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The Germans were very serious in hitting New York with V rockets.
No.
They weren't.
Germany experimented early in the war with some underwater-launchings of small 30 cm battlefield rockets. Those were never V weapons, that silly everything-I-need-to-know-I-learned-from-YouTube video you posted notwithstanding. That project was scrapped in 1942, long before the end of the war. At any rate, there was never any suggestion of using these against the strategic target of a city. They were exclusively imagined as tactical battlefield weapons.
The notion of launching V1s from a submarine never got further than bored planners putting their fantasies on paper. The Luftwaffe (the service behind the V1s) and the Kriegsmarine (the service with the cool boats that sailed underwater) were never on the same page. This was never much more than a Germany musing.
The cockeyed V2 scheme was that a launch pod would be towed into position by a u-boat specially modified for the mission. It would have required both u-boat and towed launch pod to surface off the coast of the target. A crew of technicians would then have to undertake the long, laborious process of fueling the missiles and setting the gyroscopic targeting parameters for the target relative to their location. All the while, they would have to hope that the vigilant coastal patrol (surface and air: Operation Teardrop, the USN with RCAF support - on the lookout for precisely this) never happened to spot them, because they would have been sitting ducks. In the event, no modified u-boat was ever built for the task, only one launch pod was ever completed, and no testing of any sort was ever undertaken.
Quote:
Originally Posted by John-UK
The end of the war stopped their plan.
Right. Just like the 'end of the war' stopped German plans for exploring the moon.
Aside from the fact that V2s against New York would have been about as strategically useful as those against London (which is to say, aside from some resource-diversion from an enemy that had far more resources to divert to defense than Germany had to divert to hare-brained offensive schemes), they'd have been even more inaccurate - being launched from a bobbing rather than fixed platform and from variable rather than fixed sites.
The whole plan was about as likely to come to fruition as Sea Lion, which is to say it was a fervent fantasy in the minds of some but had no real-world chance of actually happening.
Did you look at the vid? It seems you never. V rockets to hit New York wasn't just a plan on paper. They worked to do it producing hardware. They cut back as other matters were paramount. The plan, and its execution, never went away. The Italians had a plan to sink ships in NYC harbor with real craft to do it, look at the vid.
They also developed the Amerika bomber, to bomb NYC. A real plane that flew.
Bombing London was strategically useless. London was a political target not strategic. If the Germans had concentrated on Liverpool's massive convoy port they would have had greater results in curtailing the allied war effort. The Doolittle raid was strategically useless, and useless as a real raid as well. WW2 is full if these attacks o both sides.
But the Doolittle raid tied up Japanese military men and machines, so a sort of success - as would bombing NYC. As was the case with the US Navy tying up ships and men in searching for V rocket equipped U-Boats.
So you are assuming that a proverbial car wreck into a train crash, a pinprick attack on Manhattan Island or some port in New York occurring at the same time as a massive train wreck, the convoy versus U-Boat campaign would force President Roosevelt or Truman to force Admiral King and General Arnold to massively change something.?
I am just stating facts that the Germans and Italians went some way to attacking New York - not plans but set up the hardware, etc. What effect that would have is only speculation. If the Germans attacked NYC by the Amerika bomber & V rockets and the Italians sank ships in NYC harbor, the USA's focus would be more on home defence, tying up a hell of a lot of resources that could be used attacking Germany and Italy directly.
Professor Felton has a number of excellent military videos well worth watching. By the time the Italians finally go their act together and were ready to attack NYC they had dropped out of the war.
Professor Felton has a number of excellent military videos well worth watching. By the time the Italians finally go their act together and were ready to attack NYC they had dropped out of the war.
These planned attacks were quite real. Many Americans are not aware of them.
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