Brakemine

[PMN1]

How successful or otherwise were the Brakemine trials?

If the UK could have produced a larger diameter rocket motor than the 3" motors used, would this have been useful?

A modified 3.7" AA gun mounting was used for the trials, would this have been the operational launcher?

 

[Jemiba]

According to Bill Gunstons "Enzyklopädie der Raketen & Lenkwaffen" the trials actually
were relatively succesful (after some failures at the start), the reason for cancelling the
program were just the economical difficulties at the end of the war and the disbandment
of the design team. Brakemine started with four 3'' motors and moved on to six. Such
changes may have been more difficult, if producing a completely new motor would have
necessary, I think, the "modular" propulsion may have been more flexible.
(photo from the mentioned book)

 

[pathology_doc]

A modified 3.7" AA gun mounting was used for the trials, would this have been the operational launcher?

Assuming progression of Brakemine into service in WW2, I don't see why not.


I'm sure an artillery obsessive could name plenty of examples in which a new gun was mounted on an older, well-known and proven carriage whose construction the factories are already set up for. Under wartime conditions, this makes sense. No doubt we would have seen Launcher MkI, MkI* and probably a couple more * added on as the bugs got worked out and things were optimised "on the fly", but I can't see them not starting with what they knew worked.

 

[CJGibson]

While researching BSP4, I went to the REME Museum at Arborfield. The Staff there were incredibly helpful and dug out a few documents on Brakemine. Attached is an article from the REME Association newsletter that summarises the project, but gives no info on its capabilities. I think the conclusion to draw is that they were at the stage where they were seeing if it could be done and it was cancelled before they could find its capabilities.

I think the reason it was binned was that by late 1944, bomber attacks on the UK were few, whereas the new threat was the V-1 and V-2 i.e. Brakemine's raison d'etre had disappeared.

LH Bedford went on to take charge of EECo's Red Shoes and Thunderbird projects.

Chris

(Big file, might need resizing by mods)

 

[CJGibson]

An interesting predecessor to Brakemine was Ben, which used searchlight guidance as the radars were too inaccurate for weapon guidance.

Attached image by Adrian Mann.

Chris

 

[PMN1]

Were any range/ceiling/speed requirements laid down or was it simply a case of see what you can get with the motors available?

Ahh edit: Chris has given an answer already.

 

[pathology_doc]

I think the reason it was binned was that by late 1944, bomber attacks on the UK were few, whereas the new threat was the V-1 and V-2 i.e. Brakemine's raison d'etre had disappeared.

You'd think it would be perfect for the V-1, wouldn't you? Sure, it's fast - but it's basically a 'dumb' target incapable of taking evasive action or deploying countermeasures.


Or were they able to take one look at that situation and realise early on that the speed, height and consequent angular displacement rate were so far beyond Brakemine's capabilities as to not be worth it?

 

[JFC Fuller]

Reading the REME association newsletter that Chris kindly posted it seems obvious why it wasn't used. It was at a relatively low technology readiness level and thus not yet production ready.

There is an interesting looking file at Kew that may contain the meat of the answer: AVIA 48/3

 

[pathology_doc]

True; I was mainly attempting to argue that a raison d'etre did exist in the V-1, but Brakemine simply wasn't ready in time to face the Doodlebug and would have (and indeed did) remained unready until long after other weapons had solved the problem.

 

[CJGibson]

Another reason could be the mauling that the Luftwaffe had taken during Op. Steinbock, which pretty much took the bomber force out of the game. Nightfighters and Ack-Ack were effective against the bombers, so having pretty much taken out the Luftwaffe bombers by June 1944, why develop a defensive weapon when operations turned to the offensive?

I think the RAF and AA Command had a good idea of the V-1 speed and range via Scientific Intelligence, hence the acquisition of proximity shells for AA guns and placing Tempests and Meteors in the South East. Perhaps the only thing that wasn't in place was the placement of the guns and the zoned defence that became so effective.

Another ponder is what if the Germans didn't believe the intelligence on impacts that had been fed back via Double Cross?

Chris

 

[PMN1]

How effective would it have been as an anti Kamikaze weapon?

 

[CJGibson]

I doubt the Kamikaze were in the minds of the Brakemine team. That was an Admiralty problem being addressed in two ways: Fairey's Swallow(?) and the Admiralty's LOPGAP.

LOPGAP showed more potential, leading to Sea Slug which I've traced back as far as 1944, if not 43. Prior to that The Admiralty were concerned about guided bombs such as Fritz X.

So I'd regard Brakemine as a bomber killer with LOPGAP against guided bombs and of course Kamikaze.

