Jet Aircraft & Propellar aircraft as Separate Units and Separate Research

[BriantheWise]

Jersey John!

Let's play IP!

[Wolfpack]

The early flying wing wasn't the be-all-end-all of bombers. The American version did have significant problems. The range, speed, and payload were fine, but the pilots did have significant problems with bomb accuracy. The Crash certainly didn't help the cause either. All in all, it was a design well ahead of it's time.

[JerseyJohn]

BriantheWise --

Thanks for the invitation. I didn't think I'd be able to handle the Christmas Tournament schedule but am always game for individual games. Hope I can put up a fight that won't be too boring considering the level of competition you're accustomed to.

I know you're an active player so let me give you my E-mail and let me know when it's convenient and which scenario you prefer, etc..

jpdellova@aol.com -- or -- jpdellova@comcast.net (I try to leave the second one for business. Haven't had any problems with AOL, except for a hundred spams every day!)

Wolfpack

Agreed on all of it.

Still, it's interesting --even today-- to look at photos of other planes from that era, including jets and rocketcraft, then switch to a flying wing photo and you sort of look twice at it!

[ December 21, 2002, 06:51 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[Compassion]

Originally posted by Wolfpack:

Actually, I would say the biggest drawbacks to a jet bomber is the limited payload along with range. The early jet bombers weren't exactly heavyweights.

I wonder if this isn't more a reflection on the German air doctrine of using tac air only and not worrying much about strategic bombing. Even though they were hard pressed and obviously trying to concentrate on defensive weapons (no matter what Hitler said) in 1944 and 45 and the need for a large long range bomber was nil. However, Luftwaffe project list has many concept drawings for jet powered bombers but most with ranges well under 3000km. THere are a few 4 engine jet designs, but they are built for speed, not distance such as the Arado AR E.560 project listed below:

This fast mover would carry 3 tons of ordinance with a top speed of 590mph, but a range of only 2100 mph.

Conversely, the US had several designs on the boards as early as 1944, but with the Superfortress's sucess there was no need. THe Germans had several quite innovative designs that would come up for long range bombing of any kind, but they were cancelled well beforethe writing on the wall was recognized mostly due to (imo) lack of patronage in the Luftwaffe and the procurmement offices.

The world would have to wait until 1952 for delivereis of the B-47 for a jet bomber to arrive on the scene (shown here with a jato or rato package for short take offs). Note the F-80 flying chase.

[ December 21, 2002, 07:40 PM: Message edited by: Compassion ]

[General Billote]

That F-80 is mucho cool looking....

[JayJay_H]

Originally posted by JerseyJohn:

[...]the pilot didn't sit, he lay on his stomach viewing things through a plexiglass panel. The mixture activated itself exactly between his legs!

Harrrrrrrrrrrr

[JerseyJohn]

JayJay_H

Yes, that guy was a test pilot even beyond the normal looney requirement! It had to be landed on a virtually endless salt flat.

I'd love to know if that contaption ever made a second test flight.

I hate to say this, but the 1945 Imperial Japanese no-return Air Force would have loved it!

Compassion

Great entry. I think it was in 1944 that the Luftwaffe sent a stripped down aircraft on a round-trip flight from Germany to circle over New York City. Not certain what the type was, maybe an augmented Condor but probably a prototype of something that never went into production, possibly something similar to what you've posted up there. The purpose was to establish to their own satisfaction that they could deliver a wonder weapon if one were made available.

[ December 21, 2002, 11:14 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[Compassion]

Originally posted by Wolfpack:

The early flying wing wasn't the be-all-end-all of bombers. The American version did have significant problems. The range, speed, and payload were fine, but the pilots did have significant problems with bomb accuracy. The Crash certainly didn't help the cause either. All in all, it was a design well ahead of it's time.

True, though the crash has been thought by many to be caused because of intentional misuse of the plane by the test crew.... gone horribly wrong. As for accuracy, the only thing they had to go on was the government delivered bombsights (have no idea if the hopped up Nordens they were using at the time could handle either the flying wing's extreeme pitch up cruising trim or the speeds it flew at). Add to that the B-36 shared it's corporate sponser with that of the brand new SecDef's last job, the B-36's design win is certainly suspect!

THough as you say, it was a design ahead of it's time and until modern avionics and computer flight correction had been perfected, it could be a handful in some flight conditions... .But damnit!, it looked cool in War of the Worlds!

[ December 21, 2002, 08:17 PM: Message edited by: Compassion ]

[Compassion]

Originally posted by JerseyJohn:

I think it was in 1944 that the Luftwaffe sent a stripped down aircraft on a round-trip flight from Germany to circle over New York City. Not certain what the type was, maybe an augmented Condor but probably a prototype of something that never went into production, possibly something similar to what you've posted up there. The purpose was to establish to their own satisfaction that they could deliver a wonder weapon if one were made available.

