Best Jet of the War?

[GermansRGeniuses]

Actually no, the point is for the missle to be large.

Why?

That way it can carry more explosives and of varying types, as well as possible targeting and/or guidance equipment and a shaped warhead charge to pierce ship armor well...


Mainly as a weapon to attack capital ships (like the deck of a carrier), not outlying DDs...

Originally Posted by DerAdlerIstGelandet

You know the Germans were working on VT (proximity fuses) as early as the early 1930's. The concept was not new, I wonder why they could not get it to work.

Again, it was a matter of where their base industrial technology was at the time. The British could not get such a thing working either. When the problem was taken up in earnest by the USA (with the advantage of recieving all the British research notes and some British researchers), the wide base of the US electronics industry was able to supply the needed skills and construction methods. There was just a lot more diversity of research and industry to be applied to solving this problem. Sylvania was working on minature glass tubes, and focuesed on making these strong enough to withstand initial acceleration. At the same time, RCA began developing metal tubes in case Sylvania's efforts failed (which were abandon when Sylvania succeeded). Germany and Britain simply could not afford to undertake such multiple path research, they would instead try the most promising path first, then if that did not succeed, they would try another or give up.

Let me explain what I mean by the industrial/research base. Prior to WWII the USA already had companies like Sylvania, GE, RCA, Raytheon, Eastman Kodak, and Hytron (and some others) competeing in electronics and vacuum tube industry. When the VT fuse project was undertaken the skills and techniques and engineering talent of all these (and many more) companies which had previously been working as competitors along different lines of thought were able to be drawn upon to develop a working fuse. 87 firms using 110 factories were utilized to develop and produce the VT fuse, neither Germany nor Britain had this kind of diversity or depth to draw upon within their national electronics industries.

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Lunatic

Originally Posted by GermansRGeniuses

Actually no, the point is for the missle to be large.

Why?

That way it can carry more explosives and of varying types, as well as possible targeting and/or guidance equipment and a shaped warhead charge to pierce ship armor well...


Mainly as a weapon to attack capital ships (like the deck of a carrier), not outlying DDs...

But they didn't have any guidence systems that could work beyond a few miles. And also the planes to carry them had limits to the size of the rocket that could be carried. The engine on the Me163 could carry that thing 50+ miles after climbing to altitude, it would have been able to carry a ship based missile with no climb even further. They might have eventually tried something bigger than the Hs293, but something as large as the rocket on the Me163 was just unneeded.

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Lunatic

[GermansRGeniuses]

You seem to not have gotten the point...


It could have been dropped by an He-177, a jet bomber, or anything that could carry it...

As it is indeed a rocket, more so than a missle, it could be released at a dive, in a roughly 45 degree angle to pierce a ship's top armor, though I am saying it could be used to mount a guidance system due to its size...

[plan_D]

Finally someone has mentioned the A-10 apart from me. Although missing the vital fact that it was the worlds first ICBM, or maybe that was said and I didn't read it.

Well done to RG for being one of the first Americans in history to mention the British when discussing something the Americans achieved that used British notes on the subject.

And who said this fictional missile had to have a guidance system? Bombs didn't have guidance systems, so this missile could have been dropped while the mother ship is pointing it at the ship. Turn away and go home with the tail gunner laughing as the ship explodes. Needs to be bigger for a bigger explosion to bring down Aircraft Carriers.

Originally Posted by GermansRGeniuses

You seem to not have gotten the point...


It could have been dropped by an He-177, a jet bomber, or anything that could carry it...

As it is indeed a rocket, more so than a missle, it could be released at a dive, in a roughly 45 degree angle to pierce a ship's top armor, though I am saying it could be used to mount a guidance system due to its size...

That was not the intent of the weapon. An He-177 trying to attack an Allied ship as you describe would likely be a dead plane, it would have to get too close. And from such a range, why would it need a rocket motor giving 6 minutes of thrust?

The idea of these weapons was to release them outside of enemy AAA range and then guide them into the target. For that, perhaps 45 seconds of thrust is more than enough. Because the weapon is going to be in decent the whole way to the target, it does not need the thrust to lift it 30,000 feet into the air in 3 minutes, so this dicates the motor should be smaller as well.

