this is more a guided missile than a rocket, as stated in Ian Hogg`s "German Secret Weapons of the Second World War". It was supposed to be fired from ships and abandonned in 1944. the Kriegsmarine had a rocket program too ! Can anyone contribute more on this subject?
Wait, wait...
So above we can see the Moeve, and here is the Nussknacker.
Similarity is striking but Nussknacker seems to be some 70 cm longer, heavier than the Moeve (215 kg vs 150 kg), with similar booster stage (4230 vs 4000 kg*s total impulse) and nearly twice as big sustainer (2300 vs 1200 kg*s). Diameter of 21 cm and wingspan of 129/130 cm are just the same.
Judging from the "UNT 272" - Unterluess Report No. 272.
EDIT
Quick comparison of both missiles - Nussknacker above, Moeve below.
I just wonder if this Unterluess report, created after the war for the Allies, shows the actual Moeve, or just a mixture of the Nussknacker layout combined with the Moeve data. The Moeve just does not look right for me - for example its booster is much bigger than in the Nussknacker, while they should be rougly of the same size (or even the Nussknacker's being slightly bigger).
According to CIA reports of 1954, just after the end of hostilities, the Soviets took possession of the documents of Rheinmetall missiles like the Falke-Moeve and developed with the group of German scientists the Sokol an improvement of the moeve.
According to CIA reports of 1954, just after the end of hostilities, the Soviets took possession of the documents of Rheinmetall missiles like the Falke-Moeve and developed with the group of German scientists the Sokol an improvement of the moeve.
Well, Russian sources describe three surface-to-air missile programs with German origin which were run in USSR in late 1940s:
* R-101 - reverse-engineering of "Wasserfall" missile. The blueprints were reconstructed from one captured missile sample, and two series of test launches (about 30 missiles) were run in 1949 and 1950. The results were far from satisfactory, the "Wasserfall" itself was so flawed, that essentially every tested R-101 missile was a unique prototype. By 1951, it was still unclear, could R-101/"Wasserfall" be used as weapon system at all. At the same time, USSR own S-25 "Berkut" missile program showed much better progress, so R-101 was cancelled.
* R-102 - reverse-engineering of "Schmetterling" missile. It was reconstructed from several captured samples and little avaliable documentation. A batch of R-102 were build & tested in 1949, showed some promise, but it was decided not to proceed with improved R-102M missile.
* R-103 - was reserved for reverse-engineering of "Rheintöchter" R3 missile. But after evaluation of captured documentation, Soviet engineers decided that "Rheintöchter" project did not proceed far enough to validate reverse-engineering, because it would be simpler to just develope similar missile from scratch. So the R-103 was given to reverse-engineering of German "Taifun" surface-to-air rocket (which also did not proceed much)
I can think of few less effective ways to knock an enemy pane from the skies than someone on a moving vehicle tracking a missile with their eyeballs and twitching a joystick.
As far as I know, no such missile existed. The first attempt to develope air-to-air missile in USSR was SNARS-250 (rus. Samo-Navodachiisya Aviatsionny Raketny Snaryad - Self-Homing Aircraft Rocket Projectile), started in 1948:
But it have zero similarities with German missile; SNARS-250 was supposed to be supersonic infrared/semi-active radar homing weapon.
I can think of few less effective ways to knock an enemy pane from the skies than someone on a moving vehicle tracking a missile with their eyeballs and twitching a joystick.
Well, it was logical first step - after all, command control already existed, and there was a lot of uncertainty about automatic guidance/homing. The realization that manual control of air-to-air missile created a self-contradiction - to be efficiently controlled by human hand, the missile need to move relatively slow, but the slower missile went, the more and more correction commands were required for it to stay on course - came only later.
I can think of few less effective ways to knock an enemy pane from the skies than someone on a moving vehicle tracking a missile with their eyeballs and twitching a joystick.
Sure. But as with the wire-guided X-4... I just don't see that nonsense working against an *airplane.* A tank? Sure, especially when launched from a static position.
Sure. But as with the wire-guided X-4... I just don't see that nonsense working against an *airplane.* A tank? Sure, especially when launched from a static position.
Neither do I. The number of "what could go wrong" in X-4 just overstepped any rational assumptions. As far as I know, the only ones, who actually adopted command-guided AAM were French with Nord AA.20. And even it was quickly converted to automatic beam-riding guidance.
P.S. There was ONE pre-war concept of actual self-homing air-to-air missile, but I found it a bit dubious. According to the only one source that mention it, the missile was suggested in 1935 by Stepanov brothers, two engineers from Ural.
Essentially the idea was to use a photoelectric guidance. A ring-shaped photocell, divided on four sectors (left-right, up-down) was supposed to be used. They were sencitive enough, to discriminate between empty sky and target plane, which blocked part of the light. If the enemy plane was directly forward, the output from all four sectors was the same. If enemy plane shifted, the output on the sector that faced empty sky increased, and the output on the sector that faced enemy plane decreased. The output of the sectors was amplified by the triode, and used to operate electromagnets, that (with the help of springs) hold the control surfaces in balance.
The idea apparently was rejected due to great complexity for mid-1930s, and uncertainty about the practicality of such project. The simpler solutions - like recoiless guns and unguided rocket projectiles - were viewed as more promizing against relatively slow bombers of 1930s.
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! Can anyone contribute more on this subject?