THey had lots of neat designs though many were unpractical or depended on some other branch of service. I always liked the Blohm & Voss seaplane bomber concept that depended on oversized U-Boats to work as tenders to maintain a flotilla across the Eastern Seaboard of the US... of course that project was cancelled in 1943 when Happy Time came to an end and there was going to be no way to project a force like that across the Atlantic.

[ December 21, 2002, 08:39 PM: Message edited by: Compassion ]

[JayJay_H]

This was a proposal for a New York bomber. The flying wing format allows for large amounts of internal fuel as well as a large bomb load. Had the war continued into he late 40's one of these may have been able to deliver an atomic bomb on New York, Boston, Washington....

Arado E555

[Compassion]

Of course that depends on the German slave physics corps coming up with a nuke... NOt the most likely of scenarios in light of the fact that the US had at least two in 1945 and would have been used to bring Germany to heel if they hadn't already fallen.

[JayJay_H]

By then (late 40's) Germany would have even be able to introduce the rest of their secret weapons (which they had in the drawer) to the battlefield. To name a few:

Surface-to-Surface Missiles

Fieseler Fi 103

Also known as the V-1 or FZG 76, this was the

first practical cruise missile.

Rheinbote

The Rheinbote was a four-stage, unguided long-range artillery missile. (Range of 215km.)

------------------------------

Air-to-Surface Missiles

Blohm und Voss Bv 143

Glide bomb for anti-ship use, accelerated by a rocket engine.

Blohm und Voss Bv 246 Hagelkorn

The Hagelkorn was an unpowered long-range glide bomb. It had an excellently streamlined fuselage, and wings with a very high aspect ratio. Construction of the wings was unusual: The aerofoils were made of concrete, around a steel core. Range was up to 200km if released from 10,000m. Several guidance systems were tried, including the Radieschen radar homing system. This made Hagelkorn one of the first anti-radar missiles. Over 1100 were produced before the project was cancelled.

Friedensengel

The Friedensengel was a set of wings and tail surfaces, designed to extend the range of a standard 765kg air-launched torpedo.

Fritz-X

Fritz-X, also known as FX-1400, was the first successful guided bomb. It consisted of a 1400kg armour-piercing bomb, fitted with four wings in a cruciform arrangement, and a tail ring with spoilers for control.

Henschel Hs 293

This was the first guided missile that entered service in large numbers. The Hs 293 was a glide bomb of aeroplane configuration, with a underslung rocket engine. The sloop HMS Egret, on 27 August 1943, had the dubious honour of being the first ship sunk by a guided missile. Many other victims followed, including five destroyers. Over 2300 Hs 293 missiles were fired.

Henschel Hs 294

Derivative of the Hs 293. It was intended as a anti-ship weapon, travelling to final trajectory to its target underwater.

Henschel GT 1200

The GT 1200 was a powered glide bomb for use against ships. It was designed to dive into the water at the end of its trajectory.

Zitteröschen

Zitteröschen was the first supersonic, winged, and guided missile. Intended for use against ground targets, it had small triangular wings and two rocket motors. It did not enter production.

------------------------------

Surface-to-Air Missiles

Feuerlilie

Anti-aircraft missile.

Hecht

Surface-to-air missile.

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.

Rheintochter

This was a large anti-aircraft missile, rather crude in design.

Taifun

This was an unguided anti-aircraft weapon. Taifun was accelerated to Mach 3+, and could reach altitudes up to 15000m. It was intended to fire salvos of 30 missiles.

Wasserfall

The Wasserfall SAM was developed at Peenemüde, and was based on experience with the A-4, also known as V-2. It was smaller, but of similar shape and also powered by liquid fuels. The operator used input from radars tracking both the target and the missile to steer it, using a radio command link. A proximity fuse would ignite the 235kg warhead. The program was cancelled in February 1945, when it was close to the production stage.

------------------------------

Air-to-Air Missiles

Henschel Hs 298

The world's first AAM.

Kramer X-4

R4M

Me 262 could carry wooden racks with twelve R4M missiles under the outboard wing panels. With a range of 1500m and a warhead of 0.5kg, they were very effective against allied bombers. There was also a version with an armour-penetrating shaped-charge warhead. The R4M was not used on a large scale, but after the war many airforces introduced folding-fin aircraft rockets (FFAR) based on the R4M.

------------------------------

Anti-tank Missiles

Kramer X-7 Rotkäppchen

Wire-guided anti-tank missile.

Pfeifenkopf

This anti-tank missile used electro-optical guidance.

Pinsel

Used electro-optical guidance either.

