"The secret weapons of the Luftwaffe" by Lucas Turks
During World War II the German scientists created
weapons among the most advanced ones seen until that moment.
Unfortunately for them, it was too late in order to avoid the German
defeat. 2nd Part of the Article
The decline of the Nazi Reich begins
Until summer 1942, the star of the Nazi Germany
seemed endless shining over Europe and the other regions of the world
in which the troops of the Third Reich were advancing. In North Africa,
General Rommel and his Afrika Korp had been able to help the Italian
Ally that was in clear difficulty and to take the initiative by
arriving at the doors of Egypt, before the British forces stopped his
attack at El-Alamein. On the Soviet front, Manstein had attacked with
success in Crimea, while at the end of August the Wehrmacht arrived at
Stalingrad, starting the tragic legend of the Russian city.
Then, the winter came after the autumn. With the changing of the
seasons, it changed also the destiny of the war. In October, Montgomery
counterattacked at El-Alamein, while the Anglo-American Allies opened a
new front in North African by landing in November on the coasts of
Morocco and Algeria. In the same month, the Soviet giant did a supreme
effort by succeeding among thousand difficulties in preparing one great
offensive at Stalingrad and defeating the German Army of von
Paulus.
Although the Allies advertised on the press their land victories, it
was on the air and naval front that the fates of Germany were
definitively decided. For the first three years of war, the German
submarines terrorized the sailors of all the Allied convoys with
military and fuel cargos that traveled between the United States and
Great Britain. Then, with the new year, with the always greater
engagement of the US Navy and the Royal Navy for the escort of the
transport ships and of the US Air Force and the RAF for the long range
patrolling, the German U-Boote were less effective, in spite of
the tactical (as the "wolf pack" tactic with several submarines in
hunting against the same target) and technical (the snorkel that
guaranteed briefer stops afloat to refuel the submarines)
innovations.
With the increased flow of supplies to Great Britain, the opening of a
second European front was not an Stalin's idea only, but a real
possibility. In preparation for the memorable moment of the D-Day, the
British islands represented the ideal starting point for the bombers
that faced the courageous resistance of the Luftwaffe and the
frightening German antiaircraft artillery in order to bomb the
industrial cities of the Ruhr or Hamburg and Bremen and hit to the
heart the enemy nation. While the Americans bombed by day, assuming
themselves the greater risks and therefore the huge human losses, the
British struck by night, making unsure all the hours of the day.
In the hour of the Need, the Luftwaffe was, we can say, forced to adopt
the most advanced technologies that would have become the base of the
modern astronautics and aviation: the jet fighters and the
rockets. They were described as the "ultimate weapons" from the Nazi
propaganda, but these aircrafts would have affected very relatively the
war because of the shortage of raw materials (mainly oil that was
missed by the Germans in the Caucasus) and of human resources (the
pilots with flight experience was precious good in that period).
However, those machines like Messerschnitt Me 163, Messerchnitt Me 262
and the Velwaltungswaffen, better known with the name of V1 and V2,
represented important milestones in the history of the modern
aeronautics.
A revolutionary fighter
The Messerschnitt Me 163 "Komet" included in its
own features some design elements that were years ahead the other
aircrafts that flew at that time in the European skies.
With long wings if compared to the short and large body, at first
glance it could appear even funny, especially after the takeoff, when
the front undercarriage was detached in order to leave the place to a
big skid that made it seem as a sleigh on which some children would be
surely happy to play under the winter's snow. The name of "Kraft Eis"
(Egg Shuttle), a nickname given to it more or less playfully by its
pilots, seemed more than right. However, at a second glance, an less
superficial observer would have begun to see some particulars that
transformed it in a unique weapon: the positive arrowhead wings, the
lack of the tailplanes and the small, but extremely powerful back
rocket engine.
Born from a prewar idea by Aleksander Libbisch, Me 163 had been
constantly developed during the first phase of the Second World War. By
summer 1941, several prototypes already flew at Peenemünde, but it
was immediately clear that the project needed more improvements
and deepened studies. The model 163A was brought into air under some Bf
110 in order to be freed few seconds before the ignition of the rocket
engine. It was only with the aircrafts class 163B that the Luftwaffe
thought to have found sufficient "stability" in the
development of this airplane for its operating employment.
