Institute for Solid State Physics. While still at the institute he
carried out a forensic physical examination of the gas chambers of
Birkenau and concluded that for a variety of technical reasons they
could not have been used for executions. In 1993 he published his
findings in what is called The Rudolf Report, and was promptly
dismissed from the Max Planck Institute. A court in Stuttgart ruled
that the report “denies the systematic mass murder of the Jewish
population in gas chambers” and was therefore “popular incitement,”
“incitement to racial hatred,” and “defamation.” The court rejected
Mr. Rudolf's request for technical evidence about the truth or
falsehood of his report, ruling that the “mass murder of the Jews” is
“obvious.”

Mr. Rudolf has continued to commit thought crimes, editing a
compendium of revisionist articles called Grundlagen zur
Zeitgeschichte [Foundations of Contemporary History]. In 1996 a court
fined his publisher 30,000 marks ($18,000) and ordered all copies
seized and burned. Police raided Mr. Rudolf's apartment three times,
and in 1996 he was finally sentenced to 14 months in prison. Rather
than serve time he fled to England, which has anti-racist laws but
where Holocaust denial is not (yet) a crime. He is now director of
Castle Hill Publishers, which issues revisionist works, and publishes
a German-language revisionist quarterly. Jewish groups have brought
pressure on the British government to enact laws to outlaw Holocaust
denial so that Mr. Rudolf can either be prosecuted in England or
extradited to Germany. Like Jürgen Graf of Switzerland, unless free
speech is restored in his homeland, he will go to jail if he ever
returns. Recently he moved to the United States and has applied for
amnesty as a political refugee. It will be interesting to see how the
INS, which has stretched “political persecution” to include
wife-beating and making fun of homosexuals, will avoid granting him
asylum.

One German defendant who did not flee the country was the elderly
historian Udo Walendy, publisher of the “Historical Facts” series of
booklets. In May, 1996, the district court of Bielefeld sent him to
prison for 15 months, and a year later a court in Herford added 14
more months to his sentence. He was also fined 20,000 marks ($12,000)
when 12 copies of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf were found in his
possession. Judge Helmut Knöner of the Herford court took the curious
position that Mr. Walendy was guilty not of a sin of commission but of
omission:

“This [case] is not about what was written-that is not for this court
to determine-but rather about what was not written. If you had devoted
just a fraction of the same exactitude to highlighting the other side
[of the Holocaust question], you would not have been sentenced.”

Here we find the tortured reasoning to which censorship laws
invariably give rise. To have failed to write about a particular
historical event in a balanced manner is a crime that can send a
historian to jail. In the court's view, this one-sided writing was
“meant to disturb the public peace,” not withstanding the “exactitude”
of Mr. Walendy's work. Moreover, although Mr. Walendy has been a model
prisoner he was denied the usual grant of release after serving
two-thirds of his sentence. Authorities explained that this was
because he was unlikely to change his views.

It is possible to argue that Austrian censorship laws have already
claimed a life. In 1995, Werner Pfeifenberger, a German professor of
political science published an essay called “Internationalism and
Nationalism: a Never-Ending Mortal Enmity?” in a collection issued by
Austria's Freedom Party (see AR, Dec. 1999, and March 2000). A
prominent Jewish journalist attacked the essay, accusing Prof.
Pfeifenberger of writing in a “neo-Nazi tone,” and “extolling the
national community.” Because the professor had criticized the 1933
Jewish declaration of an international boycott of ermany, the
journalist also accused him of reviving “the old Nazi legend of a
Jewish world conspiracy.”

The German state of North Rhine-Westphalia dismissed Prof.
Pfeifenberger from his teaching position, and a court in Vienna
prepared a case against him under Austrian anti-Nazi laws. On May 13,
2000, just a few weeks before the trail, Prof. Pfeifenberger took his
own life. His lawyer explained that Prof. Pfeifenberger faced ten
years in jail under the charges, did not expect a fair trial, and had
already spoken of committing suicide. As in Germany and Switzerland,
Austrian law does not permit a defendant to argue the veracity of his
statements; offensive “tone” or “diction” is sufficient to secure
conviction.

United States citizens have fallen afoul of German censorship
laws-without the slightest gesture of support from their own
government. Hans Schmidt of Pensacola, Florida, runs the
German-American National Public Affairs Committee, which publishes a
newsletter. Mr. Schmidt, who fought in the German army, moved to the
United States after the war and became a U.S. citizen. In 1995, on a
trip to Germany to visit family members, German authorities arrested
him for having sent some of his newsletters to Germany. They held him
in jail for five months but released him in conjunction with the first
part of his trial. Mr. Schmidt, who could have been sentenced to five
years in prison, slipped out of the country rather than stay for the
rest of his trial.

Another American, Gary Lauck of Lincoln, Nebraska, was not so lucky.
Known as “the farm-belt Führer,” Mr. Lauck is an unapologetic
supporter of Nazism, and has shipped a considerable quantity of Nazi
material to Germany. In March, 1995, he was visiting Denmark, a
country that does not have anti-Nazi laws, but in an operation of
questionable legality, the Danes extradited him to Germany. In August,
1996, a Hamburg court convicted him of inciting racial hatred and
distributing illegal materials-which he did legally in the United
States and not in Germany-and sentenced him to four years in jail. He
served his sentence and returned to the United States, where he
continues to promote Nazism.

At almost the same time Mr. Lauck was on trial in Germany, the
American citizen Harry Wu-a fervent critic of China-slipped into China
illegally on a mission of support for dissidents and was arrested. The
U.S. State Department mounted an extraordinary effort to secure his
release, but completely ignored Germany's prosecution of Mr. Lauck.

Another curious case involving the United States is that of a young
German musician Hendrik Möbus. Mr. Möbus said provocative things about
Jews, gave the Nazi salute during a concert, and later turned up in
the United States. In a little-known incident in the summer of 2000,
federal officers arrested Mr. Möbus with the intention of extraditing
him to Germany, even though his offenses were not crimes in the United
States. Apparently thinking better of this unjustifiable proceeding,
the government released Mr. Möbus, who promptly turned the tables by
suing for political asylum. With the help of William Pierce of the
West Virginia-based National Alliance, Mr. Möbus has hired immigration
lawyers to argue his case on the grounds that he will be persecuted
for his political beliefs if he returns to Germany.

One of the common difficulties for applicants for asylum is that they
must prove they face a realistic threat of persecution. In Mr. Möbus’
case, the German authorities have already issued an extradition
request in which they openly state they want to send him to jail. Once
again, it will be interesting to see how the INS responds.

Neo-Nazi music is increasingly popular in Germany, and bands play a
constant cat-and-mouse game with the police. Most make their
recordings in secret studios or across the border in Poland, and the
recordings are then pressed in the United States. The CDs come back to
Europe via Sweden, where the material is not illegal. Mere possession
is a crime in Germany, but the authorities estimate there are more
than 100 neo-Nazi bands operating clandestinely.

Some repressive measures fall short of imprisonment. In August, 2000,
the German postal bank, which is part of the government-owned post
office, systematically shut down all accounts used by any group it
considered “far-right.” These included Germany's two main nationalist
parties, the German Peoples’ Union (DVU) and the National Democratic
Party (NPD). Postbank chairman Wulf von Schimmelmann explained that
the measure was “a contribution to political hygiene and cementing of
democracy in Germany.”

Thought-control can take a comical turn. In August, 2000, Dresden
police ordered a 25-year-old man to get a haircut because he had
shaved the back of his head leaving only the letters “SS,” in the
distinctive angular script used by the Nazis.

Mein Kampf has been banned in Germany for years, and German companies
have been quietly enforcing the ban overseas as well. Publishing giant
Bertelsmann polices its US-based website bookstore for titles
forbidden in Germany, and is trying to do the same with
Barnesandnoble.com, of which it owns 40 percent. Mein Kampf is banned
in several other countries, including Holland and the Czech Republic,
where distributors were recently fined. There is considerable irony in
suppressing Hitler's turgid autobiography. For years it was common to
say that if only people had read it in the 1930s they would have
stopped Hitler in his tracks. Now we must presumably be kept from
reading it for fear we will follow its advice.

Until 1995, Spain was a popular refuge for dissidents facing
prosecution elsewhere in Europe but in that year it passed new laws
putting it firmly in the camp of the censors. The first conviction
came in November, 1998, when bookseller Pedro Varela was sentenced to
five years in jail for “incitement to racial hatred” and “denying or
justifying genocide.” His case began in December, 1996, when police
raided his Librería Europa bookstore in Barcelona and confiscated
20,000 volumes. Nearly two years went by before he went to trial
because many of the books were in English, French, or German, and the
court insisted that they be translated into Spanish. In addition to
the five-year prison term, the court fined him 720,000 pesetas
($5,000) and ordered all 20,000 books burned-even though only 30 of
some 200 titles were found to violate the law.

In December 1998, Mr. Varela appealed the sentence to the provincial
court or Audencia of Catalonia, which ruled unanimously in April 1999
that the censorship law violates guarantees of free expression in the
Spanish constitution. The case will now go before the Constitutional
Tribunal in Madrid. In the meantime, Mr. Varela's 20,000 volumes have
not yet been burned, but he has not gotten them back either. He
restocked his store and continued to operate, but in January 1999, a
mob of “anti-fascists” smashed through the protective metal shutters
of his shop, ransacked it, and burned hundreds of books. Police
arrived but did nothing. Mr. Varela rebuilt his store and continues to
sell books.

In Britain, despite campaign promises from Tony Blair that Labour
would ban Holocaust denial, in early 2000 Parliament resisted pressure
from Jewish groups to do so. Home Office Minister Mike O'Brien
explained that the government was unable to “strike a balance between
outlawing such offensive statements while ensuring that freedom of
speech is not unduly restricted.” Since 1986 the Public Order Act has
made incitement to racial hatred an offense, but Jewish groups argued
this law was inadequate because prosecutors have been unable to show
that Holocaust denial incites hatred. This is not to say that these
laws have never been used. Although enforcement is sporadic, a few
racial nationalists have been convicted.

Originally prosecutors had to prove a defendant intended to stir up
hatred, but that was difficult. Later the laws were broadened to
permit conviction if hatred was stirred up whatever the intent, but
that was also hard to prove. Now, it is sufficient to show a
“likelihood” that some act will incite racial hatred, and it was on
this basis that Spearhead editor John Tyndall and British Nationalist
editor John Morse were tried together and convicted by a single jury
in 1986. The prosecution's tactic was to read page after page of
“offensive” material in court and the cumulative effect seems to have
convinced the jury what they wrote was “likely” to incite hatred. The
judge decided the crime deserved six months in jail. Mr. Tyndall, who
after serving his sentence returned to editing Spearhead, despises
incitement laws but believes they have the beneficial effect of
keeping racial nationalists from using intemperate-and ultimately
unpersuasive language.

Nick Griffin, now head of the British National Party, received a
suspended sentence after a similar conviction in 1998. He also edited
a magazine, which discussed Holocaust revisionism and opposed
non-white immigration to Britain. In his case as well, there seems to
have been no clear line between acceptable and unacceptable opinions;
his magazine apparently created an overall atmosphere that was
“likely” to incite hatred.

Some British anti-racism measures approach outright insanity. As
reported in the July 2000 issue of AR, a recently-passed law
forbidding “racially threatening or abusive words” was recently
invoked against a Cambridge man who got into a whispered argument in a
library. A woman overheard Robert Birchall tell Kenyan-born Mugai
Mbaya to “go back to your own country,” and reported him to police.
Mr. Birchall was fined 100 pounds. In the city of Gloucester police
officers are reported to have been sent to eat in ethnic restaurants
and listen in on the conversations of other patrons so they can charge
them with crimes if they say rude things about other races.

Perhaps even more than to Europeans, Americans feel kin to Canadians
and perhaps Australians-fellow English-speakers who have established
themselves far from the homeland. But here, too, traditions of free
speech have crumbled under the pressure of special-interest groups. In
October 2000, the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission ordered Frederick Toben-back from prison in Germany-to
remove Holocaust revisionist material from the web page of the
Adelaide Institute. Commissioner Kathleen McEvoy said Mr. Toben
violated the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act by “having published
materials inciting hatred against the Jewish people.” She also ordered
Mr. Toben to post a lengthy apology. Mr. Toben refused, saying he
would not apologize for material he believed to be factual and that
any proceeding against him was immoral if truth was not permitted as a
defense. The government-funded commission has no enforcement powers,
but could initiate proceedings to have Mr. Toben jailed for contempt.

In Tasmania, the commission has also accused an associate of the
Adelaide Institute, 58-year-old Olga Scully, of selling anti-Jewish
material and putting it in mailboxes. She also refused to apologize,
and the commission announced plans to take her to court. The
Russian-born grandmother says she is not intimidated and is “quite
prepared” to go to prison.

It will be a surprise to many Americans to know that our
next-door-neighbor Canada now has a nearly 20-year tradition of
censorship. In 1981 a well-liked secondary school teacher and mayor in
Lacombe County, Alberta, named Jim Keegstra was reported to be telling
his social studies students that Jews run the world. The school board
fired him-which it no doubt had the right to do-but Canadian
authorities also charged him with violating section 281 of the
criminal code, which prohibits spreading hate against an identifiable
group. Mr. Keegstra remained unrepentant during a ten-year legal
battle that took him to the Canadian Supreme Court, which upheld his
conviction.

The most famous Canadian thought criminal is undoubtedly Ernst Zundel,
a German who immigrated to Canada in 1958 and established himself as a
commercial artist. Since the mid-1970s he has published and publicized
Holocaust revisionist materials, and in 1983 he was charged under
section 181 of the criminal code, which prohibits spreading “false
news” that the purveyor knows to be false.

His case became something of a cause célèbre, and the trial dragged on
for eight weeks before reaching a conviction. Mr. Zundel filed
numerous appeals and in 1992 the Supreme Court ruled the law under
which he was convicted unconstitutional because it was “an
unjustifiable limit on the right and freedom of expression.”

Mr. Zundel was not out of court for long. At the urging of Jewish
groups, he was brought before the Canadian Human Rights Commission in
what must be one of the most Kafkaesque censorship proceedings of
modern times. There is a section of the Canadian criminal code written
to outlaw telephone answering machines with “hate messages.” It makes
it illegal “to communicate telephonically” “any matter that is likely
to expose a person or persons to hatred [for reasons of race,
ethnicity, etc.].” In a tortured interpretation of this law, Mr.
Zundel was charged on the basis of a web page that contains Holocaust
materials by him and by others. Although the site is commonly known as
the Zundelsite, it is based in the United States and run by an
American.

Ironically, the Human Rights Commission has been asked to find Mr.
Zundel guilty because he is associated with a foreign web page that
publishes articles that, in print form, have been found to be legal in
Canada. Indeed, the first and lengthiest of the pamphlets cited in the
charge is the very one cited in the previous case that was thrown out
by the Canadian Supreme Court! What is more, this case has dragged on
for an astonishing five years. At the same time, the chairman of the
Human Rights Tribunal has conceded that “the truth is not an issue
before us. . . . The sole issue is whether such communications are
likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.” Mr.
Zundel, who has spent an estimated $140,000 on the case, recently gave
up even trying to defend himself, saying “I would rather save my money
and appeal their grotesque ruling when it comes out.” Amazingly, the
case continues to drag on without him, with final arguments expected
in late February.

Yet another prominent censorship victim has been Doug Collins and the
newspaper that used to publish him, the North Shore News. In February
1999, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal found Mr. Collins
guilty of acts “likely to expose Jews to hatred or contempt.” Found
criminal were four columns he wrote in 1994. Interestingly, the
tribunal decided that taken individually none of the columns was a
criminal act, but taken together they were. The tribunal ordered Mr.
Collins and the North Shore News to desist from further incitement to
hatred, and to pay $2,000 to a Jewish man who had brought the charges,
as compensation for injury to his dignity and self-respect. It also
ordered the paper to publish the judgment in full, which was perhaps
the first time the government ever forced a Canadian newspaper to
print something against its will. Mr. Collins now publishes on the
Internet.

Canadian authorities have been very unpredictable in their enforcement
of laws against “incitement of hatred.” They have never been bothered
by the lyrics of black rap “musicians” who openly urge blacks to kill
whites, but it has taken a very close look at academic studies of
racial differences. Canadian customs authorities have seized many
shipments of books from the United States including Race, Evolution
and Behavior, by Philippe Rushton (reviewed in AR, Dec. 1994). Prof.
Rushton, who teaches psychology at the University of Western Ontario,
has been himself investigated for inciting hatred and nearly lost his
job because of his carefully-researched studies of racial differences.
Other books Canadian customs have held at the border include Shockley
on Eugenics and Race (reviewed in AR, Jan. 1993), Race, Intelligence
and Bias in Academe by Roger Pearson, The Dispossessed Majority by
Wilmot Robertson, and The Immigration Invasion by Wayne Lutton and
John Tanton.

The United States does not have censorship laws but we are creeping in
that direction. Hate crime laws are an ominous step, because they add
penalties to crimes based on motive. Until the passage of hate crime
laws sentencing did not depend on the motive of a crime but whether it
was premeditated or spontaneous. You could punch a man because he was
fat, black, insulted you, or seduced your wife, and you were guilty of
assault. Now, certain motives-that is to say certain thoughts-bring
heavier penalties. In February of this year, a Houston, Texas, judge
sentenced 21-year-old Matthew Marshall to no fewer than ten years in
jail for burning a cross in front of a black family's house. People
who commit gruesome violent crimes often get less jail time.

We have also had a few cases of censorship almost as absurd as those
that have begun to crop up in England. In August, 1998, Janis Barton
was leaving a restaurant in Manistee, Michigan, and walked by another
group waiting to be seated. Those in the other group spoke to each
other in Spanish, and Mrs. Barton said, out loud, “I wish damn Spics
would learn to speak English.” One of the Spanish-speakers filed a
complaint and Mrs. Barton was charged with the crime of committing
“insulting conduct in a public place,” on the grounds that what she
said were “fighting words” that could provoke violence. A jury bought
that argument and the judge sentenced Mrs. Barton to 45 days in jail
(she served only a few days). This is an odd case that may not be
repeated, but it clearly shows the direction in which hypersensitivity
to the feelings of non-whites is taking us.

Another worrying step towards censorship is a law passed just last
December 15, which requires all libraries receiving federal money to
use content filters on computers connected to the Internet. The idea
is to protect people from pornography, violence and “hate speech,” but
the makers of filtering software invariably give it a leftist slant.
The federal government is using the power of the purse to restrict
access to certain views and information.

The full-blown, unabashed censorship laws in Europe and Canada are a
giant step backwards in the history of Western Civilization. It was
perhaps one of the most significant conceptual breakthroughs in human
thought to recognize that the social cost of suppressing “error” is
far greater than the damage unchecked “error” can do when men are free
to refute it. It is cause for great sadness that our European brethren
have stepped back into the mentality of the witch hunt, forcing their
citizens into exile and making them prisoners of conscience.

Indeed, it is in the defense of prisoners of conscience that Amnesty
International (AI) made a name for itself, and cases like those
described here would appear to be tailor-made for them. According to
their own publications, prisoners of conscience are “people who are
imprisoned, detained or otherwise physically restricted anywhere
because of their beliefs, color, sex, ethnic origin, language or
religion, provided they have not used or advocated violence.” Every
person mentioned in this article and thousands more have been charged
with crimes because of the non-violent expression of beliefs. AI goes
on to say that “all people have the right to express their convictions
and the obligation to extend that freedom to others” and that “Amnesty
International seeks the immediate and unconditional release of all
prisoners of conscience.”

A number of people have appealed to AI to intervene on behalf of
imprisoned Holocaust revisionists but AI refuses. In 1995 it affirmed
“Amnesty International's intention to exclude from prisoner of
conscience status those who advocate the denial of the Holocaust . . .
.” They took this step on the grounds that dissent from accepted views
on the Holocaust means one has “advocated national, racial, or
religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination,
hostility or violence.” What this means is that AI does not consider
someone a prisoner of conscience unless it agrees with him.

It is probably true that some of the people charged under incitement
laws really do want to stir up hatred-something that however
reprehensible is legal in the United States and should be legal
everywhere-but there is no evidence whatever that this is the motive
of people like Robert Faurisson, Fredrick Toben, Pedro Varela or
Germar Rudolf. It is the people who oppose their work who appear to be
driven by hatred. Furthermore, as British prosecutors have found, it
is unclear just how disputing the existence of gas chambers or the
number of Nazi victims incites hatred against anyone. People are not
suddenly going to start hating Jews just because a pamphlet convinces
them the Nazis killed only one million rather than six million.

It would be more plausible to say that anyone who harps on slavery,
Jim Crow, and segregation is inciting hatred against whites, or that
anyone who describes the way Indians mutilated the bodies of Custer's
men at Little Big Horn is stirring up hatred against Indians. If you
scoff at the miracles in the Bible are you inciting hatred against
Christians? If not, why not? After all, neither the truth of the
statements nor the intent of the speaker matters. Laws of this kind
cry out for abuse and invidious application.

Obviously of concern to American Renaissance is the possibility that
any description of race or sex differences could be considered
incitement to hatred. What if the French and the Germans decide
discussions of race and IQ are hate-mongering? This is actually more
logical than saying skepticism about gas chambers makes people hate
Jews. Will AR be banned in Europe? Will people who write for AR be
arrested if they go to Europe?

Laws about inciting hatred are really very simple: If you hurt the
feelings of certain people you can be charged with a crime. So far,
the people about whose feelings one must be most careful are Jews.
Pressure from Jewish organizations has turned what may have been
intended as universal prohibitions into prohibition of opinions that
upset Jews.

Laws of the French, German, and Austrian type that specifically
prohibit Holocaust denial likewise reflect the pressure of Jewish
organizations. There is only one historical event in all of human
history-an event of particular interest to Jews-about which the law
forbids dissent. Legally requiring acceptance of a historical event is
an absurdity on its face, but why just this one? In January 2000, the
French National Assembly voted officially to recognize the Turkish
“genocide” of Armenians during the First World War. There are many
people who strongly dispute the number and circumstances of these
deaths; Turkey angrily withdrew its ambassador after the vote. No
doubt there will be vigorous “genocide denial,” “whitewashing of
crimes against humanity,” and “insulting the memory of the dead.” Why
will this not be a crime in France? One can only conclude that it is
because Armenians have less influence than Jews.

