B-17's and Long Aerial Mines
David Shaw
but which might have been devastatingly successful if used in
different circumstances.
The Long Aerial Mine was designed by the British for breaking up
aerial formations but only used briefly during the 1940/1941 Blitz,
and only against night bombers. The LAM was a cylinder 14 inches long
with a 7 inch diameter, and weighed 14 pounds. After release, the case
opened at both ends. A support parachute opened, to which was attached
a length of cord and the container. The towing parachute, packed in a
bag, fell out of the other end of the container to which was attached
2,000 feet of piano wire. The bomb, which weighed 1 pound, was fixed
to the container by a weak link and cord to which was attached a small
stabiliser parachute.
If an aircraft struck the piano wire the shock wave ran up the wire
causing the weak link to break away from the container. This action
also opened the stabilising parachute. The shock wave also ran down
the wire and the whiplash unfurled the towing parachute. As the
aircraft flew on the towing parachute dragged the bomb down onto it.
A twin engined Harrow transport aircraft could carry a 120 LAMs. Laid
at 200 foot intervals a single Harrow could lay a minefield
approximately four and a half miles long. Only one success was ever
claimed for the LAM system against a night bomber, due to the
difficulties of radar control and because the night bombers didn't fly
in formation.
The question which puzzles me is why the Germans never tried out a
similar device against the American daylight bomber formations?
"The Germans did use bombs and other devices dropped from above bomber
formations. The problem was that getting a formation of twin engine
bombers up to 25-30,000 feet to drop would have been suicide. The
escorting fighters would have shot all of them down. Heinz Knocke
tried dropping a bomb into a B-17 formation and got three bombers on
the first try (see p.93 - "I flew for the Fuhrer"). It took him 25
minutes to climb to 30,000 feet and he was never successful getting
his whole squadron to do it. These were great ideas but none could
ever be implemented."
The above quoted e-mail is typical of the responses I've received in
in response to my posting about using long aerial mines against massed
bomber formations in daylight. It's historically correct, but there
are one or two points I'd like to pick up on. The first is the
question of weight: a fair sized bomb would have weighed 500 pounds. A
long aerial mine weighed 14 pounds. In other words each Bf 109 or Fw
190 single engined fighter could have carried ten mines with minimal
effect on performance and dropped them before engaging in combat. Five
fighters and fifty mines would have been enough -- I believe -- to
have completely broken up a B-17 or B-24 formation.
The second point is that there was no need to fly high above the
bombers in order to use the mines. The normal Luftwaffe attack against
USAAF bomber formations was a shallow dive to build up speed and then
to attack the bombers head on. This method was perfectly suited to
releasing the mines: each mine was deployed under a parachute with a
2,000 foot length of piano wire above it, and fell slowly because of
the attached parachute, so no great accuracy was needed to make them
effective. If you went straight into the bombers and dropped the mines
behind you as you went, then there was a good chance of snagging a
target somewhere in the formation unless they broke ranks. Which was
all that was needed to give the fighters their chance.
The suggestion that twin engined mine droppers could not have been
used because of escorting fighters also throws up a couple of points.
The first, of course, is that escorting fighters were ineffective or
completely absent because of range problems until the Mustang was
available in large numbers. The second is that a single Ju 88 could
have spread a curtain of mines four and a half miles wide in front of
any B-17 formation. This completely turns the tactical situation
around. Instead of attacking masses of enemy bombers the German
fighters now have to defend a single German aircraft against the
American escorting fighters: it's the American fighter pilots who have
to attack, and the more of them that attacked a single target, the
more likely they were to get in each other's way.
Yes, SD-2 bombs dropped from fighters might also have been very
effective against bomber formations, I can believe that. We could
imagine each fighter dropping about two dozen such devices in a direct
head on attack. But if you're using SD-2's the term 'free-fall' might
lead to confusion, as they actually deployed their own built in wings
to descend quite slowly -- that's why the British described them as
butterfly bombs.
