German glide bombs and aerial torpedoes

moin1900

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Hi everybody

I have read about the Peter-X glide bomb here
http://www.balsi.de/Weltkrieg/Waffen/Sonderwaffen/Luftwaffe/peterx.htm
http://www.net.bialystok.pl/~hess/r_lpk_peter_x.htm
Any pictures or drawings?

Zippermayr L.40 Lufttorpedo
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Zippermayr
Any pictures or drawings?

Delta torpedo-glider Gerätwerk Stargard L.50
http://www.balsi.de/Weltkrieg/Waffen/Sonderwaffen/Luftwaffe/l10.htm
http://www.net.bialystok.pl/~hess/r_lpk_l.50.htm
Any pictures or drawings?

L.10
http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/LRG/l10.html
Fritz-X
http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/LRG/fritz.html

Thanks in advance
 
Re: German Glide Bombs and aerial torpedoes

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Re: German Glide Bombs and aerial torpedoes

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The German side did not notice any effect of jamming.
It knew about the technical unreliability of its guided missiles that did not require jamming to end in failure.

Well, Germans in WW2 were rather poor in electronic, and notoriously suspicious of high technology (no wonder, considering Nazi anti-intellectual policy). For example, after their radio navigation fiasco in the "battle of the beams", they just give up all efforts in this area alltogether.
 
The German side did not notice any effect of jamming.
It knew about the technical unreliability of its guided missiles that did not require jamming to end in failure.
Actually, by late 1943 the Luftwaffe had become paranoid about jamming to a point where they were reluctant to approve any project that required electronic signals that might be jammed. Whether they recognized this about guided weapons like Fritz X or Hs 293, they certainly knew they could and like were being jammed just as most other electronic systems were.

A clear example of this is the insane use of wire guidance in the Ruhrstal X-4 air-to-air missile. Wire guidance became one of the "go to" methods of sending control signals to a missile because it was seen as unjammable. Such was the paranoia the Luftwaffe had towards electronics.
 
Actually, by late 1943 the Luftwaffe had become paranoid about jamming to a point where they were reluctant to approve any project that required electronic signals that might be jammed.
And that is why they were designing radio controlled or beam riding missiles till the very end of the war? ;)
A clear example of this is the insane use of wire guidance in the Ruhrstal X-4 air-to-air missile.
I think, wire guidance was chosen because of simplicity and small size of the receiver, considering dimensions of the missile. Other air-to-air missiles developed for the Luftwaffe were still radio guided.
 
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And that is why they were designing radio controlled or beam riding missiles till the very end of the war?

Considering that they never developed any other control radio system to replace the Kehl-Strasbourg, their efforts were mostly of "engineer Hans REALLY didn't want to be drafted" category.
 
They did develop quite a lot, although not fielded.
On the other hand, they had real problems with quality - I remember a report of E-Stelle Karlshagen on a batch of 7 or 8 remote control receivers they were sent for air-to-air missiles in 1944, complaining that generally everything was wrong, aerials were not tuned, wires broken, components faulty etc. - in the conclusion it was written, it had to be considered as a really happy coincidence that one of the receivers could have been brought to working order at all. :D
 
They did develop quite a lot, although not fielded.
I was under impression that they all used derivatives of basic Kehl-Strasbourg. Which, I may say, add arguments to French suspicion that K-S was actually stolen French design (at least Hurel and Turk certainly thought that K-S radio control system is suspiciously similar to their own pre-war one)
 
Probably many of them were more or less modified variants of the K-S indeed, but I think e.g. Greifswald-Kolberg or Kogge-Brigg (Freggate) were parallel or next generation developments.
As far as French origins of the K-S are concerned, Hs 293 was undergoing ground tests of guidance system at Peenemuende-West already in February 1940, the first airdrop was conducted in September. Of course, it didn't have to be the K-S then, but we also do not have a proof at the moment, it was not.
 
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From my Blohm & Voss notes:

BV 143 Anti-shipping missile. Gliding approach, rocket-powered final flight stage.