But the real shame is how few people, either in Europe or the United
States, are willing to oppose this clampdown on freedom. The left
loves to quote lines attributed to Martin Niemoller (1892-1984), the
German Lutheran minister interned by the Nazis:

“First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I
wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak
up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I
didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.”

The message, of course, is that we must be vigilant against wrongs
done even to people with whom we may disagree, because if we do not
resist evil we may some day be its victims. European censorship laws
are precisely the kind of creeping evil Niemoller warned against, but
the left ignores them because it has no principles and the right
ignores them because it has no spine. Censorship is therefore on the
march in Europe and licking at our own borders. We have entered a new
Dark Age.

The Law is an Ass

The laws under which Europeans, Canadians and perhaps now Australians
can be prosecuted for thought crimes are of several kinds. The first
includes the French Gayssot law, which, though amazing, clearly says
what it means: No one is to dispute the genocide or other crimes
against humanity for which the Nazi leaders were put on trial at
Nuremberg after the war. There is no ambiguity about this. Anyone who
says the Nazis did not have an extermination program is a criminal.

Laws that forbid “incitement of hatred” are much more ambiguous. These
laws are particularly frightening because there is no way to know what
they mean. Presumably, if it is against the law to “incite hatred”
there should be no conviction unless it is proven that something
caused hatred. The prosecution should produce someone who, having read
the offending work or heard the offending speech or seen the offending
picture or symbol, became a hater. None of the censorship laws
requires this. Courts have decided without the slightest evidence that
anyone who takes a position on certain questions-even if all he does
is deliver this view to subscribers who have paid to receive it-is
“inciting hate.” The other breath-taking aspect of these laws is that
intent does not matter either. It makes no difference if someone
sincerely believes he is uncovering the truth; if what he says can be
construed as likely to incite hate, he can end up in behind bars.

Finally, there are laws that have no clear meaning at all. What does
it mean to “glorify National Socialism” or “insult the dead” or
“whitewash the crimes of the Nazis”? Crimes that depend on wording as
vague as this-and there have been plenty of convictions under them-are
close kin to Communist laws that forbade “anti-Soviet behavior” or
“parasitism.” These were justly decried in the West, but there is
almost complete silence about anti-Nazi laws. In the United States
vague prohibitions of this kind are clearly unconstitutional.

Another astonishing aspect of these laws is that truth is not a
defense. Once again, in the United States, the law is clear: Truth is
an absolute protection for anyone charged with making hurtful,
damaging, or embarrassing statements about anyone or anything. In the
American colonies this tradition dates back to the famous John Peter
Zenger trial of 1735. Zenger, publisher of the New York Weekly
Journal, was charged by British authorities with publishing articles
“tending to raise seditions and tumults among the people of this
province, and to fill their minds with contempt for his majesty's
government.” Zenger was arrested, jailed, and tried. Jurors, however,
were persuaded that “truth ought to govern the whole affair of
libels,” and in concluding that what Zenger had written was true, both
set Zenger free and, in effect, rewrote the law.

To many people, it seems preposterous that anyone who disputes
gassings at Auschwitz or doubts Germany's extermination program could
appeal to the truth as a defense. However, in cases of this kind facts
are of so little importance that there have been convictions for
statements that appear to be almost certainly true. British historian
David Irving, who in 2000 lost a celebrated libel case against an
anti-revisionist author, was fined $30,000 by a German court for
telling a German audience that the Auschwitz gas chamber is a post-war
reconstruction. Even the Polish curator at Auschwitz has conceded it
is a fake, but Mr. Irving is a criminal and the curator is not. A
different German court is seeking Mr. Irving's extradition for having
said the same thing to a different German audience.

James Alexander, one of the lawyers who defended John Peter Zenger,
would have been appalled. “Freedom of speech,” he wrote after the
trial, “is a principal pillar in a free government: when this support
is taken away, the constitution is dissolved and tyranny erected on
its ruins.”

[Keith W]

"Rob Arndt" <teut...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1111266597....@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

> The German Me Bf 109 pilots were "shitting themselves" when up against
> P-51s?
> That's "why" the Me Bf 109 is the greatest killing machine in aviation
> history with the most combat kills and producing the most aces in
> history.
> ISTR, that despite being considered "obsolete" by the Allies that the
> German Experten preferred to keep fighting in the 109, racking up kills
> until the last day. Me Bf 109 never lacked lethality either as field
> conversion packs kept them up to date. The Gs and Ks still had teeth
> and their pilots the tenacity to fight to the death.
> And what did Hartmann have to say about the formidable P-51 Mustang
> (NOTE: designed by a German-American)- to paraphase, "it was nothing
> special". Seems to sum it all up.
> The only advantage the Allies had in the air was plain old math-
> superior numbers. The Luftwaffe could not fight forces of 5+ to 1 in
> the air no matter how good the pilot, machine, or technology. But they
> went up anyway against a wall of firepower and still made kills until
> the last day.

The Lufwaffe with their 'superior' Me-109 had numerical superiority
in the summer of 1940 when they tried to gain air superiority
over Britain.

Do we really have to remind you of the outcome ?

Keith

[old hoodoo]

Rob Arndt wrote:
> The German Me Bf 109 pilots were "shitting themselves" when up against
> P-51s?
> That's "why" the Me Bf 109 is the greatest killing machine in aviation
> history with the most combat kills and producing the most aces in
> history.

Mostly against Russians....big deal...oh, yes, despite your massive
victory claims the Russian whipped the Germans.

> ISTR, that despite being considered "obsolete" by the Allies that the
> German Experten preferred

preferred???? Had no other choice you mean. Your vaunted Fw-190 couldn't
breathe at 25,000 feet.

to keep fighting in the 109, racking up kills
> until the last day. Me Bf 109 never lacked lethality either as field
> conversion packs kept them up to date.

At the cost of overall performance.

The Gs and Ks still had teeth
> and their pilots the tenacity to fight to the death.

They didn't have a lot of options did they?

> And what did Hartmann have to say about the formidable P-51 Mustang
> (NOTE: designed by a German-American)- to paraphase, "it was nothing
> special". Seems to sum it all up.

LOL.

> The only advantage the Allies had in the air was plain old math-
> superior numbers. The Luftwaffe could not fight forces of 5+ to 1 in
> the air no matter how good the pilot, machine, or technology. But they
> went up anyway against a wall of firepower and still made kills until
> the last day.

"wall of firepower" LOL again.

> The Me Bf 109 has not been surpassed since then as the greatest aerial
> killer of all time.

Against Russian opposition mainly.

No F-15 pilot nor naval aviator compares to the
> German Experten.

ROTFWL

Neither do Allied pilots of WW2. They are pathetic by
> comparison- having every luxury, were rotated, had an arsenal of
> democracy that was never bombed continuously, had vast resources, and
> strength in numbers.

And you expect us to apologize for treating our pilots like human beings
and backing them up with resources? Excuse me. Lousy strategy we
Americans had. Only resulted in the total defeat of
Germany and the killing of most of your experten pilots.

Hell, America should have built hypersonic
> aircraft in WW2 with its manpower and resources... but they did'nt.

Didn't need 'em to kill krauts.

The
> Germans, under total bombardment, kept producing more and more advanced
> weaponry that postwar fills every major power inventory in the world.
> Get a clue, home patriot morons.

ROTFWL...again!

Rob, you are a card. Great comedy.
>
> Rob
>

.

[Rob Arndt]

Do I really have to remind you how you left your gear on Dunkirk's
beaches after getting your ass kicked off the Continent? Or how you had
to kiss Uncle Sam's ass to get supplies and use foreign pilots (whom
you considered inferior) from your Commonwealth to fly your Hurricanes
and Spits? And the fact that a lone German bomber saved your nation
when Germany was hitting your docks, radar, manufacturing base, and
airfields? A couple more weeks and the RAF FC would have been under 300
and you would have lost it.
Still, I just wish Doenitz had 300 U-boats to just choke your tiny
island to death without invasion at all.
Don;t bring up losses because Germany could afford them, you couldn't.
Germany held the Continent and there was NO WAY Britain could have
taken it back herself. Great Brittania, a bootlicker of the US.

Rob

p.s. The Spitfire was a good aircraft, yet why didn't it kill the most
aircraft or produce the most aces? Oh, that's right, your pilots were
shit and you had to rely on Indians, Czechs, and Poles too...

[Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired]

Rob Arndt wrote:

> Do I really have to remind you how you left your gear on Dunkirk's
> beaches after getting your ass kicked off the Continent?

A small army run off by a bigger army, these things happen.

Or how you had
> to kiss Uncle Sam's ass to get supplies

Whereas the Nazis murdered people, stole their gold teeth and bought
supplies with the money/

and use foreign pilots (whom
> you considered inferior) from your Commonwealth to fly your Hurricanes
> and Spits?

That's what Commonwealth miltaries were FOR.

And the fact that a lone German bomber saved your nation
> when Germany was hitting your docks, radar, manufacturing base, and
> airfields?

What lone bomber? If you refer to the accidental bombing of London there
were several in that flight.

A couple more weeks and the RAF FC would have been under 300
> and you would have lost it.

The Nazis were losing more aircraft than they coud replace at the time.
Another of your what ifs.

> Still, I just wish Doenitz had 300 U-boats to just choke your tiny
> island to death without invasion at all.

And if you Nazis and the Japanese hadn't stated the war 60 million
people wouldn't have died. And if you had been built different you;d be
female. More what ifs.

> Don;t bring up losses because Germany could afford them,

you couldn't. ]

Then why did you lose the BOB?

> Germany held the Continent and there was NO WAY Britain could have
> taken it back herself. Great Brittania, a bootlicker of the US.

That's right, prove your insecurity by putting someone else down. If the
U.S. and Britain ahdn't taken western Europe back Germany would be
speaking Russian.

>
> Rob
>
> p.s. The Spitfire was a good aircraft, yet why didn't it kill the most
> aircraft or produce the most aces? Oh, that's right, your pilots were
> shit and you had to rely on Indians, Czechs, and Poles too...
>

And most of YOUR aces went up against inferior aircraft or aircraft on
the ground. Very few Nazi aces had their counts verified and they
counted aircraft on the ground.

Now that that is cleared up try being rational next time. The fact
remains you are not now nor have you ever been German so your pathetic
drooling over the Nazis makes NO sense.

[Jim Knoyle]

"old hoodoo" <alf...@cox-internet.com> wrote in message
news:sA5%d.47229$Im.308@okepread01...

>
>
> Rob Arndt wrote:
> > The German Me Bf 109 pilots were "shitting themselves" when up against
> > P-51s?
> > That's "why" the Me Bf 109 is the greatest killing machine in aviation
> > history with the most combat kills and producing the most aces in
> > history.

(snip)

>
> > The Me Bf 109 has not been surpassed since then as the greatest aerial
> > killer of all time.
>
> Against Russian opposition mainly.
>
> No F-15 pilot nor naval aviator compares to the
> > German Experten.
>
> ROTFWL
>
> Neither do Allied pilots of WW2. They are pathetic by
> > comparison- having every luxury, were rotated, had an arsenal of
> > democracy that was never bombed continuously, had vast resources, and
> > strength in numbers.
>
> And you expect us to apologize for treating our pilots like human beings
> and backing them up with resources? Excuse me. Lousy strategy we
> Americans had. Only resulted in the total defeat of
> Germany and the killing of most of your experten pilots.
>
> Hell, America should have built hypersonic
> > aircraft in WW2 with its manpower and resources... but they did'nt.
>
> Didn't need 'em to kill krauts.
>
> The
> > Germans, under total bombardment, kept producing more and more advanced
> > weaponry that postwar fills every major power inventory in the world.
> > Get a clue, home patriot morons.
>
> ROTFWL...again!
>
> Rob, you are a card. Great comedy.

The ME KR 200 brought many Americans to their knees! :-)

JK

[The Enlightenment]

Rob Arndt wrote:
> The German Me Bf 109 pilots were "shitting themselves" when up
against
> P-51s?

Perhaps its an exaggeration and an insult to the bravery and courage of
men who went up against the worst odds time and time again retunring
with friends and collegues dead. When there are two Me 109s and 20
P51s I think they would be 'concerned'. (I doubt they literally shat
themselves) Nevertheless a good German Pilot could and often did
escape these kinds of odds. Life was easier if the weather was bad and
there was some cloud to hide in.

> That's "why" the Me Bf 109 is the greatest killing machine in
aviation
> history with the most combat kills and producing the most aces in
> history.
> ISTR, that despite being considered "obsolete" by the Allies that the
> German Experten preferred to keep fighting in the 109, racking up
kills
> until the last day. Me Bf 109 never lacked lethality either as field
> conversion packs kept them up to date. The Gs and Ks still had teeth
> and their pilots the tenacity to fight to the death.
> And what did Hartmann have to say about the formidable P-51 Mustang
> (NOTE: designed by a German-American)- to paraphase, "it was nothing
> special". Seems to sum it all up.

He's right, except for one thing: the range of the P51 meant that less
aircaft, pilots and airfields were needed to do the same job a short
ranged aircraft such as the Me 109 or Spitfire for that matter.

This is an account of Hartmann in Combat by a P51 pilot (scroll half
way down to:
"Lawrence Thompson meets Hartmann's G-14"
http://www.virtualpilots.fi/hist/WW2History-ErichHartmann.html

> The only advantage the Allies had in the air was plain old math-
> superior numbers. The Luftwaffe could not fight forces of 5+ to 1 in
> the air no matter how good the pilot, machine, or technology. But
they
> went up anyway against a wall of firepower and still made kills until
> the last day.

Read the accounts of experten such as Willy Heilmann or Heinz Knocke or
others who had to endure loosing collegue after colleque and who lost
wingemen and new recruits unlucky enought to enter combat with
inadaquet training. Their depression and effort in continuing their
work was truely heart wrenching. The He 162 was developed to given
those "kids" a chance.
It had problems in handling suggesting the competing Blohn and Voss
designe should have been better.

> The Me Bf 109 has not been surpassed since then as the greatest
aerial
> killer of all time. No F-15 pilot nor naval aviator compares to the
> German Experten. Neither do Allied pilots of WW2. They are pathetic
by
> comparison- having every luxury, were rotated, had an arsenal of
> democracy that was never bombed continuously, had vast resources, and
> strength in numbers. Hell, America should have built hypersonic
> aircraft in WW2 with its manpower and resources... but they didn't.
The
> Germans, under total bombardment, kept producing more and more
advanced
> weaponry that postwar fills every major power inventory in the world.
> Get a clue, home patriot morons.

The Germans, despite their efforts could never keep up. They had a
fraction of the resources of the allies and if they were to succede
they would have to be perfect and no one can be perfect. They had to
cancell development after development to juggle resources from radar
proximity fuses (they started work on them before the allies) to
multicavity magnetrons (which they openly patented before Randall and
Boot did).

They didn't have the resources to replace the Me 109 with the powerfull
Me 309 and so had to keep the very easy to produce Me 109 in
production.

>
> Rob

[The Enlightenment]

Somehow I think you will find that people like Tim May want the same
lack of freedom or speach in the USA as in Europe.

[The Enlightenment]

So, what part of Mr Arndts post was "Nazi".

Germany is reduced to having made illegal the Swastickas on Airfix and
Revell model kit covers. Is that the kind of lunacy you support?

Remember, you may be suprised: you may be the one finding himself in
gaol for saying the wrong thing with the label Nazi stuck to you.

[The Enlightenment]

old hoodoo wrote:
> Rob Arndt wrote:
> > The German Me Bf 109 pilots were "shitting themselves" when up
against
> > P-51s?
> > That's "why" the Me Bf 109 is the greatest killing machine in
aviation
> > history with the most combat kills and producing the most aces in
> > history.
>
> Mostly against Russians....big deal...oh, yes, despite your massive
> victory claims the Russian whipped the Germans.
>
>
> > ISTR, that despite being considered "obsolete" by the Allies that
the
> > German Experten preferred
>
> preferred???? Had no other choice you mean. Your vaunted Fw-190
couldn't
> breathe at 25,000 feet.
>

Just a point of accuracy.

The Fw 190D-9 could breath quite well at this altitude as could the Fw
190 D-11,D-12 and d-13. (the D-13 even saw service).

The Fw 190A series when equiped with the BMW 801TS as opposed to the
BMW 801D could breath at 25,000 feet. It managed 416 mph at 30,000
feet. Its planed succesor the BMW 801F with a two stage surpercharger
on an enlarged wing FW 190A-10 would had even more performance. The
801TS engine was hard to produce due to lack of alloying elements and
other reasons. Likewise the Germans were restricted in introducing
turbo-charged engines due to lack of alloying elements. Their engines
had to use what was essentially stainless steel (an alloy called
sicromal) that had inadaquet amounts of chromium and nickel. (It was
the same alloy used in BMW 109-103 turbojet)
Final version of the BMW 801 was the 'heimat motor' that was to use
only local raw materials and not alloys at all. That says it all.

[Stephen Harding]

Rob Arndt wrote:

> Still, I just wish Doenitz had 300 U-boats to just choke your tiny
> island to death without invasion at all.
> Don;t bring up losses because Germany could afford them, you couldn't.
> Germany held the Continent and there was NO WAY Britain could have
> taken it back herself. Great Brittania, a bootlicker of the US.

Surely you can't wish Nazis would have won out over the Brits
could you?

One thing being in love with an Me 109 but quite another to
be enamored of what those 109s would have brought (and did
bring) into being in Europe.

> p.s. The Spitfire was a good aircraft, yet why didn't it kill the most
> aircraft or produce the most aces? Oh, that's right, your pilots were
> shit and you had to rely on Indians, Czechs, and Poles too...

Wonder how many of your vaunted experten would have been
experten had they not fought over a porous Eastern front or
a mostly occupied Western one?

Seems just about all of these Experten were shot down on
multiple occasions. I think several, including Adolf Galland
IIRC, were even shot down twice on single days!

Except during the BoB, that generally didn't happen to
Western allied airmen.

SMH

[The Enlightenment]

This thread has degenerated into lunacy. I doubt that the German
Experten would be so triumphalist about their success, in fact many
were humble men (mans gota know his limitations) that respected their
enemies nevertheless any man that could do what they did in the face of
overwhelming odds is worthy of respect.

Take it easy on the Gold tooth and 60 million stuff. A lot of that
stuff can be halved. There is nothing as ugly as a bunch of people
claiming to be holocuast survivors with out of date fabricated stories
regurgitated from lurid tales frothing anger, hatred and paranoia plus.
I've seen it get so bad that the only verifiable holocaust survivor
(an ex partisan) get quite angry at them. Ever group has nuts like
that.

[The Enlightenment]

The Finnish pilots seem to have used the "Flettener" to get their roll
rate up. I think roll rate must have been 4 seconds per 90 degrees
(about 1/4 that of a Fw 190 A) when at over 400 mph. This was the
biggest drawback of the 109 when at high speed. How effective the
Flettner was will be an interesting.

[Keith W]

"Rob Arndt" <teut...@aol.com> wrote in message

news:1111287581.5...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

> Do I really have to remind you how you left your gear on Dunkirk's
> beaches after getting your ass kicked off the Continent?

Do I have to remined you of how we came back ?

> Or how you had
> to kiss Uncle Sam's ass to get supplies and use foreign pilots (whom
> you considered inferior) from your Commonwealth to fly your Hurricanes
> and Spits?

Actually old boy the racial inferiority bit was the weakness of
your heroes. We always had the greatest respect for the
fighting abilities of the Ghurka , Sikh, Kiwi, Aussie etc.

> And the fact that a lone German bomber saved your nation
> when Germany was hitting your docks, radar, manufacturing base, and
> airfields? A couple more weeks and the RAF FC would have been under 300
> and you would have lost it.

Thats certainly what Goeing and smiling Albert thought too - they were wrong

> Still, I just wish Doenitz had 300 U-boats to just choke your tiny
> island to death without invasion at all.

If wishes were fishes etc

> Don;t bring up losses because Germany could afford them, you couldn't.

Which doesnt explain how you lost now does it ?

> Germany held the Continent and there was NO WAY Britain could have
> taken it back herself. Great Brittania, a bootlicker of the US.
>
> Rob

Sticks and stones etc

>
> p.s. The Spitfire was a good aircraft, yet why didn't it kill the most
> aircraft or produce the most aces? Oh, that's right, your pilots were
> shit and you had to rely on Indians, Czechs, and Poles too...
>

Which is why presumably we celebrate Battle of Britain day

ROTFLMAO

Keith

[Jukka O. Kauppinen]

Actually many of the war time pilots tend to mean with Flettener both
the horizontal stabilizer's trim AND the actual Flettener tab in the
rudder. So it takes a bit of reading between the lines to see which one
they actually mean. The Finnish 109 G-2s and G-6s did not have Flettener
tab in aelerons to my understanding.

IIRC I remember reading that on some planes, G-6s most likely, it was
possible to adjust the rudder's Flettener tab from cockpit too, but I've
seen that only in source so far, though it was a creditable source.

jok

[Jukka O. Kauppinen]

> This thread has degenerated into lunacy. I doubt that the German
> Experten would be so triumphalist about their success, in fact many
> were humble men (mans gota know his limitations) that respected their
> enemies nevertheless any man that could do what they did in the face of
> overwhelming odds is worthy of respect.

Agreed. I had the honor to meet mr. Gunther Rall some time ago and he
was very nice, modest gentleman who spoke with respect about his
opponents and their equipment.

Likewise the Finnish pilots I've interviewed have all been very fine
gentlemans, who have never spoken bad about their opponents, and have
been quite realistic about their careers, successes - and of course losses.

And I have to say that both those "pro and anti axis" posters in this
thread are spoiling this thread similarly. Can't you take your arguments
to your own thread?

jok

[David Windhorst]

Rob Arndt wrote:
>snip

> Still, I just wish Doenitz had 300 U-boats to just choke your tiny
> island to death without invasion at all.
>

Geez -- seriously, man, what is wrong with you?

[Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired]

The Enlightenment wrote:

> Rob Arndt wrote:
>
>>The German Me Bf 109 pilots were "shitting themselves" when up
>
> against
>
>>P-51s?
>
>
> Perhaps its an exaggeration and an insult to the bravery and courage of
> men who went up against the worst odds time and time again retunring
> with friends and collegues dead.