Remove the bomber threat in mid 44 and there's no need for Brakemine. A bomber killer only came back on the agenda in around 48, but by that time it had become a bomber protector.

I take the view that from late 44 until 48, it was the Admiralty that drove UK SAGW development.

Perhaps it's time to revisit BSP4.

Chris

 

[PMN1]

I doubt the Kamikaze were in the minds of the Brakemine team. That was an Admiralty problem being addressed in two ways: Fairey's Swallow(?) and the Admiralty's LOPGAP.

LOPGAP showed more potential, leading to Sea Slug which I've traced back as far as 1944, if not 43. Prior to that The Admiralty were concerned about guided bombs such as Fritz X.

So I'd regard Brakemine as a bomber killer with LOPGAP against guided bombs and of course Kamikaze.

Remove the bomber threat in mid 44 and there's no need for Brakemine. A bomber killer only came back on the agenda in around 48, but by that time it had become a bomber protector.

I take the view that from late 44 until 48, it was the Admiralty that drove UK SAGW development.

Perhaps it's time to revisit BSP4.

Chris

Well....you've done a separate book on RAF Air Defence Projects.....

 

[phil gollin]

.............. Perhaps it's time to revisit BSP4.

Chris

YES !


Or rather, A full book on British missiles.


( Have you seen the articles on early British rocket research in the British Interplanetary Society "Space Chronicle" magazine ?


.

 

[pathology_doc]

.............. Perhaps it's time to revisit BSP4.

Chris

YES !

Or rather, A full book on British missiles.

A redone BSP4 would be interesting (I for one would buy it in a heartbeat). The thing with BSP4 is that a significant proportion of the surface to air component that Britain actually brought into front-line service was ramjet powered (Bloodhound, Sea Dart, and the new Meteor), so putting in the content on ramjets actually ties in very well with what was happening on the missile side (both in terms of test vehicles and early forms of service weapons). It would certainly be interesting to see the weapon information in "Battle Flight" integrated into BSP4's account, which I think was structured well, but as Chris has alluded to in the past, too much of the early missile development story is contained in documents that have been lost or destroyed.


It would be fascinating to know, for example, just what the development program at Folland were going through before they handed Red Dean over to Vickers, and the ground-up thinking that had gone into the missile "thus far" - John Forbat's book on Vickers guided weapons projects provides a lot of "meat" on the later part of the weapon's development, but only tantalising glimpses are available of what the early prototype weapon looked like and no information as to how it evolved from scratch. The excellent "Fireflash to Sky Flash" covers the technology behind and evolution of Fireflash, Blue Sky (Firestreak/Red Top) and early marks of Sidewinder in quite a bit of detail, but because Red Dean never got a guided launch against a live target (agonisingly close!!!), it sadly misses out.


Also fascinating to explore would be the process by which a system which had a reputation for building missiles that were grossly oversize for their capabilities evolved into one which could turn out Sky Flash, Taildog, etc. But we're getting into wishlist territory here, and it may not be what Chris has in mind when he talks about a revisitation...

 

[CJGibson]

Yes! Stooge! Swallow was its rocket motors.

I think Stooge was a quick solution to the Kamikaze, based on existing rocket motors, the Swallow, and it was slow enough to be controllable via manual optical means aiding speed of development. That was its downfall.

LOPGAP - Liquid Oxygen Petrol Guided Anti-aircraft Projectile was to use the Lizzie rocket engine, be faster and use radar and radio guidance. It didn't get to that stage and (if I recall) became the RTV.1 test vehicle.

I'd like to redo the guided weapons aspect of BSP4 as I had to drop ATGWs and AShMs such as Swingfire and Blue Slug to maintain an 'Air-launched' or anti-aircraft theme.

Oh well, we shall see what happens.

Chris

 

[PMN1]

.............. Perhaps it's time to revisit BSP4.

Chris

YES !


Or rather, A full book on British missiles.


( Have you seen the articles on early British rocket research in the British Interplanetary Society "Space Chronicle" magazine ?


.

What volume was that?

 

[Siberia]

I'd like to redo the guided weapons aspect of BSP4 as I had to drop ATGWs and AShMs such as Swingfire and Blue Slug to maintain an 'Air-launched' or anti-aircraft theme.

You could put me down as another customer for it if you were to do an expanded book on the various British missile programmes that included the ATGWs and AShMs.

What volume was that?

