Me 163B WITH Torpedos

[Michel Van]

I Know sound Crazy

but German had 1944 Study about Me 163B Rocketplane WITH Torpedo's !

in 1992 they Discover in Aerodynamische Versuch Anstalt (AVA) at Göttingen several Files note.
of Windchannel Model of a Me 163B with 2 Bomb Torpedo's type BT1000.

one note was of a conference between engineer Hubert (from Messerschmitt) and professor Betz from AVA
"its necessary to check the Stability Me 163B with BT1000 in a Windchannel Test"
"the soon use of Plane against Shiptarget deepens of that Test Result"
"The Model is Ready middle of February for Test of 2 Day duration.
"A longer Test has to be interrupt, because of not urgent." signature mister Hildenbrand.
the note is date 9 February 1944.

more Files note and Photos show that Test was made

A letter from 22. September 1944 from Junkers "Flugzeugwerke und Motorenwerke" to AVA
say they receive the test result from February

the BT1000 Bomb Torpedo's
1000 kg Bomb rocket for land and sea Target
from Research's institute Graf Zeppelin in Stuttgart-Ruit

the Pilot or Bomber used a special developed "Reflexvisier"
from Drop height depend the BT1000 fly 3000 Meter far
the BT1000 was Propelled by Solid rocket by company "Rheinmetall"

Source Flug Revue April 1992 page 49
Source Picture Stüdienbüro für Luftfahrt, Feiler

 

[CJGibson]

See Herwig and Rode's "Luftwaffe Secret Projects Ground Attack and Special Purpose Aircraft" for more info on this and a different photo of the wind tunnel model.

KB

 

[Archibald]

Better to ram directly the sea target, like an Okha... crazy luft'46 concept!! :

 

[Jemiba]

Judging the range f the Me 163, it seems unlikely, that this aircraft armed
with bomb torpedoes, would have ever had a chance to attack a ship at sea ...

 

[Michel Van]

with 40 km not much

can it be that Me 163B was für Aircraft Carrier "Graf Zeppelin" ???

 

[Jemiba]

Probably not, I think.
The wind tunnel model is from about 1944, as you stated, the construction of the
Graf Zeppelin was stopped in 1943. And not to mention the dangers of the highly
volatile and explosive fuels of the Me 163, which already were too well known at
that time. I wouldn't think of these weapons as an operational armament for the
"Kraftei" (power egg, nickname of the Me 163), but as a test with a readily available
high speed aircraft.

 

[Antonio]

At Geheimprojekte der DFS 1935-1945. Motorbuch Verlag. 2000 Page 142 there is a crude sketch. It represents a Me328 towed by a He111 flying over the sea. The Me328 is released and dives against an aircraft carrier. (The aircraft carrier is Graff Zeppelin). When I saw it for the first time I thought it was a torpedo attak but, in fact, the drawing is not detailed enough to see even if it is a suicide strike.

My German skills are very basic to understand the text. So if anybody wants to see it, I can send him.

 

[Jemiba]

I just downloaded the mail from Pometablava with the mentioned sketch.
The description says :
"Mission profile of the Me 328B. A bomber towing the engineless Me 328B is
approaching the target. Out of range of the enemies air defence, the Me 328B
is released. It closes in gliding flight, until diving onto the target in a steep
dive with high speed."
The part of the article on this page clearly is describing the organisation of the "SO-Kommandos",
the suicide attack groups. Really startling stuff ! Groups of ten men were formed, five
of them should have been chosen by chance, to fly attacks. Only if they were succesful,
the other five would have been released from flying attacks on their own. This was seen
as a way to improve efficiency of the attackers, as they had the responsibility for the lives
of their comrades !
It's emphasized, that those men joined the SO-Kommando absolutely freely and were free
to leave, until they were chosen for an attack.
And the shown carrier is without any doubt the Graf Zepelin !

 

[Antonio]

Thanks a lot Jemiba, that text I sent you is more interesting than I expected.
I knew about
SO-Kommandos is new for me.

I've heard about:

Lufwaffe Sturmgruppen
http://www.ospreypublishing.com/title_detail.php/title=S9088~ser=AEU~per=2

Fieseler Fi 103 Reichenberg
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Elevon/baugher_other/fi103.html
(According to Steven Zaloga's "Target America". Ed Presidio. ISBN 0-89141-400-2. on page 113 can be read that Otto Skorzeny developed a scheme to launch piloted Fi-103 against key Soviet industries in the Urals. He proposed 250 air launched Fi-103 to be released. Pilots will bail out before the crash.