You don't understand teuton :) He's convinced German pilots near the end
of the war doing what you just described the Brits doing during the BOB
were MUCH braver than any Brit was. He really does believe it. This is
all a repeat of a tantrum he threw last year which included him sayin no
Allied pilot could do what Hannah Reisch did when she landed near the
Brandenburg gate in April 1945 or tested the manned V1. He's really a
giggle when he goes off like this.

See my observation above.

>
>
>
> Read the accounts of experten such as Willy Heilmann or Heinz Knocke or
> others who had to endure loosing collegue after colleque and who lost
> wingemen and new recruits unlucky enought to enter combat with
> inadaquet training. Their depression and effort in continuing their
> work was truely heart wrenching. The He 162 was developed to given
> those "kids" a chance.
> It had problems in handling suggesting the competing Blohn and Voss
> designe should have been better.
>

Teuton's "logic" on the so called Experten was they should keep fighting
rather than rotating into teaching teaching slots. As much as I detest
what the Nazis did it really breaks my heart that they sent semitrained
or untrained men and children into combat. How those Luftwaffe pilots
would have fared if properly trained is a matter of speculation, but it
is safe to say they would have had a better chance. Last year teuton
said the new guys should learn the hard way as the aces did never mind
the earlier pilots had pilots with combat experience,Spanish Civil War,
teaching them. What do you expect from a guy who thinks sending Hitler
Youth as young as 13 or 14 up against combat hardened men while the Nazi
"leaders" ran away?

>
>
>>The Me Bf 109 has not been surpassed since then as the greatest
>
> aerial
>
>>killer of all time.

Only because of circumstances. The Me109 was made in huge quantities.
While it was a very good machine just remember the Nazis counted
aircraft destroyed on the ground as kills and didn't expend a great deal
of effort verifying kills especially in the latter stages of the war. If
you send fleets of one type of aircraft up against fleets of various
types you will be able to say the first type killed more than any other
type, but this proves nothing. Take it on a type against type and you
will see the numbers really get fancy. Look at the kill ratios in Poland
and the early part of Barbarossa.

No F-15 pilot nor naval aviator compares to the
>>German Experten.

Unprovable emperically.

Neither do Allied pilots of WW2.

Based purely on kill rates you are correct considering the Allies pulled
experienced pilots out of the line to teach new pilots so the could
stand a chance of winning. This method proved better than the Experten
theory since the Allies won.

They are pathetic
>
> by
>
>>comparison- having every luxury, were rotated, had an arsenal of
>>democracy that was never bombed continuously, had vast resources, and
>>strength in numbers.

I still don't understand why you insist on putting down the country you
claim to be a citizen of while idolizing a country you have never even
visited. If you were German I could understand, but you claim to be a
loyal U.S. Citizen.

Hell, America should have built hypersonic
>>aircraft in WW2 with its manpower and resources... but they didn't.

Oooooh, a new one :) Hey, the U.S. could have perfected sex changes too,
but they didn't. Oh, and the U.S. could have stayed out of the war
entirely, but darn the luck, the Nazis declared war on the U.S. a few
days after Pearl Harbour.

>
> The
>
>>Germans, under total bombardment, kept producing more and more
>
> advanced
>
>>weaponry that postwar fills every major power inventory in the world.

So what? The Germans copied U.S. and other technology, whoopee. Guess
what, Germany lost.

Did you expect post-war engineering types would ignore German advances?

>>Get a clue, home patriot morons.

Oh, so that's why you aren't patriotic. You feel one has to be a moron
to be patriotic. In that case you are fully qualified.

>
>
> The Germans, despite their efforts could never keep up. They had a
> fraction of the resources of the allies and if they were to succede
> they would have to be perfect and no one can be perfect. They had to
> cancell development after development to juggle resources from radar
> proximity fuses (they started work on them before the allies) to
> multicavity magnetrons (which they openly patented before Randall and
> Boot did).
>
> They didn't have the resources to replace the Me 109 with the powerfull
> Me 309 and so had to keep the very easy to produce Me 109 in
> production.

Gee, bad things happen when one starts a war one never had a chance to
win. Darn the luck.

BTW, you have told us you are disabled with diabetes, blindness etc.
Since your disabilities aren't combat related and you have nothing else
to provide the Reich you would have been marginalized at best and put to
sleep at worst if you had been there at the time.
>
>
>
>>Rob
>

But, no need to worry, we aren't laughing with you, we are laughing at
you. In my case it's because I picture you as the Henty Gibson character
in "The Blues Brothers" sitting there painting plaster eagles.

[Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired]

Stephen Harding wrote:

> Rob Arndt wrote:
>
>> Still, I just wish Doenitz had 300 U-boats to just choke your tiny
>> island to death without invasion at all.
>> Don;t bring up losses because Germany could afford them, you couldn't.
>> Germany held the Continent and there was NO WAY Britain could have
>> taken it back herself. Great Brittania, a bootlicker of the US.
>
>
> Surely you can't wish Nazis would have won out over the Brits
> could you?

Actually he does. He's even praised Nazi efficency in murdering the 12
milion Jews and non Jews.

[Steve Hix]

In article <423DC735...@earthlink.net>,
David Windhorst <dbwin...@earthlink.net> wrote:

His dosage is off.

A problem with self-medication.

[Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired]

The Enlightenment wrote:

<snip>

>
> Take it easy on the Gold tooth and 60 million stuff. A lot of that
> stuff can be halved. There is nothing as ugly as a bunch of people
> claiming to be holocuast survivors with out of date fabricated stories
> regurgitated from lurid tales frothing anger, hatred and paranoia plus.
> I've seen it get so bad that the only verifiable holocaust survivor
> (an ex partisan) get quite angry at them. Ever group has nuts like
> that.
>

I assume this is addressed to me. I'll keep this simple for you. My
mother was an only child. My siblings and I are all that remains of her
family line. There are no others left. Some of those gold teeth came
from them.

As for funding the war the Nazis DID use gold from teeth etc laundered
primarily through Switzerland to fund the war.

Did you know the Nazis transported Jews and POWs THROUGH Switzerland
after Italy surrendered?

As for the 60 million I include casualties world wide since Japan would
have been defeated at least 2 years earlier if the Nazis hadn't gotten
uppity. How much lower the total casualties would have been will never
been known. Just so you don't misunderstand I don't blame the Nazis for
Japan's war of agression. I do know if the Nazi pigs hadn't started
their war Stalin would have had to kill off those 20 million by himself,
there would have been no death or concentration camps outside of Germany
etc.

[Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired]

Steve Hix wrote:

How about he should increase his self medication to 45 caliber?

[The Enlightenment]

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired wrote:
> The Enlightenment wrote:
>
> > Rob Arndt wrote:
> >
> >>The German Me Bf 109 pilots were "shitting themselves" when up
> >
> > against
> >
> >>P-51s?
> >
> >
> > Perhaps its an exaggeration and an insult to the bravery and
courage of
> > men who went up against the worst odds time and time again
retunring
> > with friends and collegues dead.
>
> You don't understand teuton :) He's convinced German pilots near the
end
> of the war doing what you just described the Brits doing during the
BOB
> were MUCH braver than any Brit was. He really does believe it. This
is
> all a repeat of a tantrum he threw last year which included him sayin
no
> Allied pilot could do what Hannah Reisch did when she landed near the

> Brandenburg gate in April 1945 or tested the manned V1. He's really a

> giggle when he goes off like this.

I understand part of Arndt/Teuton. At some point in his childhood he
has had his heritage and identity insulted unrightfully I would say
(perhaps hurt is the right term) and has taken to reaffirming it with
this stuff. He lashes out in an inflamatory fashion or resorts to a
degree of fantasy which only makes things worse.

To a certain extent there is a lot of "disparaging" things written
about Germam technology, weapons, the German situation, The Decisions
they made etc. That is born out of a combination of things: lack of
knowledge and context, a negative and biased attitude or in the case of
allied engineers a desire to blow their own trumpet. To someone like
Robert that would be upsetting to himself so he resorts to not only
correcting but overcompensating. It's a bit of a polarisation thingy
and to a certain extent you feed right into it.

I don't think he is a Nazi. I've had the fortune of knowing real
(German) Nazis (mostly ex), through an old girlfriend and some business
contacts and Robert just doesn't conform or understand Nazi ideology or
Beliefs. He is driven by something else. I've actually known Holocauast
survivors (ie people that lived through the war in occupied Europe and
suffered in several ways) as well. Most of the country town type Nazis
never even met a Jew or had any problems with them that's becuase Jews
were traders and professionals concentrated in the bigger cities. The
average country town Nazi were more interested in the Nazi's self
reliant can do attitude and their community spirit and their uplifting
message. I've met communists from the same German town as well and
they were both wounded or saw their friends die in the same way.

I don't think that the Germans had the manpower to keep up their
frontline manpower and train enough pilots. Whatever they did they
were going to fail. The accounts I've read of experten in their early
carears show that they often made rash mistakes in their first year.
In 1940-41 they stood a chance of living long enough to become
experten. From late 43 they stood far less chance.

> >
> >
> >>The Me Bf 109 has not been surpassed since then as the greatest
> >>aerial killer of all time.
>
> Only because of circumstances. The Me109 was made in huge quantities.

> While it was a very good machine just remember the Nazis counted
> aircraft destroyed on the ground as kills and didn't expend a great
deal
> of effort verifying kills especially in the latter stages of the war.

In the latter stages of the war I recall German pilots complaining that
becuase of the low altitudes and bad weather they had to fight in
during the late 1944 period that they were unable to conmfirm kills
becuase they were unable to see them crash. I don't think there is any
doubt about the overall veracity of the German kill scoring system.
They did have problems during the B of B which led to a tightening up
of procedure in reporting.

Accurate reporting is needed to asses overall tactical and strategic
effectiveness.

> If
> you send fleets of one type of aircraft up against fleets of various
> types you will be able to say the first type killed more than any
other
> type, but this proves nothing. Take it on a type against type and you

> will see the numbers really get fancy. Look at the kill ratios in
Poland
> and the early part of Barbarossa.
>

SNIP

>
> Based purely on kill rates you are correct considering the Allies
pulled
> experienced pilots out of the line to teach new pilots so the could
> stand a chance of winning. This method proved better than the
Experten
> theory since the Allies won.

The Germans were pulling instructors out of their training squadrons to
opperate their supply aircraft as well as pulling them out of
instructor sqaudrons to go to frontline squadrons. That was more fatal
than not returning experienced pilots.

It would be interesting to "war game" what would happen if the Germans
with the same resources did not actually plunder their training
squadrans or actually did return their fron line pilots to training.

The Germans invented the ejections seat and over 300 ejections were
performed in test aircraft, He 219, Do 335 and some He 177 and He 162.
These seats were mainly pneumatic types that were fairly heavy and
prohibitive. Luftwaffe test pilots began to insist that the Fw 190 HAD
to be equiped with an ejection seat becuase it was hard to get out of
and almost went on a kind of strike over the issue. (In the end
explosive ejection bolts were added to the canopy). However by the
time the He 162 flew they had developed pyrotechnical ejection seats
that were much lighter.

The only way I can see the Luftwaffe having overcome its pilot shortage
was to have installed these ejection seats one year earlier. The
Luftwaffe research showed that some 50% of escape attempts failed
diespite the fact that the pilot was not incapacitated.

[Bob Matthews]

Keith W wrote:

Well, duh! You just wilted poor Rob's wiener.

==bob
>
> Keith
>
>

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

The Enlightenment wrote in message <1111315291.2...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>...

(snip)

>The Germans, despite their efforts could never keep up. They had a
>fraction of the resources of the allies and if they were to succede
>they would have to be perfect and no one can be perfect.

The obvious imperfections, starting, by deliberate choice, a two
front war in June 1941, then adding the USA to the list of enemies
in December 1941.

>They had to
>cancell development after development to juggle resources from radar
>proximity fuses (they started work on them before the allies) to
>multicavity magnetrons (which they openly patented before Randall and
>Boot did).

Ah yes, the Germans always ahead in ideas, always behind in
practical development it seems. Even in 1940.

So what exactly does "starting work" on proximity fuses mean?

When exactly did a German patent a multicavity magnetron and
how was it different to the Randall and Boot device? The name
Magnetron has been applied to many devices.

>They didn't have the resources to replace the Me 109 with the powerfull
>Me 309 and so had to keep the very easy to produce Me 109 in
>production.

Ah yes, another wonder aircraft the Germans designed but never used.

The reality check is the Me309 first flew in July 1942 and found it did
not have enough hydraulic power to raise the undercarriage on the
first flight. At the other end of the speed scale there was high speed
snaking, then add the usual take off swing problems, some 5 different
tail and rudder profiles were tried. There were 3 prototypes built by
the end of 1942, but the second was destroyed landing after its first
flight. The test pilots reported high stick forces, and the Me309
could be easily out turned by the Bf109G. As a result of the
criticism the order for 9 was cut to 4 and by mid 1943 the type
was basically regarded as a flying test bed.

It was an attempt to build a better Bf109, using a nose wheel
undercarriage and carrying more fuel, top speed was around 455
mph at 28,000 feet but this was for the unarmed prototype. Note
landing speed was 110 mph thanks to the high wing loading,
weighing 7,784 pounds empty supported by 178 square feet of
wing, in other words around a ton heavier than the Bf109G with
around the same amount of wing area. Assuming the test program
had gone without a hitch the Me309 would not have appeared in
numbers before mid 1944.

The decision was made to invest the engineering resources in
the Me262.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Remove the nb for email.

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

Rob Arndt wrote in message <1111287581.5...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>...

>Do I really have to remind you how you left your gear on Dunkirk's
>beaches after getting your ass kicked off the Continent?

You mean rather like the German army in 1945, unable to stop
allied armies?

>Or how you had
>to kiss Uncle Sam's ass to get supplies and use foreign pilots (whom
>you considered inferior) from your Commonwealth to fly your Hurricanes
>and Spits?

The British paid for all the supplies the received from the US until
late in 1941, when the Lend Lease orders began flowing.

It seems strange to note someone thinks using the world as a
supply source of manpower is a bad thing, versus using only a
small subset of humanity.

And the RAF did not consider Commonwealth pilots to be inferior,
in many cases the opposite impression was recorded.

While there are different lists varying in detail some 2,945 aircrew
flew with Fighter Command during the battle, some 239 were from
the Commonwealth, outnumbered by the 269 aircrew from continental
air forces. There were 7 Americans and the rest were British (with the
usual note the nationality of some aircrew is not certain).

>And the fact that a lone German bomber saved your nation
>when Germany was hitting your docks, radar, manufacturing base, and
>airfields?

By the time the German bombers actually hit London at night, and it
was multiple bombers, the Luftwaffe had stopped its campaign on
radar stations and in fact had not bothered much with industry, the
anti industry raids began mainly to stop RAF aircraft supply and began
late in the battle. The Luftwaffe assumed its kill claims reasonably
correct therefore it must be industry replacing the losses.

Only the airfields were being hit as part of a systematic and effective
campaign at that time.

Oh yes, it was the Germans that decided to bomb London as the main
tactic, it was their mistake.

>A couple more weeks and the RAF FC would have been under 300
>and you would have lost it.

In other words we have someone totally ignorant of the actual strength
figures.

>Still, I just wish Doenitz had 300 U-boats to just choke your tiny
>island to death without invasion at all.

Yes we have someone hoping for a Nazi victory.

>Don;t bring up losses because Germany could afford them, you couldn't.

This is probably the biggest joke going around, at the start of May 1940
the Luftwaffe held 1,110 Bf109 pilots, of which 1,010 were operationally
ready, by the start of September 1940 the figures were 990 pilots
of which 735 were operationally ready. In September 1940 the Luftwaffe
lost some 229 Bf109 pilots. In the July to September 1940 period the
RAF lost some 585 Hurricane and Spitfire pilots, the Luftwaffe some
511 Bf109 pilots with the note some of the Luftwaffe July losses could
be related to the Battle of France and losses include wounded.

On July 6 1940 Fighter Command had some 1,259 fighter pilots,
on September 14 the strength was 1,492 fighter pilots.

Both sides were going through a quality crisis as experienced
pilots were replaced by undertrained pilots.

In June 1940 the Luftwaffe accepted some 180 Bf109s and in
September 1940 acceptances were 195. In June 1940 the
British produced some 412 Hurricanes and Spitfires, in
September 1940 it was 408 Hurricanes and Spitfires. So
on 6 July 1940 the RAF fighter squadrons held 871 aircraft
of which 644 were operational, on 14 September the figures
were 1,046 and 725, which was actually down from the peaks
in August, on 2 November the figures were 1,064 and 721.

For the Luftwaffe the Bf109 strength figures are, month in 1940,
strength / operational
June 1,107 / 856
August 1,065 / 878
September 932 / 721
November 921 / 673
December 832 / 587

See the Narrow Margin by Wood And Dempster, Luftwaffe by
Murray and the Luftwaffe strength figures in the RAF official
history.

At the end of March 1941 Fighter Command had 1,240 fighters
and 1,702 pilots. The Luftwaffe Bf109 force was 1,158 strong.

>Germany held the Continent and there was NO WAY Britain could have
>taken it back herself. Great Brittania, a bootlicker of the US.

The British have this rather sensible and long standing policy
when it comes to European armies, find an ally while using the
RN to keep the bad guys out of England.

>p.s. The Spitfire was a good aircraft, yet why didn't it kill the most
>aircraft or produce the most aces? Oh, that's right, your pilots were
>shit and you had to rely on Indians, Czechs, and Poles too...

Quite simple for the Spitfires, they were given less opportunity, they
had fewer numbers in 1940 and were held back from overseas
duties until early 1942, and then it took until sometime in 1943 for
them to become the main overseas RAF fighter. They did not have
the range to participate in the main battles over Germany before
September 1944.

One is sort of tempted to do the silly claim bit, so good the bad guys
stayed away from them sort of claim but that would be wrong.

[old hoodoo]

The Enlightenment wrote:
> old hoodoo wrote:
>
>>Rob Arndt wrote:
>>
>>>The German Me Bf 109 pilots were "shitting themselves" when up
>
> against
>
>>>P-51s?
>>>That's "why" the Me Bf 109 is the greatest killing machine in
>
> aviation
>
>>>history with the most combat kills and producing the most aces in
>>>history.
>>
>>Mostly against Russians....big deal...oh, yes, despite your massive
>>victory claims the Russian whipped the Germans.
>>
>>
>>
>>>ISTR, that despite being considered "obsolete" by the Allies that
>
> the
>
>>>German Experten preferred
>>
>>preferred???? Had no other choice you mean. Your vaunted Fw-190
>
> couldn't
>
>>breathe at 25,000 feet.
>>
>
>
> Just a point of accuracy.
>
> The Fw 190D-9 could breath quite well at this altitude as could the Fw
> 190 D-11,D-12 and d-13. (the D-13 even saw service).

Would a D prove superior to a P-47 or P-51D which were being produced
in great numbers?
The issue here is not the ability to design good aircraft, but the
alleged technical superiority of everything German/Nazi as asserted by
Rob. No one isn't saying the Germans weren't good engineers, as good as
anywhere in the world, but just because their engineering talent got to
play around with more diversified stuff than the Allies didn't make them
better overall. The 262 was indeed a superior aircraft, but you can look
back on history when engineers in different countries would make
something that would be superior for a while until some other country
surpassed it. Rob would maintain that
just because the Germans/Nazi's produced the first effective jet fighter
that all jet fighters in the future have to look back on the 262 as some
kind of holy grail and therefore the Nazi's must have been "superior"
and we have to thank them as otherwise we would have never gotten to
where we are today. Heck the Fw-200 had swept wings, no one is going
gag-ga over that.
One of the arguments against that is that the Germans spent a lot of R&D
talent running endless rabbit trails, few of which did prove fruitful,
but at a cost of not focusing on building better aircraft when they
needed them, forcing their experten and bomber pilots to fly overall
substandard products in lesser numbers against the West and aircraft
that could have been even more effective and in greater numbers in the
East. No supermen there.

[The Enlightenment]

Geoffrey Sinclair wrote:
> The Enlightenment wrote in message
<1111315291.2...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>...
>
> (snip)
>
> >The Germans, despite their efforts could never keep up. They had a
> >fraction of the resources of the allies and if they were to succede
> >they would have to be perfect and no one can be perfect.
>
> The obvious imperfections, starting, by deliberate choice, a two
> front war in June 1941, then adding the USA to the list of enemies
> in December 1941.

So, what is the point of making such an ignorant statement considering
that you style yourself as an expert on WW2. Sophistry?

The US was not only supplying vast amounts of materials and munitions
to the UK it was providing destroyers as escorts and it was attacking
u-boats engaged in a commerce war. Hitlers orders to the u-boat
commanders was to refrain from harming the US ships.

This was not the act of a neutral country and Germany had mutual
defense pact with Japan.

Whatever the merrits the Germans may or many not have had to their
strategic situation you might just consider that the Nazi Government
was provoked by a US that was clearly not neutral.

Roosvelt wanted a war with Germany. The US people initially did not.

You know you are a real contrarian clown Sinclair.

In Message-ID: <3ba1df2f...@news.pacific.net.au> you said:

"in 1945 the daylight Mosquito raids needed escorts because of the
new generation of Luftwaffe interceptors"

In Message-ID:
<41da288d$0$31827$5a62...@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au>
you contradict yourself and throw in a rant to boot.

> I expect
>the willingness of coastal command Mosquitos to take on Fw 190
>pertained not to their manouverabillity but to them using tactics to
>exploit a speed advantage. I also suspect that the speed advantage
>would have disappeared when compared to the latest BMW 801F equiped FW
>190A-9 (fitted to some Fw 190A-8s I believe) or the inline Fw 190s.

Ah yes, the yet another guess about allied abilities followed by the
Germans would over come the problem. Try and cope with the
fact the Mosquitoes did willingly engage Fw190s at low altitude,
and they were usually the standard mark VI. The version of Fw190
encountered was usually the A model.

>
> >They had to
> >cancell development after development to juggle resources from radar
> >proximity fuses (they started work on them before the allies) to
> >multicavity magnetrons (which they openly patented before Randall
and
> >Boot did).
>
> Ah yes, the Germans always ahead in ideas, always behind in
> practical development it seems. Even in 1940.
>
> So what exactly does "starting work" on proximity fuses mean?

