Germany's Secret Weapons

I have a documentary about germans rockets, but i haven't got the time to see it yet, allthou i sow they used a tv and a joystick.

But what do you think about theyr wind gun, or the sonic cannon ?
i also heard they had ufo's

Werner von Braun(student of Herman Oberth) team have a project of an improvment variant of V-2/A 4 missile,the A 8/A 10 variant with a much more range,capable to hit targets on east coast of USA.After war,when Werner von Braun and shes team surrender to americans and be take in US to work for americans air space industry,this project was the base for Saturn rocket ,use for Apollo space ship program.

After this week-end - and a search on my home hdd i give more details to this german SAM. I remember about 2 variants of one basic project. This is not Waserfall.

Iama

You heard about our mans with "ghioage" - some like a big wooden stick - who from time to time (when ocassion arrived) smashed heavy armoured cavlry of Teutons (for ex.)???
Of course, our army was not with "ghioage" - but ideea stands up.

Iama

Look at this:

" The guiding system consisted of a ground operator, who steered the Wasserfall missile to the target by use of a joystick by line-of-sight. The missile was gyroscopically controlled in roll, pitch and yaw, and could be controlled from the ground via radio link in azimuth and elevation. This was achieved by the four graphite rudders placed in the rocket exhaust at the slower starting speeds, and later by the four air rudders mounted on the tail once higher speeds were reached. There was also a proposed radar control system, known as Rheinland, which consisted of a radar set, direction finder set, comparator computer and a control transmitter. The radar set was to track the targets and then trigger a transponder aboard the Wasserfall missile. Then the signal from the transponder would be received by the direction finder set, thus establishing the azimuth and elevation of the missile. The information would then be fed into the comparator computer, where it was compared to the target information obtained by the radar. At this point, the necessary corrections were calculated and then relayed to the control transmitter to bring the missile into the radar beam, and once in the beam, the Wasserfall would ride up the beam to the target. Another proposed method was to use two radar sets that employed rotating dipoles giving conical scans, so that if the missile was off track, it would receive a modulated signal to bring it back on target. It was felt, using either radar system, that because of the supersonic speed of the Wasserfall, the radar system would be inadequate to control the missile when it got to within a few miles of the target, so a proximity or infrared homing system would take over near the end of the flight. "

Iama

PS - And a "schema":


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I think - in an older post i make a mistake, about Wasserfal, when i say about her it was not guided. At that time i had in mind another missile, guided, Rheinmetall-Borsig F25 and F55 "Feuerlilie", and Waserfal - a rocket presented in Modelism (?????).

Iama

And a drawing with launcher of F55

Edit: i forgot to mention the source for both last posts: www.luft46.com, at rockets.

This post has been edited by Iamandi on December 09, 2004 01:55 pm

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GREAT info Iamandi!

Were there any victims of these rockets?

Yes Goring is reported a nervous breadown casualty

Was the system even tested or was it just theory? There are plenty of things that could go wrong, especially in the young age of electronics.

From what I understand fro mthe text the missile was basicly hand-controlled, like the other German hand guided missiles that sunk Italian ships in 1943. The radar guidance seems only to have been a theory then. Practical implementation IMO was rather difficult due to the fact that they had to use large electronic lamps for the different modules (amplification, demodulation etc.).

About Wasserfall, work and research were started at the Peenemünde Research Station in 1942, and the design borrowed many concepts from the A-4 missile. First launch, with a test rocket achieved 7010m altitude, at February 1944.
Research and development were terminated in February 1945 - for reasons... easy to understand. Maybe continued... in other places, in Rusia, USA, UK, France.
"Some sources have suggested that several of the trial missiles were actually deployed against Allied aircraft. "
The missle weight was 3545kg at takeoff, and contain a 306kg warhead of high explosive armed with a proximity fuze. Was intended to equipe circa 200 batteries for guarding Germany.

Iama

Messerschmitt "Enzian" (Gentian Violet) - another sol-aer missile, ww2 secret weapon.
Developed from Me163 aerodinamic configuration at Oberammergau, with flight tests at Peenemunde. 38 flew, 16 of them with guidance systems. Had a rate of succes of 30-35%. Work at this project was cancelled in favour of concentrating on the Wasserfall rocket.
Some advantages of the Enzian: was built from non-strategical materials, with little man/hours of work, was launched from an 88 m.m. Flak afet.
Was in some variants, some of them for air-to-air, ground-to-ground - antintank, wire guided, capable of penetrating 200 m.m. armour at 1000 meters. For example, the E-4 was provided with one of 300kg of HE with an infra-red proximity fuse.
When i find some more data, i edit my post to add them.
Source: manny internet sites , and picture is from my hdd, but i think is not restricted, because i found it in a lot of sites.

Iama


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They got the turbojet engine technology from the British.

So, to resume, the countries able to build turbojets by their own technical skill during WWII were Germany, Great Britain and Italy.

The countries able to build turbojets helped by technological know-how from their allies were The United States and Japan.

Soviet Union claims that it also tested a hybrid prototype with classical motor + turbojet in March 1945, but this is to be further clarified.

Anyone can participate with data about "Hecht" - i hope i spell it correct; was another sol air missile, but i dont know nothing about it.
Thanks,

Iama

No country had transistors in WWII.
They were invented in The United States in 1947...1949, and they were for the first time used commercially by the Japanese, in the 1950's, when they flooded the market with their radio receivers.

This leads to a question I asked myself when I was about 10 years old: If there were no transistors in WWII, how could people use radios in those times?
Well, the answer is the vacuum tube.

The vacuum tube (diode, triode, tetrode, penthode etc. etc.) allowed a lot of complex electronic circuits to be used in the weaponry of WWII.
From these:

1. Really fully guided missiles (so we don't need to write "guided", because they were guided). Among these remote controlled missiles, the V-2 super-rocket itself.
2. The proximity shell, which exploded even if it not direct hit the target, but rather passed it close (invented by The United States).
3. Various types of radar, first of them being invented in Great Britain.
4. The first electronic computers, in Germany (1940) and the United States (1945)

And so on...

The vacuum tube amplifies the signal with much more accuracy than the transistor, and it does not have the "background noise", and 2 tubes built identical can be interchanged, but with 2 transistors built identical, they had to be checked and measured before replacing each other.

The transistors and tyristors eliminated the tubes from the common life because they need less electric power to operate, and over decades, they could be built smaller, and smaller, and smaller.

This post has been edited by Florin on December 14, 2004 08:43 pm

The articles in these links were intended to make fun. However, they offer some useful information.

http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=1226

http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=1636

http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2035

http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=1244

http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=1315