Why you think the Normandy landings were such a surprise, Germans were incapable to make recon flights over over Weymouth - Selsey area during spring early summer 44, say nothing on London. Only the arrival of Ar 234 changed the situation.
Turbojet powered cruise missiles
Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
Why you think the Normandy landings were such a surprise, Germans were incapable to make recon flights over over Weymouth - Selsey area during spring early summer 44, say nothing on London. Only the arrival of Ar 234 changed the situation.
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
To answer the original question, given the technology of the day, it was a waste of time and resources to even consider a turbojet engine for a cruise missile like the V-1. It wasn't until long after the war when companies like Williams and Turbomeca produced small, relatively cheap and efficient turbojet engines that were way more practical for cruise missile application.
Shortround6
Major General
The idea was there earlier, Like the Fairchild J44 and the Westinghouse J32 ( 9.5 or 9.5A, only 9.5 on on diameter) but getting engines that worked and were cheap enough to be expendable may have been a problem in the early years.
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
that's the key...
The Germans didnt need recon in 1944 they already knew exactly where the allies were and what they were going to do. Unfortunately most of the info was bogus. By the summer of 1944 Hitler was actually listening more to the British secret service than he was to his own staff, facts played only a small part in the situation.
The best estimate for this series of attacks is 110-120 V-1s launched. Of these 22 were ramp launched, the rest air launched.
On these attacks the ranging was fairly good but the accuracy was not. 73% of the 42 impacts were within an ellipse measuring 8 x 33 miles with it's centre about 8 miles north east of Southampton. The British were uncertain whether Portsmouth or Southampton was the intended target and the composite 'Portsmouth-Southampton area' appeared in initial reports. Later analysis showed that just under half the impacts occurred within a circle whose centre lay 3 miles north of the mouth of the River Itchen, leading to the correct conclusion that Southampton was the target.
One V-1 did in fact fall not in the sea but in the River Test (south of Southampton) which must have made quite a splash
This map shows the impacts for the attacks in question. It also shows where III./KG3 were launching their V-1s, outside the range of British radar (they hoped).
As someone has said, it makes no economic sense to fit an expensive turbo jet to a system which promised, and delivered, so little in return. Unless the problem of the gross inaccuracy of the system could be overcome it would have been an even bigger waste of valuable resources than the V-1 programme already was.
At least as we can see from the map, all these V-1s did fall in the same county, Hampshire!
Cheers
Steve
GrauGeist
Generalfeldmarschall zur Luftschiff Abteilung
There were Luftwaffe recon flights over Britain before the Ar234.
The British were creating a massive deception to lure the Germans away from the Normandy invasion preparations, so when Luftwaffe overflights spotted any of the Normandy assemblage, it was dismissed.
No they don't, that's why Heer was demanding early June 44 daylight recon flight over Southern England ports others than Dover area, from the latter area they had some photos. They had made recon flights off the coast but those didn't produce info the Heer wanted.
Last edited:
The point I was making was that you do recon to decide strategy and tactics. Hitler had been convinced that the main attack would be across the Pas de Calais and so any recon would be ignored. Hitler controlled the disposition of the tanks, even after D Day he was moving tanks away from Normandy, towards Calais. Given that, any recon would only "prove" Hitler was correct because proving a mad man to be wrong is dangerous.
I don't see how aerial reconnaissance to do a sort of bomb damage assessment for the V-1 strikes could possibly have worked. Just look at the distribution of the impact points. The 42 V-1s that fell around Southampton were in an area roughly 33 miles by 5 miles! An aircraft making a pass over Portsmouth or Southampton, or flying up the Thames estuary to make a few passes one side or another of the river would be lucky to distinguish any damage caused by the V-1 strikes. It's hardly like flying over Hamburg or Dresden to assess the effects of a conventional strategic bombing strike. An aircraft that flew over London, Manchester or Southampton would probably conclude that all the weapons had missed. I don't think some here have grasped just how inaccurate the V-1 system was.
The Germans would have needed squadrons of reconnaissance aircraft overflying the entire area of the Home Counties (those that surround Greater London) to have any idea where the V-1s were landing. The RAF might have had something to say about that. It's a ridiculous undertaking.