It means building the valves and amplifiers for the fuses prior to the
war and testing them. The British (RV Jones) even had a sample of the
valves developed for it and it was this that instigated the British
development of the Allied proximity fuse.

An enterprising Historian (not a mindless regurgiator of statistics)
could probably find why the German did not complete its development.
My guess it was assigned a low priority at the onset of Barbarossa or
the program was dsiruped during the Franco-German period of the war
when many R+D programs were disrupted by lack of resources. (ie
engineers and personel to test)

As the Germans developed some very tough ceramic envelops, interesting
ceramic sealing techniques for valve elements and minature ceramic
valves they were probably pretty close to

Here is everything I have currently (accumulated by "Gordon":
Message-ID: <20030201131948...@mb-fl.aol.com>
============================

Oslo Letter
the writer of the Oslo letter was Paul Wenzen Matteus Rosbaud according
to
Arnold Kramish's Griffin. MacMillan.London 1987. He was an Austrian,
fought in
Austrian army at the Italian Front during the WWI, moved after the WWI
to
Germany. Worked as a scientific adviser for the Springer publications.
So
ideally placed for espionace. There were some bad mistakes in the Oslo
report,
for example in it there was a claim that the monthly output of Ju 88s
was
5.000! The Oslo Report (translated into English)is printed in F H
Hinsley's
British Intelligence in the SWW Volume 1 (HMSO London @ 1979, Second
impression
1986. ISBN 0 11 630933 4)Appendix 5 (pp. 508 - 512).

In the book 'Most Secret War' by Brian Johnson, published by the BBC in
1978
(ISBN: 0 563 17425 0), the Introduction is entitled 'A letter from
Oslo' and
states that a small parcel was left on a window-ledge of the British
Consulate
in the small hours of the 5th November, 1939, addressed to the Naval
Attaché.
It contained a letter and a small electronic device. The device turned
out to
be a proximity fuse.

It is stated that periodically, Dr.R.V.Jones would turn up the Oslo
Report
'during quiet moments of the war, to see what was going to happen
next'. He
received the letter from the Naval attachee in Oslo and details what
the letter
contained.

On 19 September 1939 in a speech in Danzig, Hitler boasted of fearsome
secret
weapons against which Germany's enemies would be defenceless.

Confirmation of the development of at least some of that arsenal was
soon to
come from a most unexpected source-Germany_in what must rate as one of
the most
incredible windfalls even in the long history of espionage. In the
small hours
of 5 November 1939 a parcel was left on a window-ledge of teh British
Consulate
in Oslo, in what was still neutral Norway. Addressed to teh Naval
Attache, it
contained several pages of German typescript and a small electronic
device
which, when examined in London by Dr R.V. Jones of Air Ministry
Scientific
Intelligence, proved to be an early proximity fuze for an anti-aircraft
shell
and was clearly included to authenticate the much
more important typescript. Subequently known as the Oslo Reportthis
set out
the scope of German military scientific research, including such highly
classified information as the identity of Peenemunde as an important
research
centre.

The Junkers 88, the Luftwaffe's new ecret wonder plane, the
correspondent
stated, was to be used as a high-speed dive bomber - a fact unknown in
Britain.
He detailed German radar developments and confirmed that radar had
been
instrumental in directing fighters to a squadron of Wellington bombers
that had
been decimated on a raid to Wilhelmshaven. He explained the working of
a
German night-bomber radio aid, which later became known as hte Y-Gerate
and
which was to figure in th soon to be Battle of teh Beams. The report
also
significantly outlined German rocket development.

History of the U.S. Army's Technical Intelligence in European Theater
of
Operations

At the same time, an unknown person delivered a document to the British
Embassy
in Norway which became known as the "Oslo Letter". This document
outlined the
status of German scientific research with an emphasis on military
weapons.
Originally discounted as a plant, it became the basis for much of the
British
Scientific Intelligence efforts. A young Ph.D., Reginald V. Jones was
working
for the British Air Ministry and was privileged to be on the list for
receipt
of the Enigma messages. He began to compare Enigma reports and air
photographs
with the Oslo Letter and began to un-ravel the mysteries of German
weapons.

>
> When exactly did a German patent a multicavity magnetron and
> how was it different to the Randall and Boot device? The name
> Magnetron has been applied to many devices.

US patent
Magnetron. 2,123,728; Nov 29, 1935
Magnetron. 2,130,132; July 16, 1936

http://www.radarworld.org/hollmann.html
http://www.radarworld.org/hans4.html

I don't know exactly why it wasn't developed rapidly. The German had
early leadership in microwaves then abandoned it. Perhaps because the
Freya and Wurzburg were quite good radars. They also believed that the
detection characteristics of meter lenght waves was better (they were
right).

http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/transcripts/schwan.html

SCHWAN: Oh, yes. As a matter of fact, when the war started in
1939, the Germans developed the fairly well-known Wurzburg type of
equipment which operated at a wavelength of about one and one-half
meters. They were operating at a rather low frequency by comparison
with the 2400 megahertz which the United States used later in
'forty-three. They never made it to higher frequencies than that.
(Note they actually did opperate several microwave radars from 43
onward but had lmited production)

They operated at lower wavelengths where, of course, resolution is not
as
good as it is at the higher frequencies.

They developed some good magnetrons. It's an irony of history that a
few months after the war started in thirty-nine the Nazis closed the
Magnetron Development Laboratory since they thought it unnecessary for
the war. Can you imagine that?
*************************************************
The main problem the German has was one of managment: dispersal of R&D
over 100 laboratries and competition between navy and Luftwaffe with
excess
secracy.

The Engineer Nakajima of japan had developed Multicavity resonant
Magnetrons 1 year beofore the British.
Ironicaly he worked in Germany before the war and if the Germany and
Japanese had of shared as well as
the US/UK did things could have turned out different.

http://www.star-games.com/exhibits/japaneseradar/japaneseradar.html
Nakajima: In 1953 I traveled around the world without a translator. At
that time I went to London, and at the museum I found exactly the same
thing, which was explained as: "This was invented by some Birmingham
University people in 1940." 1940 means one year later than our
invention. When I found this one in the London museum, there was an
explanation that this magnetron led to Allied victory for the Second
World War. After that, a symposium was held in England by IEE, but at
that time there was no exhibition of this magnetron. I felt very
strange -- why was that thing not then exhibited? That was 1985. At
that time there were so many kinds of parts exhibited in many rooms,
but there was no exhibition of this magnetron. I felt very strange and
asked everybody, but there was no answer. After that, when I sat
alone, taking some tea, one old gentleman hit my shoulder by the hand
and told me, "Your magnetron must have been stolen by the English
King." That was an interesting thing.

Nakajima: Some top department of the Navy believed that radar was of
no use. Very strange. They didn't believe in the electronics
technology, I think. They didn't permit us to use the rare earth
metals for the magnets.

Dr. Hans E. Hollmann continued working on radar in his company
"Laboratory for High Frequency and Electromedicine" in Berlin. The
company had a staff of 20 scientists and not only did they work for
Telefunken but much of the research work went into helping GEMA. The
Telefunken Co. owned many of Hollmann's radar patents which they
registered in the US prior to the war. See patents. These patents were
worth millions of dollars. Prior to WWII, the British and the US were
not only aware of the radar technology being developed in Germany but
they also used it to develop their radar systems.

>
> >They didn't have the resources to replace the Me 109 with the
powerfull
> >Me 309 and so had to keep the very easy to produce Me 109 in
> >production.
>
> Ah yes, another wonder aircraft the Germans designed but never used.
>
> The reality check is the Me309 first flew in July 1942 and found it
did
> not have enough hydraulic power to raise the undercarriage on the
> first flight.

Clearly a teething problem. That's why prototypes are built.

> At the other end of the speed scale there was high speed
> snaking, then add the usual take off swing problems, some 5 different
> tail and rudder profiles were tried. There were 3 prototypes built
by
> the end of 1942, but the second was destroyed landing after its first
> flight. The test pilots reported high stick forces, and the Me309
> could be easily out turned by the Bf109G. As a result of the
> criticism the order for 9 was cut to 4 and by mid 1943 the type
> was basically regarded as a flying test bed.

The Rechlin test center eventually determined that the Me 309 could be
developed into a fighter. Most aircraft have initial teething issues
and multiple configurations are experimented with.

The Me 109 can outmanoever many opposition fighter at lower speeds,
including a spitfire, due to its high power to weight ratio and Handley
Page Automatic slats. It is no suprise that the Me 109 could do so
with the 309 at certain speeds.

It sounds to me as if the Me 309 had high stick forces, which would
have been the cuase of the lack of manouverabillity, that would have
been overcome with power controls, as on the He 162 salamander or with
Friese aerlerons as on the Fw 190.

>
>
> It was an attempt to build a better Bf109, using a nose wheel
> undercarriage and carrying more fuel, top speed was around 455
> mph at 28,000 feet but this was for the unarmed prototype.

The 309 was powered by the DB603 which was a considerably
underdeveloped engine of the quite large swept volume of 44 Litres that
came in several succeding more powerfull developments. As the Germans
had perfected both electronically fired cannon to sychronise with the
prop and motor canon that were mounted between the V-12 or close to the
fueselage I would not expect to much loss in speed.

> Note
> landing speed was 110 mph thanks to the high wing loading,
> weighing 7,784 pounds empty supported by 178 square feet of
> wing, in other words around a ton heavier than the Bf109G with
> around the same amount of wing area. Assuming the test program
> had gone without a hitch the Me309 would not have appeared in
> numbers before mid 1944.
>
> The decision was made to invest the engineering resources in
> the Me262.

Sensibly so becuase while the western allies had the resources to
devlop the Tempest, Typhoon, P-51, P-47, Hurricane etc the Germans
managed to find the rerources only for the Me 109 and Fw 190. The 109
was forced to soldier on. It lacked range, it lacked roll rate at
speed and it lacked the abillity to carry the armour and weapons
needed.

If the allies had of had similar resources they would have been forced
to stay with Spitfires and P-40s. No P-47s or P-51s and the range and
toughtness they provided.

[The Enlightenment]

Its clear to me that the Germans and the Allies were equivalent in
capabillity. They are essentually the same race with the same cultural
heritage at the same stage of development: a mixture mainly of Germanic
and Celtic peoples in both Germany, UK, USA at the time. Even if the
Germans had a touch more motivation (they were being bombed) or even an
advantage in 'attitude' they would loose. Its just to hard to keep up.
Running 6 months behined is deadly in a war. You might designe a
great prototype but to productionise it you need lots of resources.

Then consider the Germans had no significant home grown oil industry
that could develop and produce high octane fuels but were expending
their resources in synthesising liquid fuel from coal (including making
octane)

The Atomic bomb and the Printed Circuit Board of the proximity fuse
were Jewish. This ethniticity has some 30% of the worlds nobel prizes
they are not a group to get of side. The Germans probably would have
come up with an atmoic bomb by 1947. By 1945 they had created an
atomic pile whose neutron population while not self susataining did
increase the meutrons provided by a neutirn source by a factor of 7 or
so and that indictated to them that they needeed to increase the
dimensions of their pile by 50% to achieve a chain reaction. They
would have realised very quickly that a weapon was easier then they
thought.

[Admiral Sir Francis Haddock]

On 23 Mar 2005 03:34:41 -0800, "The Enlightenment"
<bern...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:

>> The obvious imperfections, starting, by deliberate choice, a two
>> front war in June 1941, then adding the USA to the list of enemies
>> in December 1941.
>
>So, what is the point of making such an ignorant statement considering
>that you style yourself as an expert on WW2. Sophistry?

Perhaps the ultimate fate of Germany at the hands of the three-front
war Hitler had established under his own initiative should give you
some indication that Adolf's strategic judgements were not
neccessarily chosen with an objective aim of a realistic German
victory to the fore.

>The US was not only supplying vast amounts of materials and munitions
>to the UK

In the financial year 1941-42, roughly concurrent with the first year
of lend-lease operations, the British spent approximately Ł4.085
billion on defence, while receiving approximately $1 billion in
lend-lease funded munitions exports from the United States. The most
authoritative figure for a meaningful dollar/sterling exchange rate
gives a comparative value of approximately Ł130 million for the
additional sterling-spending value of lend-lease munitions exports at
the time. Even using the most basic quantitative analysis, it would
indicate that this level of supplementary military aid, at
approximately 3.2% of what British domestic and sterling area
procurement total, is unlikely to have been decisive.

But living in revisionist world, we can just cast aside the 96.8% of
British economic resources dedicated to the war effort in that year
and assert that the 3.2% which originated from the magical fairyland
was decisive regardless of all else.

>it was providing destroyers as escorts and it was attacking
>u-boats engaged in a commerce war.

It didn't sink a U-boat until 1942, though, did it? Remind me, who
was doing the actual fighting before then?

Gavin Bailey

--

Windows OS great advance. Reliable, stable operating system install real smooth.
When try to use tough app, resource hungry, like Notepad, give informative message
like this one, "int 19H bot error". What problem here? - Bart Kwan En

[Keith W]

"The Enlightenment" <bern...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:1111579016....@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

> Its clear to me that the Germans and the Allies were equivalent in
> capabillity. They are essentually the same race with the same cultural
> heritage at the same stage of development: a mixture mainly of Germanic
> and Celtic peoples in both Germany, UK, USA at the time. Even if the
> Germans had a touch more motivation (they were being bombed) or even an
> advantage in 'attitude' they would loose. Its just to hard to keep up.
> Running 6 months behined is deadly in a war. You might designe a
> great prototype but to productionise it you need lots of resources.
>

Trouble is the Germans started out at least a year ahead.
Compare and contrast the size of the German, British and
US armed forces in 1939.

Only the USN and RN were significantly stronger than
their German equivalents

> Then consider the Germans had no significant home grown oil industry
> that could develop and produce high octane fuels but were expending
> their resources in synthesising liquid fuel from coal (including making
> octane)
>

Not an unreasonable decision for a nation with no oil reserves

> The Atomic bomb and the Printed Circuit Board of the proximity fuse
> were Jewish. This ethniticity has some 30% of the worlds nobel prizes
> they are not a group to get of side.

A graphic illustration of the stupidity of racism. Declare
one of the most talented sections of your population
to be Untermenschen, kill their families and then act
suprised when they work for your enemies.

> The Germans probably would have
> come up with an atmoic bomb by 1947.

I sincerely doubt it, as did Heisenberg, he estimated it would take
at least 5 years from the first functioning reactor to extract sufficient
plutonium.

> By 1945 they had created an
> atomic pile whose neutron population while not self susataining did
> increase the meutrons provided by a neutirn source by a factor of 7 or
> so and that indictated to them that they needeed to increase the
> dimensions of their pile by 50% to achieve a chain reaction.

Simply scaling up their existing reactor would have been
a fatal decision (literally). The Haigerloch reactor lacked
adequate shielding and control rods

> They
> would have realised very quickly that a weapon was easier then they
> thought.
>

Easy my ass.

The move from a low power reasearch reactor to the massive high power
design needed for plutonium production is a major jump, then you
have to build the reprocessing plant. The US effort at Hanford
involved 50,000 workers and required a location with ample cooling
water and electric power. None of those were readily available in
Germany in 1945.

See http://www.childrenofthemanhattanproject.org/HICC/HICC_HA.htm
for an idea of whats involved in actually producing plutonium

Keith

----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==----
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[Peter Kemp]

On 23 Mar 2005 03:34:41 -0800, "The Enlightenment"
<bern...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:

>Geoffrey Sinclair wrote:
>> The obvious imperfections, starting, by deliberate choice, a two
>> front war in June 1941, then adding the USA to the list of enemies
>> in December 1941.
>
>So, what is the point of making such an ignorant statement considering
>that you style yourself as an expert on WW2. Sophistry?
>
>The US was not only supplying vast amounts of materials and munitions
>to the UK it was providing destroyers as escorts and it was attacking
>u-boats engaged in a commerce war. Hitlers orders to the u-boat
>commanders was to refrain from harming the US ships.
>
>This was not the act of a neutral country and Germany had mutual
>defense pact with Japan.

The defence pact did not apply since Japan declared war on Japan. The
Tripartite pact did not require Hitler to delcare war unless the US
had been the agressor.
Clearly this was not the case, and Germany had already bitten off more
than it could chew by attacking the Soviet Union.
Adding an even more powerful enemy to the pot was beyond foolish and
into the realm of the insane.

--
Peter Kemp

"Life is short...drink faster"

[Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired]

The Enlightenment wrote:

> Geoffrey Sinclair wrote:
>
>>The Enlightenment wrote in message
>
> <1111315291.2...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>...
>
>>(snip)
>>
>>
>>>The Germans, despite their efforts could never keep up. They had a
>>>fraction of the resources of the allies and if they were to succede
>>>they would have to be perfect and no one can be perfect.
>>
>>The obvious imperfections, starting, by deliberate choice, a two
>>front war in June 1941, then adding the USA to the list of enemies
>>in December 1941.
>
>
> So, what is the point of making such an ignorant statement considering
> that you style yourself as an expert on WW2. Sophistry?
>
> The US was not only supplying vast amounts of materials and munitions
> to the UK it was providing destroyers as escorts and it was attacking
> u-boats engaged in a commerce war.

Please note there were very few such encounters and they tended to occur
in U.S. territorial waters. The U.S. had every right to escort any
vessel within this area and fire upon any armed intruder such as a
U-boat. There was no U.S. - German treaty allowing the Nazis to use U.S.
territorial waters as a hunting ground.

Hitlers orders to the u-boat
> commanders was to refrain from harming the US ships.

Then why did he declare war on the United States a few days after Pearl
Harbour?

>
> This was not the act of a neutral country and Germany had mutual
> defense pact with Japan.

That's not why he declared ware on the United States.

>
> Whatever the merrits the Germans may or many not have had to their
> strategic situation you might just consider that the Nazi Government
> was provoked by a US that was clearly not neutral.

The U.S. was most assuredly a bit onesided, but Hitler didn't have to
declare war. Take a look at a map of the U-boat's unting grounds in 1941
then again in 1942. All of a sudden there was a huge part of the
Atlantic in which they were no longer safe.

>
> Roosvelt wanted a war with Germany. The US people initially did not.

So Hitler was working for Roosevelt?

[Grantland]

"Keith W" <keit...@kwillshaw.demon.co.uk> drooled:

>A graphic illustration of the stupidity of racism. Declare
>one of the most talented sections of your population
>to be Untermenschen, kill their families and then act
>suprised when they work for your enemies.
>

'Fact is, Hitler saw what the Jews were doing in Russia, and he
didn't want the same in Germany. 'Fact is, Hitler got all his wacky
race theories straight out of the Jew Talmud, just replacing "Chosen"
with "Master" Race.. - if it worked for them.. 'Fact is, the "Reds"
were a potent force in contemporary German politics - in fact they
briefly held power during the war - controlling as they did the media
and the weakling borgeois Goy politicians much like they do in the US
today. Declared Communist ideology was World Domination, - just like
PNAC today. Hitler would have felt the same had it been the Mafia
that was doing it.
It is only your crass noddy Pavlonian reflex that ascribes this to
"racism". Brainwashing is a sad thing to see.

Grantland

[KP]

"Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired" <B2...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:ppi0e.5755$%d7.437@lakeread03...

> Then why did he declare war on the United States a few days after Pearl
> Harbour?

Just to split a few hairs here, the name of the place is "Pearl Harbor"
That's H-A-R-B-O-R

Royal Navy ships are welcome to find safe harbour at Pearl Harbor but that
doesn't change the spelling of the *proper name*

[Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired]

KP wrote:

Well, call the bobbies and send me to gaol.

[George Z. Bush]

"KP" <nospam@please> wrote in message
news:4241d0b8$0$23562$8b46...@news.nationwide.net...

C'mon, pal....allow them their quirks. After all, it was their language before
we imported it into North America and then corrupted it into what we now like to
think is correct English.
(^-^)))))

[BobMac]

The Enlightenment wrote:
> This thread has degenerated into lunacy. I doubt that the German
> Experten would be so triumphalist about their success, in fact many
> were humble men (mans gota know his limitations) that respected their
> enemies nevertheless any man that could do what they did in the face of
> overwhelming odds is worthy of respect.

1) The Bf 109 was a pretty good fighter. It had it's problems in the
BOB, because it was fighting farther from it's bases.

2) The guys who actually flew them were pretty good people, all 'round.
One of the last CAPTP reunions in Winnipeg had Adolf Galland as a guest
of honour. He was popular and well liked, unlike some contributors to
this thread.

rm

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

The Enlightenment wrote in message <1111577681.5...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>...

Geoffrey Sinclair wrote:
> The Enlightenment wrote in message
<1111315291.2...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>...
>> (snip)
>>
>> >The Germans, despite their efforts could never keep up. They had a
>> >fraction of the resources of the allies and if they were to succede
>> >they would have to be perfect and no one can be perfect.
>>
>> The obvious imperfections, starting, by deliberate choice, a two
>> front war in June 1941, then adding the USA to the list of enemies
>> in December 1941.
>
>So, what is the point of making such an ignorant statement considering
>that you style yourself as an expert on WW2. Sophistry?

Now this is funny, what is the claim now, the Germans had no choice
but to declare war on the USSR and USA when they did?

In 1940 and early 1941 the Germans acquired most of the resources they
needed for a long war, and with most of Europe to draw resources from
should eventually defeat Britain unless other powers intervened.

Rather than wait for the intervention the Germans ensured they would not
have a real chance to defeat Britain by declaring war on other powers.

>The US was not only supplying vast amounts of materials and munitions
>to the UK it was providing destroyers as escorts and it was attacking
>u-boats engaged in a commerce war. Hitlers orders to the u-boat
>commanders was to refrain from harming the US ships.

In 1941 the US supplies were what Britain could pay for, and a minority
of the UK war effort. The "vast amounts" were really 1943 onwards.

>This was not the act of a neutral country and Germany had mutual
>defense pact with Japan.

And the situation remains if Hitler had not declared war against the
US he could have significantly cut the odds against Germany. Aid
short of war is useful, but not as useful as a full alliance.

The treaty with Japan was not a mutual defence treaty, go read the
clauses. And note how it helped turn US public opinion against
Germany. Hitler was under no obligation to declare war on the US.

>Whatever the merrits the Germans may or many not have had to their
>strategic situation you might just consider that the Nazi Government
>was provoked by a US that was clearly not neutral.

You mean like the way the U-boats sank US ships?

>Roosvelt wanted a war with Germany. The US people initially did not.

So, the German people did not want a war.

So what about the USSR, all the above is about the USA.

>You know you are a real contrarian clown Sinclair.

Ah someone has been trawling the archives.

>In Message-ID: <3ba1df2f...@news.pacific.net.au> you said:
>
>"in 1945 the daylight Mosquito raids needed escorts because of the
>new generation of Luftwaffe interceptors"

This is correct over Germany where the new generation of interceptors,
mainly the Me262s according to the reports, were being deployed, the
later Bf109 and Fw190s had established a performance gap over the
standard Mosquito. There was also a strengthening of the Luftwaffe
fighter defences of Norway, and its warning system was working
properly in 1945.

>In Message-ID:
><41da288d$0$31827$5a62...@per-qv1-newsreader-01.iinet.net.au>
>you contradict yourself and throw in a rant to boot.

This is "The Enlightenment"

>> I expect
>>the willingness of coastal command Mosquitos to take on Fw 190
>>pertained not to their manouverabillity but to them using tactics to
>>exploit a speed advantage. I also suspect that the speed advantage
>>would have disappeared when compared to the latest BMW 801F equiped FW
>>190A-9 (fitted to some Fw 190A-8s I believe) or the inline Fw 190s.

This is me,

>Ah yes, the yet another guess about allied abilities followed by the
>Germans would over come the problem. Try and cope with the
>fact the Mosquitoes did willingly engage Fw190s at low altitude,
>and they were usually the standard mark VI. The version of Fw190
>encountered was usually the A model.

The above is supposed to be a rant.

Let us see now, I noted in 1945 the latest generation of Luftwaffe
interceptors versus Mosquitoes, this is apparently a contradiction
to noting at low level the Mosquito fighter bombers were willing to
fight the Fw190A, introduced in 1941 and still largely the same
performance wise in 1945. There were no Fw109Ds or Me262s
in Norway in 1945.

Can you try and do a little better?

>> >They had to
>> >cancell development after development to juggle resources from radar
>> >proximity fuses (they started work on them before the allies) to
>> >multicavity magnetrons (which they openly patented before Randall and
>> >Boot did).
>>
>> Ah yes, the Germans always ahead in ideas, always behind in
>> practical development it seems. Even in 1940.
>>
>> So what exactly does "starting work" on proximity fuses mean?
>
>It means building the valves and amplifiers for the fuses prior to the
>war and testing them. The British (RV Jones) even had a sample of the
>valves developed for it and it was this that instigated the British
>development of the Allied proximity fuse.

Ah yes, the great the Germans thought up the idea first, but dropped
it. Note Jones had a tube which the letter stated was a trigger device
for a proximity fuse, where the shell would be made in two electrically
insulated parts with suitable electronics to detect the change in
capacitance whenever the shell was in the presence of a third body.

Not exactly the same sort of idea the allies used. The Germans
even tried photoelectric cells as fuse triggers.

Also note Jones said the ARL noted the tube was better than anything
the UK had made, not that the UK had no idea about proximity fuses,
but when in doubt assume the allies are clueless until the Germans
tell them.

>An enterprising Historian (not a mindless regurgiator of statistics)
>could probably find why the German did not complete its development.

In other words it is someone else's problem to realise what happened.

>My guess it was assigned a low priority at the onset of Barbarossa or
>the program was dsiruped during the Franco-German period of the war
>when many R+D programs were disrupted by lack of resources. (ie
>engineers and personel to test)

In other words folks a guess and it ignores the way the Germans called
up large numbers of scientists thereby creating the "lack of resources".
Apart from the scientists taken and often misused in the military what
shortages suddenly appeared in September 1939?

>As the Germans developed some very tough ceramic envelops, interesting
>ceramic sealing techniques for valve elements and minature ceramic
>valves they were probably pretty close to

Remarkably how the Germans are always pretty close but never
making it.

(snip) of Oslo letter.

>> When exactly did a German patent a multicavity magnetron and
>> how was it different to the Randall and Boot device? The name
>> Magnetron has been applied to many devices.

As an example.

The magnetron tube was invented and its characteristics extensively explored
by GE (Alfred W Hull, 1929, Schnectady, NY) long before the war.

And a quote,

"It is also worthwhile recording the collaboration between the French and the
Brits, especially just before the Randall and Boot magentron was dispatched
to the US. There is probably a book to be written about this, but for
purposes of this post, it should be recognized that the French also had
proceeded quite far in independent magnetron development, and that the team
of Pomte/Gutton had developed magnetrons with oxide cathodes which allowed
for significantly higher pulsed power output--which were incorporated into
the Brit magnetron just before H-Hour. One developed French magnetron, as
mentioned in a post by Mr Capdeboscq, operated at 16 cm."

>US patent
>Magnetron. 2,123,728; Nov 29, 1935
>Magnetron. 2,130,132; July 16, 1936
>
>http://www.radarworld.org/hollmann.html
>http://www.radarworld.org/hans4.html
>
>
>I don't know exactly why it wasn't developed rapidly.

Maybe something simple like output? Randall and Boot managed
500 watts and 3 Ghz, or 10cm wavelength. The German magnetron
was operating at 50cm and was not as powerful. Note a patent is
not the same as a working device available.

There was also the frequency jumping problems, hence "strapping".

Another quote,

"Okabe & Yagi at the Tohoku College of Engineering developed
a split-anode magnetron in 1927 and by 1939 the Japan Radio
Company had developed an 8-cavity, water-cooled magnetron at
a wavelength of 10 cm with a continuous output power of 500
W. However, this research (which stopped in 1941 due to
material shortages) was not published until after WW2.
Another design, the first successful multicavity magnetron
design, was developed in Russia in 1936-37 by Aleksereff &
Malearoff, with results first published in 1940 "

>The German had
>early leadership in microwaves then abandoned it. Perhaps because the
>Freya and Wurzburg were quite good radars. They also believed that the
>detection characteristics of meter lenght waves was better (they were
>right).

With the trade off against resolution.

>http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/transcripts/
>schwan.html

(snip) of text.

>The main problem the German has was one of managment: dispersal of R&D
>over 100 laboratries and competition between navy and Luftwaffe with
>excess secracy.

Try and also remember the number of scientists forced out pre
war and the German military draft system.

Try and understand 100 laboratories does not sound like a lack
of resources, but a lack of organisation.

>The Engineer Nakajima of japan had developed Multicavity resonant
>Magnetrons 1 year beofore the British.
>Ironicaly he worked in Germany before the war and if the Germany and
>Japanese had of shared as well as
>the US/UK did things could have turned out different.

Yes folks, note the Japanese had to be told by the Germans as well.

>http://www.star-games.com/exhibits/japaneseradar/japaneseradar.html

(snip of text)

>Dr. Hans E. Hollmann continued working on radar in his company
>"Laboratory for High Frequency and Electromedicine" in Berlin. The
>company had a staff of 20 scientists and not only did they work for
>Telefunken but much of the research work went into helping GEMA. The
>Telefunken Co. owned many of Hollmann's radar patents which they
>registered in the US prior to the war. See patents. These patents were
>worth millions of dollars. Prior to WWII, the British and the US were
>not only aware of the radar technology being developed in Germany but
>they also used it to develop their radar systems.

If R V Jones is the authority be aware he attended a meeting in
1941 called to discuss whether the Germans had radar.

Once again all things are flowing from the Germans, no one else
could come up with the ideas, but everyone else could see their
benefit and use them. We are supposed to think the Germans
are therefore the smart ones.

Understand some devices were invented independently most
were invented based on the work of many people. See the
way attempts to measure the ionosphere in the 1920s and
1930s pushed radio development along the chain that lead
to radar.

>> >They didn't have the resources to replace the Me 109 with the powerfull
>> >Me 309 and so had to keep the very easy to produce Me 109 in production.
>>
>> Ah yes, another wonder aircraft the Germans designed but never used.
>>
>> The reality check is the Me309 first flew in July 1942 and found it did
>> not have enough hydraulic power to raise the undercarriage on the
>> first flight.
>
>Clearly a teething problem. That's why prototypes are built.

Not a good sign that something as relatively simple as that had been
miscalculated.

>> At the other end of the speed scale there was high speed
>> snaking, then add the usual take off swing problems, some 5 different
>> tail and rudder profiles were tried. There were 3 prototypes built by
>> the end of 1942, but the second was destroyed landing after its first
>> flight. The test pilots reported high stick forces, and the Me309
>> could be easily out turned by the Bf109G. As a result of the
>> criticism the order for 9 was cut to 4 and by mid 1943 the type
>> was basically regarded as a flying test bed.
>
>The Rechlin test center eventually determined that the Me 309 could be
>developed into a fighter. Most aircraft have initial teething issues
>and multiple configurations are experimented with.

Really, given the Rechlin testing comments about heavy controls were
a major factor in cancelling it. Given the handling problems clearly
meant a protracted test program to cure them. After the Me210 fiasco
the problems would have to be cured before production was allowed.

So tell us all about this Rechlin report, when was it made and what did
it say?

>The Me 109 can outmanoever many opposition fighter at lower speeds,
>including a spitfire, due to its high power to weight ratio and Handley
>Page Automatic slats. It is no suprise that the Me 109 could do so
>with the 309 at certain speeds.

Ah the recycling of the wonder Bf109 manoeuvrability claim.

High power to weight ratio? The 1942 Me109G empty weight was around
5,950 pounds being pulled by 1,475 HP using a 173 square foot wing.

The Spitfire IX weighed in at 5,800 pounds tare, with various engines
from 1,475 to 1,650 HP, on a wing area of 242 square feet.

Go work out the various power to weight ratios. Then note the
landing speed of the Me109 versus the Spitfire and what that
implies for low speed handling.

>It sounds to me as if the Me 309 had high stick forces, which would
>have been the cuase of the lack of manouverabillity, that would have
>been overcome with power controls, as on the He 162 salamander or with
>Friese aerlerons as on the Fw 190.

Ah yes, the fighter could be fixed announcement, I note the attempt
is made to say "if" the stick forces were high. The Rechlin report
claimed above should have mentioned them.

Of course simply assume such power controls were easy to introduce,
look at all those WWII aircraft with powered controls.

>> It was an attempt to build a better Bf109, using a nose wheel
>> undercarriage and carrying more fuel, top speed was around 455
>> mph at 28,000 feet but this was for the unarmed prototype.
>
>The 309 was powered by the DB603 which was a considerably
>underdeveloped engine of the quite large swept volume of 44 Litres that
>came in several succeding more powerfull developments. As the Germans
>had perfected both electronically fired cannon to sychronise with the
>prop and motor canon that were mounted between the V-12 or close to the
>fueselage I would not expect to much loss in speed.

The armament proposed came in two versions, standard fighter,
an MG151 and 2 MG131 and bomber destroyer 3 MG151 and
4 MG131.

There are two causes for a loss of speed, drag of the weapons and
their weight. Now the Me309 being so heavy anyway would have
a smaller percentage decrease in speed due to weight, beyond that
it is instructive to note the way service aircraft slowed down
compared with prototype speeds.

>> Note
>> landing speed was 110 mph thanks to the high wing loading,
>> weighing 7,784 pounds empty supported by 178 square feet of
>> wing, in other words around a ton heavier than the Bf109G with
>> around the same amount of wing area. Assuming the test program
>> had gone without a hitch the Me309 would not have appeared in
>> numbers before mid 1944.
>>
>> The decision was made to invest the engineering resources in
>> the Me262.
>
>Sensibly so becuase while the western allies had the resources to
>devlop the Tempest, Typhoon, P-51, P-47, Hurricane etc the Germans
>managed to find the rerources only for the Me 109 and Fw 190.

It seems the idea is to simply define the problem to minimise
German abilities, you know the lack of resources, the Germans
had all the ideas (major resource) but no ability to use them
(no material resources).

How about the Germans were bad fighter designers? The
Japanese produced more successful designs, A6M, Ki-84,
backed by the useful Ki-61 and Ki-43 for example. The
Japanese had fewer resources than the Germans. Check
out the later Italian fighter designs as well, they used German
engines mated to Italian airframes.

The Germans had the chance to replace the Bf109 in mid war,
but none of the replacements worked well enough.

>The 109
>was forced to soldier on. It lacked range, it lacked roll rate at
>speed and it lacked the abillity to carry the armour and weapons
>needed.

You mean like the fact the Spitfire remained in production until
the end of the war, as did the A6M, and even the US was still making
P-39s and P-40s until mid and late 1944 respectively? The US was
also making Wildcats in 1945.

>If the allies had of had similar resources they would have been forced
>to stay with Spitfires and P-40s. No P-47s or P-51s and the range and
>toughtness they provided.

Yes folks dreamland returns, the RAF was looking for a Hurricane and
Spitfire replacement in 1940, in that order. It understood the needs,
but ended up flying Spitfires all war, including making mark IXs in 1945.
The P-47 and P-51 were not something claimed wartime shortage of
materials were going to stop. The P-51 flew in 1940, the P-47 was
the USAAF's planned main fighter for the mid 1940s.

Remember the cry is the Germans did/thought/invented it first, but were
always unable to do it properly thanks to lack of resources. An economy
with the best part of 80 million people plus outside labour, controlling
most of a continent in mid 1941 lacked resources.

[The Enlightenment]

Admiral Sir Francis Haddock wrote:
> On 23 Mar 2005 03:34:41 -0800, "The Enlightenment"
> <bern...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
> >> The obvious imperfections, starting, by deliberate choice, a two
> >> front war in June 1941, then adding the USA to the list of enemies
> >> in December 1941.
> >
> >So, what is the point of making such an ignorant statement
considering
> >that you style yourself as an expert on WW2. Sophistry?
>
> Perhaps the ultimate fate of Germany at the hands of the three-front
> war Hitler had established under his own initiative should give you
> some indication that Adolf's strategic judgements were not
> neccessarily chosen with an objective aim of a realistic German
> victory to the fore.
>
> >The US was not only supplying vast amounts of materials and
munitions
> >to the UK
>
> In the financial year 1941-42, roughly concurrent with the first year

> of lend-lease operations, the British spent approximately £4.085

> billion on defence, while receiving approximately $1 billion in
> lend-lease funded munitions exports from the United States. The most
> authoritative figure for a meaningful dollar/sterling exchange rate

> gives a comparative value of approximately £130 million for the

> additional sterling-spending value of lend-lease munitions exports at
> the time.

Nice try. The British presumably didn't fund everything they needed
via 'lend lease' but paid outright for it.

> Even using the most basic quantitative analysis, it would
> indicate that this level of supplementary military aid, at
> approximately 3.2% of what British domestic and sterling area
> procurement total, is unlikely to have been decisive.

Yes, I agree your analysis is very basic. Monetary value is not a
sufficient measure of the effect of US military lend lease aid, US
supply and US escorts. Raw materials such as oil or high octane fuel
are crucial. US supplied octane, made by the Houdry process, is
generally listed as crucial. US machine tools, such as those needed to
make engines such as the Bristol sleave valve engines.

>
> But living in revisionist world, we can just cast aside the 96.8% of
> British economic resources dedicated to the war effort in that year
> and assert that the 3.2% which originated from the magical fairyland
> was decisive regardless of all else.
>
> >it was providing destroyers as escorts and it was attacking
> >u-boats engaged in a commerce war.
>
> It didn't sink a U-boat until 1942, though, did it? Remind me, who
> was doing the actual fighting before then?

They acted as a deterent and restriction to the u-boats. They attacked
u-boats. It's clear that Roosevelt wanted a war and that the
torpedoing of a US ship would provide a good excuse to provide the US
people. To avoid providing this excuse the Germans had to restrict
their tactics.

>
> Gavin Bailey
>

[Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired]

The Enlightenment wrote:

<snip>

> They acted as a deterent and restriction to the u-boats. They attacked
> u-boats. It's clear that Roosevelt wanted a war and that the
> torpedoing of a US ship would provide a good excuse to provide the US
> people. To avoid providing this excuse the Germans had to restrict
> their tactics.
>
>
>
>>Gavin Bailey
>>
>
>

There was a shoot out between a U-boat and a destroyer in 1941. If
Roosevelt wanted war he could have gone to congress with that. As I said
earlier, the U-boats were operating in U.S. Territorial waters. Don't
you think Roosevelt could have used that to his advantage. My mother as
a child saw the burning ships in 1941. Roosevelt could have had his war
in early 1941 if he really wanted it.

As for the military aid given to Britain under lend-lease the U.S. gave
the some WW1 "4 piper" destroyers. They weren't all that great a threat
to the Nazis.

Are you SURE you aren't tarver or teuton?

[Admiral Sir Francis Haddock]

On 23 Mar 2005 17:57:16 -0800, "The Enlightenment"
<bern...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:

>>> >The US was not only supplying vast amounts of materials and
>munitions
>> >to the UK
>>
>> In the financial year 1941-42, roughly concurrent with the first year

>> of lend-lease operations, the British spent approximately Ł4.085

>> billion on defence, while receiving approximately $1 billion in
>> lend-lease funded munitions exports from the United States. The most
>> authoritative figure for a meaningful dollar/sterling exchange rate

>> gives a comparative value of approximately Ł130 million for the

>> additional sterling-spending value of lend-lease munitions exports at
>> the time.
>
>Nice try. The British presumably didn't fund everything they needed
>via 'lend lease' but paid outright for it.

Just like they funded and imported food they didn't grow on the
British isles themselves, and had done since the industrial
revolution. Big deal. This stuff was funded by British resources,
and as such was an expression of the British trading economy. Deal
with it.

>> Even using the most basic quantitative analysis, it would
>> indicate that this level of supplementary military aid, at
>> approximately 3.2% of what British domestic and sterling area
>> procurement total, is unlikely to have been decisive.
>
>Yes, I agree your analysis is very basic. Monetary value is not a
>sufficient measure of the effect of US military lend lease aid,

I would agree, as would R.D.G. Allen who provided the statistics I've
just quoted and who broke them down to provide a more realistic
sterling/dollar exchange rate to account for cost differentials above
and beyond the official sterling/dollar exchange rate. This should be
obvious from the exchange-rate equivalent figure used in my quoted
text.

But since you apparently agree with this approach, I suggest you
substantiate, in detail, what the US supplied and where it was used in
comparison to British supply and British supply alternatives to
support your assertions of how it was decisive in the British war
effort. I'm going to enjoy this.

US
>supply and US escorts. Raw materials such as oil or high octane fuel
>are crucial. US supplied octane, made by the Houdry process, is
>generally listed as crucial.

And it is wrong. As far as the supply of 100-octane fuel in the
Battle of Britain goes, the British had already accumulated 400,000
tons of 100-octane fuel by the spring of 1940 when it was cleared for
operational use, and had prepared substantial expansion of production
resources both in the UK (the Heysham and Thornton hydrogenation
plants, expanding output at Billingham and in Trinidad) before this
was rendered irrelevant by lend-lease. They'd been importing
100-octane fuel in quantity and testing it since 1937. And by 1940,
the British imported more 100-octane fuel from BP refineries at Abadan
alone than Fighter Command consumed in the Battle of Britain.

>US machine tools, such as those needed to
>make engines such as the Bristol sleave valve engines.

So this equates to criticality? So, presumably, you'd extend the same
logis to the fact that three of of the Fighter groups the US deployed
to the ETO in 1942 were equipped with British-designed and built
Spitfires, and that all of the four P-40 groups deployed to the MTO in
the same time-frame used Packard Merlin engines which would not have
existed at all except for a British-funded initiative of 1940? How
about you post the details of the head of the Office of Lend-Lease
Administration's testimony to Congress in 1943 on the extent to which
American forces in Britain and the MTO were dependent upon British
economic support?

Or, as I suspect, does your definition of critiality magically change
when the nationality apparently benefitting from extra-national
economic supply changes? Prove me wrong.

>They acted as a deterent and restriction to the u-boats. They attacked
>u-boats. It's clear that Roosevelt wanted a war and that the
>torpedoing of a US ship would provide a good excuse to provide the US
>people. To avoid providing this excuse the Germans had to restrict
>their tactics.

By this standard, the retention of German forces in western Europe to
counter-act British military potential in 1941-42 was critical to what
happened in Russia.

I suggest you stop bandying about assertions on the criticality of US
supply to Britain until you understand the subject in detail. The
factual reality of wartime Allied interdependency is not a subject
which lends itself to competitive nationally chauvanistic bragging.

[Guy Alcala]

"Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired" wrote:

> The Enlightenment wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > They acted as a deterent and restriction to the u-boats. They attacked
> > u-boats. It's clear that Roosevelt wanted a war and that the
> > torpedoing of a US ship would provide a good excuse to provide the US
> > people. To avoid providing this excuse the Germans had to restrict
> > their tactics.
> >
> >
> >
> >>Gavin Bailey
> >>
> >
> >
> There was a shoot out between a U-boat and a destroyer in 1941. If
> Roosevelt wanted war he could have gone to congress with that. As I said
> earlier, the U-boats were operating in U.S. Territorial waters.

No, Dan, they weren't, unless you consider US territorial waters to extend
out south of Iceland.

http://www.domeisland.com/flushdeck/ussgreer.html

Be sure to click on the Greer deck Log link, and note the position.

The USN had begun escorting convoys most of the way across the North Atlantic
in 1941. Go here:

http://www.geocities.com/swansondd443/swanneut.html

Googling USS Kearny and USS Reuben James is also recommended. The USN, at
the direct orders of President Roosevelt (who was lying through his teeth to
the American people and Congress about what the navy was doing), was engaged
in an undeclared war against German U-boats in the North Atlantic from the
fall of 1941 on, and we had been cooperating with the British in a decidely
non-neutral fashion since at least the spring.

>Don't

> you think Roosevelt could have used that to his advantage.

He certainly did, although he didn't manage to get a declaration of war out
of it.

> My mother as
> a child saw the burning ships in 1941. Roosevelt could have had his war
> in early 1941 if he really wanted it.

Your mother's a year off in her reckoning. The second "HappyTime" for the
U-boats, the one off the US coasts, was in the summer of 1942 after the
declaration of war. Prior to that most of their subs were hard-pressed to
reach the area of Halifax (later models carried more fuel, and the Germans
also developed the Milch Cow supply subs), and in any case Hitler ordered the
KM not to provoke the US, despite repeated requests from the KM to respond to
the definitely non-neutral behavior of the USN.

