Brakemine

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What if.....what if Brakemine had entered service with the Army and Navy?

8ft long.
2ft Diameter?
6-8 3" rockets for propulsion.
Beam riding guidance.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brakemine

Prototype fired from modified 3.7" mounting.

Guidance by Blue Cedar radar
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar,_ ... o._3_Mk._7

Such a SAM, could have profound effect on developments.
Why bother with the 3"/L70 if this works?
Why bother with Green Mace?
Would this influence choices about MRS.5?
This could kill off Sea Cat/TigreCat
What happens to Thunderbird and the Stage Plan in this scenario?
It could possibly be developed to meet Popsy Mopsy and Orange Nell as a Anti-missile-missile.
 
I've never seen a range figure for Brakemine.
Nor any hint of p.k.
Certainly Blue Cedar had a range of 37,000yards which I suspect is well above the missile.

One might suspect that there would be a change of rocket motor, likely to a single large one, possibly 12".

One might also suspect that the wings might change shape with better wind tunnel work.

It would certainly have a major impact if an automatic launcher was developed.
 
What if Brakemine had entered service with the Army and Navy?
That's going to require the project to have much more resources poured into it. Just getting a rough and ready pre-production model to the stage of live firing against enemy aircraft is going to need that or at least an earlier start, probably both.


Why bother with the 3"/L70 if this works? Why bother with Green Mace?
Even if Brakemine has shot down aircraft in real life I think the anti-aircraft artillery projects are still likely to go ahead as they're the tried and tested option with them being seen as more of an evolution, surface-to-air missiles will still be highly experimental.

The largest change that I think it would create is to make surface-to-air missiles look like a viable weapon in the near- to mid-future. If that's the case then you might see an earlier start to and expansion of the Royal Aircraft Establishment's series of test vehicles which researched aerodynamics, control, guidance etc. RAE do pure research and pass the data on to firms, or the temptation might be there for government to start developing missiles themselves using an 'arsenal' organisation.
 
BRAKEMINE
 By far the most advanced of these projects at the end of the war was Brakemine, a ground-to-air-missile developed jointly by Anti-Aircraft Command and A. C. Cossor Ltd.
  This project began early in 1943, when, almost simultaneously, two proposals were written on the subject. The first was by Captain Sedgefield of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers entitled "Notes on a radio controlled rocket" and the second by Mr. L. H. Bedford, Director of Research at A. C. Cossor Ltd., in conjunction with Mr. Jofeh, describing a similar missile which would be controlled via a radar beam locked onto the target aircraft.
 Both of these papers quickly landed on the desk of Major General Sir Frederick Pile, who was then General Officer, Commanding, Anti-Aircraft Command. Pile called a meeting on the 27th of April 1943 to discuss these proposals, at which both Sedgefield and Bedford were present. One outcome of this initial and subsequent meetings was that several sub-committees should be set up to investigate the various subsystems of the missile in more detail, rather than attempt to develop an operational weapon at that stage. However, it is obvious that not all of those present at the meeting agreed with this suggestion. One result was that AA Command decided to "go it alone" and proceed to develop Brakemine under the following guidelines:
  1. An AA Command team under Sedgefield, by now a Major, would develop the missile structure, its control, firing and command systems and
  2. A Cossor team, working under Bedford, would develop the Brakemine receiver and guidance system. It is worth noting that A. C. Cossor themselves bore the cost of all the services and facilities provided by them.
  In February 1944 the first drawings of Brakemine were produced, which showed a missile with 4 wings and 4 control fin surfaces. The thrust was to be provided by eight standard 3 inch solid fuel UP rockets. This design was changed almost immediately to six 3 inch UP rockets as the boost, and to two wings and two control fins. This basic design remained throughout Brakemine's development, and an example of this missile (see Figure 2) is on display at the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineer's museum at Arborfield, near Reading in England.
  Work on Brakemine was halted for approximately 1 month during June and July 1944, when the V-1 attack on England began, but despite this the first dummy test round was ready for firing in the late summer of 1944. It was launched into the North Sea from Walton-on-Naze in Essex at the end of September 1944.
  Brakemine was a radar beam rider missile. As the designer of its guidance system, L. H. Bedford later wrote:
  "What we set out to do was to make a missile ride the axis of a conventional conically scanned radar beam, taking it as we found it without any special coding or command link features. What the missile had to do, therefore, was to interpret the radar signals as to reckon its displacement from the beam axis and then to make the manoeuvres necessary to null this."
  The radio receiver was contained in the space inside the circle of the six boost rockets, and the gyroscopes and servo-motors were mounted at the front of the missile. The system of control and change of direction was by "twist and steer", essentially the same as that used in aircraft. The hydraulically operated control surfaces were mounted at the rear of the missile.