L 10 BV 950 Friedensengel Anti-shipping torpedo-carrier glider. First version of BV 950, for propeller planes.

L 11 BV 950 Schneewittchen Second version of BV 950, for jet planes.

BV 226 Long range radar homing glide bomb [initial designation of BV 246]
BV 246 Hagelkorn Never operational, despite large numbers made.

A glider dropped from a jet plane would need to fly really fast, so for the later ones B&V made the wings with a solid concrete core and steel skinning!

Despite prolonged development and in some cases production running into four figures, constant problems were experienced with the guidance systems and none was ever used in anger.
 
The German side did not notice any effect of jamming.
It knew about the technical unreliability of its guided missiles that did not require jamming to end in failure.

Well, Germans in WW2 were rather poor in electronic, and notoriously suspicious of high technology (no wonder, considering Nazi anti-intellectual policy). For example, after their radio navigation fiasco in the "battle of the beams", they just give up all efforts in this area alltogether.
you should read the Link of of Klem before you continue to write such a nonsens
 
The German side did not notice any effect of jamming.
It knew about the technical unreliability of its guided missiles that did not require jamming to end in failure.

Well, Germans in WW2 were rather poor in electronic, and notoriously suspicious of high technology (no wonder, considering Nazi anti-intellectual policy). For example, after their radio navigation fiasco in the "battle of the beams", they just give up all efforts in this area alltogether.
About the battle of the beems:

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams

In short: The Germans developed several electronic guiding systems which allowed an unmatched precision bombing. The British had nothing like that and relied on human navigation which prooved to be extremely unprecise:

“British sceptics started regarding the system as proof that the German pilots were not as good as their own, who they believed could do without such systems. The Butt Report proved this to be wrong; aerial reconnaissance returned photographs of the RAF bombing raids, showing that they were rarely, if ever, anywhere near their targets.[16]“

However, the British could develop countermeasures against the first version quite fast, but not because they foreseen this system due to greater skills, but simply by intelligence service which brought them the required information about the system.

After the first system “Knickbein” the Germans developed a more refined system “X-Gerät” which allowed a precise localization within 91 m with a distance of 320 km to the antennas:

“X-Gerät was used effectively in a series of raids known to the Germans as Moonlight Sonata, against Coventry, Wolverhampton and Birmingham. In the raid on Birmingham only KGr 100 was used and British post-raid analysis showed that the vast majority of the bombs dropped were placed within 100 yards (91 m) of the mid-line of the Weser beam, spread along it for a few hundred yards. This was the sort of accuracy that even daytime bombing could rarely achieve. The raid on Coventry with full support from other units dropping on their flares almost destroyed the city centre.[25] „

I don’t like to call the destruction of almost an entire city center a success, but at least it proved that the system was effective. Counter measures could first be developed after a X-Gerät could be recovered from a wrecked airplane. Just by analyzing the system, the British found out, that there jamming was filtered out automatically, which they didn’t expect. However, despite that, it was still difficult to disturb the system:

“setting up this false beam proved very difficult as the Germans, learning from their mistakes with Knickebein, did not switch the X-Gerät beams on until as late as possible, making it much more difficult to arrange the "false Elbe" in time.[30]

The third system “Y-Gerät” could be analysied and effectively countermeassured by the British because again, they had superior intelligence service and the help of help of a German mathematician. However the raid against Briten came to an end anyway, because the war against the Soviets became the highest priority.

The whole story of the German navigation systems proves the high level of German electronic developments during the war an not the opposite. It also proves, the high level of British espionage which enabled them to fight the German systems effectively.
 
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The German side did not notice any effect of jamming.
It knew about the technical unreliability of its guided missiles that did not require jamming to end in failure.

Well, Germans in WW2 were rather poor in electronic, and notoriously suspicious of high technology (no wonder, considering Nazi anti-intellectual policy). For example, after their radio navigation fiasco in the "battle of the beams", they just give up all efforts in this area alltogether.