Daimler Benz Project E

http://www.luft46.com/db/dbbombe.html


Me 163 with torpedo was tested on 9 February 1944 so could it, and also the Me 328B, be related to defence against Allied amphibious assaults?. Overlord was in June 1944.

 

[Antonio]

Just one more reference to Luftwaffe suicide unit from Wings&Airpower Article Index 1972-2004 (the 2005 version I received it from lark, but a 2007 version can be found here:

http://www.wingsairpower.com/back-issues/

In August 1971 it was published "Rommkommando. Lufwaffe Suicide Sqdn. (Westell)

Unfortunally, that issue is not available. I feel very curious about its contents :'(

 

[AMF]

I remember having read the article in Flug Revue mentioned in Michael Van's post.
I absolutely could not remember the year before I saw it in the first post of this thread.
However, I remembered the month of the issue of Flug Revue perfectly well, even before I saw it again in Michael Van's post. Why could I remember the month so well? Because it was an April issue and at the first time I read the article I took it for an All Fools' Day joke. I think I remember another article from another April issue of Flug Revue about a supposed project to put the turret of a Leopard tank on a pair of aircraft floats as the basis for a "high speed gunboat".
Of course I can guarantee nothing, but I still think the likelyhood of a joke as fairly high. Perhaps the 1992 May issue of Flug Revue might shed some light on this, because newspaper or journals often admit their All Fools' Day jokes afterwards.
As Jemiba already stated, the range of the Me 163 was ridiculously short (and would be even shorter with a heavy load like the one mentioned) and it was very prone to accidental explosions. For an interceptor, the limited range is not that bad. If you station it near, say, Berlin then enemy aircraft are bound to come to the interceptor. But how is anti-shipping plane to come near enemy ships? With a range of 40 km (mentioned by Michael Van) you cannot even reach the other side of the English Channel at its narrowest point and return.
Would there even have been ground clearance for the bomb-torpedoes? The Me 163 landed on a skid, which makes landings (I think) somewhat bumpy. Would the bomb-torpedoes not break loose if the Me 163 tried to land with them, after a practice flight or after not having found its target?

 

[Jemiba]

Had another look at the photo, and I think, with these weapons, the Me 163
would hardly have been able to take off on itself, because of too low ground
clearance. But, of course, there may have been thoughts, about other take-off
methods, e.g. piggy back. This also would have cured some range problems, so
an attack on an invasion fleet nearby the coast could have been possible.
But, of course, that's only an idea, that I cannot prove with any source !

 

[CJGibson]

Now then, now then, what have we here? It was sent to me by a mate. It was apparently dug up in Germany and subsequently blown up by an EOD team! I don't have any details apart from that it was first posted on another forum.

Chris

 

[Jemiba]

The T-shaped object reminds me on the guide pins used on tube launched torpedoes
and probably not needed on an airlaunched variant. Maybe one of the rocket torpedo
types tested at the end of the war ?

 

[Grzesio]

The T-shaped thing is a standard suspension lug used on heavier German bombs, while the whole projectile obviously is a BT with a Rheinmetall-Borsig solid fuelled engine for rocket bombs, with reduction valve etc.
BT 1000 RS seems to be a good match (as the picture is named) - if any BT 1000 RS were built.

 

[Justo Miranda]

The "Bombentorpedo" was not an actual torpedo, but a purely ballistic weapon (bomb) with certain features resembling the torpedo as it travelled a short horisontal distance through the water before hitting the intended target. There were several variants, only the BT1000 was rocket-propelled, but it was shortly abondoned - none BT's were ever operational.

I have briefely mentioned the BT (and listed the versions) in this Wiki-article:

List of World War II torpedoes of Germany - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Please see

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/german-bt-torpedo-bomb-projects.18301/#post-175459

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Somehow I doubt that an Me 163 could successfully carry two BT 700 let alone BT 1000 and fly. Think about this: A fully loaded Me 163 weighs about 12,000 lbs. and about a third of that weight is fuel. You are adding about 1500 to 2200 lbs. of bombs (with attendant drag) to the plane. That's about a 25 to 30% increase in weight, not including fuel. Take off would still be on one of those little dolly trucks unless you are contemplating using this as some sort of Mistel combination.
Even if the plane could fly with this load, you have just six minutes of powered flight then the loaded plane becomes a drag heavy glider with a a few more minutes of flight.
The whole exercise seems pointless. Why would the RLM / Messerschmitt even propose such a combination?

