What plane do you wish had sawservice

[Anonymous]

Delcyros,

If the German's could have built a working "approximation fuse", they'd not have needed a fancy missile to defend Berlin. The lack of a proximimity fuse was probably the biggest single technical failure of the German's during WWII.

Why would you then assume they'd have one for this weapon?

=S=

Lunatic

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

The whole point of this topic sort of is a 'What If' RG, that is what he is implying. He is not saying it was going to have happened.

 

[Anonymous]

Well than the "what if" to consider in this area is...

WHAT IF THE GERMAN'S HAD DEVELOPED A PROXIMITY FUSE BY MID 1943 OR EARLY 1944?

No need to get off into complex SAM's, that alone would have crushed both the RAF and USAAF bomber offensives.

=S=

Lunatic

 

[delcyros]

Dear RG,

There have been at least 10 subtypes of C-2W (W-1 - W-10) SAM, W-8 and W-10 exlusively with approximation fuzes (abandoned by Speer). The reason for this was the competition of SAM-projects to choose the best SAM for further development in september 1944 by 2. Batterie FLAK Lehr- und Versuchsabteilung. During these tests WITHOUT approximation fuzes 50% of the fired C-2 hit the target plane in 40.000 ft physicly. All SAM have been remotery controlled. The "what if" scenario doesn´t take working fuzes into account, I rated that 20-30% of the SAM would hit the target, only (physicly). One of the conclusions of the competitive shots in september was that a working approximation fuze is needed. Moreso because of the large HE warhead, which caused fatal blast effects at distances up to 100 ft. You are completely right if you underline that such a fuze wasn´t ready in time (I believe that the acustic approximation fuze haven´t worked properly at any time...). There have been two major directions in approximation fuzes, the acustic one, I have already mentioned and an Funkmeß (radar)-based, but none of them have been produced in numbers for the C-2W project by wars end (call it Luftwaffe´46, if needed), I even doubt that R&D have been finisched.
There is also some evidence that C-2W have been used against bombers on at least one time. Nowarra, based on statements of Speer, mentioned that around 50 C-2W have been succesfully used in february and march 1945 against heavy bombers. (H.J. Nowarra, die deutsche Luftrüstung 1933-1945, vol. 4 (Koblenz 1993), page 65.)I tried to find any confirmations about it, but there is no proof beside of an article by Gröger in a local newspaper, who said to be member of Flarak Versuchsabteilung and who claims that C-2W and Hs-Schmetterling have been desperately used by this unit in the closing months of ww2 against heavy bombers in small numbers. He also claims that they succeed in downing bombers with these weapons. However, he didn´t wrote any concrete times and specifc local positions, so I cannot verify them. Gröger faded away in the late 90´s.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Interesting stuff. I did not know too much about the C-2W's.

 

[Anonymous]

Dear RG,

There have been at least 10 subtypes of C-2W (W-1 - W-10) SAM, W-8 and W-10 exlusively with approximation fuzes (abandoned by Speer). The reason for this was the competition of SAM-projects to choose the best SAM for further development in september 1944 by 2. Batterie FLAK Lehr- und Versuchsabteilung. During these tests WITHOUT approximation fuzes 50% of the fired C-2 hit the target plane in 40.000 ft physicly. All SAM have been remotery controlled. The "what if" scenario doesn´t take working fuzes into account, I rated that 20-30% of the SAM would hit the target, only (physicly). One of the conclusions of the competitive shots in september was that a working approximation fuze is needed. Moreso because of the large HE warhead, which caused fatal blast effects at distances up to 100 ft. You are completely right if you underline that such a fuze wasn´t ready in time (I believe that the acustic approximation fuze haven´t worked properly at any time...). There have been two major directions in approximation fuzes, the acustic one, I have already mentioned and an Funkmeß (radar)-based, but none of them have been produced in numbers for the C-2W project by wars end (call it Luftwaffe´46, if needed), I even doubt that R&D have been finisched.
There is also some evidence that C-2W have been used against bombers on at least one time. Nowarra, based on statements of Speer, mentioned that around 50 C-2W have been succesfully used in february and march 1945 against heavy bombers. (H.J. Nowarra, die deutsche Luftrüstung 1933-1945, vol. 4 (Koblenz 1993), page 65.)I tried to find any confirmations about it, but there is no proof beside of an article by Gröger in a local newspaper, who said to be member of Flarak Versuchsabteilung and who claims that C-2W and Hs-Schmetterling have been desperately used by this unit in the closing months of ww2 against heavy bombers in small numbers. He also claims that they succeed in downing bombers with these weapons. However, he didn´t wrote any concrete times and specifc local positions, so I cannot verify them. Gröger faded away in the late 90´s.

