Bomb sights for light bombers.

[tyrodtom]

The proposed Me-263 would have had a endurance of 12 minutes of power. That's where they get that 45 mile radius, 12 minutes at their speed would equal about 90 miles.

So you got to plan a mission down to the minute or it won't make it back to land, it's got to pick it's target with enough care so that once it goes low to skip bomb it has to have enough fuel to regain altitude to glide to it's landing field, where it will be helpless until towed to cover.

Sounds like another brillant brainstorm to deplete the Luftwaffe of it's pilots even faster.

 

[Njaco]

I don't see an anti-shipping Me 163 as stupid at all especially if it was the longer ranged Me 263 version. The Me 263, BT 700 weapon and TSA-2D bombsight were all independantly developed weapons so the expense was only in integrating them. The range is given in "Luftwaffe Secret Projects: Ground attack and special purpose aircraft" as a radious of around 45 knautical miles or so (don't have book with me).

Once airborn they would be beyond interception. The weakiness is of course the range, it can protect only a narrow section of coast. These interceptors and their pilots would need to do double duty intercepting bombers or reconaisance aircraft using either these aircraft; otherwise they'd just be wasting time waiting for an invasion fleet on their stretch.

The strength of the weapon was its extremely potent weaponry the warhead is equal to a truely massive torpedo, its detonation in an area that can not be easily protecred, the expected high accuracy and pk and the difficulty in intercepting.

Ofcourse the Luftwaffe didn't atually decide to produce it; however they did investigate it.

Sooooo......aren't we really talking about the Bachem "Nader"?

 

[standish]

Siegfried wrote in #49:
"I can't see it as particularly usefull within the context as you are comparing medium altitude level bomber attacks using level bombing sights and large strings of bombs against dry docked ships with dive bomber attacks against ships at speed and out to sea fully defended and at the ready. Brest was in fact regarded as difficult to defend, it was too open to the sea and so gave limited opportunites to mount a defense and had limited FLAK which is one reason the Germans moved their ships from the area. It was a level bomber attack against a dry docked ships using armour piercing bombs dropped from sufficient height to penetrate rather than semi-armour piercing bombs dropped from low level against a manouvering ship. Halifaxes and Wellingtons would have been nearly relatively ineffective against manouvering ships. The height of these attacks also precludes use of smaller more effective light FLAK.'"
--
My uncle Standish was the Australian pilot of 1 of the 2 Wellingtons shot down at Brest 1 July 1941, as Siegfried was discussing. His CO wrote to my grandmother that the flight was low and steady, which suggests Standish was lining up (a flak ship?) for a precise hit. Just a bit of personal info...
cheers.