After the first system “Knickbein” the Germans developed a more refined system “X-Gerät” which allowed a precise localization within 91 m with a distance of 320 km to the antennas:



The third system “Y-Gerät” could be analysied and effectively countermeassured by the British because again, they had superior intelligence service and the help of help of a German mathematician. Howeverm the raid against Briten came to an end anyway, because the war against the Soviets became the highest priority.

The whole story of the German navigation systems proves the high level of German electronic developments during the war an not the opposite. It also proves, the high level of British espionage which enabled them to fight the German systems effectively.

This is kind of wrong. X-Gerät was the first system developed from the pre-war Lorentz blind homing and landing system. It used a total of five (5) beams. The first two, like in the simpler Knickbein, were the main beams side by side that guided the plane to the target. There were three cross beams that cut the two main ones. These told the aircrew when they were at the initial point for their bomb run, when to open the bomb bay doors, and lastly, when to drop on target.
X-Gerät was available pre-war, but the system was difficult to set up because of the number of transmitters that needed permanent mounts, and the complexity of the system and training on it. Only KG 100 had gotten this training and equipment.

Knickbein was a simplified version of X-Gerät using only the two main beams and a single cross drop beam. Because it was cheaper and easier to use and set up, this was the guidance system most Luftwaffe bomber crews had available. This is why it got used first.

Y-Gerät was an attempt to give Kinckbein some capacity for electronic countermeasures to jamming, but proved just as jammable as the other two systems and was dropped soon after introduction.

What all of this shows isn't that the German electronics industry was cutting edge once the war started, but rather that they largely rested on and relied on a higher level of pre-war innovation that fell off once the war started.

With the British, they proved much better innovators, although many of their systems were, in a word, crude in terms of the actual product. That is, they found something that would work on the cheap.

The US on the other hand, were a combination of innovators, copiers, and everything got mass produced with high levels of quality.
 
The Lozenz system was a pre war German development, which was first testet in 1932. Sure it was the basis for later developments which were succsessfully undertaken by the Germans. This is no contadiction to the theses, that German electronic developments were very advanced at the time.

The British had nothing like that and droped their bombs rather coincidentally. The Americans at least did their very best to develop an advanced bombsight wheras the British approach was just using a large mass of bombs at drop it whereever a town center was suspected.

The Y-Gerät wasnt so easy to Jam, in fact in became only possible after the Luftwaffe made several setious bombings with high accuracy. The British finally sucseeded with jamming, because of their espionage, not because of technical superiority.
 
The Lozenz system was a pre war German development, which was first testet in 1932. Sure it was the basis for later developments which were succsessfully undertaken by the Germans. This is no contadiction to the theses, that German electronic developments were very advanced at the time.

The British had nothing like that and droped their bombs rather coincidentally. The Americans at least did their very best to develop an advanced bombsight wheras the British approach was just using a large mass of bombs at drop it whereever a town center was suspected.

The Y-Gerät wasnt so easy to Jam, in fact in became only possible after the Luftwaffe made several setious bombings with high accuracy. The British finally sucseeded with jamming, because of their espionage, not because of technical superiority.
The British early in the war did develop the STABS bombsight, their version of the US Norden.

British bombing accuracy could have improved using OBOE, but that remained in use only with their Pathfinder force, and only had the range to penetrate to about the Ruhr. Beyond that, the curvature of the planet precluded its use.

Of course, by late 1943 the introduction of radar systems for bombing increasingly took over from H2S the H2X, and similar US systems like EHB (Every House in Berlin), or APQ 7 Eagle. The US also developed LORAN and then TACAN and these started to be introduced in 1944.
 
Thanks Justo for the info, What book are these pages.
 
On Y-Gerät...

I looked up the description of the system in Insturments of Darkness by Alfred Price. Y-Gerät used a system similar to the US YE ZB homing system. It radiated a series of 180 directional signals per minute. A device aboard the aircraft would detect the signal and could interpret which part of the beam it was in relative to the transmitting station. The device also transmitted a signal to the station and the time shift between when the signal was sent and received back told the plane's distance from it. Both signals were intermittent like a morse code might be. This was necessary to vary the directional signals.

