Did anyone ever propose an Allied use of V-1 or V-2 rockets?

[TokyoBayer]

@RealityChuck

Mulberries were barges that were designed to be towed to a beach and then sunk to become a pier or artifical breakwater for a temporary harbor. Ships could tie up and unload without running aground on the beach.

As can be seen in the quote, it was actually much more complex than simple barges. It was quite the engineering feat. Here’s an interesting documentary on it.

@md2000

When the original daylight bombing raids started, the casualty rate was horrendous (IIRC sometimes one quarter of aircraft did not come back). I think that’s why they switched to nighttime raids, where they reduced casualties a bit but reduced (already sad) accuracy of bombs, this creating more German casualties.

While this is true for the RAF, the US stayed with daytime bombing to give round-the-clock attacks. As mentioned above, it wasn’t until the P-51D was available in winter of '43/'44 that the US could resume large scale day attacks deep into Germany.

The main point is that with air superiority, the allies could drop anything, anywhere, with far more accuracy and larger volume. The benefit of the V1 an V2 were that even without any air support, they could easily reach their target and deliver payload, however ineffective.

ETA: Echoing what Bridget Burke said on the daytime/nighttime bombing.

When invading Japan, the USAF could easily fly fairly unmolested over any battlefield already and drop what they would need to. The Japanese were running out of aircraft an trained pilots. Fancy weapons were not necessary.

As I stated above, Hap Arnold was impressed enough with the JB-2, the US version of the V1, that he originally ordered 75,000 of them in January, '45.

As background, Germans was still fighting its last major offense on the Western Front, the Battle of the Bulge that month. They were looking to increase their bombing capacity as inclement weather prevented bombing raids up to one-third of the time.

In January, the US had not yet developed and implemented the strategy for firebombing and they were just realizing that the super fast jet streams over Japan was making precision bombing impossible. If the B-29s stationed out of the Marianas bombs with the wind, the ground speed was too fast for the Norden bombsight, and if they flew against the wind, the planes would be above the target for too long, allowing effective AAA.

The JB-2 must have been seen as an attractive alternative. However, by switching to night attacks with napalm bombs, the USAAF was able to fly at a lower altitude and were able to release bombs below the jet stream.

By the time the kinks were getting worked out for the JB-2, the US had found the firebombing to be highly effective and the Japanese AAA was running out of ammunition, allowing for more effective precision strikes.

The Imperial armed forces had stockpiled great quantities of munitions to defend against the planned invasion, and the Allies were planning a massive bombardment of the Kanto region which the JB-2 would likely have played some part in.

[Magiver]

@bob_2

There wasn’t even much support for the jet engine. Frank Whittle sent his detailed proposal to the Air Ministry in 1929 and they turned him down.

he didn’t have a viable engine in 1929.

There were 2 types of jet engines developed simultaneously by both the British and the Germans. The Brits took the more reliable route and went with centrifugal type engines while the Germans focused on the axial flow. It came down to metallurgical science and the axial flow really didn’t have the proper metal to keep the thing together.

[Ranchoth]

@TokyoBayer

I don’t believe there was a serious proposal. The Allies didn’t capture V-2s until May, '45 and weren’t able to fly them until Sept., '45 with the help of captured German technicians and scientists. The surrender of Japan occurred before that.

[…]

Could you be misremembering the US version of the V-1 which was called the JB-2?

I’m fairly certain I’m not—I’m familiar enough with the JB-2, at least enough not to confuse it with a V-2. And in any case, I cheerfully agree that it couldn’t have been a very “serious” proposal, given the impracticality of such a plan, and the fact that (at best) it’s gotten a scrap of a historical footnote to it’s memory…assuming it actually exists at all, and wasn’t solely the product of me taking a nap after eating a scrap of underdone potato.

[ralph124c]

The V-2s had an annoying tendency to explode-the alcohol/liquid oxygen fuel was unstable and caused many engine explosions. Plus the "guidance’ system was pretty primitive. Hitting within a 50 mile radius was considered good.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@ralph124c

the "guidance’ system was pretty primitive. Hitting within a 50 mile radius was considered good.

Wrong.

What was the accuracy of the V-2? This question reduces to one of philosophy - if a missile misses the aim point by half the range, does that shot count against the missile’s accuracy calculation or is it a failure, counted in the reliability calculation? Tests of prototype V-2’s in 1943 indicated a 4.5 km CEP (circular error probable - the radius within which 50% of the shots impact). 100% of the shots fell within 18 km of the target. A radio beam guidance update system was introduced in December 1944, which in tests produced a 2 km CEP. In reality, in the campaign against Britain, 518 rockets were recorded as falling in the Greater London Air Defence Zone of 1225 fired, implying an average CEP of 12 km.

Part of this lack of accuracy was attributable to a skillful British disinformation campaign. Nazi agents in Britain were the only source of information to the Germans as to where the missiles actually hit. Most of these agents had been turned by British intelligence and were sending back false reports as to the impact points of the rockets. These false reports indicated that the missiles were going long and impacting beyond London. As a result of corrections due to this false information, the German average impact point moving farther and farther east as the campaign went on. The average impact point for the entire campaign ended up on the eastern edge of the Greater London Air Defence Zone.

Had accurate post-attack reports been available to the Germans, the CEP would have been more like 6 km, reinforcing Dornberger’s claim that by the end of the campaign the missile was close to achieving its tested accuracy.

[Mr.Kobayashi]

Thanks for the replies, I hadn’t read about the U.S. version of the V-1, just the kind of thing I was after.

@md2000

Where’d you get that idea? When the original daylight bombing raids started, the casualty rate was horrendous (IIRC sometimes one quarter of aircraft did not come back). I think that’s why they switched to nighttime raids, where they reduced casualties a bit but reduced (already sad) accuracy of bombs, this creating more German casualties.

The main point is that with air superiority, the allies could drop anything, anywhere, with far more accuracy and larger volume. The benefit of the V1 an V2 were that even without any air support, they could easily reach their target and deliver payload, however ineffective.

When invading Japan, the USAF could easily fly fairly unmolested over any battlefield already and drop what they would need to. The Japanese were running out of aircraft an trained pilots. Fancy weapons were not necessary.

I dunno, Fat Man and Little Boy were pretty fancy for the times. Point being that whenever there was an opportunity to spend resources of whatever kind if there was a chance to spare American lives that option would always be taken, the most obvious example being the prodigious rate at which the Allies burned through artillery ammunition. As you say when the casualty rates in the sky climbed resources were thrown at the problem, in the form of the P-47/P-51. If you fire rockets, you don’t risk any crew being shot down, was my thinking.

[Magiver]

Guidance technology changed considerably between the beginning and end of the war. The Germans had developed a fly-by-wire air-to-air missile with an attenuating detonator. The Ruhrstahl x-4. It was designed to be fired at B-17’s as a standoff weapon and could be guided by the pilot until got close enough to the bomber where it would explode at the frequency produced by the engines. Never used but it showed the advancement in technology driven by the war.