Brakemine Parameters
Length 2.01 meters
Body diameter 0.27 meters
Wing span 0.84 meters
Range (approx.) 8 kilometers
Weight 145 kilograms
Maximum speed Supersonic​
  As is the case with all such projects, early failures occurred. The first two dummy rounds with the control fins locked in the neutral position did not fly far, and ended up in the sea just off Walton-on-Naze. Round 3 disintegrated just before the end of its flight, and this problem was eventually traced back to differential heating between the inside and outside surfaces of the whole missile. These and other problems were overcome, and by round 10 confidence was high enough to persuade the technical team to add the guidance system to the Brakemine dummy. This was tested on rounds 11 to 16, when some evidence of control resulted in a decision to increase the size of the control fins and to move the wings forward slightly. Round 17, fired towards the end of 1945, incorporated these changes and was launched into a fixed radar beam. This round also showed evidence of intelligent control of the missile, but by this time the war had ended.
  About 20 missiles were fired of the original design, half of them fully equipped with a guidance system but not under control. The improved version of the missile then began trials. The war ended in Europe as these continued. The guidance system had been proved in the meantime and Britain’s first working AA missile was a reality even though still experimental. The post-war run-down of the Army might have killed the project but now the Ministry of Supply took over and continued experiments for two years. The project then moved to Aberporth but no further Brakemines were fired since all effort was concentrated on another experimental missile which subsequently became Thunderbird. REME personnel continued to work with the MOS on these projects well into the 1950s.
 
I have to say, Walton-on-the-Naze is probably the most unlikeliest top secret missile testing location! I wonder what made them choose that location?
 
8km....or 4.32nm

Proceeding with some development would be of use against something like V1, and Kamikaze aircraft.

Such a system certainly had potential to develop into the space of Popsy, Mopsy and Orange Nell. And sort of preceed the likes of Mauler and PT.428.
If anything it sounds of interest as an alternative Sea Cat and Tiger Cat.
 
I have to say, Walton-on-the-Naze is probably the most unlikeliest top secret missile testing location! I wonder what made them choose that location?

If you go north of Walton you will see the Naze Tower. This was part of the early Chain Home system. Given that the Brakemine was radar guided and the tower was a radar base....
Nice image here of the radar mast http://www.nazetower.co.uk/tower_museum.html

This is a very interesting read https://petefrost.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/experimental-rockets-at-the-naze/
Little hint of REME at Walton here, with PRO Kew file mentioned - http://heritageofwalesnews.blogspot.com/2011/11/local-people-help-to-reveal-wartime.html

Looks like a good history of Brakemine by THE DEFENCE ELECTRONICS HISTORY SOCIETY if someone can get the full article;
 
I had wondered if it was located at the radar station. This confirms that, but still leaves a mystery why this site was chosen. It fairly remote being farming/salt marsh area but its not exactly the middle of nowhere with four nearby coastal towns and the busy waterways of Harwich are only 5 miles further north. Still, it seems to have held onto its secrecy so maybe it wasn't a bad idea.
I might have a browse next time I am down at Kew for that file.
 
So history belongs in the relevant section, though I'm grateful for the information.

I think it's quite intriguing what would be the result of keeping GAAP in house so to speak and not palming it off to the private sector.
But then I raised that in the Theoretical and Speculative section, which is where it belongs as far as I can see.

Having a missile of about 7ft in length rather fits neatly into a ship's deck of 8ft height I might note.
 
I'll go further.
This could kill off Sea Cat, and Tiger Cat SAM development from the anti-tank weapon.
In turn this is going to be much more evolve-able for the Popsy/Mopsy type anti-missile defense SAM.

In turn this places thing in a much better position for the next generation.

Having developed a lot of equipment for such a SAM, the likes of PT.428 and a Beam Riding Command Guided system is a much more natural progression.
Not quite Sea Wolf or Rapier but definitely a higher performance Indigo type system.

Again separation of Target Tracking from Missile Guidance radars allows for interception plot in time and space rather than angular convergence systems.
Add to this the addition of computer predicted target location, results in a much shorter flight path for intercepting missile.
All of which can be pioneered with developments of Brakemine.
 
