We all know that Nazi Germany during WWII was very advanced in military technologies, and they were in fact way ahead of the allied forces in many researches. The Germans kept coming up with one new weapon after another, although they were actually bottle-necked by the resources available to them thus they could not truly mass produce many of the new weapons they have developed. Some secret weapons came too late to be in effective numbers to make any impact on the outcome of the war. What Nazi weapons might be able to change the outcome of the war if it was mass produced? Tiger II? (only produced just over 300 units) Maus the 180-ton super heavy tank? (still experimenting, might be able to start the production if wasn't for Hitler's order on upgrading specifications) STG 44? (made only a few hundred thousands) ME 262? (came too late and only produced a few hundreds) Anything else you can think of?
The V2 rocket was horrifically destructive and psychologically devastating for the population of Allied citites within range. Some 1000 were launched against London alone, the first one on June 13th 1944, and are estimated to have caused 115,ooo casualties. Each massive explosion happened seconds before the incoming whoosh of the rocket, because they travelled faster than sound. So you as a Londoner never knew if you were going to be hit next, there was no way to take cover like with the V1 doodlebugs. The psychological effect on the nation's morale was enormous. The V3, Hitler's super cannon using multipropulsion of the shell, was thankfully never used. But these would be insignificant if the Germans had been able to develop their atom bomb project.
Had Hitler given the go ahead for the Heinkel He-280 to be produced, it would of been un-matched in air to air combat & it's quite possible it could of cleared the skies of RAF fighters during the Battle of Britain, had there been enough of them. On the downside, endurance would of been an hour at the very most, most likely less during combat, meaning it would of had to run back to base to re-fuel, leaving the bombers un-escorted & at the mercy of any RAF fighters in range. Especially if the target was London. Having said that, Britain was test flew a prototype jet fighter in 1941, so again its possible that project could of been rushed along & maybe the first test flight would of been as early as December 1940, in a bid to regain air superiority?
Well, if the atom bombs were developed by the Germans first, it would not be a war any more. It would be a total one sided genocide. Although I am sure the allied forces would try everything they can to intercept the German planes carrying the A bombs before they can reach their cities. However, it would be harder to do so if the Germans decided to drop nukes on the front line battlefield to eliminate concentrated allied troops. As for aircraft, what the Germans needed was strategic bombers which they never really had. They could never conduct any strategic bombing throughout the war because they don't have such bomber. Their fighters are also not having enough range. But I heard both cases are due to their limited resources to build aircraft. Did Germans have torpedo bombers? I am not sure about this because every time I read about it they only mentioned dive bombers. Torpedo bombers would be a lot more effective against Royal navy ships. On a side note, I have left out Tiger 1. I heard that 5,000 Tiger 1 was ordered by the German military, but only 1,300 or so were delivered because production bottlenecks. If they were able to produce 5,000 Tigers, it could make a fairly large impact, but that's something might not become true even if they wished to... in fact they indeed tried to lol.
They made aircraft modifications capable of carrying air-bourne torpedo's but they did not have a dedicated torpedo aircraft, save for a version of the JU-88. (A-14 or A-17) which in essence was just a field modification to a few numbers of A-4's. Missions were undertaken from bases in Norway against convoys bound for Murmansk. They had some success & raids were also launched from Petsamo in Finland as the convoys drew closer. The torpedo carrying aircraft also made raids against shipping in the Mediterranean theatre of operations. I don't have a book handy but it is highly possible an attack was made against Royal Navy ships. I do know that just after Italy turned to the Allies side, Luftwaffe bombers made attacks against the Italian Navy using the new guided bombs & rocket propelled, guided torpedo's. The raid was a great success resulting in sinking's & heavy damage being inflicted. There are a couple good books on the subject of Luftwaffe torpedo operations & the books have some pretty remarkable pictures taken from convoys of He-111's making their wave top height attacks. That is very true, if Germany had developed the A bomb first then the world as we know it would be a very different place indeed. I could see Germany using it against Moscow & possibly London. I don't think they would risk a dropping it on the front lines for killing their own troops, but in a situation like the D-Day invasions, or the Battle of the Bulge, I could see it as a possibility. I read somewhere that the JU-86 was a strategic bomber, but they didn't follow it up with anything after. Closest they had was the Fw-200 but it's bomb load was too little. I'm not sure about the fighters, their lack of range. They tried to bring a heavy fighter in which could operate for longer, the Bf-110, which had great success in the early battles & the early years in Russia, but up against more modern fighters it got badly mauled.
If I am correct, Germany never developed a bomber with 4 or more engines which was required for long distance strategic bombing with high loads. They also never had the long range fighter escorts for their bombers. During the Battle of Britain, once reached England the German fighters had only 10 minutes time before have to return to base due to the limited fuel onboard. American P-51 were able to escort B-17 all the way to the heart of Germany and destroy important factories and other targets. Germans were not able to do the same thing. A-bomb would have changed everything, since Hitler would have no problem with genocide. By the way, what was the payload of V2 rockets? Could those rockets carry nukes? It would be a lot harder to intercept a rocket than to shoot down an unescorted bomber.
The payload of the V2 was one ton. Luckily Hitler didn't see the full potential of developing an atom bomb. The Germans had good scientists but the project never got the same support from the war leaders that Project Manhattan, the US development of the atom bomb did. And the Norwegian resistance very successfully sabotaged their production of heavy water in Norway, an immortalized in the movie "Heroes of Telemark". Yes, if Hitler had got his hands on such a weapon he would have had used it without a doubt. The whole point of naming the V weapons "V" was for Vengeance. I was always mystified why the Germans never used gas warfare in WW2, seeing as it was a favourite method of mass extinction 25 years earlier on the Western Front. Was it because Hitler himself had been the victim of an Allied gas attack in WWI? Or because the Germans thought we had the more sophisticated versions of nerve gas (we didn't actually) and was wary of upping the stakes to that level? The only time gas affected Allied troops was in fact in the Luftwaffe raid on Bari, when they unknowingly hit a deposit of Allied mustard gas in the vessels unloading troops there, causing a lot of casualties.
Operation Backfire the V2 Rocket BAOR 1945 (oops out of sequence !) Volume I: https://archive.org/stream/Reportonoperati1Grea#page/n0/mode/2up Volume II: https://archive.org/details/Reportonoperati2Grea Volume IV: https://archive.org/details/Reportonoperati4Grea Volume III: https://archive.org/details/Reportonoperati3Grea Volume V: https://archive.org/details/Reportonoperati5Grea http://www.scribd.com/doc/38160709/A4-Fibel-V2-Rocket-Fibel-Germany-1944-Improve
