The Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka, better known to American sailors as the Baka bomb was not a version of the V-1:
The Germans did experiment with thier own piloted suicide version of the V-1, the Fieseler Fi 103R but the project was cancelled. 3) None of this addresses why on earth the Germans would try to turn the V-1 into a wire-guided anti-ship missile, something it was completely unsuited for. Wire guidance out to more than a few kilometers in a missile is impractical simply due to the length of wire needed, and attempting to steer a Manual Command Line of Sight missile to its target gets progressively harder the further away the target is. This brings up the biggest problem with making the V-1 a wire guided anti-ship weapon: it would have to be launched within visual sight of the target ship. It would be completely useless in this role from a ground launch due to both the short range and the long preparation time required for launch. As an air-launched weapon it would be suicidal as it would require the heavily overloaded launch plane, presumably the He-111 which was used in this role, to attempt to approach within several kilometers of an Allied ship. The Ohka suffered heavy losses due to the carrier aircraft being easily shot down in this overloaded state, and it only had to approach to 37km before release. The Ohka was also able to avoid effective anti-aircraft fire due to its being able to reach a terminal speed of 650km/h in level flight or 1,000km/h in a dive. The V-1 with its pulse jet could only reach 640km/h, which combined with its low operational altitude made it quite vulnerable to anti-aircraft guns using proximity fuzes:
The existing Fritz X would be better in almost every conceivable way to a V-1 modified as a wire guided anti-ship missile.
I wonder how many times I’m going to have to post in this thread a reminder that the Germans had computers as good or better than the US and UK at the time the war started. They just failed to capitalize on them as much. But they had them and used them.
A lot of the artillery advantage had to do with communication with spotters. Both sides had the same tech there, the US just exploited it better.
Not incidentally, this and the wartime production increases set the stage for the post war economic boom of the US- we not only had the most advanced manufacturing techniques, but big undamaged factories set up to use them, plenty of manpower available, and a huge market for manufactured goods in Europe and Asia.
We also had a good share of the world’s capital. We did institute Lend-Lease and similar programs to supply goods to other countries on credit. But we did this after they had spent all their money reserves buying goods from us.
To illustrate the trend, the United States owned 24% of the world’s gold in 1913 and 70% of the world’s gold in 1947.
I’m sorry for implying that it was a version of the V1 but both are similar in shape and size and were the precursors to the modern cruise missile.
The V1 carried twice the payload and could drive into a ship at 400 mph. It was also designed to fly operationally from Heinkel He 111’s and over 1000 of them were launched that way.
Since they already had a wire guided system for rockets it wouldn’t be much of an engineering feat to modify a V1. being able to launch a guided weapon with such a small foot print 2 miles out would be a difficult weapon to defend against.
I’m not so sure capital is the word I’d use. We had a ridiculous amount of production capacity and natural resources. It was also almost impossible to attack these resources because of the distances involved.
After the war we had 75% of the worlds production capacity because much of Europe and Asia was heavily damaged in the war.
Small guided (“brilliant”, really) weapons with 2 mile range and 400 mph diving speed already existed. We just called them kamakazes. And while they were hell on picket destroyers, they didn’t do spectacularly against capital ships, USS Franklin, et al, aside.
Wire guided weapons are a pain to use over seawater, FWIW. Ask the IDF, who had difficulties with TOW during IIRC, the Yom Kippur War, during cross-Canal shots.
You’re joking, right? I just explained the problem to you, but to repeat it: your “small footprint” is a heavily overloaded He-111 that you are expecting to get within 2 miles of an Allied ship. It’s going to be picked up on radar a hell of a lot further out than 2 miles. The Japanese suffered heavy losses trying to get heavily over laden G4Ms close enough to launch Ohkas, and they only had to get within 37km and didn’t have to loiter trying to steer the Ohka via a command wire. The end result of all of this trouble is still a weapon inferior to the Fritz X, which had a range of 5km, a speed of 770 mph and to top it off was designed to penetrate heavily armored targets such as cruisers and battleships, something the V-1 just wasn’t going to do. Just as an FYI, the Hs 293 was the companion of the Fritz X intended only for use on unarmored targets and had a range of 12km.
You’re just not getting it; I don’t know how many more ways I can explain it. You are joking, you just don’t realize it. An He-111 carrying a V-1 was a sitting duck to any fighter that intercepted it, just like the G4M was a sitting duck when carrying an Ohka. It was extremely overloaded, slow, as maneuverable as a moving van and incidentally was externally carrying a bomb with an 850kg warhead with a motor that used highly unstable acetylene to start the pulse engine. It wasn’t going to get within 2 miles to launch without extreme luck. It was going to be picked up on radar far, far beyond two miles out and at that point a half blind syphilitic pilot flying a biplane could blow it out of the sky without much trouble. Yet again the Japanese had problems enough getting G4Ms close enough to launch Ohkas without becoming target practice for American pilots, and it only had to get within 37kms of a ship to launch and didn’t have to then loiter trying to guide the Ohka onto the target. It would in fact be far better to fly close in with a torpedo since carrying a torpedo didn’t turn the He-111 into flying target practice. The He-111 and Ju-88 were fairly successful as torpedo bombers, and incidentally the G4M Betty was excellent as a torpedo bomber.
