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Wasserfall & Feuerlilie

Discussion in 'Wonder Weapons' started by USMA03, Jun 22, 2001.

  1. USMA03

    USMA03 Member

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    If these two weapons were ready, would they have made a difference in the out come of the war? It can be seen that even with heavy bombing in from 1943-1945 that the German industry continued to put out with Speer at the helm, but if these two anti-aircraft rockets (surface to air missles) were ready would they have effected the outcome? Could the combined strength of the British and American air forces have overcome these weapons in their infantcy? More information is available at http://visi.net/~djohnson/missile/

    Steve Flagg
     
  2. Erich

    Erich Alte Hase

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    Hi Steve :

    This would of course depend on the year. This is very speculative, but if Germany had not been pounded by the air and did have the resources for chemical and fuel distribution then there would of been many, many aerial flak sites developed. Germany had the manpower just not the reserves. The US bomber crews were startled when the Br 21 rocket launcher was used in July of 43 under the wings of the Bf 109, later Fw 190 and then a total of 4 under the Bf 110G-2's and the Bf 410's. Allied fighter escort then in 1944 prevented much of the rocket attacks from even forming up. When again the R4M came into use under the wings of the Me 262 in 1945, the Allied crews were again startled and the US fighter escorts started hanging around the Me 262 airfields to take them on before they could out pace the P-51's and the same high altitude. Could the so-called rocket wonder weapons of turned the tide ..... ? Possibly if they would of been made in sufficient numbers and placed at strategic locations. Fortunately nearly all were in the experimental stages and were still being caried for trials when the fields/testing centers were captured. Can you imagine if the Germans had perfected the homing/guidance system what would of happened ? Total chaos !!

    E
     
  3. Erich

    Erich Alte Hase

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    Thought I would give this a slight-- (bump) --

    guys:

    anyone know of some good books or web-sites that cover the anti-aircraft missiles during WW 2 ?

    E
     
  4. Friedrich

    Friedrich Expert

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    Not at all, Erich. My strong point is not Luftwaffe and less its technological issues like missiles and flying bombs... I cannot help you this time.

    But I think those miracle weapons would have made us very happy!!!
     
  5. Erich

    Erich Alte Hase

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    I can tell you Friedrich that if these ground based wepaons would have been operationally functional by the beginning of 1944 things might have been possibly different over the skies of Germany and US bomber tactics would of had to have changed. You probably would not have seen such tight organized boxes.

    E still looking for a good book......
     
  6. Friedrich

    Friedrich Expert

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    I think we could have not win, but make Western allies to search for peace. In this way: Let's say we have V1s and V2s, Some 500 operational Me-262, Me-163B, He-162 (Is that the number of the "Salammander") by June 1943. Italy invasion, France invasion and the air raids over Germany could not have been possible. If just with a few Me-109 and Fw-190 we could shot down 1/3 of the bombers... I can't imagine with those Me-262, totally smashing bombers' formations. With such loses Churchill and Ike would have reconsidered.
     
  7. Hairog

    Hairog Member

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    I have a story in the Pen and Quill Forum that uses the Wasserfal and I've figured out a practical guidance system. Only it's the Soviets that have it in 1946.
     
  8. ickysdad

    ickysdad Member

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    Only thing I have to say is there
    s a big difference between making a few prototypes/conducting trials and getting something into serial production.
     
  9. T. A. Gardner

    T. A. Gardner Genuine Chief

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    Wasserfall was a fail. The missile had numerous issues that would have left it useless as a SAM.

    First, the Germans didn't know enough about supersonic flight to recognize that the control surfaces, designed in a conventional way that was used on aircraft, would be useless at supersonic speeds. The all-flying control surface hadn't yet been recognized and put into use. Without this type of control surface the Wasserfall wasn't going to be maneuverable in flight. This would have required a complete redesign of the missile's control and flight surfaces to fix.

    Next, the CLOS system using a joystick and ground controller was never going to be a viable solution to a missile that could fly as far as 16 miles from its launching position. At half that range and a target at say, 25,000 feet you are trying to guide a supersonic missile to an intercept with a speck in the sky. Since both the missile and target are moving, and there will be some parallax error involved, it is a virtual certainty that a visual control system using a simple joy stick like the Germans were using was completely worthless as a guidance system.
    The missile really needed a guidance radar, target tracking radar, and a fire control computer capable of taking data on the position of both and sending command signals or guiding the missile to an intercept. Germany lacked anything close to an acceptable system that could do that.