> As for the military aid given to Britain under lend-lease the U.S. gave
> the some WW1 "4 piper" destroyers. They weren't all that great a threat
> to the Nazis.

They had their problems but they came in quite handy when Britain was
desperately short of escort ships.

Guy

[Keith W]

"The Enlightenment" <bern...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message

news:1111629436.5...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

>
>> In the financial year 1941-42, roughly concurrent with the first year

>> of lend-lease operations, the British spent approximately Ł4.085

>> billion on defence, while receiving approximately $1 billion in
>> lend-lease funded munitions exports from the United States. The most
>> authoritative figure for a meaningful dollar/sterling exchange rate

>> gives a comparative value of approximately Ł130 million for the

>> additional sterling-spending value of lend-lease munitions exports at
>> the time.

> Nice try. The British presumably didn't fund everything they needed
> via 'lend lease' but paid outright for it.

This is exactly right. Much of the material delivered in 1941-2
had been ordered and paid for LONG before lend-lease came
into being and domestic production of weapons in almost all classes
exceeded that of Germany. Indeed lend-lease was needed precisely because
Britain had virtually exhausted its gold and foreign currency reserves

<snip>

> They acted as a deterent and restriction to the u-boats. They attacked
> u-boats. It's clear that Roosevelt wanted a war and that the

So far so good, I'm inclined to the belief that FDR was indeed
intent on provoking a German declration of war.

> torpedoing of a US ship would provide a good excuse to provide the US
> people. To avoid providing this excuse the Germans had to restrict
> their tactics.

Realty check - 2 US destroyers WERE torpedoed in 1941
one of which sunk. These happened LONG before the
attack on Pearl Harbor.

Keith

[Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired]

Guy Alcala wrote:
> "Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired" wrote:
>
>
>>The Enlightenment wrote:
>>
>><snip>
>>
>>>They acted as a deterent and restriction to the u-boats. They attacked
>>>u-boats. It's clear that Roosevelt wanted a war and that the
>>>torpedoing of a US ship would provide a good excuse to provide the US
>>>people. To avoid providing this excuse the Germans had to restrict
>>>their tactics.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Gavin Bailey
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>There was a shoot out between a U-boat and a destroyer in 1941. If
>>Roosevelt wanted war he could have gone to congress with that. As I said
>>earlier, the U-boats were operating in U.S. Territorial waters.
>
>
> No, Dan, they weren't, unless you consider US territorial waters to extend
> out south of Iceland.
>
> http://www.domeisland.com/flushdeck/ussgreer.html

I stand corrected. For some reason I remember reading an article about
the Greer incident as being off of New Jersey. I guess I am getting old
or something.

>Be sure to click on the Greer deck Log link, and note the position.

>The USN had begun escorting convoys most of the way across the North
>Atlantic in 1941. Go here:

>http://www.geocities.com/swansondd443/swanneut.html

>Googling USS Kearny and USS Reuben James is also recommended. The
USN, >at the direct orders of President Roosevelt (who was lying through
his >teeth to the American people and Congress about what the navy was
>doing), was engaged in an undeclared war against German U-boats in the
>North Atlantic from the fall of 1941 on, and we had been cooperating
>with the British in a decidely non-neutral fashion since at least the
>spring.

I was familiar with these incidents, but always assumed they occurred in
the West Atlantic. I never did understand the mid ocean meeting point
idea since it seems logical to me to escort U.S. flagged vessels at
least to Britain' territorial waters.

[Guy Alcala]

"Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired" wrote:

> Guy Alcala wrote:
> > "Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired" wrote:

<snip>

> >Googling USS Kearny and USS Reuben James is also recommended. The
> USN, >at the direct orders of President Roosevelt (who was lying through
> his >teeth to the American people and Congress about what the navy was
> >doing), was engaged in an undeclared war against German U-boats in the
> >North Atlantic from the fall of 1941 on, and we had been cooperating
> >with the British in a decidely non-neutral fashion since at least the
> >spring.
>
> I was familiar with these incidents, but always assumed they occurred in
> the West Atlantic. I never did understand the mid ocean meeting point
> idea since it seems logical to me to escort U.S. flagged vessels at
> least to Britain' territorial waters.

There was no requirement that the ships be U.S. flagged -- the nationality of
the ships wasn't an issue. We were escorting British organized convoys to/from
Halifax, Nova Scotia, handing them off to/receiving from the British escort
groups at MOMP. In short, our neutrality was pretty much a fiction. Hell, back
in May 941 Bismarck was re-spotted (after she'd been lost for a day and a half)
by a British Catalina, which happened to have a USN co-pilot onboard (he was
actually flying at the time while the pilot attended to a call of nature, and
was the one who spotted her). His presence was most definitely not released to
the public at the time.

Guy

[Tank Fixer]

In article <1111319850.5...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>,
on 20 Mar 2005 03:57:30 -0800,
The Enlightenment bern...@yahoo.com.au attempted to say .....

> I doubt that the German
> Experten would be so triumphalist about their success, in fact many
> were humble men (mans gota know his limitations) that respected their
> enemies nevertheless any man that could do what they did in the face of
> overwhelming odds is worthy of respect.

You are correct.
I had the good fortune to meet Franz Steigler back in my youth. He was a
modest man.
A true gentleman who was patient with many questions that evening.
Even though he had flown Fw190's and ME262 he said he still prefered the
Me109.

He had a health respect for the back end of B17's...

--
When dealing with propaganda terminology one sometimes always speaks in
variable absolutes. This is not to be mistaken for an unbiased slant.

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

Guy Alcala wrote in message <42432AA2...@junkpostoffice.pacbell.net>...

>"Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired" wrote:

>> I was familiar with these incidents, but always assumed they occurred in
>> the West Atlantic. I never did understand the mid ocean meeting point
>> idea since it seems logical to me to escort U.S. flagged vessels at
>> least to Britain' territorial waters.
>
>There was no requirement that the ships be U.S. flagged -- the nationality of
>the ships wasn't an issue. We were escorting British organized convoys to/from
>Halifax, Nova Scotia, handing them off to/receiving from the British escort
>groups at MOMP. In short, our neutrality was pretty much a fiction.

On August 17 1940 Hitler ordered a total blockade of England and gave
permission to sink neutral ships on sight.

Eastmomp was 22 West, Westmomp was 52 West, momp was around
the mid Atlantic point, at least in 1941.

In March 1941 Hitler declared Iceland and it waters were now in the
war zone so on April 9 the US agreed to protect Greenland.

On 10 April USS Niblack had an encounter with what it thought was a
U-boat near Iceland, dropping embarrassment depth charges.

On 18 April 1941 the US extended its Atlantic security zone to 26 West,
around 1,000 miles closer to Europe than previously (60 West), effectively
to around the coast of Iceland.

On 15 May the USN base at Argentia Newfoundland established.

On July 1 the US convoy carrying Marines sailed to Iceland, arriving
on the 7th. From then on the official position became the US was
running convoys to its men in Iceland and ships of other nations
were welcome to join those convoys.

On September 4 1941 USS Greer had its encounter around 175 miles
from Iceland.

On September 7 a US merchant ship was sunk by axis aircraft in the
Red Sea.

On September 11 came the orders for the USN to shoot on sight.

USS Kearny was hit on 17 October 1941, after reinforcing the escort
of SC-48 south of Iceland.

USS Reuben James was sunk on 31 October while part of the escort
of HX-156 in position 51 59 N, 27 05 W.

On 6 November the USN captured the blockade runner Odenwald,
using the official excuse "suspected slaver".

On 7 November US merchant ships were allowed to enter war zones.

>Hell, back
>in May 941 Bismarck was re-spotted (after she'd been lost for a day and a half)
>by a British Catalina, which happened to have a USN co-pilot onboard (he was
>actually flying at the time while the pilot attended to a call of nature, and
>was the one who spotted her). His presence was most definitely not released to
>the public at the time.

In fact all three Catalinas that spotted and shadowed Bismarck that
day had USN co-pilots on board. Ark Royal's search planes turned
up around 20 minutes after the first Catalina.

See also,

The USN liaison officer on board Illustrious in November 1940.

The US "observers" flying missions with RAF units based in Greece
in 1941, though not as part of the regular crew as far as I am aware.

And so on.

[Admiral Sir Francis Haddock]

On Sat, 26 Mar 2005 17:11:02 +1100, "Geoffrey Sinclair"
<gsinc...@froggy.com.au> wrote:

>The USN liaison officer on board Illustrious in November 1940.
>
>The US "observers" flying missions with RAF units based in Greece
>in 1941, though not as part of the regular crew as far as I am aware.
>
>And so on.

There were US observers in the UK at the same time, visiting RAF
bases, as well as others visiting RAF operational units in the Middle
East.

[Stephen Harding]

Peter Kemp wrote:

> The defence pact did not apply since Japan declared war on Japan. The
> Tripartite pact did not require Hitler to delcare war unless the US
> had been the agressor.
> Clearly this was not the case, and Germany had already bitten off more
> than it could chew by attacking the Soviet Union.
> Adding an even more powerful enemy to the pot was beyond foolish and
> into the realm of the insane.

All clear after 60 years of hindsight.

But was the US really seen to be that powerful in 1941?

Hitler of course felt Americans were good at building
refrigerators, not tanks (which the US indeed wasn't so
good at in a qualitative sense; airpower was very different,
as with a host of other areas).

The US was an obvious world industrial power even in 1917,
but it seems the industrial output of the US in WWI was
barely a blip on the material scale of that conflict.
Perhaps I'm wrong?

Seems to me there is no reason why the US could not have
been an industrial war animal during WWI that it was
during WWII, but for some reason, wasn't. (Too brief a
time?)

Hitler and Tojo might be excused, circa 1941, in not being
too intimidated by the industrial/military might of the US.

SMH

[Keith W]

"Stephen Harding" <har...@cs.umass.edu> wrote in message
news:4245...@news-1.oit.umass.edu...

> Peter Kemp wrote:
>
>> The defence pact did not apply since Japan declared war on Japan. The
>> Tripartite pact did not require Hitler to delcare war unless the US
>> had been the agressor.
>> Clearly this was not the case, and Germany had already bitten off more
>> than it could chew by attacking the Soviet Union.
>> Adding an even more powerful enemy to the pot was beyond foolish and
>> into the realm of the insane.
>
> All clear after 60 years of hindsight.
>
> But was the US really seen to be that powerful in 1941?
>

They werent especially powerful in 1941, in fact only the
USN was a credible fighting power, however the more
far sighted on both sides saw US potential.

Churchill and Yamamoto certainly were well aware of that
but I suspect Hitler and the Japanese Government
were rather more dismissive.

Keith

[The Enlightenment]

Geoffrey Sinclair wrote:
> The Enlightenment wrote in message
<1111577681.5...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>...
> Geoffrey Sinclair wrote:
> > The Enlightenment wrote in message
> <1111315291.2...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>...
> >> (snip)
> >>
> >> >The Germans, despite their efforts could never keep up. They had
a
> >> >fraction of the resources of the allies and if they were to
succede
> >> >they would have to be perfect and no one can be perfect.
> >>
> >> The obvious imperfections, starting, by deliberate choice, a two
> >> front war in June 1941, then adding the USA to the list of enemies
> >> in December 1941.
> >
> >So, what is the point of making such an ignorant statement
considering
> >that you style yourself as an expert on WW2. Sophistry?
>
> Now this is funny, what is the claim now, the Germans had no choice
> but to declare war on the USSR and USA when they did?

US involvement in the war looked like a forgone solution. The US had a
president that that wanted this. It was going to happen in all
probabillity, don't you agree?

US naval ships were escorting UK convoys and attacking u-boats in the
Nth Atlantic for at least 6 months prior to Germany's declaration of
war a few days after Pearl Harbour. There was no activity against UK
ships in US waters. Opperation drum beat (the use of 5 u-boats in US
coastal waters didn't begin untill late december. Most u-boats didn;t
have the range.

>
> In 1940 and early 1941 the Germans acquired most of the resources
they
> needed for a long war, and with most of Europe to draw resources from
> should eventually defeat Britain unless other powers intervened.

France declared war on Germany on the same basis as Britain, over the
Polish invasion, but only reluctantly and at the behest of Britain.
This was typical British policy: to divide and conquer and to take the
side of weaker powers, using them as proxies to damage a potential
rival.

The lands Germany occupied came at a huge cost in manpower to occupy
them. It guaranteed access to a few extra resources but not many.

>
> Rather than wait for the intervention the Germans ensured they would
not
> have a real chance to defeat Britain by declaring war on other
powers.
>
> >The US was not only supplying vast amounts of materials and
munitions
> >to the UK it was providing destroyers as escorts and it was
attacking
> >u-boats engaged in a commerce war. Hitlers orders to the u-boat
> >commanders was to refrain from harming the US ships.
>
> In 1941 the US supplies were what Britain could pay for, and a
minority
> of the UK war effort. The "vast amounts" were really 1943 onwards.

Irellevent. US Ships were attacking German ships without a declaration
of war. That was my point. Why do you always avaoid the issue and
seek to score points in other areas not related to the point at hand?

Obfusification?

>
>
> Let us see now, I noted in 1945 the latest generation of Luftwaffe
> interceptors versus Mosquitoes, this is apparently a contradiction
> to noting at low level the Mosquito fighter bombers were willing to
> fight the Fw190A, introduced in 1941 and still largely the same
> performance wise in 1945. There were no Fw109Ds or Me262s
> in Norway in 1945.
>
> Can you try and do a little better?

SNIP

More of your evasive squid ink.

>
> >> >They had to
> >> >cancell development after development to juggle resources from
radar
> >> >proximity fuses (they started work on them before the allies) to
> >> >multicavity magnetrons (which they openly patented before Randall
and
> >> >Boot did).
> >>
> >> Ah yes, the Germans always ahead in ideas, always behind in
> >> practical development it seems. Even in 1940.
> >>
> >> So what exactly does "starting work" on proximity fuses mean?
> >
> >It means building the valves and amplifiers for the fuses prior to
the
> >war and testing them. The British (RV Jones) even had a sample of
the
> >valves developed for it and it was this that instigated the British
> >development of the Allied proximity fuse.
>
> Ah yes, the great the Germans thought up the idea first, but dropped
> it. Note Jones had a tube which the letter stated was a trigger
device
> for a proximity fuse, where the shell would be made in two
electrically
> insulated parts with suitable electronics to detect the change in
> capacitance whenever the shell was in the presence of a third body.
>
> Not exactly the same sort of idea the allies used.

Infact it is very similar. The German fuse used a thermionic amplifier
valve and emited radio energy. The German formal proximity fuse was
cancelled in late 1940 at a time a great many programs were put on ice.
The program was resurected formally in 1944 and over 1000 shells were
produced and fired. Initial success rate was 85% with a 2 meter range
this soon raised to 95% at 4 meters and eventually a few shells worked
at 10-15 meters. It was essentially ready for production.

The impedence of free space is approximetly 377 ohm which is made up of
the ratio of the free permeabillity and free permativity of space. An
object will likely have differing relative permeabillities and
permativities and this which lead to differing impedences and impedence
mismatch will lead to reflections. These characteristics will also lead
to for instance capacitance changes in the regions of the kind of
isolated shell casings the Germans made.

Althought the American and German proximity fuses appear different in
terms of fundementals they are the same.

> The Germans
> even tried photoelectric cells as fuse triggers.

Its a valid concept and works so long as triangulating optics is used
to blank out distance light sources or if modulated ligh sources are
used. Its An idea that goes back much further. The modern concept
uses lasers and optics.

>
> Also note Jones said the ARL noted the tube was better than anything
> the UK had made, not that the UK had no idea about proximity fuses,
> but when in doubt assume the allies are clueless until the Germans
> tell them.

The "Allied" proximity fuse was developed in the USA. Germany did not
have the luxury of turning over her better ideas to a powerfull,
distant and rich allies to develop them.
It had the choice of canelling the program or developing it more
slowly.

Try and think out of the box.

>
> >An enterprising Historian (not a mindless regurgiator of statistics)
> >could probably find why the German did not complete its development.
>
> In other words it is someone else's problem to realise what happened.
>
> >My guess it was assigned a low priority at the onset of Barbarossa
or
> >the program was dsiruped during the Franco-German period of the war
> >when many R+D programs were disrupted by lack of resources. (ie
> >engineers and personel to test)
>
> In other words folks a guess and it ignores the way the Germans
called
> up large numbers of scientists thereby creating the "lack of
resources".
> Apart from the scientists taken and often misused in the military
what
> shortages suddenly appeared in September 1939?

Why do you say "it ignores the way..." I actually said that is what
happened. The scientist and engineers probably ended up opperating or
maintaining advanced equipement at the front.

>
> >As the Germans developed some very tough ceramic envelops,
interesting
> >ceramic sealing techniques for valve elements and minature ceramic
> >valves they were probably pretty close to
>
> Remarkably how the Germans are always pretty close but never
> making it.

As I found out the did get over 1000 successfull pre-prpduction
electronic proximity fuses working. How much did they lag allies?
Perhaps 6-7 months given the depplyment oft he prox fuses just after
d-day when the V1 attacks began.

>
> (snip) of Oslo letter.
>
> >> When exactly did a German patent a multicavity magnetron and
> >> how was it different to the Randall and Boot device? The name
> >> Magnetron has been applied to many devices.
>
> As an example.
>
> The magnetron tube was invented and its characteristics extensively
explored
> by GE (Alfred W Hull, 1929, Schnectady, NY) long before the war.
>
> And a quote,

These were single cavity magnetrons that had problems in terms of
stabillity and power due in part to thermal feedback.

There were several German magnetrons, most not multicavity. For
whatever reason the Germans disbanded there microwave development team
at a time Randall and Boot hadn;t had their success.

>
> There was also the frequency jumping problems, hence "strapping".
>
> Another quote,
>
> "Okabe & Yagi at the Tohoku College of Engineering developed
> a split-anode magnetron in 1927 and by 1939 the Japan Radio
> Company had developed an 8-cavity, water-cooled magnetron at
> a wavelength of 10 cm with a continuous output power of 500
> W. However, this research (which stopped in 1941 due to
> material shortages) was not published until after WW2.
> Another design, the first successful multicavity magnetron
> design, was developed in Russia in 1936-37 by Aleksereff &
> Malearoff, with results first published in 1940 "
>
> >The German had
> >early leadership in microwaves then abandoned it. Perhaps because
the
> >Freya and Wurzburg were quite good radars. They also believed that
the
> >detection characteristics of meter lenght waves was better (they
were
> >right).
>
> With the trade off against resolution.

Not if large antenna are used and this is possible in ground based
installations. Wurzburg D and Manheim were not too bulky and Manheim
was quite accurate.

>
>
>http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/transcripts/
> >schwan.html
>
> (snip) of text.
>
> >The main problem the German has was one of managment: dispersal of
R&D
> >over 100 laboratries and competition between navy and Luftwaffe with
> >excess secracy.
>
> Try and also remember the number of scientists forced out pre
> war and the German military draft system.
>
> Try and understand 100 laboratories does not sound like a lack
> of resources, but a lack of organisation.

It appears to have been a "cell" approach to maintaining secrecy from
which the Germans suffered. It had its advantages but slowed the rate
of development due to the lack of sharing of information.

>
> >The Engineer Nakajima of japan had developed Multicavity resonant
> >Magnetrons 1 year beofore the British.
> >Ironicaly he worked in Germany before the war and if the Germany and
> >Japanese had of shared as well as
> >the US/UK did things could have turned out different.
>
> Yes folks, note the Japanese had to be told by the Germans as well.

Don't be an idiot. Nakajima mentions that he invented a multicavity
magnetron and that he also toured Germany pre-war. There was quite a
bit of German/Japanese co-opperation but not to the level of US/UK
perhaps to do with distance.

>
> >http://www.star-games.com/exhibits/japaneseradar/japaneseradar.html
>
>
> (snip of text)
>
> >Dr. Hans E. Hollmann continued working on radar in his company
> >"Laboratory for High Frequency and Electromedicine" in Berlin. The
> >company had a staff of 20 scientists and not only did they work for
> >Telefunken but much of the research work went into helping GEMA. The
> >Telefunken Co. owned many of Hollmann's radar patents which they
> >registered in the US prior to the war. See patents. These patents
were
> >worth millions of dollars. Prior to WWII, the British and the US
were
> >not only aware of the radar technology being developed in Germany
but
> >they also used it to develop their radar systems.
>
> If R V Jones is the authority be aware he attended a meeting in
> 1941 called to discuss whether the Germans had radar.
>
> Once again all things are flowing from the Germans, no one else
> could come up with the ideas, but everyone else could see their
> benefit and use them. We are supposed to think the Germans
> are therefore the smart ones.

You are an absolute paranoid nutcase. At no point did I imply that
everything flowed from the Germans. I pointed out that they were aware
of the mutlicavity magnetron around 1935 and that they were working on
electronic proximity fuses.

>
> Understand some devices were invented independently most
> were invented based on the work of many people. See the
> way attempts to measure the ionosphere in the 1920s and
> 1930s pushed radio development along the chain that lead
> to radar.
>
> >> >They didn't have the resources to replace the Me 109 with the
powerfull
> >> >Me 309 and so had to keep the very easy to produce Me 109 in
production.
> >>
> >> Ah yes, another wonder aircraft the Germans designed but never
used.
> >>
> >> The reality check is the Me309 first flew in July 1942 and found
it did
> >> not have enough hydraulic power to raise the undercarriage on the
> >> first flight.
> >
> >Clearly a teething problem. That's why prototypes are built.
>
> Not a good sign that something as relatively simple as that had been
> miscalculated.

It was most likely out of the Me 109 parts bin intended to accelerate
prototype testing if indeed it was due to a lack of power due to a too
small and area jack.

>
> >> At the other end of the speed scale there was high speed
> >> snaking, then add the usual take off swing problems, some 5
different
> >> tail and rudder profiles were tried. There were 3 prototypes
built by
> >> the end of 1942, but the second was destroyed landing after its
first
> >> flight. The test pilots reported high stick forces, and the Me309
> >> could be easily out turned by the Bf109G. As a result of the
> >> criticism the order for 9 was cut to 4 and by mid 1943 the type
> >> was basically regarded as a flying test bed.
> >
> >The Rechlin test center eventually determined that the Me 309 could
be
> >developed into a fighter. Most aircraft have initial teething
issues
> >and multiple configurations are experimented with.
>
> Really, given the Rechlin testing comments about heavy controls were
> a major factor in cancelling it. Given the handling problems clearly
> meant a protracted test program to cure them. After the Me210 fiasco
> the problems would have to be cured before production was allowed.
>
> So tell us all about this Rechlin report, when was it made and what
did
> it say?