Brakemine Parameters
Length 2.01 meters
Body diameter 0.27 meters
Wing span 0.84 meters
Range (approx.) 8 kilometers
Weight 145 kilograms
Maximum speed Supersonic
Compare to AIM-26A nuclear Falcon (data from Wikipedia), probably the largest and fattest of the breed:

  • Length: 84.25 in (2.140 m)
  • Wingspan: 24.4 in (62 cm)
  • Diameter: 11.4 in (29 cm)
  • Weight: 203 lb (92 kg)
The particular breed of Falcon is slightly longer and substantially fatter (to fit the nuke in) than the AIM-4, but with comparable body size to the British missile. It does have a 20cm smaller wingspan and is considerably lighter than Brakemine, the latter no doubt due to years of design experience in missile and component terms.

Nevertheless, it puts Brakemine in its appropriate size context. I suspect Brakemine was abandoned because the airframe offered no room for growth with internal components of the given size.

Had it been started a couple of years earlier, it might have stood a better chance of being in a more advanced state of development when the war ended. Whether this would have resulted in a missile that had officially been issued for service, who knows? Had the V-1 been substantially faster, and thus not amenable to being shot down by final-generation piston-engined fighters or Mark I Meteors, a much greater development effort might have been made in order to get the existing hardware into service, come whatever may. After the war, when time was available, starting over with a better platform was probably the wiser move.
 
Was use made after the war of what was learned by the Germans in the Wasserfall SAM project?
 
Was use made after the war of what was learned by the Germans in the Wasserfall SAM project?
I have a source (which I will have to dig through hundreds of books to find) indicating that the Allies looked at it closely but felt they could do better with respect to the guidance system.

I think it's not widely realized just how much progress the Allies had made with the technical aspects of producing guided missiles. The popular view is that the Germans had done all the work, and everything the Allies did was based on either German work or German scientists. The existence of weapons like Brakemine and projects like Artemis shows this not to be the case.

The Germans may have been closer to a weapon they could actually fire at the enemy, but this was the most likely the result of their SAM projects being driven by an urgency the Allies weren't feeling. For the British, both the Night Blitz and then the V-1 assault were over/being solved by other means before the projects they were driving could be brought to fruition. For the Americans, there was some rush work toward the end of the war for a basic SAM to help solve the Kamikaze problem, but this too came to a halt with the end of the war. With the need to put something in service ASAP no longer in play, the Allies shifted to a more methodical, ground-up approach.
 
Yes, the steering-guidance-from-the-ground approach of Wasserfall and the other German SAM projects, as opposed to something like beam riding or later developments of onboard seeker-guiders, was a less effective approach. But, the Germans almost fielded an operational weapon. As noted elsewhere, technical excellence doesn't win wars...having operational weapons does.

Regarding the lesser motivation of Western developers as the end of WWII became more foreseeable...I however would have thought that, given the 1945 concern in some Western capitals that USSR and the West were ideologically uncomfortable allies and might become adversaries, which of course turned out to be a correct prediction, having a working SAM could have been very defensively useful.
 
Brakemine was a very, very basic SAM system. As designed, it was to use beam riding and a proximity fuze. The flight controls oddly--well we are talking the British here--used wing warping to maneuver the missile.

While about 20 total test shots were made with Brakemine, it wasn't until test 17 that guidance was tried.

Given the mediocre method of flight control, that it was a beam rider-- a digression:

Beam riding missiles fly an inefficient path towards the target, continually making course corrections to intercept. This means the missile has a more limited range and is particularly bad in intercepting crossing targets as the missile is always chasing the target. It is also a subsonic missile, meaning it's really s l o w...

Anyway, Brakemine was a relatively small missile and solid fueled. No warhead was ever fitted. Given the guidance system (a Radar No. 3 Mk 7 coded "Blue Cedar") and method of flight, it would have had a likely useful intercept range under five miles, if that. The launcher was a modified 3.7" AA gun mount, and couldn't have been used operationally as it had no means of rotating or elevating it for a launch (that is, somebody would have had to be standing at the mount operating the handwheels when the missile fired).

While no actual attempts were made to intercept a target, I'd estimate Brakemine's ability to take down a high-flying bomber that was not on a direct intercept path to the launch site (likely)--that is, crossing--at less than 5%. That's really little better than using conventional AA guns.

Brakemine (and the RN's Stooge) were merely first attempts foraying into development of a SAM. A lot more work needed to be done before Britain would have a reasonably working system.

If you compare Brakemine to the largest US program underway at the same time, Bumblebee, that program already had supersonic, ramjet powered missiles approaching Mach 2 in speed and being reliably fired to 12 + miles and 40,000 feet. The associated control development program was firing CTV (Control Test Vehicles) using semi-active homing to develop the flight controls

1659482241309.png

A CTV being readied for launch at Topsail Is. N. Carolina. Circa 1945 - 46

This missile uses all-flying surfaces with hydraulic and servo control to maneuver it. At this point, the forward set of wings move in pairs to maneuver the missile. Later tail control would be adopted.

