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Luftwaffe Special Weapons PDF

273 Pages·2021·93.49 MB·english
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LUFTWAFFE SPECIAL WEAPONS 1942–45 99778811447722883399882244__ttxxtt__aapppp..iinndddd 11 1111//0022//22002211 1111::5500 99778811447722883399882244__ttxxtt__aapppp..iinndddd 22 1111//0022//22002211 1111::5500 LUFTWAFFE SPECIAL WEAPONS 1942–45 R O B E R T F O R S Y T H 99778811447722883399882244__ttxxtt__aapppp..iinndddd 33 1111//0022//22002211 1111::5500 OSPREY PUBLISHING Bloomsbury Publishing Plc PO Box 883, Oxford, OX1 9PL, UK 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland 1385 Broadway, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10018, USA E‑mail: [email protected] www.ospreypublishing.com OSPREY is a trademark of Osprey Publishing Ltd First published in Great Britain in 2021 This electronic edition published in 2021 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc © Robert Forsyth, 2021 Robert Forsyth has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on pp. 6–9 constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB 9781472839824; eBook 9781472839831; ePDF 9781472839800; XML 9781472839817 Edited by Tony Holmes Artwork by Jim Laurier and Steve Zaloga Line Drawings by A. L. Bentley Cover images (from left to right): Me 262A‑1a/U4 Wk‑Nr 111899. (EN Archive) Armourers heave a 21 cm mortar shell into the outer launch tube of a pair fitted to the underside port wing of a Bf 110. (EN Archive) ‘Fritz X’ glide bomb. (EN Archive) Ju 88A‑4 BF+YT. (EN Archive) Index by Zoe Ross Osprey Publishing supports the Woodland Trust, the UK’s leading woodland conservation charity. Paper from responsible sources To find out more about our authors and books visit www.ospreypublishing.com. Here you will find extracts, author interviews, details of forthcoming events and the option to sign up for our newsletter. 99778811447722883399882244__ttxxtt__aapppp..iinndddd 44 1111//0022//22002211 1111::5500 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 6 CHAPTER ONE The Specialists 10 CHAPTER TWO Heavy Cannon 30 CHAPTER THREE Air‑to‑Air Weapons 84 CHAPTER FOUR Air‑to‑Ground Weapons 158 CHAPTER FIVE Anti‑Shipping Weapons 184 CHAPTER SIX Radical Measures 224 CHAPTER SEVEN The Aircraft as a Weapon 242 SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 260 INDEX 265 99778811447722883399882244__ttxxtt__aapppp..iinndddd 55 1111//0022//22002211 1111::5500 INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS On 30 December 1943, the crews of USAAF B‑17 Flying Fortresses executing a bombing raid to Ludwigshafen in Germany described being attacked by an enemy fighter trailing a length of steel cable through their formation. In its post‑mission report, the Eighth Air Force’s 3rd Bomb Division stated impassively that the 4th Combat Wing ‘reported one single‑engined enemy aircraft carrying a bomb attached to a 100‑ft cable flying 800 ft over the lead group’. To the crews, this represented an alarming development; the reinforced steel cable was designed to cut into wings or coil itself around engines. And this was in addition to the massed conventional fighter attacks, made from all ‘clock’ directions, which were experienced in the target area, as well as air‑to‑air mortars being fired into the bomber ‘boxes’ – or the dreaded Pulks if you were a German fighter pilot. Indeed, only two weeks before, B‑24 Liberator and B‑17 crews had reported incidents of enemy aircraft dropping conventional bombs into their formations. However, such accounts were met with caution and even some degree of scepticism by USAAF Technical Intelligence, but the intelligence officers should have paid more heed to the reports of their airmen, for their observations were entirely accurate. These were just further examples of operational trials using a range of inventive, albeit radical and unconventional weapons deployed by the Luftwaffe in its attempt to inflict carnage on the increasing numbers of Allied Viermots (for Vier Motor – four‑engined – as the heavy bombers were referred to colloquially by the Jagdflieger) targeting the Reich around the clock. By late 1943 Germany was confronted by draining, multi‑dimensional warfare fought across the massive Eastern and Mediterranean Theatres, as well as by the increasingly intensive battles of attrition being waged in the Reichsverteidigung – the aerial defence of the homeland itself. Such was the rapid growth of Allied military strength, combined with technological development, that Germany was being forced, with its limited and narrowing resources, to demand from its ballistics engineers and weapons designers ever more inventive, radical and effective armament with which to combat the enemy in, and from, the air. At around the time the crews of the 4th Combat Wing witnessed cable being dragged into their formation, on the Eastern Front German aircraft were being fitted with a range of heavy calibre 30 mm, 37 mm and even 75 mm anti‑tank cannon intended to punch 99778811447722883399882244__ttxxtt__aapppp..iinndddd 66 1111//0022//22002211 1111::5500 INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 7 back at Russian tanks, while from mid‑1943 at sea, Luftwaffe bombers deployed state‑of‑the‑art Hs 293 and Fritz X guided glide bombs against Allied shipping off the coast of Italy. And it would not stop there. As the stakes grew higher, so Germany’s armaments designers produced ever more sophisticated weapons such as the innocuously named Sondergeräte (special devices) with photoelectric cell triggering systems, and the 55 mm R4M rocket and X‑4 guided missiles for use against enemy bombers. At the fringes of weaponry development, there were no bounds to what was put forward for serious consideration, from chemical sprays to artificially generated squalls of air intended to destabilise enemy formations. I have long been intrigued by the inventiveness of the German weapon manufacturers, and the lengths to which their designers and engineers would go to bring down enemy bombers from mid‑1943 onwards, as well as their attempts to make some impact against masses of Soviet armour on the battlefield. But this is not to say that the production of weapons was trouble‑free. As one example, I cite the following post‑war report written by Oberst Ingenieur Johannes Mix, who, in January 1943, was in charge of Abteilung (Abt.) E6, the weapons section of the Development Group in the Technisches Amt (Technical Office) within the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM – German Ministry of Aviation), and who held similar positions until war’s end. The report highlights the Machiavellian connivance which affected the manufacture of heavy calibre cannon such as the 30 mm MK 108 and MK 103: The tendency of military agencies to demand that new weapons developed by industry be put into full‑scale series production as soon as the first sample weapons had been test‑fired with satisfactory results was confirmed repeatedly in the case of the newly developed equipment and – just as repeatedly – this habit gave rise to setbacks. Mix was of the opinion that: . . . the intervention of the Ministry for Armaments and War Production towards the conclusion of development work was not favourable in the case of the MK 103 and MK 108. [Mix’s] reproaches in this connection are directed not against the Waffenkommission (Ordnance Commission) and its special sub‑committees, but rather against the office of the Sonderbeauftragter Für Waffen (Special Coordinator in Charge of Weapons) in the Ministry for Armaments and War Production. This office, run on the lines of Party politics and staffed by non‑experts, supervised developmental work with a peculiarly unhealthy kind of coordination. In this connection it may be worthwhile to mention that this agency took steps to have the development work on the MK 103 and MK 108 transferred to itself shortly before its scheduled conclusion, requisitioning one of the chief experts to take over on behalf of the office. Subsequently, development work was officially brought to a close under the auspices of the Specialist’s 99778811447722883399882244__ttxxtt__aapppp..iinndddd 77 1111//0022//22002211 1111::5500 8 LUFTWAFFE SPECIAL WEAPONS 1942–45 office, without, however, absolving the Entwicklungsabteilung (Development Department) of ultimate responsibility for the equipment. This book offers an insight into the Luftwaffe’s ‘special’ weapons. I must stress ‘insight’ – space is finite and, regrettably, it is impossible to include all ‘special’ weapons, so I have elected to focus on the most radical or the most advanced or the most used, all depending on the availability of source material. I have opted to structure the book by intended role and deployment, though inevitably there is some crossover. With regard to cannon, I have decided to cover only weapons of 30 mm and greater calibre. The 20 mm MG 151/20 was a fine automatic cannon which equipped