From taking a quick look at their site I'm guessing the Vol. 62 Supplement 2 article The Rocket in Britain 1900 to 1940: Part 1 - Postal and Amateur Rockets by John Becklake, can't seem to see a Part 2 anywhere, but there's also Vol. 64 Supplement 1 and Supplement 2 for a two part one entitled Mr 'Z' - Sir Alwyn Crow, A Little Known British Rocket Pioneer: A New Look at Rocketry in Britain During World War II by Frank Winter plus a separate article by Andrew Chatwin on UP3 Rocket Anti-Aircraft 'Z' Batteries in the latter.

 

[phil gollin]

What volume was that?

.


Space Chronicle, Vol 64, Supplement 1, 2011 :- "Mr Z", part 1, article on development of rockets, including Z-batteries.





Space Chronicle, Vol 64, Supplement 2, 2011 :- "Mr Z", part 2, and article on "UP3 Rocket Anti-Aircraft, Z-Batteries"





Space Chronicle, Vol 65, Supplement 1, 2012 :- 4 articles on early British rockets from Congreave through to composite propellants


------


Also, there is a lot on the cordite rockets in TNARO file ; "AVIA 15/925 Developments of rockets for assisted take-off of aircraft"


.

 

[CJGibson]

What I find most interesting about the early GWs is how the effort, on both sides, waxed and waned with the threat. Britain under the Blitz from 40-41 worked on the Spaniels, until the Luftwaffe went East. Then from 43-44 they worked on a variety of GWs such as Artemis, Ben and Brakemine. Germany under the Allied bomber offensive, specifically the 8th AF daylight offensive, worked on Wasserfall and Rheintochter and Enzian from 42-45.

Germany learned the same lessons that the UK had learned two years before – manual command was a waste of time, hence the later radar/radio guidance for X-4, Wasserfall and Rheintochter.

I take view that the British weapons of 1944 were superior to their German counterparts as they were smaller, simpler (due to their use of the 3in rocket motor) and used better, more innovative, guidance systems than the Germans with their larger, complicated weapons with rocket engines.

Any thoughts?

Chris

 

[Jemiba]

At least for Wasserfall, I'm not sure, that military suitability was really a key point behind
that design. AFAIK, it was proposed by Wernher von Braun himself and due to the "urgency"
of the development of AA missiles, it is said, he succeeded in getting more staff, some even
called back from their commitment at the front.

 

[pathology_doc]

I take view that the British weapons of 1944 were superior to their German counterparts as they were smaller, simpler (due to their use of the 3in rocket motor) and used better, more innovative, guidance systems than the Germans with their larger, complicated weapons with rocket engines.

Any thoughts?

Chris

It's interesting, in that context, that the major AAM and SAM work we have physical remnants of from the actual war years is German. It may have been bigger, clunkier and less advanced, but what price that when they actually got as far as test-firings of what were basically service weapons, and we are left wondering why the hell they didn't try them out against a live enemy when it seems they had little to lose by doing so.


I keep coming back to the what-ifs. IF Artemis had been proceeded with, THEN the British might have learned a thing or two about the ups and downs of (S)ARH a lot earlier than they did, and IF that were the case, perhaps THEN the whole Red Dean/Red Hebe/SARH Blue Jay family saga might have been very different. In fact, we might have seen a very different pathway of interceptor evolution, if only because of the acknowledged difficulty (impossibility?) of getting a SARH illuminator into the Lightning. It might have forced either a decision to proceed with the Thin Wing Javelin or a firm purchase of CF-105s that could have saved the Arrow, if only to have a fighter that had supersonic performance and room for the necessary electronics.


(Yes, I know, F.155T/the Delta III would have beaten the lot of them for performance, but the TW Javelin prototype was over half complete with pre-production aircraft in jigs when the axe fell on it and the Arrow was a flying reality, while the first metal hadn't even been cut on Fairey's beast yet.)

 

[Jemiba]

... and we are left wondering why the hell they didn't try them out against a live enemy when it seems they had little to lose by doing so.

From what can be read in those piles of books and articles about German WW II guided weapons, using
them wasn't that easy. They were still prototypes only, often with subtle changes amongst the actually produced
examples. They were no service weapons and those, actually able to handle them, just were the designers
and engineers, people too valuable to be put in harms way, as the AA regiments had high losses, too.

 

[Siberia]

I take view that the British weapons of 1944 were superior to their German counterparts as they were smaller, simpler (due to their use of the 3in rocket motor) and used better, more innovative, guidance systems than the Germans with their larger, complicated weapons with rocket engines.

Any thoughts?

On the size difference, the British were constrained by the physical size of the propellant they were able manufacture but was the size of the German missiles forced on them by the design of the rocket engines or an active choice? Since they were having to work without proximity fuses, another advantage alongside the ones you mention the British had over them, but instead rely on command guidance I could see them deciding to go for a larger warhead weight to balance out potential detonations being further away from the targets, plus IIRC they wanted to try and target the bomber boxes/streams against multiple aircraft. Of course that could be completely reading too much into it if it was simply technological limitations.