The US program was nowhere near a working SAM either. So, Brakemine remains an interesting first attempt at a British SAM, but one that was not likely to ever produce a useful operational missile.
 
Was use made after the war of what was learned by the Germans in the Wasserfall SAM project?
I have a source (which I will have to dig through hundreds of books to find) indicating that the Allies looked at it closely but felt they could do better with respect to the guidance system.

I think it's not widely realized just how much progress the Allies had made with the technical aspects of producing guided missiles. The popular view is that the Germans had done all the work, and everything the Allies did was based on either German work or German scientists. The existence of weapons like Brakemine and projects like Artemis shows this not to be the case.

The Germans may have been closer to a weapon they could actually fire at the enemy, but this was the most likely the result of their SAM projects being driven by an urgency the Allies weren't feeling. For the British, both the Night Blitz and then the V-1 assault were over/being solved by other means before the projects they were driving could be brought to fruition. For the Americans, there was some rush work toward the end of the war for a basic SAM to help solve the Kamikaze problem, but this too came to a halt with the end of the war. With the need to put something in service ASAP no longer in play, the Allies shifted to a more methodical, ground-up approach.
Actually, in the field of SAM's the Germans by the end of WW 2 had pretty much produced crap in the way of a viable SAM. Unlike an oft repeated myth, Wasserfall was a complete failure as a SAM, formed the basis for nothing, and only bits and pieces at most were used postwar. The Russians tried for almost a decade to get it to work before finally dumping it as unworkable. In the US, it was assigned to GE for development under Project Hermes, as an alternative to Bell / Western Electric's Nike. GE made just six (6) test shots before recognizing it was not worth pursuing.
The USN went an entirely different way with Bumblebee that eventually delivered Talos and the spin-off's, Terrier and Tartar. One should note that by the time Germany surrendered, the Bumbelee program was firing Cobra Test Vehicles (a ramjet missile) to higher speeds, longer ranges, and higher altitudes than anything Germany managed (Mach 1.75, 12 miles, 40,000 feet) and was going out beyond that.

The Germans had some vague notions about a guidance system too. The British and US both managed better by the end of the war.

The USN program was driven by several wartime urgencies. First it was guided bombs like Fritz X and missiles like the Hs 293, then it became the Kamikaze problem. The US Army knew they needed something better than a bigger AA gun, but weren't pressed for development. The USAAF got in on the action with their GAPA missile because they wanted control of the US SAM programs when they became a separate service, taking that function away from the Army-- Luftwaffe Heer / RAF British Army rivalries anyone?
 
Brakemine was a very, very basic SAM system. As designed, it was to use beam riding and a proximity fuze. The flight controls oddly-well we are talking the British here-used wing warping to maneuver the missile.

I think you may have misunderstood the control system. It didn't use wing warping it used polar controls i.e. Twist/Steer, as successfully used on a number of SAMs including Bloodhound. Simple and it worked.

The German use of powerful, big liquid fueled engines meant they could use basic guidance systems where as the British relied on the 3in motor which required them to develop innovative lightweight systems.

Chris
 
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Actually, in the field of SAM's the Germans by the end of WW 2 had pretty much produced crap in the way of a viable SAM. Unlike an oft repeated myth, Wasserfall was a complete failure as a SAM, formed the basis for nothing, and only bits and pieces at most were used postwar. The Russians tried for almost a decade to get it to work before finally dumping it as unworkable. In the US, it was assigned to GE for development under Project Hermes, as an alternative to Bell / Western Electric's Nike. GE made just six (6) test shots before recognizing it was not worth pursuing.
The USN went an entirely different way with Bumblebee that eventually delivered Talos and the spin-off's, Terrier and Tartar. One should note that by the time Germany surrendered, the Bumbelee program was firing Cobra Test Vehicles (a ramjet missile) to higher speeds, longer ranges, and higher altitudes than anything Germany managed (Mach 1.75, 12 miles, 40,000 feet) and was going out beyond that.
Do you have a detailed, in-depth source for all this? I'm not doubting you; I'm just looking for another rabbit hole to dive down, and the thicker the book and the more detail it goes into, the better. (And if there's math, I can cope with that.)
 
Brakemine was a very, very basic SAM system. As designed, it was to use beam riding and a proximity fuze. The flight controls oddly-well we are talking the British here-used wing warping to maneuver the missile.

I think you may have misunderstood the control system. It didn't use wing warping it used polar controls i.e. Twist/Steer, as successfully used on a number of SAMs including Bloodhound. Simple and it worked.

