Flying a Fieseler Storch

@SuperbattleshipYamato Yeah I get you 100%. Alternate History is a niche interest in the first place so finding other people willing to go down the rabbit hole is always tough.

I was reading this document (https://history.army.mil/html/books/104/104-20/CMH_Pub_104-20.pdf) which counted the Panzer 1 as a tankette. Do any of you think this is a better description for the vehicle than a light tank? It’s not much heavier than some Japanese tankettes and its armament and crew size is certainly similar.

This is the first time I’ve heard of classifying the vehicle as a tankette, which is why I find it noteworthy.

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If I was going into Tank on Tank combat I’m taking the M4 Sherman. Better sights, better visibility, an actual turret basket, better ergonomics, better mechanical reliability, and with the 76mm variant a very capable anti armor gun. As well as far more reliable armor due to high production quality standards. The M4 armor is reliable face hardened. The T34 could be correctly hardened, too hard so that it’s brittle or too soft.

If I was trying to drive a tank to get into a fight, the M4 is the obvious choice due to the much better reliability.

If I had to pick a tank to work on. M4 again due to its easy to repair design.

If I wanted to drive a comfortable tank well that’s no contest it’s the M4. Also it’s an easier to drive tank due to the vastly superior production quality.

So the M4 is a vastly superior weapons platform the only reason they seem comparable is on paper armor thickness and gun. Off of paper they aren’t close. Like pretty much all Russian military equipment they seem intimidating but ultimately are trash. Like how the T 72 got smashed by the M2 bradely and infantry fighting vehicle not even a tank.

Thanks for the informative post. You prompted me to do a little reading. At least according to what I just read, you are correct: a dirty bomb does not have a more powerful explosion than a conventional bomb. That reading contradicts the impression made by a documentary I watched; in which the explosion from a dirty bomb was portrayed as more powerful than a conventional weapon, less powerful than a nuclear blast.

There were some reports of what appeared to be nuclear weapons tests in Germany toward the end of the war. The documentaries in question treated those reports as evidence of dirty bombs being tested. But given that the explosions themselves were very powerful and produced a lot of light, the reports in question were either false (which is most likely) or else may have represented testing of actual nuclear weapons (less likely).

But not necessarily impossible, given the fact that a Nazi nuclear weapons complex has recently been discovered in Austria.

This brings me back to the aforementioned statement by Goering that Germany would have a nuclear bomb by 1946. If a dirty bomb was as unimpressive as your post and my recent reading leads me to believe, it’s quite possible that by “nuclear bomb” he meant an actual nuclear bomb.

However, it’s worth mentioning that Goering is the same guy who promised that the British Expeditionary Force near Dunkirk could be wiped out by the air, with no need for a German land offensive. Goering was also the one who promised that the German pocket at Stalingrad could be adequately supplied by air; and that there was no need for it to attempt to retreat westward. Goering had a track record of over-promising and under-delivering; so his promises of a nuclear weapon in 1946 should be taken with a grain of salt.

On the other hand, Germany was easily ten years ahead of the Allies in chemical weapons research. Perhaps more. If the German nuclear program did not result in a usable weapon until, say, 1947, Germany could in the meantime have retaliated against Allied nuclear attacks with chemical weapons attacks against Allied cities. Imagine this scenario: the United States has just dropped a nuclear bomb on Berlin. Germany has chosen to retaliate by sending a group of Horten H. XVIII planes to deliver a chemical payload to New York City. Allied leaders recognize that even though Germany has not yet developed nuclear weapons, it still has the capacity to respond tit-for-tat to the Allied destruction of German cities.

Great article.  THANKS!

Some of those articles said that the Stealthyness was most likely accidental.
Accidental, my foot!

This is what an accidental stealth fighter looks like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_N-1M

Everthing about the Horton says that the Germans knew what they were doing and purposfully used every unconventional means possible to make it invisible to radar, from the building matterial to the slight angles at the front of wing, to the engine placement…