07-08-2009, 05:54 AM | #11 | |
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Chatham, Kent, England
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Re: What would benefit from advanced battery technology?
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They would probably have needed vastly increased resaearch and development, and for years before the conflict began. An alternate universe where governments and defence procurements are rational would probably be required. Helicopters are quite effective on piston power; both Korea and Vietnam wars employed Sikorsky designs using radial-piston powerplants very effectively. Many trainer helicopters still use piston power. On the bomber guidance beams: yes, the X, Y-Gerat, Knickebein (mostly early-WWII), the later GEE, OBOE, the lesser known 'Jay' and later LORAN systems all aid navigation even in darkness and no visibility, but do not hit targets. H2S and later ground-mapping radars did aid targetting, but even in good conditions, the B-29s raiding Japan had switched to area firebombing. They could hit the targets using their version of H2S, but manufacturing was reputedly too dispersed to offer many pin-point or large factory targets. Killing or 'unhousing' the workers was probably easier. Attempts were made with weapons that home on radio/radar sources, but defences are simple (the aerial/antenna is some distance from the installation, false/decoy transmissions). Something that acts independent of jamming, something that knows where the target is, that would be revolutionary, and very hard to combat. Such as trained pigeons pecking at a target on a screen (which guides the bomb), such as pilots flying their bomb directly into the target, such as incendiary bats roosting in wooden houses. All improve targetting, all have their own problems. |
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07-08-2009, 06:11 AM | #12 | |
Join Date: May 2009
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Re: What would benefit from advanced battery technology?
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1. Indiana Jones found an extradimensional craft; it is explicitly stated as such in the movie. (Yes, time is a dimension; no, time is not the dimension referred to in the movie.) 2. I was assuming that the discussion called for one of the WWII combatants making a breakthrough. In the time travel scenario, GPS is not simply a matter of a time traveler providing a single breakthrough, but of the entire network of GPS satellites being either recreated and launched (requiring the creation or proision of sufficient launch capacity to do so) or transported in toto from the future. In either case, this would be a huge undertaking, even from the point of view of a time traveling meddler. There are far easier ways to "jump the tech" and produce greater effects. |
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07-08-2009, 07:01 AM | #13 |
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Re: What would benefit from advanced battery technology?
Come to think of it, a beam riding V1 tuned to British radar wavelengths could have been very useful to the Germans... a sort of PLARM...
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07-08-2009, 09:53 AM | #14 |
Join Date: Mar 2006
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Re: What would benefit from advanced battery technology?
Agreed on the advances in jet engines
IIRC the two main problems with pistons are the cooling during hoover and the size/weight of the engine. Compare the Sikorski H-34 and the Bell UH-1 looking at the nose of the H34 and the engine capsule on the to of the UH-1 As for the navigation systems they actually did hit targets since at least some of them generated a "release bomb" signal, sometimes even releasing the bombs on automatic. And GPS isn't Jam-Proof either. The signal is there, basically all the time so it will likely be detected, being omni-directional does not help either. In our times ARMs prevent jamming but in WWII that is still a think to come. Separating antenna and the radio, decoy transmitters etc. are an old hat, used those stuff back in the 1980s in the German Territorials. And given that Direction Finders (HF-DF/Huff-Duff in example) did exist in WWII I guess some of that stuff (or a fully mobile radio system) was used even back then by some commanders. The Brits did use a separation Antenna and Electronics approach on their Chain-Home stations IIRC. Sidenote: The germans DID get it right late in the Battle of Britain going for the buildings and installation but Fatboy called that off. ================================= Another useful thing: (Computer) Numerical Controlled Lathe. The increase in production without the need of more highly skilled mechanics will benefit the Germans the most due to their combination of HighTech Weapons and small population base (The Sowjets are lower tech, the Western Allies have the US manpower) Nuclear Fission Reactors: IIRC power-producing reactors are a post-WWII development. Imagine the Germans building a Typ XXI submarine with a "Heisenberg Engine" instead of batteries.