I find it very hard to believe remote controlled SAM's could successfully kill such a high flying target with any reliablility. How would the ground observer know when the SAM was within 100 feet of the target - there would be no effective depth/range perception. Actually physically hitting the target would be even more difficult, there are so many factors involved in plotting such an intercept.

I did some work on guidance systems in the mid-late 80's, and I find the idea of remote controlled targeting of this nature pretty absurd. It's hard to do even when you have a radar lock on the target.

The German's had just managed to copy the cavity magnitron in 1945, and their copy was weak because of the lack of magnet technology. I don't think it was possible for them to make a radio proximity fuse small enough to fit in a shell or even a missile that would have nearly sufficient range to be effective until the magnet technology was developed.

=S=

Lunatic

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

find it very hard to believe remote controlled SAM's could successfully kill such a high flying target with any reliablility. How would the ground observer know when the SAM was within 100 feet of the target - there would be no effective depth/range perception. Actually physically hitting the target would be even more difficult, there are so many factors involved in plotting such an intercept.

Why do you find it so hard to do? It is done today still, I have actually seen it done and it was quite easy. If the Germans used a camara mounted to it then I dont see why it was so hard. It is the same idea in the UAV program and they have even shot down things fired from the UAV using remote control.

 

[Wildcat]

How big were these C-2W's? To get to 40 000ft they would have to be big enough to carry abit of fuel. Did they have a launch motor and a sustainer motor or just a single motor? I've never heard of the C-2W's so forgive my ignorance.

 

[KraziKanuK]

Surface-to-Air Missiles
Enzian
The design of Enzian was inspired by the Me 163 rocket-powered fighter aircraft. Its delta-wing layout and relatively fat fuselage were similar. It had four boost engines and a sustainer. A small number was built, but problems with the engines and the guidance system were never resolved.

Feuerlilie
Anti-aircraft missile. It had a streamlined body and twin tail fins. It was powered by a rocket engine and had radio command guidance. Although development continued until the end of the war, it was never ready.

Hecht
Surface-to-air missile, in development until it was replaced by more promising designs in 1941.

Henschel Hs 117 Schmetterling
Of all experimental surface-to-air missiles, this one came closest to an operational weapons system. At the end of the war it was in production, but it was never operationally used. With a length of 4.29m, it was a relatively small missile. Its shape was that of a small aircraft, with a sustainer rocket engine in its body, and two boost engines, mounted above and below its fuselage. Range was about 32km, and it could be used against targets up to 10,000m high, although in such cases guidance problems were considerable: Aiming was visual, by means of a radio command link. There were also experiments with air-drops, with the use of radar for guidance, and with proximity fuses.

Rheintochter
This was a large anti-aircraft missile, rather crude in design. It had four tail fins, six fins on the center body, and four canard control fins. It had a boost engine in the tail, and a sustainer in the front fuselage. Control was again visual aiming with a radio command link. Rheintochter III was smaller than Rheintochter I, but had better performance. The project was abandoned in December 1944.

Taifun
This was an unguided anti-aircraft weapon. It was a simple, 1.93m long, spin-stabilized rocket with a 0.5kg warhead. Taifun was accelerated to Mach 3+, and could reach altitudes up to 15000m. It was intended to fire salvos of 30 rockets. At the end of the war it was in mass production.

from http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pettypi/elevon/gustin_military/gweapons.html

Henschel Hs.117
Schmetterling ("Butterfly") Surface to Air Missile.

Schmetterling was a surface-to-air, anti-aircraft missile designed to be small enough to be deployed by small teams of men without the need for heavy lifting equipment, and with a warhead with sufficient power to severely damage a B-17 enemy bomber with a proximity burst.

Designed by Professor H. Wagner, and developed by F. Henschel under his guidance, Schmetterling was on the drawing board comparatively early in the war. It comprised a liquid fuel, rocket-powered, winged missile with a warhead, launched with the aid of solid fuel boosters from a special firing rig.

Wagner's initial proposals were for a winged, powered, air launched, "stand-off" anti-ship missile, in competition with Dr. Kramer's free-falling Fritz X. Out of the series of weapons which Henschel derived via the Hs.293, the 1941 Hs.297 project was conceived as an anti-aircraft rocket. However, at this time, the defence rocket concept was not a requirement for the Reichsluftministerium and development was halted after two months' work as "uninteresting".

With a radical change in the fortunes of the war, defence weapons became a priority, and under the new designation 8-117, the Schmetterling project was reactivated in March 1943.

