Over the Christmas break I managed to get in a bit of reading, and came up with some interesting information on German rocket and missile projects.

Enzian

Designed by Dr Wurster's team at Messerschmidt, the Enzian was originally conceived as a subsonic ground-to-air rocket, with the prospect of further development into a supersonic air-to-air missile, as well as a ground-to-ground, and anti-tank missile.

Compared to other German missiles, Enzian was an exceptionally powerful weapon, carrying a 1,000 lb warhead that could be fitted with a variety of proximity fuzes. It was to be powered by four Rheinmetal-Borsig solid fuel booster rockets on takeoff, with the main rocket engine being a bi-fuel Walther design using turbine pumps to supply the Benzene fuel and Nitric Acid oxidizer.

The missile was to be fired from the standard 88mm anti-aircraft gun mounting, to which two, 7 metre long, launching rails were added.

to be constructed of compressed wood or laminated wood, due to the shortage of vital materials, the Enzian measured approx 4 metres in length, with a total weight of 1,800 kg.

Guidance for the missile was to be by radio link, with the operator using either optical or radar tracking to maneuver the missile into the target area, where upon either an infra-red homing device (Madrid), acoustic homing head (Archimedes) or radar homing head (Moritz), would take over control and guide the missile to the target.

Testing and development began in June 1943, under the designation FR (Flak Rakete), and several FR designs were constructed until the missile was given the designation "Enzian" in January 1944.

Enzian-5 was to be the most advanced design of the later series, projected as capable of reaching Mach 1.6 or even Mach 2, with a ceiling of 52,000 feet.

In all 60 Enzians were built, with 38 Enzian-1’s being test launched, 16 under radio control.

The project came to an official halt in January 1945, when orders were received to concentrate all available effort on more promising projects, however, work actually continued while several parties, including Professor Messerschmidt, attempted to have the project officially re-started. These attempts at continued development of Enzian failed and the project was finally wound up in March 1945.

Fleigerfaust (also sometimes referred to as Luftfaust)

A nine barrelled, 20mm, hand held rocket launcher developed for ground defence against low flying aircraft.

The projectile was a standard 20mm high explosive/incendiary round attached to a steel tube containing a solid fuel propellant. Electrically ignited, the rocket motor vented through 4 angled ports in the base of the tube, giving the projectile spin for stability as well as forward thrust. The standard round achieved a velocity of 380 metres per second, spinning at 26,000 revolutions a minute, with an effective range of about 500 metres, and maximum range of about 2,000 metres.

The projector was a fairly simple device, consisting of nine light, metal tubes fitted in a circular array on a shoulder stock, with a pistol grip and a trigger incorporating a magneto firing generator, similar to a Panzerschreck. The rounds were provided in clips of nine, matching the barrel layout, and could be loaded as one.

The firing sequence was automatically set to fire five rockets immediately on pressing the trigger, with the other four rockets being delayed one-tenth of a second so that the rockets were launched without their exhausts interfering with one another.

It was projected that several thousand Fleigerfausts would be manufactured during March/April 1945, but at wars end, only a few examples were found by the Allies.

Kurzzeitsperre

Developed by Rheinmetal-Borsig, as a method of preventing low flying attacks on gun batteries, airfields and other ground installations, the Kurzzeitsperre consisted of a battery of rocket projectors spaced about 30 metres apart around the perimeter of the installation. The projectile was a simple rocket, trailing a length of hardened steel wire, 1.8mm wide and 0.7 mm thick, which was attached to the ground projector.

When the battery was electrically fired en masse, the rockets rose to a height of 1,000 metres and burst open, releasing a parachute, to which the wire was attached. The parachute would then drift slowly back to earth. When a low flying aircraft hit the wire, the wire would spin and saw it’s way through the aircraft. Tests showed that the spinning wire could cut through an average aircraft wing in less than a second.

A smaller version, using a standard mortar round as propulsion, was also developed. This version had a maximum height of 300 metres.

Mowe

A remote controlled, anti-aircraft rocket for use on small and medium-sized ships against low flying aircraft. Development of the Mowe rocket began in May 1944, and production drawings were ready by August the same year, the designers having had previous experience in the development of other rockets and missiles such as the Hs-293, Rheinbote and Rheintochter.

Compared to these other devices, Mowe was to be cheap and simple to produce and use.

Guidance was to be by optical tracking and radio. The missile weighed in at about 90 kg, and was powered by a two-stage solid fuel motor, carrying a 12 kg high explosive warhead fitted with a Kugelblitz proximity fuze. It had an effective range of about 2,000 metres.

As with other development projects it appears that Mowe was abandoned in late 1944 in favour of other more promising developments.

Pfeifenkopf (also called Pinsel)

Conceived as an anti-tank guided missile using a visual homing system based on the principle of television. The missile was to carry a super-iconoscope in it’s head using a spiral scanning method, which compared the missile’s own target image with that from it’s aiming device. The crude imaging system using as it's basis the target’s contrast with it’s background.

Unfortunately, due to the crude technology in use, this method demanded that a very sharp contrast had to exist between the target and the background, something that could never be guaranteed on the battlefield.

Tests carried out in late 1944, however, proved the system fairly successful, and it was proposed that development of Pfeifenkopf should also include a capacity for air-launching as an air-to-ground missile for tank hunting.

Pfeifenkopf weighed about 25 kg, and had a projected range of a little over 1,000 metres.

The Pfeifenkopf project also led to another anti-tank missile proposal, Steinbocke, which was very similar in design, but used an infra-red homing device instead of the visual homing of Pfeifenkopf.

Taifun

Development of this free-flight anti-aircraft rocket began in mid 1944, with the designs being submitted to the Reishluftfahtministerium in September ’44, accepted and frozen for manufacture in October ’44.

Testing and development of both solid fuel and liquid fuel versions of Taifun was carried out at Peenemunde, with actual production beginning in January 1945, with an order for 10,000 units, of which 600 were built before the end of the war.

The intention was to have over 400 Taifun batteries, each of 12 projectors, in action by September 1945, each projector to be a converted 88mm anti-aircraft gun mounting carrying 30 rockets.

The standard production version of the Taifun, was approximately 2 metres in length, 10cm in width, weighed about 20 kg, and was fitted with a contact fuzed warhead, weighing about half a kilo. The rockets’ rate of ascent was in excess of 3000 feet per second and it had an operational ceiling of 50,000 feet.

The rocket would have proven a very cheap (the whole device costing about 25 Reischmarks) and effective anti-aircraft weapon.

I'd be interested if anyone had any info on whether these weapons, especially the Fleigerfaust were actually used. I have only seen two fuzzy photos of this weapon in very old books, which looks a bit like 9 US 3inch bazookas in a circle, fired from the shoulder.

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"We have invaded space with our rocket and for the first time - mark this well - have used space as a bridge between two points on the earth; we have proved rocket propulsion practicable for space travel. This third day of October, 1942, is the first of a new era of transportation, that of space travel." - General Walter Dornberger