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15 minutes after Solomani and Vagr met, a Solomani started calling them Lassie. 15 seconds after the Vagr realised who Lassie was, the Solomani died. Last edited by Darkwalker; 07-08-2009 at 10:00 AM. |
07-09-2009, 05:57 AM | #15 | |
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Chatham, Kent, England
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Re: What would benefit from advanced battery technology?
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'Sufficiently advanced technology' would have an enormous influence (if understandable and understood) from wherever and however it arrived, I feel. 2: Agreed; a matter of POV. I was assuming higher TL devices as naturally being from a later time, and let my imagination rip. My limited knowledge of RAF bombing during WWII led me to think that the actual late-WWII trend toward precision attack (overtaken by nuclear weapons that didn't need to be accurate) would benefit by something along the lines of GPS. If a new technology is being transmitted through time (an unspoken assumtion on my part) then satellites, immediate availability, strategic suprise, etc. all arrive as well, as the planning is all, and my assumed 'villains of the future' (the space-conquering Universal Reich?), if they do it at all, should go the whole hog. Sorry for my lack of clarity; I don't edit my thoughts until written down. |
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07-09-2009, 06:04 AM | #16 | |
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Chatham, Kent, England
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Re: What would benefit from advanced battery technology?
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The extra equipment made those bombs heavier, and harder to make fly the range required, possibly due to many small course corrections. I have found only passing mention of attempts to do this (RV Jones' book 'The Mare's Nest' for one, if I recall correctly) and I think the Germans may have abandoned the idea after the BBC dispersed it's transmissions fro Alexandra Palace to many antennae around the country. Have found mention (Osprey Books' V-Weapon sites book) of V1's being set to make a turn after launch, both to disguise the laucher, and to make launch sites more flexible; this seems to have only been used during the last months, from Germany itself. |
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07-09-2009, 06:08 AM | #17 |
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Re: What would benefit from advanced battery technology?
And thermobarics weapons ... I understand the flakwaffe experimented with them in the hope of using them to break up bomber streams but had difficultly with fuel dispersal.
I can see that making a huge difference if they ever made it work. |
07-09-2009, 06:21 AM | #18 | |
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: Chatham, Kent, England
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Re: What would benefit from advanced battery technology?
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A system independent of that (visual sighting and aiming of the corretly recognised target, something like GPS that uses much more accurate surveying and location of targets) would avoid the 'attacking blind' factor. A later radar bombing system (such as the developed H2S system employed by RAF Vulcans druing the Falklands business) had the benefits of satellite updates, navigational beacons during the early part of the flight, ground radio beacons near the target, with the addition of a reasonably high quality image of the target area from their search radar. This last item permits the last-minute objective improvement of aim I suggest as being useful in accurate, as opposed to indiscriminate bombing. I like your idea for the nuclear engine for typ XXI U-boot. Such submarines would have been revolutionary, given a sub big enough to keep a crew able an healthy. They could have been at least as widely-travelled and as threatening as the famed pocket battleships, with the added quality of invisibility. The automatic control of manufacturing often turns up in SF novel and stories written about this time. GURPS: War Against the Machines; robo-factories produce the weapons, then robots to use them, then the two robot armies replace humans. Find the bunker that contains the the off-switch, quick! |
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07-09-2009, 08:19 AM | #19 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
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Re: What would benefit from advanced battery technology?
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=================== Another useful thing would be an Inertial Navigation System. The current units are quite rugged and small and give good accuracy. Useful for submarines, planes and artillery. ==================== Nuclear driven XXI -> USS Nautilus ;) While almost twice the size her general looks/layout are quite close to the XXI.
__________________
15 minutes after Solomani and Vagr met, a Solomani started calling them Lassie. 15 seconds after the Vagr realised who Lassie was, the Solomani died. Last edited by Darkwalker; 07-09-2009 at 08:22 AM. |
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07-09-2009, 04:28 PM | #20 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: What would benefit from advanced battery technology?
You talk as if there was a fourth Jones movie. I pity any world like that. A strange horrifying place in which nuclear bombs could be blocked by household refridgerators.
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