By 1943 Erhardt Milch had already decided that the Me 262 was not only
the way of the future but essential. He infact wanted it in service by
mid to late 1943. Given the lack of resources it would clearly be
pointless to develop two aircraft at once.

>
> >The Me 109 can outmanoever many opposition fighter at lower speeds,
> >including a spitfire, due to its high power to weight ratio and
Handley
> >Page Automatic slats. It is no suprise that the Me 109 could do so
> >with the 309 at certain speeds.
>
> Ah the recycling of the wonder Bf109 manoeuvrability claim.
>
> High power to weight ratio? The 1942 Me109G empty weight was around
> 5,950 pounds being pulled by 1,475 HP using a 173 square foot wing.

So, factor in the use of MW-50, GM-1 and the various boost levels that
became available at various times post 42 (we are talking of a 1943
evaluation) then this figure goes up.

>
> The Spitfire IX weighed in at 5,800 pounds tare, with various engines
> from 1,475 to 1,650 HP, on a wing area of 242 square feet.
>
> Go work out the various power to weight ratios. Then note the
> landing speed of the Me109 versus the Spitfire and what that
> implies for low speed handling.

Provide the links yourself then?

>
> >It sounds to me as if the Me 309 had high stick forces, which would
> >have been the cuase of the lack of manouverabillity, that would have
> >been overcome with power controls, as on the He 162 salamander or
with
> >Friese aerlerons as on the Fw 190.
>
> Ah yes, the fighter could be fixed announcement, I note the attempt
> is made to say "if" the stick forces were high. The Rechlin report
> claimed above should have mentioned them.

So Geoffrey, what causes high stick forces? Do you have no idea where
they come from or what can be done to reduce them or what it was about
some aricraft that kept them low?

>
> Of course simply assume such power controls were easy to introduce,
> look at all those WWII aircraft with powered controls.
>
> >> It was an attempt to build a better Bf109, using a nose wheel
> >> undercarriage and carrying more fuel, top speed was around 455
> >> mph at 28,000 feet but this was for the unarmed prototype.
> >
> >The 309 was powered by the DB603 which was a considerably
> >underdeveloped engine of the quite large swept volume of 44 Litres
that
> >came in several succeding more powerfull developments. As the
Germans
> >had perfected both electronically fired cannon to sychronise with
the
> >prop and motor canon that were mounted between the V-12 or close to
the
> >fueselage I would not expect to much loss in speed.
>
> The armament proposed came in two versions, standard fighter,
> an MG151 and 2 MG131 and bomber destroyer 3 MG151 and
> 4 MG131.
>
> There are two causes for a loss of speed, drag of the weapons and
> their weight. Now the Me309 being so heavy anyway would have
> a smaller percentage decrease in speed due to weight, beyond that
> it is instructive to note the way service aircraft slowed down
> compared with prototype speeds.

Rechlin had a reputation for testing aircaft in combat trim not
specially treated (with polishing for instance) to give misleading
figures. They were a customer center. Tests from manufactures (allied
ones?) may have been different as they were touting their own product.

>
> >> Note
> >> landing speed was 110 mph thanks to the high wing loading,
> >> weighing 7,784 pounds empty supported by 178 square feet of
> >> wing, in other words around a ton heavier than the Bf109G with
> >> around the same amount of wing area. Assuming the test program
> >> had gone without a hitch the Me309 would not have appeared in
> >> numbers before mid 1944.
> >>
> >> The decision was made to invest the engineering resources in
> >> the Me262.
> >
> >Sensibly so becuase while the western allies had the resources to
> >devlop the Tempest, Typhoon, P-51, P-47, Hurricane etc the Germans
> >managed to find the rerources only for the Me 109 and Fw 190.
>
> It seems the idea is to simply define the problem to minimise
> German abilities, you know the lack of resources, the Germans
> had all the ideas (major resource) but no ability to use them
> (no material resources).

By your mentality they had no good ideas but all the resources in the
world that they didn't use. Is that where you stand?

>
> How about the Germans were bad fighter designers? The
> Japanese produced more successful designs, A6M, Ki-84,
> backed by the useful Ki-61 and Ki-43 for example. The
> Japanese had fewer resources than the Germans. Check
> out the later Italian fighter designs as well, they used German
> engines mated to Italian airframes.

Apart from the A6-M they were not produced in as great a quantity.
They also tended to be niche aircraft and all didn't necessarily
perform at alitude.

>
> The Germans had the chance to replace the Bf109 in mid war,
> but none of the replacements worked well enough.

They improvement they offered didn't justify the disruption to
production given that the Me 262 was supposed to produce a paradygme
shift a short time latter and needed the same developmemtal resources.

They did move to the FW 190D series which could have had varous high
altitude engines earlier.

>
> >The 109
> >was forced to soldier on. It lacked range, it lacked roll rate at
> >speed and it lacked the abillity to carry the armour and weapons
> >needed.
>
> You mean like the fact the Spitfire remained in production until
> the end of the war, as did the A6M, and even the US was still making
> P-39s and P-40s until mid and late 1944 respectively? The US was
> also making Wildcats in 1945.
>
> >If the allies had of had similar resources they would have been
forced
> >to stay with Spitfires and P-40s. No P-47s or P-51s and the range
and

> >toughness they provided.
>
> Yes folks dreamland returns,

What audience are you playing to?

> the RAF was looking for a Hurricane and
> Spitfire replacement in 1940, in that order. It understood the
needs,
> but ended up flying Spitfires all war, including making mark IXs in
1945.

The Luftwaffe was also looking at 109 replacements.

> The P-47 and P-51 were not something claimed wartime shortage of
> materials were going to stop. The P-51 flew in 1940, the P-47 was
> the USAAF's planned main fighter for the mid 1940s.

Yep and the 109 was at a different developmental phase.

>
> Remember the cry is the Germans did/thought/invented it first, but
were
> always unable to do it properly thanks to lack of resources. An
economy
> with the best part of 80 million people plus outside labour,
controlling
> most of a continent in mid 1941 lacked resources.

How would you say they should they get the Poles, Czechs or French to
force them to test and designe aircraft for them? Admitedly a bit of
this did go on but it was limited.

[Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired]

The Enlightenment wrote:

>
> How would you say they should they get the Poles, Czechs or French to
> force them to test and designe aircraft for them? Admitedly a bit of
> this did go on but it was limited.
>

You have GOT to be kidding. The Nazis made every effort to find and use
engineers and technicians in occupied territories. If they refused to
work for the Nazis they were subject to various forms of coersion
including, but not limited to, threats of action against family members
and enslavement.

Dan, U. S. Air Force, retired

[Jukka I Seppänen]

"The Enlightenment" <bern...@yahoo.com.au> writes:

> The Germans were pulling instructors out of their training squadrons to
> opperate their supply aircraft as well as pulling them out of
> instructor sqaudrons to go to frontline squadrons. That was more fatal
> than not returning experienced pilots.
>
> It would be interesting to "war game" what would happen if the Germans
> with the same resources did not actually plunder their training
> squadrans or actually did return their fron line pilots to training.

Possibly earlier and more catastrophic ground and sea losses than
historically.
Lack of aviation fuel, trainers, etc. would still limit radical changes
so basically outcomes would be same.

Jukka

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

The Enlightenment wrote in message <1112185873.6...@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>...

>
>Geoffrey Sinclair wrote:
>> The Enlightenment wrote in message
><1111577681.5...@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>...
>> Geoffrey Sinclair wrote:
>> > The Enlightenment wrote in message
>> <1111315291.2...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>...
>> >> (snip)
>> >>
>> >> >The Germans, despite their efforts could never keep up. They had a
>> >> >fraction of the resources of the allies and if they were to succede
>> >> >they would have to be perfect and no one can be perfect.
>> >>
>> >> The obvious imperfections, starting, by deliberate choice, a two
>> >> front war in June 1941, then adding the USA to the list of enemies
>> >> in December 1941.
>> >
>> >So, what is the point of making such an ignorant statement considering
>> >that you style yourself as an expert on WW2. Sophistry?
>>
>> Now this is funny, what is the claim now, the Germans had no choice
>> but to declare war on the USSR and USA when they did?
>
>US involvement in the war looked like a forgone solution.

By the way in all the attempts at replying the voluntary German
declaration of war on the USSR goes missing

Yes folks, the USA suddenly found itself at war in the Pacific, a war
that required naval strength, one that would distract it from any
anti German activities for quite some time. Indeed if Germany could
lay low there are possibilities like the US devoting much more to naval
power, not air or ground combat strength, further weakening the ability
of the US to hurt Germany.

So what happens? Germany voluntarily declares war on the USA.

>The US had a
>president that that wanted this. It was going to happen in all
>probabillity, don't you agree?

In all probability it was going to happen, Hitler's government was that
criminal. Of course it was also stupid, instead of giving itself more time
to defeat the USSR before coping with the US it decided to simply up
the odds.

>US naval ships were escorting UK convoys and attacking u-boats in the
>Nth Atlantic for at least 6 months prior to Germany's declaration of
>war a few days after Pearl Harbour.

So we have the claim the USN was attacking U-boats in May 1941?

The US marines were sent to Iceland in July 1941, after that the US
began escorting convoys. The shadow and report orders came in
after the troop deployment.

>There was no activity against UK
>ships in US waters. Opperation drum beat (the use of 5 u-boats in US
>coastal waters didn't begin untill late december. Most u-boats didn;t
>have the range.

We know the U-boats were under orders to try and stay away from
US ships, but it did not always work. I presume it has been noticed
how merchant ships were being attacked due south of Greenland
and off the Greenland coast by December 1941? The U-boats were
advancing across the Atlantic. To May 1940 there had been no
sinkings west of Iceland, to mid March 1941 almost all sinkings due
south of Iceland.

As the RAF deployed longer range aircraft the U-boats moved further
west. At the rate of advancement in 1941 they would have been off
the Canadian coast by early 1942 anyway.

>> In 1940 and early 1941 the Germans acquired most of the resources they
>> needed for a long war, and with most of Europe to draw resources from
>> should eventually defeat Britain unless other powers intervened.
>
>France declared war on Germany on the same basis as Britain, over the
>Polish invasion, but only reluctantly and at the behest of Britain.

Yes folks the myth making continues.

>This was typical British policy: to divide and conquer and to take the
>side of weaker powers, using them as proxies to damage a potential
>rival.

Yes folks, note how the British policy is characterised as bad or bad
faith anyway. Note Nazi Germany is claimed as a rival, not a criminal
state.

>The lands Germany occupied came at a huge cost in manpower to occupy
>them. It guaranteed access to a few extra resources but not many.

Yes folks, we have more myth making. The French bauxite deposits for
aircraft as a big boost, add iron ore. Throw in the armaments plants at
Liege and the Philips works in Holland. The ability to import important
materials from Spain, Portugal and Turkey. Even imports from Japan
and Iran via the USSR and the supplies from the USSR itself. Add imports
from French North Africa, food and fertiliser mainly, as well. Note the
Germans imposed favourable currency exchange rates on the occupied
countries and billed them for the occupying army upkeep.

Then the Germans go and close off imports from the east, around
1,600,000 tons in the first half of 1941. Then they go and declare war
on the USA and around a year later lose the imports from North Africa
around 3,800,000 tons in 1941, including 12,000 tons of crude rubber
and 160,000 tons of various ores.

And as for the "huge cost" in December 1941 the Heer had
126 divisions in the east and 36 in the west, plus 8 in the Balkans
and 5 in Southern Norway. Of course the forces in the west were
there to occupy the land and to repel any British attack. Similar
for some of the forces in the Balkans, like the division in Crete.

For example the chart the above figures were taken from has
around 20 divisions on the French and Belgian coasts and 5
of the remainder are units being established or "brought up".

>> Rather than wait for the intervention the Germans ensured they would not
>> have a real chance to defeat Britain by declaring war on other powers.
>>
>> >The US was not only supplying vast amounts of materials and munitions
>> >to the UK it was providing destroyers as escorts and it was attacking
>> >u-boats engaged in a commerce war. Hitlers orders to the u-boat
>> >commanders was to refrain from harming the US ships.
>>
>> In 1941 the US supplies were what Britain could pay for, and a minority
>> of the UK war effort. The "vast amounts" were really 1943 onwards.
>
>Irellevent. US Ships were attacking German ships without a declaration
>of war. That was my point. Why do you always avaoid the issue and
>seek to score points in other areas not related to the point at hand?

Ah yes the wonder change the subject line, it should be noted for all the
claims of the USN attacking U-boats the reality is the USN was the
one losing ships. As was the US merchant marine.

Oh yes and the wonder "what the USA was doing" line is because I
made the point,

"The obvious imperfections, starting, by deliberate choice, a two
front war in June 1941, then adding the USA to the list of enemies
in December 1941."

>Obfusification?

No just noting the Germans had no fundamental reason to declare
war on the USA in 1941, the US was not going enough to really hurt
the German war effort and the Japanese were going to absorb all
the US could deploy for quite some time.

I note by the way nothing at all about the German invasion of
the USSR in 1941.

deleted text, to the next >

"And the situation remains if Hitler had not declared war against the
US he could have significantly cut the odds against Germany. Aid
short of war is useful, but not as useful as a full alliance.

The treaty with Japan was not a mutual defence treaty, go read the
clauses. And note how it helped turn US public opinion against

Germany. Hitler was under no obligation to declare war on the US.

You mean like the way the U-boats sank US ships?

So, the German people did not want a war.

So what about the USSR, all the above is about the USA."

>> Let us see now, I noted in 1945 the latest generation of Luftwaffe

>> interceptors versus Mosquitoes, this is apparently a contradiction
>> to noting at low level the Mosquito fighter bombers were willing to
>> fight the Fw190A, introduced in 1941 and still largely the same
>> performance wise in 1945. There were no Fw109Ds or Me262s
>> in Norway in 1945.
>>
>> Can you try and do a little better?
>
>SNIP
>
>More of your evasive squid ink.

What I like is the sub thread has been deleted and then I am
supposed to be hiding it. Very good.

>> >> >They had to
>> >> >cancell development after development to juggle resources from radar
>> >> >proximity fuses (they started work on them before the allies) to
>> >> >multicavity magnetrons (which they openly patented before Randall and
>> >> >Boot did).
>> >>
>> >> Ah yes, the Germans always ahead in ideas, always behind in
>> >> practical development it seems. Even in 1940.
>> >>
>> >> So what exactly does "starting work" on proximity fuses mean?
>> >
>> >It means building the valves and amplifiers for the fuses prior to the
>> >war and testing them. The British (RV Jones) even had a sample of the
>> >valves developed for it and it was this that instigated the British
>> >development of the Allied proximity fuse.
>>
>> Ah yes, the great the Germans thought up the idea first, but dropped
>> it. Note Jones had a tube which the letter stated was a trigger device
>> for a proximity fuse, where the shell would be made in two electrically
>> insulated parts with suitable electronics to detect the change in
>> capacitance whenever the shell was in the presence of a third body.
>>
>> Not exactly the same sort of idea the allies used.
>
>Infact it is very similar.

Yes folks, the objective is to try and claim the allies used the German
idea to build proximity fuses. Now we are into it was similar.

So the allied proximity fuse shells were made in two halves like the
German idea? Which guns used such shells?

>The German fuse used a thermionic amplifier
>valve and emited radio energy. The German formal proximity fuse was
>cancelled in late 1940 at a time a great many programs were put on ice.

So you see the line is the Germans told the allies how to do it but
then did not do it for themselves.

> The program was resurected formally in 1944 and over 1000 shells were
>produced and fired. Initial success rate was 85% with a 2 meter range
>this soon raised to 95% at 4 meters and eventually a few shells worked
>at 10-15 meters. It was essentially ready for production.

It would be good to find a source for this claim, which yet again was the
Germans did have it, put did not produce it in quantity.

>The impedence of free space is approximetly 377 ohm which is made up of
>the ratio of the free permeabillity and free permativity of space. An
>object will likely have differing relative permeabillities and
>permativities and this which lead to differing impedences and impedence
>mismatch will lead to reflections. These characteristics will also lead
>to for instance capacitance changes in the regions of the kind of
>isolated shell casings the Germans made.

Apparently this explanation is a substitute for showing how the allied
proximity fuse shells were "the same".

>Althought the American and German proximity fuses appear different in
>terms of fundementals they are the same.

Yes folk they are very different but are classified as "the same" by virtue
of them both being proximity fuses, they have the same name you see.

>> The Germans
>> even tried photoelectric cells as fuse triggers.
>
>Its a valid concept and works so long as triangulating optics is used
>to blank out distance light sources or if modulated ligh sources are
>used. Its An idea that goes back much further. The modern concept
>uses lasers and optics.

In other words folks if the Germans tried it then it must be good, ignore not
workable in the 1940s of course.

>> Also note Jones said the ARL noted the tube was better than anything
>> the UK had made, not that the UK had no idea about proximity fuses,
>> but when in doubt assume the allies are clueless until the Germans
>> tell them.
>
>The "Allied" proximity fuse was developed in the USA.

I suppose what went across the Atlantic in 1941 is going to be ignored?
After all to keep the story that the allies simply developed a German
idea it has to go via Britain. So if it was developed in the US presumably
the Germans had no input? So the claim

"instigated the British development of the Allied proximity fuse." is wrong
on all counts? Cannot keep the story straight?

>Germany did not have the luxury of turning over her better ideas to a powerfull,
>distant and rich allies to develop them.

Yes folks yet again, the Germans did it first, but lacked resources.

In population terms Germany was around 50% larger than Britain and
the US was around 50% larger than Germany. The Japanese were
around the same population as Germany.

>It had the choice of cancelling the program or developing it more slowly.

Alternatively it had the choice of not declaring war on the USSR and
then the USA. Plus actually properly organise the science and engineering
side of the economy.

>Try and think out of the box.

Translation substitute fiction for facts.

>> >An enterprising Historian (not a mindless regurgiator of statistics)
>> >could probably find why the German did not complete its development.
>>
>> In other words it is someone else's problem to realise what happened.
>>
>> >My guess it was assigned a low priority at the onset of Barbarossa or
>> >the program was dsiruped during the Franco-German period of the war
>> >when many R+D programs were disrupted by lack of resources. (ie
>> >engineers and personel to test)
>>
>> In other words folks a guess and it ignores the way the Germans called
>> up large numbers of scientists thereby creating the "lack of resources".
>> Apart from the scientists taken and often misused in the military what
>> shortages suddenly appeared in September 1939?
>
>Why do you say "it ignores the way..." I actually said that is what
>happened. The scientist and engineers probably ended up opperating or
>maintaining advanced equipement at the front.

Note folks, we are give a "guess" which now becomes "what happened",
this is then followed by assumptions on what the drafted the scientists
and engineers actually did. It also ignores the talent drain pre war.

In fact the highly educated were often treated as simply another recruit.

So show us all the advanced equipment in the Wehrmacht in 1939.

In the mean time try and cope with the fact the "lack of resources" was
largely self inflicted, misusing trained manpower, declaring war on more
and more countries.

>> >As the Germans developed some very tough ceramic envelops, interesting
>> >ceramic sealing techniques for valve elements and minature ceramic
>> >valves they were probably pretty close to
>>
>> Remarkably how the Germans are always pretty close but never
>> making it.
>
>As I found out the did get over 1000 successfull pre-prpduction
>electronic proximity fuses working.

Yet another claim without proof.

>How much did they lag allies?
>Perhaps 6-7 months given the depplyment oft he prox fuses just after
>d-day when the V1 attacks began.

Yes folks, the Germans making test firings and never putting them
into production is compared to the allies in full production, years
after test firings.

The claim ignores the USS Helena firing proximity fused shells off
Guadalcanal in January 1943. So yes folks, the Germans never having
a production line even by May 1945, puts them only 6 to 7 months
behind the allies in the usual Germany did it first fictional universe.

http://www.smecc.org/radio_proximity_fuzes.htm

Note how the allies created the condition for exploding the shell.
See "capacitance" anywhere?

Note how production was 500 fuses a day in October 1942. Note
by the end of 1944 the delivery rate was 40,000 per day, or in
other words just over half an hour to equal the entire claimed German
production.

>> (snip) of Oslo letter.
>>
>> >> When exactly did a German patent a multicavity magnetron and
>> >> how was it different to the Randall and Boot device? The name
>> >> Magnetron has been applied to many devices.
>>
>> As an example.
>>
>> The magnetron tube was invented and its characteristics extensively explored
>> by GE (Alfred W Hull, 1929, Schnectady, NY) long before the war.
>>
>> And a quote,
>
>These were single cavity magnetrons that had problems in terms of
>stabillity and power due in part to thermal feedback.

Oh sorry, fail to get the point again? Magnetron was a name used on
many devices.

>> "It is also worthwhile recording the collaboration between the French and the
>> Brits, especially just before the Randall and Boot magentron was dispatched
>> to the US. There is probably a book to be written about this, but for
>> purposes of this post, it should be recognized that the French also had
>> proceeded quite far in independent magnetron development, and that the team
>> of Pomte/Gutton had developed magnetrons with oxide cathodes which allowed
>> for significantly higher pulsed power output--which were incorporated into
>> the Brit magnetron just before H-Hour. One developed French magnetron, as
>> mentioned in a post by Mr Capdeboscq, operated at 16 cm."

Yes this will be ignored.

>> >US patent
>> >Magnetron. 2,123,728; Nov 29, 1935
>> >Magnetron. 2,130,132; July 16, 1936
>> >
>> >http://www.radarworld.org/hollmann.html
>> >http://www.radarworld.org/hans4.html
>> >
>> >
>> >I don't know exactly why it wasn't developed rapidly.
>>
>> Maybe something simple like output? Randall and Boot managed
>> 500 watts and 3 Ghz, or 10cm wavelength. The German magnetron
>> was operating at 50cm and was not as powerful. Note a patent is
>> not the same as a working device available.
>
>There were several German magnetrons, most not multicavity. For
>whatever reason the Germans disbanded there microwave development team
>at a time Randall and Boot hadn;t had their success.