However, on balance, I still prefer the long aerial mine concept
simply because it created a greater danger area and because they would
have created more stress for the pilots. Imagine seeing those
parachutes suddenly opening in the sky in front of you and knowing
that underneath each one is a 2,000 foot wire with a bomb dangling on
it -- snag a wire and a second later your aircraft gets blown up. With
the SD-2's it would have been more of a sudden death thing -- by the
time you see them they've either missed you or not. And since the
effect the Luftwaffe really needed to achieve was to break up the
formations, I'll still vote for the aerial mines, although it's
certainly not an clear cut case for one method or the other.
There are two other points I'd like to make about this whole deal. How
successful these type of weapons could be would depend on what stage
of the war they were introduced. In the early days of the American air
offensive any weapon which regularly broke up the US bomber formations
would probably have ended the era of massed daylight raids. After all,
nobody at that stage knew how good the Merlin powered P-51 was going
to turn out to be, and that it was going to be capable of virtually
defeating the German fighter force over Germany itself. But by the
middle of 1944 only an outstandingly successful new technique could
have had any hope of keeping the B-17's and B-24's out of German
skies.
It's slightly off topic but perhaps useful to mention that when the
USAF faced the post war contingency of attacking Russian heavy bombers
it opted for head on attacks using large numbers of 2.75 unguided
rockets as the most likely way of scoring a hit in a single pass.
Of course even if the daylight attacks with heavy bombers had been
abandoned, it wouldn't have put the USAAF out of the war. They might
have joined the RAF in night raids, but I doubt it. I think they would
have started flying long range low level intruder missions with P-38's
and P-47's, with especial emphasis on attacking targets of opportunity
inside Germany, especially in cloudy conditions where enemy fighters
could easily be avoided. I also think a large number of such missions
would have been flown in the Mediterranean theatre. My own conclusion
is such a case is the same as if the RAF had done the same thing -- a
great deal more damage inflicted on the Germans for a lot less cost in
men and machines.
As for disrupting the allied air offensive, I would simply agree that,
on both sides, airfields were the key targets. The problem with
attacking German airfields at low level was that it was about the
nearest thing to a suicide mission an allied pilot was ever asked to
undertake. Every Luftwaffe airfield was a deathtrap because of the
number of flak guns located around them, and because of the skill of
their crews. Allied gunners could soon have provided the same amount
of protection for Allied airfields and indeed, even when totally
surprised by Operation 'Bodenplatte', did a reasonable job of plucking
the attacker's feathers.
As I see it, there were three methods of effectively attacking enemy
airfields in that era
1) Specialised anti-aircraft bombs to be dropped in large numbers,
probably at night. Imagine two dinner plates glued together rim to
rim, but made of metal and filled with explosive. An outer array of
stub wings sets the bomb rotating when dropped and it lands fairly
gently because of the aerofoil effect of the stubs. Since most surface
area of an airfield is those days was grass, the bombs are painted
green. At the bottom of each bomb is a pinch of black powder to throw
the device to a height of about thirty feet when it explodes, this
achieving a maximum damage area. The fusing could be either immediate,
delay action and/or movement. The effect would be the most amount of
damage and inconvenience possible for all the tonnage dropped.
2) An electronic guidance system which could be carried high enough in
the air to enable your intruder aircraft to be guided in night/bad
weather conditions far into enemy territory on the other side of the
Channel. This would enable surprise attacks by single aircraft at all
hours of the day and night from varying directions with the best
chance of surviving a single high speed run. The main objective is to
frighten the shit out of the ground crews and make them careless and
slow in their work.
3) What would be even better would be some kind of stand off weapon.
If you can imagine a guidance system it would be easy enough to take a
transport glider, fill it with explosives and radio controls -- taken
from a done target, like the RAF's pre-war Queen Bee -- and launch it
fifty miles away from the airfield. Being made of wood, it would not
be detectable on radar and should arrive as a complete surprise. And
four tons of RDX going off over a hangar complex would certainly ruin
the ground crew's schedule.
An example of what happens to Air Forces who don't defend their
airfields properly is provided by the Japanese in Burma and the South
West Pacific. They lost so many aircraft on the ground that they
simply couldn't keep up a major aerial presence.