The Hs292 weighed about 3000 lbs. The Me163 weighed about 9000 lbs. To justify using the Me163 engine on a larger scale Hs292 type missile, the missile would have had to weigh something on the order of 20000 lbs or more, and no German bomber could carry such a weapon.

The He177 could carry two Hs292's, so it might be able to carry a weapon weighing about 10000 lbs - maybe. Put the Me163 engine on that, and it would go so fast the person operating it would have almost no chance to actually guide it into the target, and it would have enough fuel to go 50+ miles to a target, but it would be out of the operators range within 5 miles. What's the point of that?

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Lunatic

[GermansRGeniuses]

BECAUSE THE ROCKET WOULD GO BLOODY FAST!


Also, provided it was fairly well sized and broke the sound barrier, the boom would scare the hell out of the sailors on board, just like the sirens on the Ju-87!

[plan_D]

I'm liking the fear thinking there.

Originally Posted by plan_D

Finally someone has mentioned the A-10 apart from me. Although missing the vital fact that it was the worlds first ICBM, or maybe that was said and I didn't read it.

Well done to RG for being one of the first Americans in history to mention the British when discussing something the Americans achieved that used British notes on the subject.

And who said this fictional missile had to have a guidance system? Bombs didn't have guidance systems, so this missile could have been dropped while the mother ship is pointing it at the ship. Turn away and go home with the tail gunner laughing as the ship explodes. Needs to be bigger for a bigger explosion to bring down Aircraft Carriers.

A lot of British ideas were perfected in the USA during WWII. The VT fuse and computing gunsights are two good examples.

It kind of defeats the purpose of a liquid fueld rocket to use it in a direct fire weapon like you describe. For this purpose, solid fuel rockets would have done the job just fine and much much safer. The problem with solid fueled rockets is they have no thrust control and endurance was typcially limited to 30 seconds or less (usually much less). A liquid fueled rocket allowed the thrust to be controlled and gave more powered flight time, which was what was needed for a manually guided standoff weapon.

If all you want is a big rocket to shoot at ships, not a guided missile, something like the "tiny tim" made a lot more sense.

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Lunatic

[GermansRGeniuses]

I know - it would make other sailors think there were twice the rockets, scaring them to hell and demoralizing them most likely, kinda like the Gau-8 Avenger, the shell hits before you hear the burst!

[plan_D]

Could a 'Tiny Tim' bring down a Carrier?

Really though, if you've got a V-1 sized rocket blowing this ship apart there'd be no point in scaring them. But then, I'm sadistic so I'd want to scare them before killing them.

Originally Posted by GermansRGeniuses

I know - it would make other sailors think there were twice the rockets, scaring them to hell and demoralizing them most likely, kinda like the Gau-8 Avenger, the shell hits before you hear the burst!

P-51's and P-47's used to use the speed of sound effect for ground attack all the time. They'd come in near the target at high speed at about 8,000 feet and head away from it, then sweep around into a steep dive and come back at it. The enemy would think they'd passed them by, but when they realized the sound was not actually still going away from them, they had only seconds before the fighters were on top of them. Often the rockets were exploding just as they started to "look up".

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Lunatic

[GermansRGeniuses]

Good man!

When you bring that up, as it being V-1 sized, that means an He-11 could likely carry it...

Originally Posted by plan_D

Could a 'Tiny Tim' bring down a Carrier?

Who's carrier and what size? Japanese - maybe but unlikely. British - probably not. American - extremely unlikely.

But the Tiny Tim 11.75" HVAR was only 10' long 1285 lbs in weight with a 550 lbs warhead. Increase that to 5,000 lbs with a 2000 lbs warhead and yes, it probably could take out most CV's.

But US CV's were very hard to take down with a single hit even with 2000 lbs bombs. They were very well compartmentalized and had lots of damage control systems, and very well trained crews.

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Lunatic

[plan_D]

Quite simply, the first line could have been a no then. Dragging it out well beyond needs...

British carriers had damage control systems as did the Japanese. And was it only the US carriers that had well trained crews, I think not.