    The lack of a suitable proximity fuze was another problem. Command detonation might be substituted as a poor man's alternative.

    The choice of RNFA and furfuyl alcohol as propellant is also problematic. This left a thick reddish brown smoke trail behind the missile making it highly visible to the target and giving such targets a good chance to dodge or jam the missile.

    Postwar, the US found the Wasserfall virtually worthless, firing a few before dropping it as even a research missile as part of Project Hermes. The Russians tried to further develop it into a SAM but ran into so many problems that they recognized a complete redesign would be necessary and dropped it too.
     
  10. T. A. Gardner

    T. A. Gardner Genuine Chief

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    Since I posted last to this subject, I've become engaged in very detailed research for a book on early SAM development and learned far more about these systems.

    Feuerlilie, in both the F25 and F55 versions were intended to be sounding rockets for R&D and the whole use as a SAM was simply a cover by the scientists and engineers at the Luftfahrtforschunganstadt (LFA or Institute for Aerodynamic Research) to get funding since all projects for basic R&D had long been cancelled by the RLM. Thus, there wasn't any serious attempt to make this rocket viable as a SAM.

    Wasserfall, as I noted was found postwar by the US and Soviet Union to be a colossal failure. The US fired 6 as part of Project Hermes then dumped the design virtually entirely for US designs that eventually turned into the Viking series of rockets used for satellite launch and space research. The biggest single failure of Wasserfall, and every other wartime German SAM was the lack of a viable guidance system.

    Without a working proximity fuze, any missile would require either command detonation or a direct hit to work. That alone is a serious lowering of the Pk of any missile. Then there is the guidance systems the Germans did try and develop. The two main ones were Burgund and Alsance. Both worked the same way, with the difference being Burgund was optical and Alsance used radar.

    The way Burgund worked was using a standard heavy flak gun fire control system with modifications for command control of the SAM being used. A 4 meter Flak Em 34-36 rangefinder and a Flak Folge Gerät were used to find the range and the bearing, altitude, and speed of the target respectively. These two devices electro-mechanically calculated their outputs and fed them to a Kommandogerät 36 or 40. This calculated the firing solution and any parallax error. From start to a firing solution took about a minute. If the target radically maneuvered during the calculation the system had to start over again. The system could handle targets to about 400 mph at most.

    Alsance substituted one of several gunfire control radars, variously Wurtzburg, Wurtzburg Riese, Mannheim, and Mannheim Riese. These substituted for the rangefinder and speed / bearing optical systems. Otherwise, Alsance was the same system.

    The two, once a solution was calculated, had the output displayed on a special screen showing the target and missile after launch as a dot. The operator would then use a joystick to try and bring the two dots together. The movement of the stick was electro-mechanically translated into a radio signal in a device codenamed Bodo. The output of this went to a standard radio transmitter like the Keilheim series used with the Fritz X or Hs 293. The transmitter sent the signal through a non-polarized non-directional antenna to the missile that received it and would cause it to maneuver.

    Both systems were highly susceptible to jamming, and the slow speed of the computational equipment meant that if the target maneuvered radically the missile would likely miss simply because of a loss of calculation on course that resulted.

    Both systems could control a single missile in flight at a time.

    There were several variants beyond this proposed that were basically just variations on the same theme using different transmitters, radars, etc. None of these systems was tested in any sort of live fire situation against an actual target. At best they were a very basic and minimal guidance system that represented a starting point to developing something that really would work.

    Notably, Bell / Western Electric's solution and system for the Nike missile was quite similar but used far better radars using monopulse outputs rather than less accurate and easily jammed conical scan systems like the Germans. The fire control computers and operator station were also far better being custom designed for the missile rather than modified gunfire controls. Note, that the US solution didn't rely on anything from the German wartime efforts in this area and were independently developed.

    There is absolutely no way a supersonic SAM was going to be controlled using a MCLOS system based solely on the one used with something like Fritz X or Hs 293. The speeds involved were beyond human hand-eye coordination. Subsonic SAMs like Schmetterling or Rhinetochter were too slow and of too limited range to be viable against a fast, high-flying bomber.
     

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