The Japanese Type 93 Torpedo, used during WWII, had an effective range of around 22 kilometers. Torpedoes were not an explosive bayonet for airplanes and submarines (unlike the Spar Torpedoes of the 19th century), they actually did have some standoff distance or they would never be effective against a ship armed with guns to defend herself.
Ah, Operation Aphrodite. This shows just what the edge of technology was at the time. The list of mission failure after mission failure shows that remotely guided aircraft-bombs just wasn’t doable in that era.
It also greatly affected later American politics: Joseph Kennedy, Jr. died during one mission bumping up Jack Kennedy in the family hierarchy.
Nah. The V-2 had a 1000kg warhead, bigger than the V-1, but was actually less effective than the V-1 because it dove into the ground at supersonic speeds, burying the warhead before it exploded. The V-1 exploded closer to the surface and caused destruction instead of making a crater. And that’s with HE. Incendiaries need to be on the surface (actually, on buildings) to do their job, which is kinda the opposite of what you got from V-2s. Incendiary bombs weighed only a few kilos but were broadcast in their hundreds over a large area.
The Type 93 Torpedo was not steerable so I’m not sure why you’re bringing it up. Airplane launched torpedoes were very effective in WW-II. The Bismark was immobilized by an antique airplane carrying a torpedo and The Pacific fleet was severely damaged at Pearl Harbor due to aerial attack and torpedoes played a significant roll.
Wow, you’re still not getting it. Unlike a B-17 that has to be OVER the target, a stand off weapon is delivered out of range of the target. Of course it’s subjected to fighter attack, but unlike a bomber it doesn’t also have to defend against ground/sea attack. What do you think fighter aircraft are for? To defend other air assets. If you can use one plane to destroy one ship then you’ve gained a substantial advantage in resource management over your enemy.
Thinking in terms of asset management look at a B-17. It’s a large complicated airplane with a crew of 10 requiring a fighter escort and they have to send waves of them to attack a target that they might (if they’re lucky) come within 1000 feet of hitting requiring much greater coverage for success. There is no defense against the ground flak. They have to fly through it.
Now look at a Heinkel 111. A much smaller aircraft which means they can build more in relation to a B-17 using the same resources. A crew of 5 requiring less training and 2 less engines which means much less maintenance. Using a guided weapon they can attack a target without flying over it’s air defenses and while using the same fighter escort as a B-17. The difference is they can consistently deliver their ordinance directly to the target.
It’s the difference between building a large expensive tank that’s hard to maintain or building 5 pretty good tanks that are easy to maintain. It’s resource management and Hitler sucked at it.
From my various readings, I’d have to submit that the Germans had a lot of innovative aircraft on the drawing boards or in prototype by the end of the war. They were the first to come up with swept wings. But timing was everything and they never had time to perfect them, let alone put them in to production and squadron use. And some of the designs wouldn’t have worked anyway.
Type 93 was not a guided torpedo I guess you mean? It’s true it’s not a directly comparable weapon to guided torpedoes or missiles/glide bombs instead of torpedoes, but it’s relevant in another way to the thread topic. It’s an example of something Japan produced superior to that of any other country. No other torpedo of WWII remotely approached the Type 93’s speed/range capability.
Germany produced more military items more advanced than those of other countries’ than Japan did. But I agree with the general consensus of the thread that post war interest in Germany’s technical capabilities has tended to obscure the pretty clear fact that Germany didn’t produce more such world leading items than the Anglo/Americans. Nuclear weapons are a gigantic exception that it’s rather strange German tech enthusiasts tend not to think of. But actually there were many other such areas.
Even in antiship guided weapons the US Bat glide bomb was operationally used late in WWII and was conceptually more advanced than the German manual command to line of sight weapons (either radio or wire), being autonomously active radar guided, like post WWII anti ship missiles. In many cases it seems that the impression of great German advances is partly due to lack of familiarity with stuff which appeared in US hands late in the war or like a lot of German stuff wasn’t ready in time. It might be partly because British writers also aren’t as interested in late war US weapons developments outside the really big ones. That affects public knowledge because a lot of what’s written of the technical history of WWII is by British authors. These weapons didn’t appear in important roles in the European war the British were and remain much more focused on, and weren’t going to change the outcome of Allied victory if they did. Advanced German weapons OTOH did have at least the theoretical potential to reverse the war’s course, and that’s a reasonable explanation why they’ve generated more interest, especially to a British audience.