Apologies in advance if I got the number wrong, the plane I’m referring to is the rocket-powered interceptor the Germans developed to try and deal with bomber attacks.
I’m curious about the weapons because the plane itself looks much smaller than most conventional fighters, and on the History channel they mentioned that the engine and fuel tanks took up such a large part of the plane it affected other aspects such as cockpit and weapons (I believe this plane was too small to have a 2 seat trainer version)
Despite its extremely limited range and effectiveness in the war, I think it is a very interesting concept. The sillohuette of the plane in the air has an almost alien-like appearance, in fact, I believe some bomber pilots (sorry, no cite) mistook these planes for UFO’s.
I used to have a copy of The Military History of World War II, which described the Me-163’s weaponry as “a battery of rockets in the nose.” It did not offer any further information.
According to this page the Komet sported two 30mm cannons. One mention in there is more specific saying one model had two 30mm Mk108 cannons with 60 rounds per cannon (not a whole lot of ammo).
As far as I can remember, it had a machine gun and cannon like most other German planes of the era. I seem to recall they were also working on (or even had) a strange upward firing rocket that would fire into the belly of bombers as the Komet flew underneath. It supposedly had a trigger activated by the shadow of the bomber. You can probably find some good info on Yahoo or somewhere.
Interesting story about another case of mistaken identity in the air: During the Korean war, Twin Mustangs were used to carry big old recon pods under the center wing section. I once heard (sorry, no cite here either) that a few Mig pilots thought we were coming with “the big one” and hauled butt in the other direction. Seems that shooting it down would be a better option, but not if you were into self-preservation, as these pilots most likely were.
According to the Virtual Aviation museum, it had either two MG151 20mm guns, or two MK108 30mm guns. I don’t know about the rockets, there were several variants of the Me-163.
I heard about that light-sensor too. They actually used it as well; apparently 2 B-17’s were shot down with this device (Mentioned on Weapons at War on the History Channel)
Most early versions had two 20mm MG151, but the standard production armament was two 30mm MK108.
Hitting a bomber with a swift moving Me 163 was hard, so a device called SG500 was devised. It consisted of ten 50mm launcher tubes in the plane’s wing roots, firing upwards, controlled automatically by photosensitive shells.