 

[pathology_doc]

Since they were having to work without proximity fuses, another advantage alongside the ones you mention the British had over them, but instead rely on command guidance I could see them deciding to go for a larger warhead weight to balance out potential detonations being further away from the targets

And then oddly enough we see the same thing with early British AAMs vs. comparable American designs after the Second World War:


US Falcon (tail-chase IR or SARH) - warhead tiny, impact fuze only; missile AUW as little as 135lb in some variants.
US Sidewinder (tail-chase, IR) - warhead began life in the 10lb bracket, missile 155lb; proximity fuze or direct impact.
US Sparrow (SARH BVR) - warhead somewhere around 66lb, missile somewhere just south of 500lb. Proximity/impact.


UK Firestreak (tail-chase IR) - warhead 50lb, all-up 300lb (Red Top came significantly later; 68lb/330lb). Proximity/impact.
UK Red Dean (short range all-aspect active) - warhead 100lb, all-up 1300lb. Proximity/impact.


The scathing opinion given by a Brit to his own country's Red Hebe - the successor to Red Dean, which should have been a better missile - should be borne in mind here. It's telling that we see the early iterations of the missile Folland developed hanging off the wingtips of Gloster Meteors... "Still in the piston era", indeed.

All that being said, I think a rear-hemisphere shot with a Red Top wouldn't be something I'd have wanted to be on the receiving end of - you're still dealing with a Mach 3 fire-and-forget missile with a near 70 pound blast-frag warhead, and that's nothing to sneeze at.

Whether an Allied heavy bomber would stand a chance against one of the early German SAMs is an interesting matter for conjecture, especially since command guidance means you don't know you're the target unless you have a black box telling you there's a tracking radar specifically watching you. I suspect that if the war in Europe had gone on much longer, RAF bombers at least would have carried a crewmember devoted entirely to watching the various black boxes designed to pick up on these things. (The less said about Monica RWR, the better; although given the evolution towards the Air Gun Laying Turret with a pair of 20mm towards the end of the war, a hypothetical aggressive crew flying a Lincoln or suitably re-equipped Lancaster might choose to operate it with the specific intent of luring in and killing enemy night fighters with radar-directed gunfire.)

Not all corkscrewing Lancasters or Halifaxes evaded the night fighters trying to kill them, but getting out of the way of a SAM with a less instantaneous control loop might be another matter.

 

[CJGibson]

Hmmm...mere conjecture, but I wonder if Fishpond could have detected a SAM after launch or in flight? They were big enough.
Based on Wiki Wasserfall data there would be just under 30 seconds from launch to impact on a straight-up flight to 20000ft, longer on slant ranges. Rheintochter would take 30% longer and Enzian would be 30% slower still.

Probably more time than the Fishpond operator had to react to a fighter.

Chris

 

[JFC Fuller]

Chris in particular and all in general,

I had a very quick poke around this topic yesterday. I have not yet located the earliest documents but I have found some very late war/early post war guided weapons documents.

Re Brakemine: By all accounts the vehicle itself was terrible (though the guidance system was considered interesting), its aerodynamics were poor meaning supersonic flight was extremely limited. In 1945/6 they were in the process of changing the rocket motor type as it was believed that after-burning flames from the previous motors were blocking the radio command signals (is this where the Sea Slug/Fireflash layout came from?). The number of firings was in the twenties though most of these were uncontrolled and were highly experimental in nature. LOPGAP was seen as far more promising, at least from the perspective of a test vehicle. It was stated very clearly that there was no service application for Brakemine at that point.

More interesting, to me at least, are the efforts from mid-late 1945 onward to create a single guided weapons research and development agency (eventually emerged as the Guided Projectiles Directorate). This includes the earliest list I have seen of British military guided weapons requirements and proposed (wildly optimistic) development schedules.

 

[CJGibson]

Interesting, JFC.

I based most of my stuff on material from Arborfield, possibly a bit rose-tinted. I really must revisit the early GW files as I did all the research in the BDE* and thus only have scribbles that I take to the pharmacist to decipher and at the time some of the information wouldn't have meant anything to me.

I had heard of the signal-blocking effect, but not on Brakemine. If you look at the cutaway in Arborfield, there are many things that are puzzling, such as the long drive shafts for the tail controls. But they must have had reasons for it.

Perhaps I'll get another crack at the early GWs soon enough.

Chris

*Before Digicam Era

 

[CJGibson]

Like this?

