German guided missile

Does anyone have a link to the video that shows the German guided missile hitting a cruiser? I want to say Wasserfall missile and the USS Savannah, but I am probably completely off on names. Thank you in advance.

 

Double post - please delete. Videos embedded in next message.

 

I don't know if this is it (I've never seen the footage before), but in the last 10 seconds of this video there is a very distant shot of an Hs-293 missile hitting a vessel of some sort: [YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb_fHgx-anE[/YOUTUBE]

There is also one of a Fritz-X hitting the HMS Warspite (towards the end as well): [YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ_VdnQ5a7I[/YOUTUBE]

Hope this helps.

 

Hummel

yes the Wasserfall was a ground to air missile to take out US bomber formations. In fact all ground based using ramps exclude V-1 and V-2 were for countering the US heavy bomber threat.

 

Most of the ships in the Mediterrainian that were attacked by guided weapons were hit with the Fritz X guided bomb. The Hs 293 missile was primarily used by KG 100 and Fliegerführer Atlantik against merchant shipping in the Bay of Biscay and occasionally further out into the Atlantic itself.

 

Hmmmm... this is a new one for me. Thanks for the posts. Now I have a new little research project for me in my spare time.

 

Captured German film about the Fritz X bomb from the Air Technical Service Command.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1imE2GwDK8

 

Probably already stated but the missiles were used too early and by the time good targets were up the allies had counters for them...

 

The HS 293 scored its greatest hit in the Mediterranean when it sank the American ship, Rohna which was carrying American troops with over 1000 dead (if my memory is correct).

As with the other German guided missiles, once the threat was known, blocking the radio signal was effective in deflecting the missile.

 

Haven't seen a video of it, but USS Savannah was hit by a Fritz X at Salerno, around the same time as HMS Warspite in GP's video. The bomb actually exploded in the forward magazines, but rapid flooding prevented a catastrophe. Savannah was taken home and repaired, including bulging to strengthen the hull. The added displacement also allowed her 5"25 secondary guns to be replaced by 5"38s which were considered more effective against high-speed targets. Her Mark 33 5" gunfire control system was replaced by Mark 37.

The British light cruiser Spartan was sunk at Anzio by an Hs-293; this exploded just below the main deck but did sufficient structural damage to cause the ship to founder.

Another notable success occurred in the Bay of Biscay in August 1943. The British were conducting anti-subamarine sweeps with groups of their best escorts, sloops and destroyers, when an Hs293 attack sank the sloop Egret and damaged HMCS Athabaskan. This led the British to abandon the sweeps and removed at least one hazard faced by the U-boats.

 

AFAIK the Germans stopped development or anyway gave it low priority (possibly in favour of the V weapons, U-Boats and night fighter had higher priority for the small pool of missile and electronics expertise available), the Italians were rather advanced on wire guided technology that is basically immune to jamming though the state of their industry makes it "iffy" whether they would have been able to come up with a reliable weapon system.

Both the USS Savannah damage report and a number of pictures of the Fritz-X exploding are easily found on the net, the pic quality makes it likely they were from a film, (Google is your friend when it's not spying on you), I had actually included one of them in a post (#226) on the "name that naval vessel" thread, my current setup doesn't allow my to paste anything so I can't link.

 

IIRC, the Italian BB Roma was sunk by a Fritz-x as it was sailing to surrender to the Allies. The ship's crew thought they were safe and so didn't have their water-tight doors closed.

 

Roma was hit by two Fritz-Xs, the first of which went completely through the ship and exploded underneath, flooding much of the engineering plant. The second caused a detonation of the forward main magazines, causing the ship to break up and founder.

 

Hmm. I would counter that argument with the fact that the US JDAMs are, if fact, WW2 era technology 500, 1000 and 2000 lb bombs that to this day have had little or no development, other than the guidance technology.
Their guidance systems now include multiple alternatives: GPS, Laser and electronic guidance systems have all been "more or less" published.

If the Luftwaffe had focused on guidance technology... who knows where it could have led them...

 

Actually Fred, they did. They developed wire guidance and also were developing a TV (primitive, but indeed a TV camera) to put in the nose so that the missile could be aimed and guided to the target without the mother plane having to fly a more-or-less straight course. Neither of these things came to be perfected before war's end.

 

The missiles were reliant on the plane surviving long enough to guide the missile to the target, this was possible in 1943, but after 1944 there were few bombers and pilots left.

 

Also, by 1944, the Luftwaffe was putting all its diminishing eggs into fighters. Bombers weren't allocated very much fuel for training or ops.