Cheers
Steve
The Germans would have needed squadrons of reconnaissance aircraft overflying the entire area of the Home Counties (those that surround Greater London) to have any idea where the V-1s were landing. The RAF might have had something to say about that. It's a ridiculous undertaking.
Cheers
Steve
IIRC it was other way around, von Rundstedt co thought that attack would be across the pas de Calais and Hitler got, at least initially, an intuition that the target will be Normandy. And AG B (Rommel) decided the placement of the 3 PzDivs under his command 21st, 116th and 2nd, all three rather near to the coast for rapid a counterattack but dispersed along the coast, because the actual place of the invasion was unknown to germans.
from wiki
On 9 June (3 days after D-day), Garbo sent a message to German High Command that reached Adolf Hitler[24] saying that he had conferred with his agents and developed an order of battle showing 75 divisions in England—in reality, there were only about 50. Part of the "Fortitude" plan was intended to convince the Germans that a fictitious formation—First U.S. Army Group, comprising 11 divisions (150,000 men), commanded by General George Patton—was stationed in the south and east of Britain.[3]
The deception was supported by fake planes, inflatable tanks and vans travelling about the area transmitting bogus radio chatter. Garbo's message pointed out that units from this formation had not participated in the invasion, and therefore the first landing should be considered a diversion. A German message to Madrid sent two days later said "all reports received in the last week from Arabel [Pujol's German code-name] undertaking have been confirmed without exception and are to be described as exceptionally valuable."[2] A post-war examination of German records found that, during Operation Fortitude, no fewer than sixty-two of Pujol's reports were included in German military high command intelligence summaries.[39]
The German High Command accepted Garbo's reports so completely that they kept two armoured divisions and 19 infantry divisions in the Pas de Calais waiting for a second invasion through July and August 1944. The German Commander-in-Chief, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, refused to allow General Erwin Rommel to move his divisions to Normandy.[3] There were more German troops in the Pas de Calais region two months after the Normandy invasion than there had been on D-Day.
Yep. It's worth remembering that the V 1 was very simple technology, even for 1943/1944. Any country with a modern aircraft industry could have built it, it's just the Germans managed to put it into service before anyone else. Although fitted with a simple auto pilot, the 'guidance' system wasn't so much about guidance as pointing it in the right direction and fingers crossed it didn't stray off course. It was aimed in the general direction of London and fired. It worked on the simple principal of the known distance to London from the launch point and the time it took to get there based on a given speed. This was counted down on a counter driven by the wee propeller in the nose and once this ran out, the fuel lines to the motor were cut, spoilers under the hori stab were deployed and the thing tipped over into a terminal dive.
It's also worth remembering that the V 1 and to a degree the V 2 were terror weapons, post raid recon wasn't going to reveal much; the damage done was intended to be partially psychological, so an assessment of fallen rubble isn't going to tell you how the population are coping with the impact of the campaign. Both weapons were too inaccurate and inconsistent for a major strategic bombing campaign with tangible results toward German victory to be carried out, although it was hoped beyond hope that this might result, of course.
German reconnaissance was carried out over the British mainland throughout the war, but the results were indifferent to the point of being useless, since most attempts to undertake flights into British airspace were curtailed by the aircraft being intercepted. In 1944 a lone Bf 109 was shot down over England and crashed; the Brits were surprised to find it had a camera in the aft fuse - this is well known about the '109 of course, but it does scupper the theory that the Germans weren't at least trying to take images over Britain during the war.
If the reconnaissance could identify the rubble!
On a good day 100 V-1s could be launched against London. If an optimistic 25% managed to fall within the Greater London Area the reconnaissance aircraft would be looking to photograph just 25 sites in an area of over 600 square miles. Not likely.
If they wanted to assess the overall accuracy they would have to identify other sites thinly spread over the Home Counties, thousands of square miles. That's not unlikely, it's impossible.