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,14876.msg149098.html#msg149098

Chris

 

[alertken]

GAAP started in 1944 enmeshed in the politics of the Scientific Civil Service, and UK GW long remained so embroiled.


France/US decided by 1946 that GW would be Projectiles, guided, to be managed in Arsenals; so did RAE, hoping to turn Westcott into the Royal Projectile Factory. An obscure politician, John Freeman, MoS 1948 Parliamentary Secretary, stopped that and tasked RAE scientist Morien Morgan (to be father of Concorde) with placing work in the Aero industry. During 1949 he took 20 MoS-funded projects and reduced them to 4: he was struggling with Policy that GW, the Bomb, and Bombers should proceed at No. 1 Priority...all of them. He then hawked them around Aero, who were profoundly disinterested in being asked to “detach some of your best men to (a) doubtful starter, politically vulnerable (perhaps) even unprofitable”. He offered G.Nelson at EE one-stop-shop Prime, as owner of Napier (motor) and Marconi (guidance); Nelson accepted (to become Thunderbird), conditional on not having “to put capital into the venture”. His reward was to “put up their own buildings - or more accurately (MoS funding) the operation” at Napier/Luton and a new site at Stevenage (to be MBDA). Aeronauts disdained GW: V-A Special Director/Weybridge, G.Edwards: “wasn’t particularly interested in GW…junior partner of the a/c side (a) poor relation.” A.R.Adams,Good Company,BAC,1976,pp4/28/61/70.

Backwater. That is why it was Folland and Fairey, AWA and EE that were early entrants, not Hawker, HP, Supermarine. It was not Sir Geo. that brought DH in, but new MD of DH Props - ex-MoS Sir Ralph Sorley. So, Avro, on Blue Steel: (MoS’ view was that if they) "could not perfect (100 n.miles range on Mark 1) how could they (on Mark 2) do 1,000n.m.? (Weapons Res.Divn, many ex-RAE staff weak management structure (criticisms) recriminations (were) common parlance” H.Wynn,RAF Nuclear Deterrent Forces, HMSO,1994,p.202/4.


Woe and pain are the words that sprang to Ministers' minds if UK GW was broached. Much of this is in S.R.Twigge,Early Devt. of GW in UK,Harwood,1993. Because the story is so depressing, most Aero Company hagiographies downplay GW. Only now that UK industry is truly trans-national (MBDA/Thales-UK/Raytheon-UK) does it produce (slowly, expensively) products that find markets in competition.

 

[CNH]

AVRO was not the first choice for Blue Steel. In fact, the preference was for a non V bomber firm, so there would be no bias to one aircraft or the other. Vickers was approached.

They presumably said no, and hence AVRO was offered the job, and set up a GW team from scratch.

Reading the various AVRO proposals for follow ons is quite interesting; someone calls the W130 a 'meccano' proposal.

AlertKen is quite right: if they couldn't get Blue Steel to work, what chance did they have with something more demanding?

 

[CJGibson]

"Reading the various AVRO proposals for follow ons is quite interesting; someone calls the W130 a 'meccano' proposal."

Given that W130 was aimed at l'Armee de l'Air, I wonder if it was D J Harper of the Controller, Air office who later said French prototypes, specifically the ACF, were 'knife and fork' jobs.



Chris

 

[pathology_doc]

Woe and pain are the words that sprang to Ministers' minds if UK GW was broached. Much of this is in S.R.Twigge,Early Devt. of GW in UK,Harwood, 1993. Because the story is so depressing, most Aero Company hagiographies downplay GW. Only now that UK industry is truly trans-national (MBDA/Thales-UK/Raytheon-UK) does it produce (slowly, expensively) products that find markets in competition.

True, but look at Rapier, Bloodhound and Sea Cat, all of which sold overseas. (You can't count sales of missiles that came as part of the package with their carrier ships or aircraft, so Seaslug, Sea Dart, Firestreak and Red Top are non-contenders here.) And is there any company in the English-speaking Western world that's actually doing it quickly and on the cheap right now, or even has done since AIM-9 came out?

 

[Spark]

Hi
Blue steel was similar a bit like a clone of early Avro work started in 1950, first hand source!

Like this?

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,14876.msg149098.html#msg149098

Chris

My ambition is to do it from the customer perspective, so show the way requirements evolved and then align missile projects beneath the individual requirements.

 

[PMN1]

An interesting predecessor to Brakemine was Ben, which used searchlight guidance as the radars were too inaccurate for weapon guidance.

Attached image by Adrian Mann.

Chris

Have you seen any hoped for performance figures for searchlight guided Ben?