Best Jet of the War?

American carrier crews were better trained for damage control, and US ships in general were better setup for damage control and had much superior internal armor.

=S=

Lunatic

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Originally Posted by plan_D

And who said this fictional missile had to have a guidance system? Bombs didn't have guidance systems,

Actually there were bombs that were "guided" atleast somewhat:

PC 1400 FX "Fritz X" Guided Bomb
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Over-All Length: 130 in.
Length Of The Control Unit Housing: 16 in.
Length Of Fins At The Root: 31 5/8 in.
Length Of Fins At Outer Edge: 18 1/4 in.
Length Of Fin At Leading Edge: 18 5/8 in.
Max. Width Of Tail Width: 48 in.
Min. Width Of Tail Width: 33 3/4 in.
Span Of The Fins: 58 3/4 in.
Weight Of Filling: 270 kg.
Total Weight (Approximate): 1,650 kg
DESCRIPTION: The PC 1400 FX is a radio controlled glider bomb designed for attacks against capital ships or similar targets. The complete missile consists of three distinct units, the H.E. armour piercing warhead, the control unit housing, and the tail assembly. There are four aluminum alloy fins secured to the missile at approximately the center of gravity. The purpose of these fins is to give the bomb sufficient lift so that the control surfaces in the tail unit can exercise adequate influence.
WARHEAD: The warhead is an ordinary PC 1400 kg bomb to which the four above mentioned fins have been attached. It has one transverse fuze pocket located aft the H-type suspension lug. Two horizontal exploder tubes are centered in the warhead to insure high order detonation on impact. The usual filling for the warhead is 50/50 amatol.
FUZING: The type fuzing generally used has the El. A. Z. 38B electrical impact fuze set to operate with a very short delay. The fuze is sometimes fitted with an extension cap. Alternative fuzes have been found in the missile are the El. A. Z. 28A and the El. A. Z. 35. The wiring diagrams and the operation of each of these fuzes can be found in the bomb fuze section.
CONTROL UNIT HOUSING: The control unit housing, made of cast magnesium alloy,

Blohm & Voss 246 "Hagelkorn" Guided Bomb
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Manufacturer: Blohm & Voss
Type: Air launched guided glide bomb
First Launch: 1943
Number Produced: 1,100
Dimensions:
Fuselage Diameter: 542mm
Length: 3525mm
Weight: 730 kg.
Propulsion Unit: None
Fuel Weight: None
Thrust (kiloponds): None
Explosive Weight: 435kg
Wing Span: 6408mm
Wing Area: 1.47 Cubic Meters

Targeting:
Various guidance packages, none really successful

Blohm & Voss L.10 "Friedensengel" Torpedo Glider
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Manufacturer: Blohm & Voss
Type: Air launched guided torpedo glider
First Launch: December 21st, 1943
Number Produced: 324
Dimensions: Glider Only
Fuselage Diameter: 440mm
Length: 3894mm
Weight: 218 kg.
Propulsion Unit: None
Fuel Weight: None
Thrust (kiloponds): None
Explosive Weight: As LT 950 Torpedo
Wing Span: 2500mm
Wing Area: 2.06 Cubic Meters

Performance:
Speed: 87 Meters per second
Range: 9,000 Meters
Targeting:
N/A



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Note:
Friedensengel means Angel Of Peace

Henschel Hs 294 Torpedo Bomb
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Manufacturer: Henschel
Type: Air launched guided glide torpedo bomb
First Launch: 1941
Dimensions:
Fuselage Diameter: 620mm
Length: 6114mm
Weight: 2170 kg.
Propulsion Unit: 2 x HWK 109-507D
Fuel Weight: N/A
Thrust (kiloponds): 1,300
Explosive Weight: 630kg
Wing Span: 4025mm
Wing Area: 5.30 Cubic Meters

Targeting:
Hs 294D - Television guidance from launch plane.
Number Produced:
20 Hs 294 V1
40 to 80 Hs 294 A-0
45 Hs 294 V2
20 Hs 294 D

http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/LRG/index.html

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Originally Posted by RG_Lunatic

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.

=S=

Lunatic

Makes sense

[plan_D]

OK, German remote control glide bombs were 'guided' but I was refering to iron bombs - just dropped.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

alright fair eneogh

[Erich]

a cheap colourized imitation of JG 7 a/c........... interesting though

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

It should have been left black and white.

I left out the free fall guided bombs. USA had them too. USA also had remote control B-17's that "suicided" into the target. JFK's older brother died in one arming it before he was to bail out.

=S=

Lunatic

[plan_D]

We all know that the Germans were the leading experts in most technologies though. And thank god one of the Kennedys died before they became politicians, saves him being assassinated.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

The Germans were leading in technologocal designs but they did lack the resources and the time to finish most of there research. Given more time they could have been devastating. As said in other posts by other people I agree that the US had the better resoarces and industry in place.

[evangilder]

Originally Posted by RG_Lunatic

I left out the free fall guided bombs. USA had them too. USA also had remote control B-17's that "suicided" into the target. JFK's older brother died in one arming it before he was to bail out.

=S=

Lunatic

That was project Aphrodite. Joe Kenedy died in a B-24 Aphrodite airplane, not a B-17. That is a common misconception. We actually had a visitor at our museum that photographed several Aphrodite aircraft and missions.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Thats interesting project that I did not know about until know. I only the thought the Germans toyed around with that idea called the Mistel.

Radio Controlled Bomber Drone. Project Aphrodite. The idea was to pack an aged bomber with 10 tons of explosives and fly it into the impregnable submarine pens on the French coast. A pilot was required to get the bomber airborne and trimmed so that a controlling plane could fly it to the target. The first plane exploded over England before the pilot had bailed out. The pilot was Navy Lt Joseph Kennedy, eldest son of that family, who was being groomed for the presidency, a post later held by the second son, John F. Kennedy.
Sep 3, 1944 --A pilot took off in a torpex-laden drone Liberator from an airfield in England, set radio control and parachuted to the ground. The PV controlling the Liberator's flight, sought to hit submarine pens on Helgoland Island; however, he lost view of the plane in a rain shower during the final alignment and relying only upon the drone's television picture of the terrain hit the barracks and industrial area of an airfield on nearby Dune Island.
http://www.ww2pacific.com/ideas.html

Originally Posted by DerAdlerIstGelandet

The Germans were leading in technologocal designs but they did lack the resources and the time to finish most of there research. Given more time they could have been devastating. As said in other posts by other people I agree that the US had the better resources and industry in place.

It wasn't just more resources and industries, it was more base level technology. The machine tools were more advanced, the basic metalurgy was more advanced, plastics were more advanced, and the cutting edge electronic components were more advanced. As a plane designer (for example) you can only work with the alloys, machine processes, electronics technology, plastics, etc... that the base industry can provide. German engineers did as much as they could with what they had, but Germany was in no position to expand the base and this limited what could be realistically built. Consequently Germany spent a lot of resources on weapons systems they really could not realistically build.

=S=

Lunatic

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

I agree with you somewhat. I think they wasted a lot of resources not on what they could not build but on things that should not have been built. Things that were a waste of time or could not change the outcome of the war.

I always wonder how Hitler could take his Army into WWII using a bolt action rifel as the standard infantry arms.