The German use of powerful, big liquid fueled engines meant thy could use basic guidance systems where as the British relied on the 3in motor which required them to develop innovative lightweight systems.

Chris

So what could Britain have done with an equivalent of the German liquid fueled engines?
 
Brakemine was a very, very basic SAM system. As designed, it was to use beam riding and a proximity fuze. The flight controls oddly-well we are talking the British here-used wing warping to maneuver the missile.

I think you may have misunderstood the control system. It didn't use wing warping it used polar controls i.e. Twist/Steer, as successfully used on a number of SAMs including Bloodhound. Simple and it worked.

The German use of powerful, big liquid fueled engines meant thy could use basic guidance systems where as the British relied on the 3in motor which required them to develop innovative lightweight systems.

Chris

So what could Britain have done with an equivalent of the German liquid fueled engines?
LOP/GAP?
 
Lizzie (LOX and petrol) engine was developed by Lubbock around 1941, but in its original form only put out 60lbf for 30 secs. (you can do the arithmetic) from its 4in chamber. In its later, larger guise (as a JATO unit in 1942) was claimed to put out 1,000lbf for 22 secs from a 16in chamber.

Who wants to be dicking around with LOX and petrol when the He 177s are heading your way? Stick with what you know - 3in motors.

Chris
 
Actually, in the field of SAM's the Germans by the end of WW 2 had pretty much produced crap in the way of a viable SAM. Unlike an oft repeated myth, Wasserfall was a complete failure as a SAM, formed the basis for nothing, and only bits and pieces at most were used postwar. The Russians tried for almost a decade to get it to work before finally dumping it as unworkable. In the US, it was assigned to GE for development under Project Hermes, as an alternative to Bell / Western Electric's Nike. GE made just six (6) test shots before recognizing it was not worth pursuing.
The USN went an entirely different way with Bumblebee that eventually delivered Talos and the spin-off's, Terrier and Tartar. One should note that by the time Germany surrendered, the Bumbelee program was firing Cobra Test Vehicles (a ramjet missile) to higher speeds, longer ranges, and higher altitudes than anything Germany managed (Mach 1.75, 12 miles, 40,000 feet) and was going out beyond that.
Do you have a detailed, in-depth source for all this? I'm not doubting you; I'm just looking for another rabbit hole to dive down, and the thicker the book and the more detail it goes into, the better. (And if there's math, I can cope with that.)
I'm currently working on a long article / short book on the history of early SAM development. So, it's from a bunch of sources. Bumblebee is really a fascinating program. It was a massive effort that dwarfed virtually every other SAM project worldwide, except the S-25 Berkut that grew out of the Russian's failure to get Wasserfall to work.
 
Actually, in the field of SAM's the Germans by the end of WW 2 had pretty much produced crap in the way of a viable SAM. Unlike an oft repeated myth, Wasserfall was a complete failure as a SAM, formed the basis for nothing, and only bits and pieces at most were used postwar. The Russians tried for almost a decade to get it to work before finally dumping it as unworkable. In the US, it was assigned to GE for development under Project Hermes, as an alternative to Bell / Western Electric's Nike. GE made just six (6) test shots before recognizing it was not worth pursuing.
The USN went an entirely different way with Bumblebee that eventually delivered Talos and the spin-off's, Terrier and Tartar. One should note that by the time Germany surrendered, the Bumbelee program was firing Cobra Test Vehicles (a ramjet missile) to higher speeds, longer ranges, and higher altitudes than anything Germany managed (Mach 1.75, 12 miles, 40,000 feet) and was going out beyond that.
Do you have a detailed, in-depth source for all this? I'm not doubting you; I'm just looking for another rabbit hole to dive down, and the thicker the book and the more detail it goes into, the better. (And if there's math, I can cope with that.)
I'm currently working on a long article / short book on the history of early SAM development. So, it's from a bunch of sources. Bumblebee is really a fascinating program. It was a massive effort that dwarfed virtually every other SAM project worldwide, except the S-25 Berkut that grew out of the Russian's failure to get Wasserfall to work.
Please go ahead and make that book as long as you feel is necessary. I assure you, I will be more than pleased to read all of it. Actually, a window into the Russians' early struggles would be most entertaining. For example, Yefim Gordon and Tony Buttler's book on Russian aircraft weapons told me more about what NATO called AA-1 Alkali than I could have dreamed possible... but left me wanting to know more about the early-days stuff.
 
Brakemine was a very, very basic SAM system. As designed, it was to use beam riding and a proximity fuze. The flight controls oddly-well we are talking the British here-used wing warping to maneuver the missile.