Of course, no matter how you play the game, in the end the Americans
always win because they had far greater resources than anybody else.
Andrew Clark
"David Shaw" <da...@f-e-mail.com> wrote
> If you can imagine a guidance system it would be
> easy enough to take a transport glider, fill it with
> explosives and radio controls -- taken from a
> done target, like the RAF's pre-war Queen Bee
> -- and launch it fifty miles away from the airfield.
> Being made of wood, it would not be detectable
> on radar and should arrive as a complete surprise.
The problem with this idea is that the Luftwaffe lacked the
technology to enable a dead reckoning approach to anything
smaller than a city (no GPS). Your gliders would be lucky to
hit the same county as the airfield, just as the V1 were
lucky to hit London.
Successful German stand-off weapons had to be actively
guided to their targets, like the rocket anti-shipping bombs
or the Wasserfall guided anti-aircraft missile. The
Luftwaffe had the technology to design a system which would
give very good accuracy to a radio-guided pilotless plane,
but unfortunately for them the RAF had the technology to
successfully jam the system, as was found in 1940.
After 1942, the only practical way of attacking RAF and
USAAF airfields with large bombloads, in the absence of any
intelligence apparatus on the ground, was a fleet of
suicide-pilot guided V2 missiles. Fortunately, by the time
the SS took over the V2 programme, in late 1944, there was
insufficient time or resources to do this.
--
Errol Cavit
<snip>
> was a fleet of
> suicide-pilot guided V2 missiles. Fortunately, by the time
> the SS took over the V2 programme, in late 1944, there was
> insufficient time or resources to do this.
>
rather supersonic at impact? You would need clear skies at the target
point, surely?
Do you have a project name or similar for this, filtering out hits on
timeslines etc on Google is proving difficult.
Cheers
Errol Cavit
--
Andrew Clark
"Errol Cavit" <Err...@hotmail.com> wrote
> This sounds like somewhat of a technical
> challenge. Wasn't the V2 rather supersonic
> at impact? You would need clear skies at the target
> point, surely?
I have to confess that the suicide-piloted V2 is entirely my
own idea. My maths is none to good, but I think that if the
V2 air brakes were applied as the V2 came out of the
stratosphere (50,000 feet) at 1400 m/s, the missile could be
slowed to to about 460 m/s by around 30,000 feet, thus
giving the pilot about 7 seconds at little over 1,000 mph to
adjust the air rudders for final target approach. The
inertial guidance system of the V2 could be trusted to place
the missile within 10 miles of its target.
All in all, probably a good way for the SS to use up its
last remaining teenagers.
--
artamendi
news:<3f00f4f4...@news.pacific.net.au>...
> The normal Luftwaffe attack against
> USAAF bomber formations was a shallow dive to build up speed and then
> to attack the bombers head on. This method was perfectly suited to
> releasing the mines: each mine was deployed under a parachute with a
> 2,000 foot length of piano wire above it, and fell slowly because of
> the attached parachute, so no great accuracy was needed to make them
> effective. If you went straight into the bombers and dropped the mines
> behind you as you went, then there was a good chance of snagging a
> target somewhere in the formation unless they broke ranks. Which was
> all that was needed to give the fighters their chance.
Sounds good, but, I can see a few small shortcomings in the idea.
First. Releasing dozens or thousands of slow fell devices in the same
area that you in the reversal trip, or the ones behind you in the same
attack wave, or the ones in the attack waves behind the yours are
going to traverse is not good to their morale and stress also.
Second. Unless you want accidents to occur with your own fighters
hitting your mines you'll end separating clear fire areas for the
mines as they were Flak-only and Fighter-only areas. This means
reducing the space and time available for those two well proven
systems to operate, complicate the airdefense system further, etc...
One alternative would be to risk flying some minelayer fighters ( or
Me110s/Ju88s or even outdated types as Ju86 or captured
French/Czech/Polish/Italian stuff ) into the flak free fire zones to
add the effect of both weapons in a "breaking zone", but knowing that
they would not be attacked by fighters in those areas bombers could
fly in loose formations to minimize the damage and "form the square"
as soon as they leave them.