It was 1943 and a special test unit, Erprobungskommando 16, received
the new weapon that, since the beginning, was considered revolutionary
from the pilots who could fly with it. The powerful rocket engine
pushed the Komet beyond 880 km/h, approximately 200 km/h more than
Supermarine Spitfire IX for example. Then, it was able literally to
climb the sky up reaching 5000 meters in a minute. These performances
placed it in a special category outside the attack range of its direct
competitors.
But, the test pilots, as well as the brave men who would have piloted
it during operating missions, would have discovered soon that the Komet
had long series of defects that made it dangerous not only for the
pilot, but also for the land staff. Firstly, the powerful Walter rocket
engine with which it was equipped, used as fuel a deadly mixture of
concentrated hydrogen peroxide (T-Stoff) and hydrazine with metanolo
(C-Stoff) that had to be mixed in order to create the reaction
necessary to make the airplane fly. This mix was highly unstable, so
much to provoke various deaths among the refueling staff. The pilots,
as protection from the high corrosivity of these substances, were
forced to wear special protecting suits that, however, were
useless during the riskier moment of the flight: the takeoff.
The pilot had to press an ignition button that released the two
substances and created the real fuel mixture. If all went well, the
throttle for giving power could then be pushed. If something went wrong
during the mixing, there was nothing to do for the pilot, because the
flight ended with a crash or a fire of huge proportions. The dangers
during the takeoff were not only those quoted above. The front
undercarriage that was subsequently unhooked as soon as the aircraft
took off, was without shocks-absorbers and therefore the smallest
imperfection in the track or an uncertainty in the distribution of the
force on the throttle by the pilot could involve the airplane's
turnover. When everything went right at the moment of the takeoff, the
pilot could enjoy the jet flight for 6 minutes only. In fact, so long
it lasted the fuel mixture, after the exhaustion of which the Me 163
can only glide. For this reason, the first phase of the pilotage
training for the Komet was done with gliders.
The defects were obvious to all, but the need of Germany was equally
great. Consequently, the men trained at the Erprobungskommando 16 were
already authorized to fly with Me 163 in the Jagdgeschwander 400
(located at Lipsia) since May 1944. The main operating actions were
naturally those to contrast the Allied bombers that tortured the German
war industries. The Komet had all the qualities to be a winning
fighter: the speed helped during in the dogfight with the escorting
Allied fighters, while a powerful Rheinmetall-Borsig cannon (30 mm)
transformed it into a mortal threat for any enemy bomber.
Unfortunately those that would have had to be its advantages were also
its defects. Since the Komet flew at more than twice the speed of its
targets, the pilot had only few seconds in order to use his fire power
against the target. Because of bad luck or bad planning, the
Rheinmetall-Borsig cannon had a low shooting speed and so only
few shots could be shot during that short time. If you were able to hit
the target once, it was indeed a lucky day. Towards the conclusion of
the conflict, the German engineers had found the solution for this
problem: racks for rockets that were shot vertically regarding the
flight level so that it would have been enough to fly under a bomber to
increase the chances to hit it. This last innovation was never
operating, but several test in combat conditions were done .
The difficulties of the Me 163 pilots were not ended here. Also in the
hypothesis in which they succeeded in taking off without damages and
the phase of contact with the enemy bombers was completed without
casualties, there was still the landing! Since the aircraft had to
glide down towards its own base without the push of the rocket engine
because of the minimal duration of the fuel, it could happen, and it
really happened, that many landings were done at a too high speed that
caused the turnover of the airplane or the break of the wings because
of the contact with the land; surely, landing on a "ice-skate" did not
guarantee the perfect equilibrium... Moreover, the Allied pilots, after
having understood how the Komet was vulnerable during the phase of
disengagement from the combat, waited that the enemy airplanes flew
towards their own airbases in order to attack them during the landing,
when the "Egg Shuttle" flew with all the grace that its nickname let us
imagine.
To express a judgment about the qualities of this fighter is surely
difficult for the simple reason that it was perhaps a too young project
for active deployment and surely its development was abruptly
interrupted from the German defeat. Instead, the undeniable quality
that it had was to show, for the first time in the world, which
technical levels the air weapons could achieve.
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