I think you may have misunderstood the control system. It didn't use wing warping it used polar controls i.e. Twist/Steer, as successfully used on a number of SAMs including Bloodhound. Simple and it worked.

The German use of powerful, big liquid fueled engines meant thy could use basic guidance systems where as the British relied on the 3in motor which required them to develop innovative lightweight systems.

Chris

So what could Britain have done with an equivalent of the German liquid fueled engines?
Everybody at that time (1944 - 1954 give or take) was pretty much selecting a liquid fuel sustainer engine simply because there was no solid fuel engine combo that could give enough thrust for long enough to get the kinds of ranges wanted for a SAM. The go-to fuel was some combination of RNFA (Red Fuming Nitric Acid--a mix of somewhere around 80% nitric and 20% sulphuric acids) as the oxidizer and something like a furfural alcohol or aniline as fuel. Gasoline could be used too. This stuff ignites on contact and is storable. The downside is it's nasty to handle and corrosive.

The early British SAM programs were run on the cheap because they had to be. Britain simply couldn't afford a new, huge, development program. They did good with what they had. The Swiss surprisingly, Oerlikon, came up with an early SAM in the RSB /C /D series. It was good enough the Japanese (post war in the 50's) and the US tried it out.

On boosters, everybody used solid fuels and usually multiple ones to get the thrust for a quick liftoff. The US in Bumblebee wanted a more compact booster and through a concerted effort found new solid fuels to use along with a massive study of cross sections of that fuel by Allegany Ballistics Lab to make it burn more evenly and reliably.
The problem everyone had with multiple booster rockets was they wouldn't all burn evenly so you ended up with some variations in thrust and that would cause erratic flight in turn. Most engineers solved this by slowly rotating the missile as it lifted off imparting spin to even out those irregularities.
 
Was use made after the war of what was learned by the Germans in the Wasserfall SAM project?
Well, US, USSR and France independently tried to make use of it, but after spending a lot of resources and building a lot of prototypes, came to same conclusion; the missile was just plainly hopeless, badly designed by peoples who have very little clues about problems of supersonic aerodynamic. It was simpler to develope a new missiles (which both USSR and USA did).
 

The early British SAM programs were run on the cheap because they had to be. Britain simply couldn't afford a new, huge, development program. They did good with what they had. The Swiss surprisingly, Oerlikon, came up with an early SAM in the RSB /C /D series. It was good enough the Japanese (post war in the 50's) and the US tried it out.
Disagree - Red Duster was assigned priority (possibly even super priority, I'd need to check) in 49. The V-bomber based had to be defended. Have a read of Battle Flight, a book wot I wrote.

Wartime development waxed and waned with the threat.

Boosters - the asymmetric thrust from a failed boost motor was fixed by canting the nozzles so that the thrust lines converged at the CoG (or whatever it is on GWs)

Chris
 
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It was a massive effort that dwarfed virtually every other SAM project worldwide, except the S-25 Berkut that grew out of the Russian's failure to get Wasserfall to work.
Despite my Russian pride, I must admit: while S-25 was engineering marvel, it was also technological nightmare and dead end in terms of SAM development. Resources, spend on building dual defense ring of S-25 bases around Moscow would possibly be much better spend to produce ten time this number of simpler, single-channel SAM's (like S-75 eventually).
 
The USAAF got in on the action with their GAPA missile because they wanted control of the US SAM programs
I've got a book at home, I can't remember the title of it ATM, but it goes into the early development of guided missiles in the US. You can probably guess which one I'm talking about. About half of the content is about the inter-service political infighting surrounding who got to control what.

I agree with what you said about the Allies having their own long lead. A long time ago on this forum, I got the idea to write a fictitious Secret Projects book about a fictitious nation - I picked Carthage, setting the scene in an alternative universe where it had not been wiped out by Rome and the two continued a long rivalry into the present day. One thing I didn't get around to writing but devoted a lot of thought to was the missile chapter. In it, the Carthaginians get the idea (shared by much of the general public that only watches History Channel and reads secondhand books out of the 1970s) that the Germans (and ONLY the Germans) had done it all and been unlucky not to get the chance to put it in production. They decide to start their own guided weapon program, thinking the US, UK and Russia are also starting off from the bottom of the staircase. They quickly find out how mistaken they are, and just how much investment into R&D is required to get even basic guided weapons to work.

Part of the German mythos is that they made their name with air-launched guided weapons which, for all their limitations, successfully destroyed or seriously damaged major surface units of their enemies (sank Roma, were unlucky not to sink Warspite, etc). We never hear as much about what the Allied guided weapon programs actually accomplished, because the successes were nowhere near as spectacular or visible, nor is there much in the wider world about what the Brits and Yanks had managed to do in research terms by the war's end and where their research programs stood in respect to Germany.

