Submarines and their Weapons - Aircraft of World War II

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CHAPTER TWO Rocket-powered Aircraft Rocket-propelled interceptor aircraft were very attractive to the German Air Ministry, for they seemed to offer a realistic possibility of being able to threaten the high-flying Allied bombers which, by 1944, were decimating the country's industrial base. This was particularly true since they did not require fossil fuel, which was in very short supply by that time, and could be constructed cheaply, largely from plywood; a considerable effort was put into developing such aircraft, but ultimately to no avail. Had we been considering the history of thrustpowered flight in something like chronological order, rather than in terms of the impact the new technology had on the course of aviation in World War IT, we would have examined the rocket before the jet. In fact, there is little conflict here, for the first effective demonstrations of the two types occurred almost simultaneously and in the same place: in the last months before the outbreak of war, at Ernst Heinkel's factory at Rostock-Marienehe. While neither type was actually conceived as a weapons platform, and even Above: The Messerschmitt Me 163B-1 'Komet'. Left: The Ba 349 had four solid-fuel booster rockets and a liquid fuel sustainer motor, Launched vertically, it was to have climbed to 14,000m (45,900ft) in one minute. though neither did what was hoped of it, thanks to a series of poor design decisions, both demand inclusion here because of the influence - both positive and negative - they exerted. We have seen how the jetpropelled He 178 was deficient because its designer failed to solve the problem of how to induct air to the engine efficiently. This, it must be said, would have been hard to foresee. The main fault of the rocketpowered He 176, on. the other hand, was glaringly obvious, at least to the cognoscenti. Unfortunately, there were few of them around in 1939. THEHEINKELHe176 The rocket-propelled aircraft designated the He 176 by the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM - the German Air Ministry) was powered by a Walter Rl motor 3fi
ROCKET-POWERED AIRCRAFT using hydrogen peroxide. Earlier versions (more accurately, existing He 112 fighters with auxiliary motors) had used a power unit developed by Wernher von Braun (qv), which used liquid oxygen and alcohol, a rather more volatile mixture. The near-explosive decomposition of hydrogen peroxide into superheated steam when it comes into contact with a catalyst such as calcium, potassium or sodium permanganate was to become a mainstay of German propulsion programmes in a number of very different areas, as we shall see. The He 176 flew for the first time on 30 June 1939. The aircraft probably never exceeded the standard it had been designed to beat, 700km/h (435mph), which was below the world speed record of the day. It was essentially too heavy both for its powerplant and for its short, stubby wings. The RLM showed little interest in it, favouring the design which would become the Messerschmitt Me 163 'Komet' (qv). Heinkel abandoned the project. ALEXANDER LIPPISCH Alexander Lippisch was a self-taught aerodynamicist who had worked at Zeppelin/Dornier after World War 1, then at Rhön-Rossitten-Gesellschaft (RRG - which Below: The Messerschmitt Me 163 'Komet' interceptor first went into action in August 1944. It accounted for only about a dozen Allied bombers in six or seven months. developed gliders for meteorological research, amongst other things), and later, when RRG was absorbed into it, at the Deutsches Forschungsinstitut für Segelflug (DFS - German Glider Research Institute). Lippisch maintained that had Heinkel had even a narrow understanding of the nature of gliders, he would have realised that he needed a large wing area (and a small wing loading) to make an aircraft such as the He 176 fly adequately, as it had only very marginal power reserves. Instead, Heinkel had given his proto-rocket aircraft short, stubby wings which were really little more than control surfaces, and his experiments failed in direct consequence. Lippisch went further than that, of course. Like the Horten brothers, he was a staunch and unremitting advocate of the tailless, delta-pianform flying wing, and was the first to fly such a design, in 1931. Three years before that, however, Lippisch had produced a rocketpropelled glider for automobile manufacturer Fritz von Opel, who saw the new technology mostly in terms of its ability to attract crowds, but who was interested enough (and rich enough) to provide seed money for would-be pioneers. Opel lost interest in the early 1930s, after rocket-powered gliders had been the death of a number of pilots. Lippisch's 'Ente' ('Duck') became the first rocket-powered aircraft to fly, with Fritz Stammer at the controls, on 11 June 1928. By 1933, Lippisch had designed a variety of
