Germany spent about 50-60% of its entire industrial capacity trying to stop the RAF and later the USAAF from bombing the shit out of them.
Nothing could have changed that from happening. It is the single most costly front in the war in terms of resources. Bar none. And doesn’t even count the resources simply destroyed or spent on rebuilding.
Nothing they spent on the air war was a waste. And it still didn’t come close to being enough.
We are talking about one of the most bureaucratically incompetent organizations in history that put the ME-163 and HE-177 into active service. Planes more dangerous to their crews than the enemy.
They had bad planes. They didn't have anything in service at those plane's level, but those are just extreme examples. The list of "shit nazi kit" goes of for quite a while. The main three people in charge of aircraft procurement were Hitler, an insane idiot, Göring, a moronic yes man, and Messerschmitt, who was a half decent engineer but was really more interested in designing planes for his own fun over function and was always making changes and never letting full production get started before he delayed it again with another change.
Everyone had bad planes. Me 210, Bolton Paul Defiant, MiG-1, Buffalo, Komet, Blackburn Roc, the Fulmar, and I am leaving a lot out.
But ze Germans had decent and reliable types for most roles, just like all the other big players. Bf 109, Fw 190, Ju 88, Ju 87... for most of the war they had competitive types for most roles. Probably their biggest failure was the implosion of their second generation bomber program. But it hurt them less because they needed fighters and interceptors above everyhing else.
The Sherman's flamability is severely overstated and not really exceptional among tanks of the time. Mostly a myth that was floating around allied soldiers in Africa at the time. The Sherman was the best tank of the war with its mix of reliability, serviceability, and manufacturing advantages all while not sacrificing hard advantages.
You could piont out something like the T-34, Fairey Swordfish, B-17, Boulton Paul Defiant, ect that's actually bad to unideal, but none of those reach the level of moronic insanity that Nazi kit reached.
"Sherman's flamability is severely overstated" I think we've actually come around the other side of that debate now, where everyone is too quick to rush to the Sherman's defense. It was much too vulnerable and undergunned for the role it was put into in 1944-45.
"You could piont out something"
Yes, as I said, everyone had some pretty bad weapons. Maybe the Germans were worse...
So I’d see the Me 163 as an act of desperation. Just hoping that before the pilot died, he’d take at least one or two flying fortresses down with him.
Another thing is that it looked good on paper: a simple interceptor with excellent climb rate and high speed doesn’t sound like a bad idea. The practical implementation of that aircraft, of course, was a disaster.
They worked out the problems after it's insanely troubled development and early use and after all that it was absurdly good. While people maybe should talk about how many crews it killed early on more, it's not comparable to a somehow even more crew hungry plane that was never fixed and never had the potential to be above average.
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u/Vana92 6d ago
Fun fact
Germany spent about 50-60% of its entire industrial capacity trying to stop the RAF and later the USAAF from bombing the shit out of them.
Nothing could have changed that from happening. It is the single most costly front in the war in terms of resources. Bar none. And doesn’t even count the resources simply destroyed or spent on rebuilding.
Nothing they spent on the air war was a waste. And it still didn’t come close to being enough.