>
>Thanks for that, Chris.
>
>It is indeed a massive vessel and it's amazing that it could carry 2 or 3
>aircraft, but the CBS article is
>a little breathless, perhaps, when it speculates that such vessels might have
>changed the course of the war.
>
>The aircraft would have been quite small, capable of carrying only a small
>payload; their use would have been
>restricted to one flight with limited effect because of the small payload.
>And the whole project would have
>been way too expensive for a small nation to sustain, which is presumably why
>the original programme of 18
>vessels was scaled back to 3.
>
Actually, they could have done a lot of damage and thereby prolonged the
war. Taking out the locks of the Panama Canal would have severely impacted
sealift freight and naval ship passage between the Atlantic and Pacific, and
damaging or destroying shipbuilding and repair facilities would have heavily
imoacted naval operations. Interestingly, those subs appear to only have two
forward torpedo tubes.
Just those actions alone could have prolonged the war for a year or more,
and Germany was one year away from delivering nuclear weapons to New York City
and Washington by way of the Amerikabomber, a jet-powered flying wing bomber
that would have sufficient range to fly to the American east coast and back
without refeuling. It was designed by the Horten brothers and was a
collaboration with Messerschmit.
It would also have provided sufficient time for Germany to put the Horten
229 (aka Gotha 229) into production, which was invisible to radar and would
have taken out the British coastal radar in less than a week. It was the
single most advanced aircraft of the war, and luckily Patton's Third Army
overran the airfield where it was being developed:
http://www.aviastar.org/air/germany/horten_ho-9.php
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hitler%27s+stealth+fighter&oq=hitler%27s+stealth+fighter&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=3187l10234l0l10812l24l24l0l18l0l0l359l1000l2-1.2l3l0
Chris
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