Page 4 and 5: Roger Ford Publishing Company
Page 6 and 7: Contents INTRODUCTION 6 CHAPTER ONE
Page 8: Her scientists made an enormous and
Page 11 and 12: JET AIRCRAFT developed during World
Page 13 and 14: JET AIRCRAFT stillborn Oil engine,
Page 15 and 16: JET AIRCRAFT the first all-jet Me 2
Page 17 and 18: JET AIRCRAFT Messerschmitt Me 262A-
Page 19 and 20: JET AIRCRAFT
Page 21 and 22: JET AIRCRAFT Above: Surrounded by J
Page 23 and 24: JET AIRCRAFT Above: The Junkers Ju
Page 25 and 26: JET AIRCRAFT one aircraft - in the
Page 27 and 28: JET AIRCRAFT DORNIER Do 335 Type: S
Page 29 and 30: JET AIRCRAFT Above: Despite its app
Page 31 and 32: JET AIRCRAFT engined bombers do. Th
Page 33 and 34: JET AIRCRAFT Above: Gotha engineers
Page 38 and 39: MESSERSCHMITT Me 163B-1 Type: Singl
Page 40 and 41: 50 unpowered versions were built be
Page 42 and 43: February 1945, a single, unmanned t
Page 44: for completing a test programme on
Page 47 and 48: HYBRID AIRCRAFT AND GLIDERS 1940, i
Page 49 and 50: HYBRID AIRCRAFT AND GLIDERS GOTHA G
Page 51 and 52: HYBRID AIRCRAFT AND GLIDERS 'MISTEL
Page 54 and 55: CHAPTER FOUR Rotary-win g Aircraft
Page 56 and 57: 'Drache' ('Kite'). The new aircraft
Page 58 and 59: through 90 degrees to bring them to
Page 60: universally jointed drive shaft and
Page 63 and 64: SURFACE-TO-SURFACE MISSILES THEFIES
Page 65 and 66: SURFACE-TO-SURFACE MISSILES Above:
Page 67 and 68: SURFACE-TO-SURFACE MISSILES Above:
Page 69 and 70: SURFACE-TO-SURFACE MISSILES FIESELE
Page 72 and 73: Left: A complete VI weighed some 2.
Page 74 and 75: Right: A technician is photographed
Page 76 and 77: made now of graphite rather than mo
Page 78 and 79: cooling it and supplying it with su
Page 80 and 81: SURFACE-TO-SURFACE MISSILES
Page 82 and 83: 134. Other reports suggest that the
Page 84: discussion stage. There was also ta
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Above: The simplest of all air-to-a
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AIR-TO-AIR WEAPONS aim on a target
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CHAPTER SEVEN Air-to-Surface Missil
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armoured deck slowed it down fracti
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DORNIER Do 217E-5 Type: Four-seat a
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at reduced speed. These defensive t
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HENSCHEL Hs 294 Type: Rocket-propel
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SURFACE-TO-AIR MISSILES 'Schmetterl
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SURFACE-TO-AIR MISSILES Mach number
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Above: The 'Rheintochter' 1 on its
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CHAPTER NINE Artillery By the end o
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simple matter. In around 20 hours,
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third gun, which was never complete
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unlike the 'Gustav Gerät', they we
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21CM KANONE 12 (K12) Calibre: 21.1c
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ARTILLERY 11 s
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TANKS AND ANTI-TANK WEAPONS PzKpfw
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TANKS AND ANTI-TANK WEAPONS PANZER
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TANKS AND ANTI-TANK WEAPONS Above:
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CHAPTER ELEVEN Submarines and their
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TYPE XVIIB Type: Coastal submarine
Page 134 and 135:
TYPE XXIII Type: Coastal submarine
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Above: A 'Marder' ('Marten') midget
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The next step was to produce a true
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NUCLEAR, BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL WE
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Page numbers in italics refer to pi
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INDEX Paris Guns 109-10 Tarsival 1
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Submarines and their Weapons - Aircraft of World War II

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