So the German SAM program gets to ride (in the general public's perception; we know better here) on the success of the glide bombs, not to mention the historical fact that the Germans did manage to design, manufacture, deploy and fire multiple examples of a short-range ballistic rocket (V-2), some at least of which DID reach targets and do damage there. I was well aware that this program led nowhere in the long run, but didn't have sources to back that statement up. I'm not sure what I look forward to reading more; your actual work or the bibliography. I suspect the bibliography is going to do terrible things to my wallet, but that's OK.
 
Despite my Russian pride, I must admit: while S-25 was engineering marvel, it was also technological nightmare and dead end in terms of SAM development.
A technical history in good English (i.e. not Google Translate) about the problems of early Russian missile development is badly needed, if it does not already exist.
 
The USAAF got in on the action with their GAPA missile because they wanted control of the US SAM programs
I've got a book at home, I can't remember the title of it ATM, but it goes into the early development of guided missiles in the US. You can probably guess which one I'm talking about. About half of the content is about the inter-service political infighting surrounding who got to control what.

I agree with what you said about the Allies having their own long lead. A long time ago on this forum, I got the idea to write a fictitious Secret Projects book about a fictitious nation - I picked Carthage, setting the scene in an alternative universe where it had not been wiped out by Rome and the two continued a long rivalry into the present day. One thing I didn't get around to writing but devoted a lot of thought to was the missile chapter. In it, the Carthaginians get the idea (shared by much of the general public that only watches History Channel and reads secondhand books out of the 1970s) that the Germans (and ONLY the Germans) had done it all and been unlucky not to get the chance to put it in production. They decide to start their own guided weapon program, thinking the US, UK and Russia are also starting off from the bottom of the staircase. They quickly find out how mistaken they are, and just how much investment into R&D is required to get even basic guided weapons to work.

Part of the German mythos is that they made their name with air-launched guided weapons which, for all their limitations, successfully destroyed or seriously damaged major surface units of their enemies (sank Roma, were unlucky not to sink Warspite, etc). We never hear as much about what the Allied guided weapon programs actually accomplished, because the successes were nowhere near as spectacular or visible, nor is there much in the wider world about what the Brits and Yanks had managed to do in research terms by the war's end and where their research programs stood in respect to Germany.

So the German SAM program gets to ride (in the general public's perception; we know better here) on the success of the glide bombs, not to mention the historical fact that the Germans did manage to design, manufacture, deploy and fire multiple examples of a short-range ballistic rocket (V-2), some at least of which DID reach targets and do damage there. I was well aware that this program led nowhere in the long run, but didn't have sources to back that statement up. I'm not sure what I look forward to reading more; your actual work or the bibliography. I suspect the bibliography is going to do terrible things to my wallet, but that's OK.
A larger reason the Germans get attention and the Allies don't on these subjects is they lost. Their technology wasn't classified after the war ended whereas the Allied programs generally were. Much like Enigma and code breaking only in recent years has much of this technology been declassified for general study.

Thus, the German engineers, officers, and such were free to write--and embellish--on their technology while their Allied counterparts had to toil on in development in silence. The Russians were really the ones that had to play catch up in 1945. This was due to two events:

The first was an internal rivalry within their pre-war rocketry and missile development bureau that was in part fueled by Stalin's purge. It really wrecked the dynamic of what were some pretty advanced ideas and projects bringing them to a virtual halt.
The second was WW 2. The war meant Russia could no longer afford the luxury of researching projects that would take years, possibly decades to come to fruition, if ever. They had to focus on winning first.

The Germans in rocketry were equally blessed and cursed with what was probably the world's best salesman on rockets, Werner v. Braun. He was a decent engineer, but he really excelled beyond others at selling programs that often bordered on lunatic to the powers-that-be. Thus, the German program eventually piles of cash thrown at it for very erratic results.

Both the US and Britain came to the same conclusions separately about developing a SAM at about the same time, and with somewhat similar concepts right out of the gate. Their view was get something that works in service while developing something better and do it all as efficiently and cost effectively as possible.
 
I suspect Brakemine was abandoned because the airframe offered no room for growth with internal components of the given size.

I suspect Churchill decree of late 1945 to savagely cut all defence related research in order to have money to feed the nation was a pivotal factor. It’s the same decree that killed the M52.
 
Churchill was gone by August 45, it was Attlee who A) kicked off the atom bomb project B) delivery system and C) the defence of these.
When Churchill returned in 51, he was quite impressed with what Attlee had set in train. Significant considering his view of Attlee.