The combination gave the bearing and range to the aircraft relative to the known location of the ground station. When the aircraft reached a predetermined range from the station, it would release its bombs on the target. The system operated on 42 to 48 Mhz.

Once the signals were known to the British, it was simple to jam the system. The British used a powerful transmitter operating on the same frequency as Y-Gerät and just filled in the gaps in the signal. A second transmitter sent the range signal so the distance couldn't be calculated due to conflict of the two. This jamming system was codenamed "Domino."

Later, a second jammer called "Meacon" was introduced, after capture of several Y-Gerät devices from shot down bombers. This device was more sophisticated in that it spoofed the signal with false ones and was designed to lead German bomber crews off course rather than just make the signals unusable.

The Domino stations were set up a Alexandra Palace North London and Beacon Hill near Salsbury. Once these were in operation, out of 89 Y-Gerät sorties by the Luftwaffe during the first two weeks of March 1941, only 18 outside the area of jamming were successful.

The Meacons also proved successful, bagging the RAF an intact Ju 88 that got lost in late July 1941, and a Do 217 that landed at Lydd in Kent on October 21st.
 
just read:

"Although Jones had correctly guessed the beam layout (and acknowledges it was only a guess), the modulation frequency had been measured incorrectly as 1,500 Hz, but was in fact 2,000 Hz. At the time it was believed that this would not make any difference, as the tones were close enough that an operator would have a hard time distinguishing them in a noisy aircraft.[26]

The mystery was eventually revealed after an X-Gerät-equipped Heinkel He 111 crashed on 6 November 1940 on the English coast at West Bay, Bridport.[26] Although the aircraft sank during the recovery operation, the waterlogged X-Gerät equipment was recovered.[27] On examination, it was learned that a new instrument was being used that automatically decoded the dots and dashes and moved a pointer on a display in the cockpit in front of the pilot. This device was fitted with a very sharp filter which was sensitive only at 2,000 Hz, and not to the early British 1,500 Hz counter-signals.[28] While the jammers were modified accordingly, this came too late for the raid on Coventry on 14 November; but the modified jammers were able to successfully disrupt a raid on Birmingham on 19 November.[29]"

So the British have only been able to decode the system after they found an intact example. Even than, it took quite a while until they managed to jam it, until than Coventry was destroyed whith the hepl of the Y-Gerät.

As we see, the British had a superior intelligence and pure luck (see the story with the Wotan and the 45 Hz) service which helped tham to jam the German system. This has next to nothing to do with superior electronic technologies.
 
Following the sending of Justo in the post #24, it is about a German bomb little quoted in the books.these few lines extracted from the book of "Fritz Hahn-Deutsche Geheim Waffen 1939-1945 Flugzeug Bewaffnungen", give us a preview of this one.other information or pictures would be very useful.just to enrich the topic. Flugbombe (Flyingbomb) project of JU Use. Die Junkers/LGW Steuerbare Sturzbombe (Controlled Drop Bomb): This bomb project was used to study the drop processes and the release procedures, the bomb of approximately 1000 kg was designed by the Strömungstechnik/Dessau department. Its construction was taken in charge by the LGW (Luftfahrtgerätewerk- Hakenfelde- Berlin-Spandau). This bomb consisted of a bomb body about 1500 mm long and 420 mm in diameter, to which was attached by means of explosive rivets an almost equally long 170 kg tail of bell-shaped appearance. The eight-sided box tail attached to it was overhung by the Landespeer by another 300 mm. After the drop was completed, the tail (which contained the stabilization and recording equipment) was ejected by a preloaded spring with a force of about 200 kg. Due to the now increased air resistance, the speed of the tail section decreased from 930 km/h to 385 km/h within 6 seconds. The then ejected auxiliary parachute pulled a supporting parachute of about 8 m
 

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