Third. You need a really good sinchronization to make it work. You
need to know exatly when ( how long do those mines stay in the air at
the proper altitude 4-5 mins ? ) and where ( you need them in the
exact bearing and altitude of the incoming formation when the
formation is going trough and of course the bombres can change
altitude, course... ) lay the minefield and coordinate it thus just
few seconds after the box is broken a fighter fomation jumps on the
scattered bombers before they can reform. This implies that fighters
and mines would have to be really close, close enough to cause
accidental damage to fighters.
I can't see no real technicall trouble in the German side to make that
possible, but as soon as the Allies learn how the trick goes they'll
began jamming radars and making fake attacks ( the same way Training
Sqns of the Bomber Command were used to make simulated attack
formations during the great raids flying over the North Sea in
seemingly attack routes ) that would divert minefields ( not all of
them and not allways, but some ).
Fourth. The trouble here is about how fast can you make the minelayer
planes climb to reach the deploying altitude. Climbing to such
altitudes requires time, and that means either having a really good
climber with external loads or deploying minelayers to proper altitude
before knowing the bombers are coming and directing them towards the
attackers ( that is: lots of fuel wasted ). Me-109s and Fw-190s had
already troubles reaching combat altitudes on time due to overload
with heavy guns, add to that external loads...
Fifth. The countermeasures are as cheap and easy as provinding the
leading planes, or all planes, in the boxes with the same wire cutting
devices used against barrage ballons.
Sixth. You'll need to put up a organization to recover all the
unexploded bombs that land before they begin causing civilian
casualties among the Germans.
I see it all very hard to sell to Hitler unless the idea catches him
from the start, but, in short, there was no "Definitive" weapon able
to end the war quick or easily, the A-Bomb excluded. In the event the
Germans bothered in setting up the whole show that would only mean an
added nuissance in the path of the bombers in the best of the
scenarios ( for the Germans of course ).
Bests,
I.A.
Christopher Morton
wrote:
>The Long Aerial Mine was designed by the British for breaking up
Far more effective would have been for the Germans to have started
INTENSIVE work on AA missiles like Enzian and Wasserfall much earlier
and at levels of funding calculated to actually achieve significant
results..
The cost/benefit ratio would have been far better.
--
More blood for oil... in my name!
Ed Frank
> I have to confess that the suicide-piloted V2 is entirely my
> own idea.
[spacesnips]
The idea of the piloted A4 featured prominently in
Thomas Pynchon's WWII novel _Gravity's Rainbow_.
Ed Frank
--
Don Phillipson
news:3f00f4f4...@news.pacific.net.au...
> The Long Aerial Mine was designed by the British for breaking up
> aerial formations but only used briefly during the 1940/1941 Blitz,
> and only against night bombers. The LAM was a cylinder 14 inches long
> with a 7 inch diameter, and weighed 14 pounds. After release, the case
> opened at both ends. A support parachute opened, to which was attached
> a length of cord and the container. The towing parachute, packed in a
> bag, fell out of the other end of the container to which was attached
> 2,000 feet of piano wire. The bomb, which weighed 1 pound, was fixed
> to the container by a weak link and cord to which was attached a small
> stabiliser parachute.
Memory suggests this was one of the bright
ideas of F.A. Lindemann (Lord Cherwell),
Churchill's chief scientific adviser, enemy of
Tizard (deputy minister of the Dept. of Scientific
and Industrial Research in the 1920s) and
a familiar Whitehall figure in defence science
projects even before Churchill came to power
(because of his role in aviation research in the
First World War.)
Book sources include biographies of Cherwell
and Tizard and R.V. Jones's Most Secret War
(1978: Jones was MI6's science adviser)
besides histories of the air defence of Great
Britain. The Royal Navy developed a similar
ship-mounted AA device called PAC (parachute
and cable) described in Gerald Pawle's Secret
Weapons of World War II (1967); the RN had
two rival research structures, and this book
narrates the weirder one, commanded by
reservist Charles Goodeve.)
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs (Ottawa, Canada)
dphillipson[at]trytel.com
--