But as you say, a lot got whacked to fund these.

Chris
 
The USAAF got in on the action with their GAPA missile because they wanted control of the US SAM programs
I've got a book at home, I can't remember the title of it ATM, but it goes into the early development of guided missiles in the US. You can probably guess which one I'm talking about. About half of the content is about the inter-service political infighting surrounding who got to control what.

I agree with what you said about the Allies having their own long lead. A long time ago on this forum, I got the idea to write a fictitious Secret Projects book about a fictitious nation - I picked Carthage, setting the scene in an alternative universe where it had not been wiped out by Rome and the two continued a long rivalry into the present day. One thing I didn't get around to writing but devoted a lot of thought to was the missile chapter. In it, the Carthaginians get the idea (shared by much of the general public that only watches History Channel and reads secondhand books out of the 1970s) that the Germans (and ONLY the Germans) had done it all and been unlucky not to get the chance to put it in production. They decide to start their own guided weapon program, thinking the US, UK and Russia are also starting off from the bottom of the staircase. They quickly find out how mistaken they are, and just how much investment into R&D is required to get even basic guided weapons to work.

Part of the German mythos is that they made their name with air-launched guided weapons which, for all their limitations, successfully destroyed or seriously damaged major surface units of their enemies (sank Roma, were unlucky not to sink Warspite, etc). We never hear as much about what the Allied guided weapon programs actually accomplished, because the successes were nowhere near as spectacular or visible, nor is there much in the wider world about what the Brits and Yanks had managed to do in research terms by the war's end and where their research programs stood in respect to Germany.

So the German SAM program gets to ride (in the general public's perception; we know better here) on the success of the glide bombs, not to mention the historical fact that the Germans did manage to design, manufacture, deploy and fire multiple examples of a short-range ballistic rocket (V-2), some at least of which DID reach targets and do damage there. I was well aware that this program led nowhere in the long run, but didn't have sources to back that statement up. I'm not sure what I look forward to reading more; your actual work or the bibliography. I suspect the bibliography is going to do terrible things to my wallet, but that's OK.
A great example, is that wretched German AAM the X-4 Ruhrstal. Another missile sometimes claimed to be the progenitor of other AAM's that came after it. But this isn't true at all. The British at least got as far as proposing several AAM designs during the war if not much further.

The US, with greater resources, went much further during the war. The USAAF had designed and was testing the JB-3 Tiamat. It was being ground launched with a booster section for flight testing at Wallops Island VA in late 1944. A 3 and 4 control surface design was tested. It was intended to be used with television CLOS, CLOS, or beam or semi-active radar homing.

The US Navy went a bit further. They actually used a Gorgon IIA missile in an air-to-air live fire test.

On March 8, 1945 the first live fire test against a TDC-2 target drone using a Gorgon IIA with TV CLOS control took place. The system was the same as used successfully on the Bat guided bomb. The Navy’s project engineer, Cdr. Moulton “Molt” Taylor, reported that this guidance system was unworkable against an aerial target where closing speeds were too high for human mind and hand-eye coordination to match the speed of response needed to make it work. This launch represents the first time in history that a guided air-to-air missile had been tried in a live fire test against a target.

Yet, the US gets little credit and the British the same for their efforts. The USN's live fire test certainly argues that the X-4 would have almost certainly failed in operational use with a CLOS control system.
 
Plus from a practical sense the operational urgency for the Allies to field a SAM were less by 1944-45. Perhaps the VT fuze can take the credit here, boosting the potential of conventional AA artillery to deal with the threat at hand and the electronics of the time (plus lack of adequate sources of thrust) meant the early SAMs did not have a performance edge.
 
The system was the same as used successfully on the Bat guided bomb
Er... Bat have active radar seeker. If you meant TV CLOS, its either Robin (proto-Bat, used only for testing), or USAAF's GB-4 glide bombs.
Bat was used operationally with active radar but it was tested with TV CLOS among other systems. This wasn't uncommon at the time as nobody was really sure what guidance system(s) were best for what.
 
Bat was used operationally with active radar but it was tested with TV CLOS among other systems.
The "Bat" was strictly radar guided bomb. The one with TV CLOS system was one of the previous models of the same SWOD program, named "Robin":

View attachment 682108
I went back and looked these up in Wolf's US Aerial Armament in World War II vol 3. You are correct. Robin is essentially a Pelican with TV guidance. There was also an earlier version called Dragon that used visual CLOS that was tested briefly. All three used what was referred to as the Dryden bomb.
 

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