[ December 21, 2002, 10:13 PM: Message edited by: JayJay_H ]

[Compassion]

They would either have been turned to so many miles of radioactive molten glass from US nukes or the US and Germans would have agreed to an armistace, I think. Neither society would have been able to withstand a war then went that long. The germans's might have found themselves in a twilight war with Russians beyond the Caucases, but other than that I would expect a very frigid cold war to ensue for poissibly decades.

[ December 21, 2002, 09:53 PM: Message edited by: Compassion ]

[JerseyJohn]

Compassion & JayJay_H

You guys are in rare form -- hell of a day for postings!

Concerning the German A-Bomb project. I hope somebody makes an entry on the American third string major league catcher turned espionage agent (he was actually pretty good, gathering info on the Japanese while playing there pre-war!) Moe Berg.

Among other things he was sent a late-in-the war mission to Switzerland with a revolver in his pocket.

Pretending to be a practicing physicist he sat in on a university seminar given by (not sure of the name, was it Hans Richter? I'll look it up later if nobody posts it) the head of Germany's A-Bomb project. He was supposed to decide whether or not to kill the man based upon his assessment of how close they were to actually having a bomb.

After the seminar Berg took the good Doctor aside and badgered him with questions, ultimately deciding he was an all right guy and shouldn't get plugged. Nobody believes Berg actually understood any of the physics discussed let alone have any basis whatever for deciding where Germany's A-Bomb project was headed. Years later the professor recalled the incident (not knowing it's true nature) and laughed about

insand American who kept talking about nothing!

In actuality, whether by lack of resources or will (some think it was sabotaged from within) the German A-Bomb project never progressed very far. While in custody, the house they were lodged in was bugged and the German scientists were allowed to listen to descriptions of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki detonations.

Their conversations secretly taped, it turned out that by morning they had correctly deduced the nature of the bombs including the fact that one had used plutonium and the other uranium. So perhaps the only thing standing between what they actually reached, and what they could have had, was a little quiet research time and acess to the Belgian Congo's uranium.

There was also a German plane that used to fly back and forth between the Caucasus and, I believe it was, Manchuria. I'm sure someone will post a more specific account very soon.

Final thoughts -- there were also German schemes to mount V-1s and V-2s on U-Boats -- just noticed JayJay's missles listed above; this might also be covered there.

-- As well as Japanese plans to house aircraft in a huge submarine that would cross the Pacific and wreck the Panama Canal. I think that would have made a good opening move, but by 1945 how much more could the U. S. have transferred over!

[ December 21, 2002, 09:56 PM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[General Billote]

" I too was sent on a late-war mission to Switzerland with a revolver in my pocket!"

[Compassion]

Originally posted by JerseyJohn:

Final thoughts -- there were also German schemes to mount V-1s and V-2s on U-Boats -- just noticed JayJay's missles listed above; this might also be covered there.

-- As well as Japanese plans to house aircraft in a huge submarine that would cross the Pacific and wreck the Panama Canal. I think that would have made a good opening move, but by 1945 how much more could the U. S. have transferred over!

It's almost laughable what these regimes think it would have taken to terrorize the US into helplessness. As we have seen both recently and in the past, terror attacks generally tend to piss the US off as well as are usually formualated by those that do not understand that the US is as big as it is. It would take years of varied, unanswered terror attacks to cow the US. ANd I'm not talking as an American here, but as someone who had put in the time to undestand first how big and homogenous the US is poorly the fascist and Japanese powers understood it.

Shoot, look how poorly Axis terror attacks worked on the tiny island of Great Britain and the threat of them worked on the Aussies!

[Compassion]

Originally posted by General Billote:

" I too was sent on a late-war mission to Switzerland with a revolver in my pocket!"

IS that a revolver in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?"

Alright, who can tell that I've seen Two Towers today and then spent the rest of the afternoon drinking Bass?

[Konstantin V. Kotelnikov]

Originally posted by JerseyJohn:

General Billote

Good idea. As the Soviets approached Berlin they saw a lot of Pnzr IIIs and IVs instead of Tigers and Panthers.

It's like the scene from the 1945 movie, A Walk in The Sun , after knocking out a Pz II in the Salerno battle, one American says to another, "Funny isn't it, the closer we get to Germany the more of their old stuff we're seeing."

In one of my red army books I have a rare photo of a german A7V knocked out in the streets of Berlin.

Those not familiar with the A7V it was the german tank used in WWI.

Also if you have read the excellent book "Forgotten Soldier" by Guy Sajer. (I Highly recommend this as an outstanding read!) They desparately fought to keep a PZ-II functional during the fighting in Memel in late 1944.

Germany reached a point where they would use anything that was still working to steam the tide from East and West.

-dave

[JerseyJohn]

Konstatin V. Kotelnikov

There was an English translation of a German book entitled Defeat in the East that I read in the '60s. It described very vividly what it was like being a German infantryman in 1945 on the Eastern Front.