Yes, apparently the Germans had a design for a multi cavity magnetron,
which so far as can be shown in this thread, no use was made of the
design. Which yet again seems to be standard way of making these
claims. As long as the name exists on paper or in memory somewhere
it is assumed to be a working device ready to go.

>> There was also the frequency jumping problems, hence "strapping".
>>
>> Another quote,
>>
>> "Okabe & Yagi at the Tohoku College of Engineering developed
>> a split-anode magnetron in 1927 and by 1939 the Japan Radio
>> Company had developed an 8-cavity, water-cooled magnetron at
>> a wavelength of 10 cm with a continuous output power of 500
>> W. However, this research (which stopped in 1941 due to
>> material shortages) was not published until after WW2.
>> Another design, the first successful multicavity magnetron
>> design, was developed in Russia in 1936-37 by Aleksereff &
>> Malearoff, with results first published in 1940 "

Yes, ignored again. Simply many people were experimenting and
Randall and Boot were the first to have one that passed into mass
production.

>> >The German had
>> >early leadership in microwaves then abandoned it. Perhaps because the
>> >Freya and Wurzburg were quite good radars. They also believed that the
>> >detection characteristics of meter lenght waves was better (they were
>> >right).
>>
>> With the trade off against resolution.
>
>Not if large antenna are used and this is possible in ground based
>installations. Wurzburg D and Manheim were not too bulky and Manheim
>was quite accurate.

Like everything there are trade offs. The smaller fire control radars
needed the precision.

>>http://www.ieee.org/organizations/history_center/oral_histories/transcripts/
>> >schwan.html
>>
>> (snip) of text.
>>
>> >The main problem the German has was one of managment: dispersal of R&D
>> >over 100 laboratries and competition between navy and Luftwaffe with
>> >excess secracy.
>>
>> Try and also remember the number of scientists forced out pre
>> war and the German military draft system.
>>
>> Try and understand 100 laboratories does not sound like a lack
>> of resources, but a lack of organisation.
>
>It appears to have been a "cell" approach to maintaining secrecy from
>which the Germans suffered. It had its advantages but slowed the rate
>of development due to the lack of sharing of information.

Try and understand 100 laboratories does not sound like a lack
of resources, but a lack of organisation.

In which case stop claiming "lack of resources".

>> >The Engineer Nakajima of japan had developed Multicavity resonant
>> >Magnetrons 1 year beofore the British.
>> >Ironicaly he worked in Germany before the war and if the Germany and
>> >Japanese had of shared as well as
>> >the US/UK did things could have turned out different.
>>
>> Yes folks, note the Japanese had to be told by the Germans as well.
>
>Don't be an idiot. Nakajima mentions that he invented a multicavity
>magnetron and that he also toured Germany pre-war. There was quite a
>bit of German/Japanese co-opperation but not to the level of US/UK
>perhaps to do with distance.

Yes folks, note the Japanese had to be told by the Germans as well.

Or are we simply meant to assume the connection? Which is then
later denied because there is no proof? The Germans were not into
sharing the really advanced items with the Japanese. To learn about
German radar the Japanese had to "get lost" and were fortunate the
Germans at the factory assumed it was an official visit. This was in 1941.

>> >http://www.star-games.com/exhibits/japaneseradar/japaneseradar.html

>>
>> >Dr. Hans E. Hollmann continued working on radar in his company
>> >"Laboratory for High Frequency and Electromedicine" in Berlin. The
>> >company had a staff of 20 scientists and not only did they work for
>> >Telefunken but much of the research work went into helping GEMA. The
>> >Telefunken Co. owned many of Hollmann's radar patents which they
>> >registered in the US prior to the war. See patents. These patents were
>> >worth millions of dollars. Prior to WWII, the British and the US were
>> >not only aware of the radar technology being developed in Germany but
>> >they also used it to develop their radar systems.
>>
>> If R V Jones is the authority be aware he attended a meeting in
>> 1941 called to discuss whether the Germans had radar.
>>
>> Once again all things are flowing from the Germans, no one else
>> could come up with the ideas, but everyone else could see their
>> benefit and use them. We are supposed to think the Germans
>> are therefore the smart ones.
>
>You are an absolute paranoid nutcase.

yes folks, RV Jones is "the source" he notes the British did not think
the Germans had radar in early 1941, this contradicts the attempt to
have the British using German technology. So change the subject.

Yes folks, "the enlightenment" is code for putting the lights out.

>At no point did I imply that everything flowed from the Germans.

Remarkable how in all your attempts to push the fiction the Germans
keep coming out ahead, and inventing things first. The way the words
German and good could be interchanged in most posts.

>I pointed out that they were aware
>of the mutlicavity magnetron around 1935 and that they were working on
>electronic proximity fuses.

What has been pointed out is a German wrote a paper design for a
multicavity magnetron, and then we have this trail that is supposed
to lead around the world, the Germans told the Japanese, the Germans
told the British who told the Americans. All without any evidence the
design would work.

As for proximity fuses same basic attempt, the Germans are supposed
to be the source of the idea.

Proof of these causal chains is lacking.

Understand some devices were invented independently most
were invented based on the work of many people. See the
way attempts to measure the ionosphere in the 1920s and
1930s pushed radio development along the chain that lead
to radar.

>> >> >They didn't have the resources to replace the Me 109 with the powerfull
>> >> >Me 309 and so had to keep the very easy to produce Me 109 in production.
>> >>
>> >> Ah yes, another wonder aircraft the Germans designed but never used.
>> >>
>> >> The reality check is the Me309 first flew in July 1942 and found it did
>> >> not have enough hydraulic power to raise the undercarriage on the
>> >> first flight.
>> >
>> >Clearly a teething problem. That's why prototypes are built.
>>
>> Not a good sign that something as relatively simple as that had been
>> miscalculated.
>
>It was most likely out of the Me 109 parts bin intended to accelerate
>prototype testing if indeed it was due to a lack of power due to a too
>small and area jack.

Yes folks, note how we are told why the problem occurred, no proof
of course, just an attempt to claim knowledge about the subject.

Understand after the Me210 fiasco the Luftwaffe was not going to
cut Messerschmitt much slack.

>> >> At the other end of the speed scale there was high speed
>> >> snaking, then add the usual take off swing problems, some 5 different
>> >> tail and rudder profiles were tried. There were 3 prototypes built by
>> >> the end of 1942, but the second was destroyed landing after its first
>> >> flight. The test pilots reported high stick forces, and the Me309
>> >> could be easily out turned by the Bf109G. As a result of the
>> >> criticism the order for 9 was cut to 4 and by mid 1943 the type
>> >> was basically regarded as a flying test bed.
>> >
>> >The Rechlin test center eventually determined that the Me 309 could be
>> >developed into a fighter. Most aircraft have initial teething issues
>> >and multiple configurations are experimented with.
>>
>> Really, given the Rechlin testing comments about heavy controls were
>> a major factor in cancelling it. Given the handling problems clearly
>> meant a protracted test program to cure them. After the Me210 fiasco
>> the problems would have to be cured before production was allowed.
>>
>> So tell us all about this Rechlin report, when was it made and what did
>> it say?

Note folks, the claimed Rechlin report was asked for.

>By 1943 Erhardt Milch had already decided that the Me 262 was not only
>the way of the future but essential. He infact wanted it in service by
>mid to late 1943. Given the lack of resources it would clearly be
>pointless to develop two aircraft at once.

So the Me309 Rechlin report consisted of, Milch has decided to develop
the Me262? Thanks for that enlightenment. No mention of the Me309
at all?

So where is the wonder Rechlin report?

>> >The Me 109 can outmanoever many opposition fighter at lower speeds,
>> >including a spitfire, due to its high power to weight ratio and Handley
>> >Page Automatic slats. It is no suprise that the Me 109 could do so
>> >with the 309 at certain speeds.
>>
>> Ah the recycling of the wonder Bf109 manoeuvrability claim.
>>
>> High power to weight ratio? The 1942 Me109G empty weight was around
>> 5,950 pounds being pulled by 1,475 HP using a 173 square foot wing.
>
>So, factor in the use of MW-50, GM-1 and the various boost levels that
>became available at various times post 42 (we are talking of a 1943
>evaluation) then this figure goes up.

Ah right, we are going to carefully select the best Bf109G.

>> The Spitfire IX weighed in at 5,800 pounds tare, with various engines
>> from 1,475 to 1,650 HP, on a wing area of 242 square feet.
>>
>> Go work out the various power to weight ratios. Then note the
>> landing speed of the Me109 versus the Spitfire and what that
>> implies for low speed handling.
>
>Provide the links yourself then?

Yes folks, "The Enlightenment" makes a junk claim, and demands it
be disproved.

>> >It sounds to me as if the Me 309 had high stick forces, which would
>> >have been the cuase of the lack of manouverabillity, that would have
>> >been overcome with power controls, as on the He 162 salamander or
>> >with Friese aerlerons as on the Fw 190.
>>
>> Ah yes, the fighter could be fixed announcement, I note the attempt
>> is made to say "if" the stick forces were high. The Rechlin report
>> claimed above should have mentioned them.
>
>So Geoffrey, what causes high stick forces? Do you have no idea where
>they come from or what can be done to reduce them or what it was about
>some aricraft that kept them low?

In other words folks, "The Enlightenment" does not know the answer, but
is convinced the Germans would have solved the problems. No proof is
given, it was a German invention, nothing more needs to be said.

>> Of course simply assume such power controls were easy to introduce,
>> look at all those WWII aircraft with powered controls.
>>
>> >> It was an attempt to build a better Bf109, using a nose wheel
>> >> undercarriage and carrying more fuel, top speed was around 455
>> >> mph at 28,000 feet but this was for the unarmed prototype.
>> >
>> >The 309 was powered by the DB603 which was a considerably
>> >underdeveloped engine of the quite large swept volume of 44 Litres that
>> >came in several succeding more powerfull developments. As the Germans
>> >had perfected both electronically fired cannon to sychronise with the
>> >prop and motor canon that were mounted between the V-12 or close to the
>> >fueselage I would not expect to much loss in speed.
>>
>> The armament proposed came in two versions, standard fighter,
>> an MG151 and 2 MG131 and bomber destroyer 3 MG151 and
>> 4 MG131.
>>
>> There are two causes for a loss of speed, drag of the weapons and
>> their weight. Now the Me309 being so heavy anyway would have
>> a smaller percentage decrease in speed due to weight, beyond that
>> it is instructive to note the way service aircraft slowed down
>> compared with prototype speeds.
>
>Rechlin had a reputation for testing aircaft in combat trim not
>specially treated (with polishing for instance) to give misleading
>figures.

Yes folks, another change of subject, we are talking about the Me309
but have been switched to what is supposed to be the generic Rechlin
test.

Of course the Rechlin figures, given the above claimed methods would
be close to average combat performance.

>They were a customer center. Tests from manufactures (allied
>ones?) may have been different as they were touting their own product.

Yes folks, the Me309 is being discussed, that is why we are off on this
little frolic. The claim is the Me309 would have made a good fighter,
the evidence is so strong against the claim the subject has to be changed.

>> >> Note
>> >> landing speed was 110 mph thanks to the high wing loading,
>> >> weighing 7,784 pounds empty supported by 178 square feet of
>> >> wing, in other words around a ton heavier than the Bf109G with
>> >> around the same amount of wing area. Assuming the test program
>> >> had gone without a hitch the Me309 would not have appeared in
>> >> numbers before mid 1944.
>> >>
>> >> The decision was made to invest the engineering resources in
>> >> the Me262.
>> >
>> >Sensibly so becuase while the western allies had the resources to
>> >devlop the Tempest, Typhoon, P-51, P-47, Hurricane etc the Germans
>> >managed to find the rerources only for the Me 109 and Fw 190.
>>
>> It seems the idea is to simply define the problem to minimise
>> German abilities, you know the lack of resources, the Germans
>> had all the ideas (major resource) but no ability to use them
>> (no material resources).
>
>By your mentality they had no good ideas but all the resources in the
>world that they didn't use. Is that where you stand?

This is quite funny really, the attempt to assume those that disagree
are as poorly anchored to reality as the person making the claim.

Germany had some good ideas and the resources of Europe to draw
upon. The system managed to squander much of the advantages.

>> How about the Germans were bad fighter designers? The
>> Japanese produced more successful designs, A6M, Ki-84,
>> backed by the useful Ki-61 and Ki-43 for example. The
>> Japanese had fewer resources than the Germans. Check
>> out the later Italian fighter designs as well, they used German
>> engines mated to Italian airframes.
>
>Apart from the A6-M they were not produced in as great a quantity.

A6M around 10,500 pus 800 floatplane versions.
Ki-84 around 3,500
Ki-61 around 3,000, used a copy of the DB601A engine.
Ki-43 around 5,900.

The British managed to build some 3,300 Typhoons and 1,300
Tempests.

You see the claim is "lack of resources" was the reason the Germans
did not build many fighter types, with the Typhoon and Tempest being
cited as examples of allied designs, presumably meant to be in
abundance. Meantime larger or similar Japanese production runs
are dismissed as small.

The USSBS says the Japanese aircraft production was,
1941 5,090
1942 8,861
1943 16,693
1944 28,180

And German production, including foreign plants was

1941 10,501
1942 14,751
1943 24,944
1944 39,613

The Japanese, as you can see, were around a year behind the Germans,
despite starting their production ramp up later. The Japanese had fewer
resources than the Germans.

>They also tended to be niche aircraft and all didn't necessarily
>perform at alitude.

Yes folks, when in doubt pretend. Go read up on the Ki-84
evaluations for a start.

>> The Germans had the chance to replace the Bf109 in mid war,
>> but none of the replacements worked well enough.
>
>They improvement they offered didn't justify the disruption to
>production given that the Me 262 was supposed to produce a paradygme
>shift a short time latter and needed the same developmemtal resources.

Me155, Me209 first and second tries, Me309, The Messerschmitt firm
was really trying to build a better single engined single seater fighter.

The trouble for the replacement idea was the only one that worked,
the Fw190A, lacked the altitude performance. Something that was
not solved until the third quarter of 1944.

>They did move to the FW 190D series which could have had varous high
>altitude engines earlier.

The engines were being built but the effort was going into the
Fw190B and C types.

>> >The 109
>> >was forced to soldier on. It lacked range, it lacked roll rate at
>> >speed and it lacked the abillity to carry the armour and weapons
>> >needed.
>>
>> You mean like the fact the Spitfire remained in production until
>> the end of the war, as did the A6M, and even the US was still making
>> P-39s and P-40s until mid and late 1944 respectively? The US was
>> also making Wildcats in 1945.
>>
>> >If the allies had of had similar resources they would have been forced
>> >to stay with Spitfires and P-40s. No P-47s or P-51s and the range and
>> >toughness they provided.
>>
>> Yes folks dreamland returns,
>
>What audience are you playing to?

I am unsure, the applause makes it hard to hear.

>> the RAF was looking for a Hurricane and
>> Spitfire replacement in 1940, in that order. It understood the needs,
>> but ended up flying Spitfires all war, including making mark IXs in 1945.
>
>The Luftwaffe was also looking at 109 replacements.

And strangely enough, like the "better resourced" allies found it was
much harder than expected to change over to new types.

>> The P-47 and P-51 were not something claimed wartime shortage of
>> materials were going to stop. The P-51 flew in 1940, the P-47 was
>> the USAAF's planned main fighter for the mid 1940s.
>
>Yep and the 109 was at a different developmental phase.

By the way folks, the claim was

"If the allies had of had similar resources they would have been forced
to stay with Spitfires and P-40s"

Now we are told the Bf109 was in a different development phase,
whatever that is supposed to mean.

>> Remember the cry is the Germans did/thought/invented it first, but were
>> always unable to do it properly thanks to lack of resources. An economy
>> with the best part of 80 million people plus outside labour, controlling
>> most of a continent in mid 1941 lacked resources.
>
>How would you say they should they get the Poles, Czechs or French to
>force them to test and designe aircraft for them? Admitedly a bit of
>this did go on but it was limited.

My but we have someone trying hard to ignore the facts.

Try French Bauxite for making aircraft production cheaper, try and
understand there were around 80 million native German speakers
available in mid 1940. Try and note that by 1944 the "German"
work force had around 20% foreign labour.

No need for the different nationalities to design aircraft, just build
them, freeing German labour for other tasks.

The French plants built some 3,606 aircraft for Germany,
Czech plants 6,656, Fokker in Holland some 845 aircraft.

One table I have gives the percentage production in occupied
territories during 1943 as weapons 4.8%, ammunition 6.4%,
vehicles? 16.2%, shipbuilding 35.7%, aircraft 8.9%.

German Trade with occupied territories went something like this,
year, imports, exports, in million marks

1940 1,439 / 1,393
1941 2,530 / 2,256
1942 3,682 / 2,318
1943 3,700 / 2,510
1944 2,651 / 1,488

[Blair Maynard]

> Take it easy on the Gold tooth and 60 million stuff. A lot of that
> stuff can be halved. There is nothing as ugly as a bunch of people
> claiming to be holocuast survivors with out of date fabricated stories
> regurgitated from lurid tales frothing anger, hatred and paranoia plus.

Yeah. Cramming a bunch of old men, women and young children into a room and
gassing them is much prettier than people falsely claiming to be holocaust
survivors.

[George Z. Bush]

Did the aviation content of this posting fly by while I wasn't looking?

George Z.

[The Enlightenment]

There are probably more fake holocaust survivors than there are fake
Vietnam veterans; and probably for the same reasons.

There is no credible evidence for mass extermination gas chambers;
certainly not at Auschwitz.

Perhaps if holocaust revisionists could make their inquiries, travel
and speak without being arrested or reduced by long detentions and
trials to penuary for their 'thought crimes' we could sort out the
fakes and the fake stories.

Perhaps the real stories might even stand out in relief.

I have a booklet produced by the state of Israel in 1965 that lists
some utterly rediclouse stories including:- 400 Jews being electrocuted
by 1 million volts in a room in which the floor drops away to imerse
the victims in water to the knees. Another talks of geysers of blood
over graves, another talks of the shooting and cremation of boddies in
mass graves that latter turn out to have such a low water table that
everything below a foot becomes water logged.

When did everything about the holocause become true? Answer when it
became essentially illegal to disagree with it.

[tw]

"The Enlightenment" <bern...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message

news:1133956228.7...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

>
> Blair Maynard wrote:
> > > Take it easy on the Gold tooth and 60 million stuff. A lot of that
> > > stuff can be halved. There is nothing as ugly as a bunch of people
> > > claiming to be holocuast survivors with out of date fabricated stories
> > > regurgitated from lurid tales frothing anger, hatred and paranoia
plus.
> >
> > Yeah. Cramming a bunch of old men, women and young children into a room
and
> > gassing them is much prettier than people falsely claiming to be
holocaust
> > survivors.
>
> There are probably more fake holocaust survivors than there are fake
> Vietnam veterans; and probably for the same reasons.

..yet you provde no proof to back up that assertion..

>
> There is no credible evidence for mass extermination gas chambers;
> certainly not at Auschwitz.

Don't be such a gibbering Nazi apologist, there is PLENTY of extremely
credible evidence for mass extermination gas chambers at the Auschwitz II
complex.

[Chris Morton]

In article <1133956228.7...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, The
Enlightenment says...

>There is no credible evidence for mass extermination gas chambers;
>certainly not at Auschwitz.

Not just a lie, but a STUPID lie.

How about at Birkenau?

>Perhaps if holocaust revisionists could make their inquiries, travel
>and speak without being arrested or reduced by long detentions and
>trials to penuary for their 'thought crimes' we could sort out the
>fakes and the fake stories.

THEIRS are the fake stories.

--

--
Gun control, the theory that 110lb. women should have to fistfight with 210lb.
rapists.

[Keith W]

"The Enlightenment" <bern...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
news:1133956228.7...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>

> Blair Maynard wrote:
>> > Take it easy on the Gold tooth and 60 million stuff. A lot of that
>> > stuff can be halved. There is nothing as ugly as a bunch of people
>> > claiming to be holocuast survivors with out of date fabricated stories
>> > regurgitated from lurid tales frothing anger, hatred and paranoia plus.
>>
>> Yeah. Cramming a bunch of old men, women and young children into a room
>> and
>> gassing them is much prettier than people falsely claiming to be
>> holocaust
>> survivors.
>
> There are probably more fake holocaust survivors than there are fake
> Vietnam veterans; and probably for the same reasons.
>

There probably arent, the youngest survivors would now be in their late 60's

> There is no credible evidence for mass extermination gas chambers;
> certainly not at Auschwitz.
>

Apart from the physical evidence at the site, the accounts of survivors
and liberators and the detailed plans and records left by the Nazis.

Note the last person to claim this in court lost badly.

> Perhaps if holocaust revisionists could make their inquiries, travel
> and speak without being arrested or reduced by long detentions and
> trials to penuary for their 'thought crimes' we could sort out the
> fakes and the fake stories.
>

They cant travel and publish what they like in the US or Britain,
the Germans and Austrians are a little more sensitive as
David Irving is currently discovering.

> Perhaps the real stories might even stand out in relief.
>
> I have a booklet produced by the state of Israel in 1965 that lists
> some utterly rediclouse stories including:- 400 Jews being electrocuted
> by 1 million volts in a room in which the floor drops away to imerse
> the victims in water to the knees. Another talks of geysers of blood
> over graves, another talks of the shooting and cremation of boddies in
> mass graves that latter turn out to have such a low water table that
> everything below a foot becomes water logged.
>
> When did everything about the holocause become true? Answer when it
> became essentially illegal to disagree with it.
>

Unless there's a policeman knocking on your door you
have just proved yourself to be a liar - again.

Keith

[Tiger]

Your not very "Enlightened."

[niceguy]

Almost as bad as claiming to be a Vietnam vet.

"Blair Maynard" <DELETEMEbl...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:cltlf.272644$xd2.1...@fe03.news.easynews.com...

[Chris Morton]

In article <dn7nct$nt9$1$8300...@news.demon.co.uk>, Keith W says...

>Apart from the physical evidence at the site, the accounts of survivors
>and liberators and the detailed plans and records left by the Nazis.

Yeah, so far no revisionist has been able to explain why if there were no gas
chambers or crematoria, why the German government issued Requests for Proposal
for contractors to BUILD them, then signed CONTRACTS for the work, for which
CHECKS were issued....

Oops....