WesWorld

Unfortunately, Isotta-Fraschini is often abreiviated to I.F. and not I.S. so As-Is would not occur. However, As-If is entirely possible.

As-if !

Gee, guess I was clueless

June 22, 1935 - Berlin

General Udet was in his office, after returning from the Baltic coast, speaking with RLM chief Goering on the telephone before a staff meeting.

"Ja, flew Heinkel's new kite yesterday, the He-113. On the 100 km course, it held an average speed of just under 635 km/h, without clipped racing wings or a sprint engine. Not half bad, though they'll have to either fix the cooling system or go back to a normal one, when I landed I had probably 5-6 lights trying to tell me that a pump had failed. Not that I knew what they meant, hah! No one told me until I'd landed!"

"Heinkel doesn't like the -113 number? Eh, if he'd rather use -100 let him, it's not important. It's a nice plane, from the few flights I've made in it, especially now that they've put the bigger tail on it, the V1 tended to snake where the V2 doesn't."

"They're planning on putting clipped wings and a sprint engine into the V3 to try for a record later this year. The V4 is almost done, I saw it in the factory, it'll be going to Rechlin, take a spin when you can."

"Is it better than the -109? Right now it is, ja. I'm not sure about replacing the -109, not so soon, and I expect Messerschmit can fix some of the things that are giving the -113 the advantage right now, but I'm certainly inclined to give Heinkel some more room to develop his kite. It could be, if the cooling system gets fixed, that we'll end up with 2 or 3 standard single-engine fighters, just like we had in the last war. Not the end of the world."

"Ah, so Focke-Wulf is getting a couple of the BMW-139s? Are they going to put them in a fighter??? That will be different, be interesting to see what Tank comes up with."

"Right, staff meeting time. Aufwedersein!"

June 23, 1935 - Berlin

In Grand Admiral Raeder's office -

"A Kriegsmarine security battalion? Of course we have them, they're in charge of base security at Kiel, Cuxhaven, and so on. Major Kreigsmarine bases. But this! This isn't what they're really trained or equipped for."

"That's beside the point. It's part of the new Treaty, and I'm sure Chancellor Jarres and President Eckener would be less than pleased to find out that we don't think the job can be done."

"True. Mmmmmm. I suppose what we can do is send the 4th, from Kiel, as is, and have a 4th company train quickly on the Heer's new light machineguns and anti-tank rifles. Not that there SHOULD be trouble, but there might be, and those battalions are really mostly policemen. Once the 4th company is there, a reorganization can take place to spread the heavy weapons around a bit."

"How soon?"

"To get the 4th there? Probably two weeks, between getting them ready to move, aboard ship, and to Memel. To get a 4th company ready and there, probably 2 months or a bit more."

"Get on it, then. Send Prinz Eugen and some TBs with the ship carrying the battalion, just so nothing goes wrong, that end of the Baltic might not exactly be safe at the moment."

"True, last thing we need is for some hothead to make an identification mistake."

June 26, 1935 - Manzell

Dornier Werke has announced the availability of a new and improved version of their Do-17 bomber aircraft, the Do-215. This aircraft, with a wider nose section and powered by DB-601B engines, will give the aircraft superior performance in the air (if no more payload). There is no word on whether the Luftwaffe plans to purchase any of the new aircraft.


June 30, 1935 - Hamburg

BFW has announced that it has reached a subcontract agreement with Blohm und Voss for B&V to produce Bf-109s for BFW for delivery to the Luftwaffe. With the completion of the contract for Ha-137s and no further production expected, B&V was in need of more work and BFW's contract for Bf-109s is larger than it can deliver even with the new Augsburg plant expected to begin production within 6 weeks.