Surrender was unthinkable unless you were part of a large group and even then it helped if someone was running a camera and you could remain inside the frame!

It let you know the frustration of watching T-34's and the much larger KVs crushing everything as they approached and occaisionally some fanatic Hitler Youth would rush out and stop one with a lucky shot from a panzerfaust, usually being cut down in the attempt.

Then there'd be a lull, then an earthquake bombardment of heavy artillery that lasted for hours and another retreat knowing there was less and less space to move back into.

He describes seeing PzIIIs and PzIVs always just beyond the line of sight maybe firing once then withdrawing as the Soviet Hulks moved forward. The book describes this right up to Berlin and fighting in the cellars without hope.

It's probably out of print. I think the one I read was a Ballentine Paperback. It's the only war book I've ever read that gave me a nightmare -- not because it described anything more terrible than other books, just the unrelenting hopelessness. The descriptions of the many times survivors emerged after a bombardment not know if they'd already been encircled!

But what stuck with me most was the way all the German equipment at that point seemed like useless junk. Sure, they had great weapons somewhere, but the poor bastards at the front were down to rifles and grenades and precious little of that.

[ December 22, 2002, 01:56 AM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[Konstantin V. Kotelnikov]

Originally posted by JerseyJohn:

Konstatin V. Kotelnikov

It's the only war book I've ever read that gave me a nightmare -- not because it described anything more terrible than other books, just the unrelenting hopelessness. The descriptions of the many times survivors emerged after a bombardment not know if they'd already been encircled!

Then if you haven't read "Forgotten Soldier" you should.

Sager does an amazing job of conveying the hopelessness of Memel. His descriptions of the russian front will stick with you. The snow, being encircled, the bombardments and so forth.

He was a Grenadier in Grossdeutschland joining the Division shortly after Kursk, just in time for Belgorod.

Unlike many books, it's not heroic, it is truth. How he cowered in his slit trench, how others came unglued during combat. The suicidal despair of being cut off. How they resigned themselves to death.

I have read many accounts of fighting on the Eastern Front and his is the only one I have read four times.

And I will read it again someday down the line.

A definate thumbs up.

[JerseyJohn]

Konstatin V. Kotelnikov

Your thumbs up is good enough for me. Thanks for sharing it, will find a copy and am looking forward to reading it.

A statement made by innumerable honored heros: The real heros are the ones they put in the ground.

[ December 22, 2002, 02:50 AM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[JayJay_H]

Originally posted by Compassion:

US and Germans would have agreed to an armistace, I think.

transatlantic armistice and soviets continue fighting the occupants with guerilla tactics. Agreed. I voted for that in a previous thread, that means, after USSR surrendered in SC, the Germans still should have to deal with partisans.

[Brancaleone]

Did you know? Italian air force even was planning a jet-fighter (the Reggiani Re 2007). And the first jet engine aircraft all of the world was the Caproni-Campini 1...

http://www.strange-mecha.com/aircraft/early-jet/it-jet.htm

[JerseyJohn]

Brancaleone

Thanks for the info. For all his folly Mussolini must have been planning something prior to Hitler's invasion of Poland. He kept saying Italy wouldn't be ready to fight untill late 1941 or even 1942. I think that would also have been a better time for Germany. It seems weird that, while designing such advanced concepts the Italian airforce was putting it's fliers in such obsolescent crates.

A decade earlier Italy had possibly the best airforce on earth -- the years when they were doing things like sending Balbo across the Atlantic with a squadron of seaplanes. My guess is Mussolini was planning another similar revival but the unexpected war -- Hitler said it was years away -- put a monkey wrench in his plans.

It seems odd to me that Germany, England and Italy were researching jets in 1939 and in 1944 the United States had to be given a jet engine to jumpstart a nonexistent program. Were the three countries involved working with knowledge of each other's technology, or did they reach the same concept through seperate paths?

[ December 23, 2002, 08:13 AM: Message edited by: JerseyJohn ]

[Brancaleone]

A decade earlier Italy had possibly the best airforce on earth -- the years when they were doing things like sending Balbo across the Atlantic with a squadron of seaplanes. My guess is Mussolini was planning another similar revival but the unexpected war -- Hitler said it was years away -- put a monkey wrench in his plans.

It seems odd to me that Germany, England and Italy were researching jets in 1939 and in 1944 the United States had to be given a jet engine to jumpstart a nonexistent program. Were the three countries involved working with knowledge of each other's technology, or did they reach the same concept through seperate paths?

I don't know, but I suppose air planing concentrated more on manoeurvrability than speed. So, militars didn't think that a jet engine was more desirable than a nimble and agile aircraft. It may be UK, Italy and Germany didn't trust in real benefits of a high speed aircraft.