 

[_Del_]

I think perhaps with an eye of using them a bit like coastal artillery "batteries". Based near large harbors of strategic importance, they might engage anything involved in shore bombardment or an amphibious assault. Given the successes of FritzX and Hs 293, etc, in the Med, I could see a concept of operations. And like those weapons, a BT 1000 could likely see use against occupied harbors and bridges post-invasion. interceptor

 

[Justo Miranda]

The Me P.1079/17 was an air launched variant of the Messerschmitt Me 328 bomber with a telescopic wings system based on that of the Gérin Varivol, an experimental French airplane built in 1936. After launching, the wings automatically extended, possibly by means of a compressed air system. The project was frozen until February 1943 when reappeared as anti-invasion bomber that could be used as Fliegende Küstenartillerie (long range coastal artillery) against the transport of allied troops, to stop the invasion expected to take place in the spring of 1944. It was proposed to use the French railway network to transport the aircraft (using launching carts designed by Rheinmetall-Borsig and built by Deutsche Werke Kiel Aktiongesellschaft) and the tunnels to hide them.

At the end of the expected naval bombardment prior to landing, the bombers would be taken out of the tunnels and would take off using a straight stretch of 350 m of railway with the help of two Rheinmetall-Borsig rockets of 30 tons thrust each that had originally been developed for the launch of the V-1 missiles. To reach 400 kph for the ignition of the pulsejets required only an acceleration of 2g. After take-off the cart was stopped by a mechanism that pressed on a central rail. The 1943 version would be armed with one BT1000 RS anti-ship torpedo bomb. It would have 7.4 m wingspan (extended) and 4.0 m (retracted) and 7.25 overall length. Simulated launches in wind tunnel models in July 1943 tested the viability of the system.

It was also considered a railway launched variant of the Reichenberg IV the suicide version of the Fieseler Fi 103 B-1with various types of interchangeable warhead to attack different kinds of targets as effectively as possible. For antiship usage, DFS technicians had planned to use two types of warhead: A SHL 800 hollow-charge of 785 mm in diameter (a 40% scaled-down version of the SHL 3500 used by Mistel bombers) was used for attacks on heavy armored capital ships; another option was a torpedo-bomb BT 1400, devoid of the rear section, with plywood aerodynamic fairing that consisted of two halves that separated after impacting water and released the warhead.

In the summer of 1943, some unmanned wooden mockups of the Messerschmitt Me 163B were railway launched using Rheinmetall-Borsig carts powered by two solid fuel boosters (P479 projekt 12-12-1942).

Early in 1944 the Dipl.Ing.Hubert proposed a railway launched variant of the Me 163B able to carry underwing two BT 1000 or two BT 700 torpedo-bombs.

Experiments begun on February 4, 1944 but, due to problems with the wheel bearings, testing was suspended on February 9.

Wind tunnel tests with scale models were conducted by Junkers between September and December 1944, but at the time there was no point in trying to destroy the allied invasion fleets and the project were left aside.

Sources

Le Fanatique de l'Aviation Nº396, Nov.2002
Die Deutschen Raketen Flugzeuge, Motorbuch Verlag 1989
Luftwaffe Secret projects-Ground Attack, Midland 2003
Flug Revue April 1992
Picture Stüdienbüro für Luftfahrt

 

[newsdeskdan]

The Me P.1079/17 was an air launched variant of the Messerschmitt Me 328 bomber with a telescopic wings system

No it wasn't. None of the P 1079 series had telescopic wings. The P 1079/17 had fixed swept wings - see attached drawing of it from the July 1941 P 1079 report.
The design you're referring to was labelled 'Me 328 Bordflugzeug', which appeared in a report dated July 7, 1942 - see attached drawing from the report. P 1079 had received the official designation 'Me 328' by March 31, 1942.
That aside, there were certainly attempts to design rail-launched Me 328s and Me 163s, the latter indeed being intended to carry heavier loads under its wings. I have an interrogation report somewhere where Alexander Lippisch claims to have come up with the idea of rail-launching the Me 163. There would have been a train-hauled Me 163 launch unit which could be easily moved to anywhere on the German rail network. The aircraft could then be offloaded and launched from any straight stretch of track.
There is a wind-tunnel test report of a rail launched Me 328 too. Little more is known for certain about either project.

Messerschmitt P 1079/17 of July 1941:


Messerschmitt Me 328 Bordflugzeug of July 1942: