Luftwaffe Special Weapons

273 Pages·2021·93.49 MB·english

by  Robert Forsyth

LUFTWAFFE SPECIAL WEAPONS 1942–45
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LUFTWAFFE
SPECIAL
WEAPONS
1942–45
R O B E R T F O R S Y T H
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OSPREY PUBLISHING
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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