Cheers
Steve
Hello pbehn
yes, Operation Fortitude succeeded well over Allied initial expections but that wasn't only because Hitler but also OB West believed at least some time to it. I was thinking the time before D-Day, when OB West (von Rundstedt co) believed that Pas de Calais would be the target, IIRC Rommel vacilitated between Pas de Calais and Normandy and Hitler, at least in early 44, intuitively thought that Allies will land in Normandy. The inability of LW to make proper recon over Southern England coast made the success of Operation Fortitude much easier before and after D-Day.
yes, Operation Fortitude succeeded well over Allied initial expections but that wasn't only because Hitler but also OB West believed at least some time to it. I was thinking the time before D-Day, when OB West (von Rundstedt co) believed that Pas de Calais would be the target, IIRC Rommel vacilitated between Pas de Calais and Normandy and Hitler, at least in early 44, intuitively thought that Allies will land in Normandy. The inability of LW to make proper recon over Southern England coast made the success of Operation Fortitude much easier before and after D-Day.
IIRC theBritish were well aware of LW's attemps to daylight aerial recons over England via radar and Ultra, besides 109 they tried Ar 240 and 190s. LW got some photos at least on Kentish ports.
- Thread starter
- #37
kool kitty89
Senior Master Sergeant
The designs Ohain was working with pre-war aren't all that far from the simpler/smaller range of designs that appeared post-war, even more similar to some of the smallest turbojet designs ever mass produced. (in part due to radial inflow turbines being more practical to use at those scales -they also ended up taking over most automotive turbocharger designs and I do wonder if Hirth considered applying them to their own turbocharger developments)
They were not particularly high tech, refined designs either ... and some of the innovations came less from engineering and more common sense mechanic/technician input. (the first functioning liquid fuel combustion chamber used burners adapted from the design of Otto Han's blow torch, even relying on hydrogen for the warm-up period before gasoline/kerosene could vaporize properly -similar to using methanol/ethanol in the spill pan of a torch -you can use gasoline too, but it's horribly sooty and can foul the fuel jet ... the very problem Ohain ran into when trying to start the engines using gasoline)
Still, I'm slightly surprised they hadn't attempted propane, butane, ether, or alcohol fuels to expand testing beyond hydrogen both for warm-up and for higher power compressor/turbine tests while the combustion chamber was being refined.
Granted, all work was being focused on engines suitable for manned (re-usable) aircraft, not missiles, and there's probably a better argument for using jet powered bombers than cruise missiles. (even with the poor fuel consumption, and fairly large frontal area/thrust ratio, if they could have refined the HeS 3 or HeS 6 for mass production rather than hitting the many many snags it took to getting the HeS 8 even to flying condition, they might have had useful short-life/frequent TBO engines much earlier in the vein of the earliest production 004Bs -albeit you'd need 4 to power a light/medium bomber ... but all the better for limping home in the case of in-flight failure)
I believe I've seen reference to Heinkel targeting a 10 hour TBO/service life as the minimum for practical military use.
Heinkel might have gained more RLM interest with a bomber than a fighter too. (and the way Ohain's engines were designed, they were very well suited to the sheet-metal working equipment of Heinkel's airframe facilities, adding potential for at least limited mass production before the Hirth Acquisition -the latter should have helped improve a lot of the engineering difficulties though, including with the compressor, diffuser, and turbine -or perhaps convinve Ohain to consider a centrifugal compressor + axial turbine layout for larger designs -plenty to go off from Hirth supercharger and turbocharger developments)
I'm off topic again here, though ... and I suppose a dedicated early-war Heinkel Jet Bomber 'what if' deserves its own thread anyway.
Might using recon flights able to follow/detect the V-1s with radio transponders be more useful? (corroborating the results of the data being sent back)
It would be a high risk method of corroboration, if the Germans felt that to be necessary. I have no idea how many V-1s were equipped with transponders. Given the wild inaccuracy of the weapon it would have to be a large number to give any sort of statistically useful data.
Cheers
Steve
From what I read when the (accurate) results from the transponders disagreed with the (inaccurate) on the ground reports they believed the false reports, presumed the transponders were not working and stopped using them.
yulzari
Tech Sergeant
One of the issues faced by British air defence in 1944 was the necessity to allow some Luftwaffe photo recce to find the fake aeroplanes, tanks, ships etc. of Operation Fortitude whilst stopping them finding the scale of the real resources. Letting them photograph the fake stuff and stopping them photographing the real items would send a message any german intelligence staff could read. A fine balance. And the some of the recce missions over the fake stuff have to be intercepted to display that they were defended. No way could interceptors be called off when in action as their radio was monitored in real time by the Germans. It had to be the ground directing staff who 'filtered' the intercepts.