large numbers of Bf 109s and Fw 190s in both the fighter and the ground‑attack roles but, unlike the much rarer 75 mm gun or steel cable, it cannot be regarded, in the context of this work, as a ‘special’ weapon. I began assembling material for this book more than 30 years ago, and the process of returning to, and rediscovering, documents which I sourced during the late 1980s and early 1990s has been an enriching, enjoyable and educational undertaking. It seems somehow indecently tardy to thank people after so long but, as a priority, I must offer my thanks to Phil Reed. Back in 1988, he introduced me to the wonders of the German Document Collection (GDC) and USAAF T‑2 reports, as well as original reports prepared by Rheinmetall‑Borsig at Unterlüss and the Luftfahrtforschungsanstalt (LFA – ‘Institute of Aeronautical Research’) Hermann Göring at Braunschweig, and the collection of translations produced by the Halstead Exploiting Centre, the British Intelligence Objectives Sub‑Committee (BIOS) and the Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub‑Committee (CIOS) held at the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London. I spent many happy hours left to my own devices with a microfilm‑reading machine in a room off the main reading room at Lambeth searching for nuggets. On occasion Phil was even good enough to assist with translation. A few years later, Stephen Walton kindly allowed Eddie Creek and myself to explore the then still ‘off‑limits’ document archive at IWM Duxford on more than one visit. The expression ‘little boys in a toy shop’ comes to mind because that is what we felt like as we pulled down box after box of uncatalogued, but fascinating, files from the shelves. None of this would have been possible without the support and patience of Phil Reed and Stephen Walton. Also overdue for thanks are Hanfried Schliephake, whose book Flugzeugbewaffnung first aroused my interest in the aircraft armament of the Luftwaffe many years ago. Inspired, I corresponded with Herr Schliephake for some time, and eventually visited him at his home in Königsbrunn in 1990, where he arranged for me to view copies of his collection of weekly reports from the Erprobungsstelle (E‑Stelle) Tarnewitz. It was Herr Schliephake who also made me aware of the seminal and ground‑breaking work on German air armament of World War II, Deutsche Geheimwaffen 1939–1945 by Fritz Hahn. Another well‑known German aviation historian whom I was fortunate enough to meet at his home in Mainz was the late Manfred Griehl. He kindly gave me copies of the 99778811447722883399882244__ttxxtt__aapppp..iinndddd 88 1111//0022//22002211 1111::5500 INTRODUCTION AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 9 Arbeitsberichte of Erprobungskommando (E.Kdo – Test Command) 25, the Luftwaffe weapons testing and operational evaluation unit, and fragments of those prepared by its successor, Jagdgruppe 10. I was also fortunate to correspond with, and to then meet, the former commanding officer of E.Kdo 25, Horst Geyer, at his home near Hamburg in 1993, where I spent a day talking to him about his interesting wartime career and memories. Other Luftwaffe veterans who kindly responded to my questions about Luftwaffe armament included Adolf Galland, Oscar Boesch, Franz Stigler, Walter Hagenah, Willi Unger, Gen. a.D. Walter Windisch, Fritz Buchholz, Rudi Riedl and Heinz Frommhold. Closer to home, I would like to thank Eddie J. Creek, J. Richard Smith, Steve Coates, Martin Pegg, Nick Beale, Arthur Bentley, Mike Norton, Christopher Shores, Martin Streetly and Chris Goss for their kind assistance, suggestions and goodwill over the years, while information and support from beyond British shores came from Dr. James H. Kitchens III, Jürgen Rosenstock, Stephen Ransom, Hans‑Hermann Cammann, Richard Chapman, John O. Moench, Eric Larger, Eric Mombeek, Hans‑Heiri Stapfer, Friedemann Schell, Dr. Brett Gooden and Ted Oliver. And finally I must thank Osprey Publishing for offering me the opportunity to write this book, and to Tony Holmes and Marcus Cowper whose faith in me has enabled it to materialise. Any errors are mine alone, and it is my hope that I have done all the foregoing individuals sufficient justice for their kind help over the years. Robert Forsyth Sussex September 2020 99778811447722883399882244__ttxxtt__aapppp..iinndddd 99 1111//0022//22002211 1111::5500

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Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.