Schmetterling was designed to fly subsonically to target, but close to the speed of sound, at a constant mach number. Tested in wind tunnels at DVL and AVA, the most satisfactory design was a symmetrical shape with a circular cross section fuselage, swept back wings with a NACA 0012-0,825-40 profile, a tapered tailplane and a fin. Two solid booster rockets were used to launch the missile from the firing unit and raise it to flying speed, at which point the liquid-fuelled rocket motor was used to fly the missile to target, under radio control from an observer. A proximity fuse detonated the warhead.



from http://www.walter-rockets.i12.com/missiles/hs117.htm

 

[Wildcat]

Wow! I had no idea these things existed! Thanks for the info Krazi

 

[cheddar cheese]

Check out this Italian Medium, the CANT Z.1018 'Leone':

Arguably the finest bomber produced in Italy during World War II and fully a match for any medium bomber produced by Germany or the Allies, the Leone (lion) appeared too late to influence Italy's fate in the war and was therefore built only in very modest numbers. The design was the last by Filippo Zappata before he left CANT for Breda, and also his first airplane of all-metal construction. The Z.1018 embodied the lessons of all of Zappata's previous warplanes for CANT. The Z.1018 was a very clean design of the classic cantilever low-wing monoplane type with two wing-mounted engines, tailwheel landing gear incorporating main units that retracted into the rear of the engine nacelles, and a glazed nose incorporating the bombardier station. The first prototype was basically an aerodynamic test machine, and differed from its successors in being of all-wood construction with a tail unit that comprised a dihedraled tailplane carrying endplate vertical surfaces.

The prototype made its maiden flight in 1940 and was soon followed by five more prototypes of all-metal construction with lengthened fuselage, the cockpit moved forward from the original position over the wing, and a revised tail unit incorporating a single vertical surface. These prototypes were used for the evaluation of a number of power plants including: two 1,500-hp Piaggio P.XII RC.35 radials, two 1,400-hp Piaggio P.XV RC.45 radials, two 1,400-hp Alfa Romeo 135 RC.32 Tornado radials and two 1,475-hp Fiat RA.1050 RC.58 Tifone inverted-Vee engines.

It was clear from the beginning of the flight test program that the performance of the Leone was so high that a production order was certain. This materialized in 1941 in the form of a contract for 300 aircraft to be powered by two Alfa Romeo 135 RC.32 or Piaggio P.XII RC.35 engines, depending on availability. In the event that the Alfa Romeo radial engine was available in larger quantities, and production started in 1943 with a powerplant of two such engines. By the time of the Italian armistace in 9/43 however, deliveries had reached only 10 pre-production and five production warplanes, and a few of these machines saw limited service with the 101st Bombardment Group. Such was the potential of the basic design that two important derivatives were proposed. The first of these was a heavy fighter was a fixed forward armament of 7 20mm cannon as well as a defensive outfit based on three 12.7mm trainable machine guns. The second was a night-fighter with German Lichtenstein SN-2 radar with the antenna in the nose. Both these fighter models had an estimated maximum speed of 395 mph, but neither reached the hardware stage

Max Speed 323 MPH
Ceiling 23,785 Ft
Range 1,367 Miles
Horsepower 1,350 HP per Engine
Bomb Load 3,307 Lbs
Crew 4
Weight 8,800 Kg (11,500 Fully Loaded)
Engine Alfa Romeo 135 RC.32 Tornado radial engines
Armament Three 12.7mm machine guns, one fixed forward in starboard wing root, one in dorsal turret and one in ventral position, two 7.7mm machine guns in two beam positions

http://www.comandosupremo.com/Cantz1018.html


Check out the armament of the proposed heavy fighter!

 

[delcyros]

The size of the C-2W varies a bit. It depends on the model (W-1 - W 10), however that are really large SAMs. In general all C-2W are based on v. Brauns A-4, but smaller. The launching procedure is quite the same. From a mobile platform with vertical take off - one of the problems of this particular type is the fluid oxygen needed for it´s v. Braun designed rocket engine. It developed a huge amount of thrust but fluid oxygen is problematic to handle. This means that it would be ready for operational use at a more narrow timeframe.
The first C-2W1 succesful launch of a C-2W was in late february 1944, it developed a speed at vertical climb to 2775 Km/h (Mach 2.6 at 35.000 ft)and a range of 40 km. Later version increased the operational range of the C-2W (7,8,10) to up to 100 Km.
C-2W5 take part into the competition of sept. length: 7,765 m (~26 ft), diameter: 0,88 m (close to 3 ft.)
C-2W10 latest and most advanced version of C-2W, which actually was tested, length: 6,128 m (~20 ft.), diameter: 0,70 m (~2,3 ft)

 

[Anonymous]

find it very hard to believe remote controlled SAM's could successfully kill such a high flying target with any reliablility. How would the ground observer know when the SAM was within 100 feet of the target - there would be no effective depth/range perception. Actually physically hitting the target would be even more difficult, there are so many factors involved in plotting such an intercept.

Why do you find it so hard to do? It is done today still, I have actually seen it done and it was quite easy. If the Germans used a camara mounted to it then I dont see why it was so hard. It is the same idea in the UAV program and they have even shot down things fired from the UAV using remote control.

It is done today so that means it could be done in 1945? You do realize that the transistor was not invented until the 60's right? That only the USA had a digital computer in WWII and it was the size of an autotorium?

Have you seen the state of the art in cathod ray tubes, television cameras, and transmission in those days? It would not be easy to hit a fast moving target at high altitude at all! The camera would be generating a lot of noise and the resolution would be crap.

And if it did work, it would have been very be easy to jam.

=S=

Lunatic

 

[delcyros]

I don´t want to ignore the test results of remotery controlled missiles without better sources. They actually did it, RG. And there are lots of possibilities to determine the altitude: via directed radio (cross liniking, the Luftwaffe did it regularly in 1941 over Britian), via the same procedure like the Flak shells (needs the correct estimation of altitude prior to firing via radar), via acustic approximation or guiding (this method was frequently tested for the C-2W) and of course by passive radar guidiance or even infared technologies (all tested prior to wars end)
Another point is the jamming procedure. The FuG "Kehlheim" and "Straßburg" devices of the early SAM (for remotery controll) are quite in the same technological level like the devices of the Hs-293 guided missile or Fritz-X, which have been jammed succesfully. It is well possible to jam these SAM missiles succesfully. Question is how much electronic equippment a bomber can carry to defend itself. Esspecially in 1945, where electronics were big and heavy. The Hs-293 have been succesfully jammed by ships of destroyer size. On the other hand this would advance the development of independently controlled (radar and infrared) SAM, which was at wars end in construction resp. prototype (for night defense duties) stage. My estimations might not be historical but I stay with them. 6-9% bomber losses (I extrapolated the Hs-293 rates for training and combat sorties with remotery controlled anti ship missiles). I read in my books even higher shots to hit rates (close to 50% are estimated to hit under combat situations, but I don´t believe in them, this clearly is based on the sept. tests, but those tests doesn´t reflect real probabilities under combat circumstances as the Hs-293 records prove).

 

[Anonymous]

I was only referring to jamming the TV signals. It would not take much to do that, the nature of the signal was such that it was very sensitive to jamming. You would only have to put out a small jamming signal infrequently to cause it to loose sync and then it would take several seconds (at least) to regain sync. Also, the distance between the reciever and the missile is increasing while the distance between the missile and the jammer is decreasing, so the closer it gets the less it takes to jam it. I doubt the broadcasting unit in those missiles could even send a signal 40,000 feet (7.5 miles) - it would have taken quite a bit of power to do so.

As for radar, again they lacked ALNICO magnets, thus the only way they could get strong enough magnets to make their radar unit work was to apply a lot of power to electro magnets - not very practical for a "portable" unit.

Acoustic - think about the dynamics of putting acoustic sensors on a fast moving missile - it's just not practical. First the noise of the engine would be a problem. Then there is the wind over the mic's. And finally there is the speed of the missile (which is going to be a good fraction of mach).

And as for infra-red it would not be able to get a lock until it got pretty damn close to the target. I suppose it is possible but guiding the missile into position to obtain a lock would still be a huge problem.

 

[cheddar cheese]

I would have liked to see this Daimler-Benz in service

 

[delcyros]

I read about no TV guidiance for any SAM, for Hs-293 only.
The broadcasting unit of a SAM would require a lot of power to do so, agreed. But in all (actually done or known) tests it was not necessary to power it that much, since it only was a receiver. Emitter are based on the ground as far as I know (even for radar aim), it was planned to adopt any operational Radar site for aiming the missiles. They would follow the directed signal up to the point when infrared could redirect the missile. This procedure was tested in january and february 1945 frequently with C-2W10 and R-III with statisfying results. I have no sources about active homing of the SAM as advanced as this prototype stage.
Passive homing exclusively (plans for active homing have been for the C-2W12, which never left the drawing board), as far as I know.

 

[mosquitoman]

As soon as the SAM sites were found, they would have been plastered with bombs though. Possibly low level Mossies

 

[delcyros]

Anything the Mossi can´t do?
According to Gröger, they have been attacked quite frequently by low level fighters but without much succes. Keep in mind that all SAM are mobile and not fixed to a local position. I also have to underline that I made a mistake above. The spt. tests have not been against targets in 40.000ft, I reread an article, which states that there have been a specific demonstration of a C-2W destroying a target plane in almost 40.000 ft (12.000 m). The top operational altitude of the C-2W is given in most sources with 16.000 m (~53.000 ft). The general competition was between SAM against target planes in 8.000 m (~26.000 ft), only.

 

[mosquitoman]

It's not really possible to move a SAM from one side of the country to the other to get it in in position for a raid, they'd probably be on the coast in the radar chain gaps. A couple of cookies and boom, no more SAM