No German suicide bombers?

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john2
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No German suicide bombers?

#1

Post by john2 » 19 Feb 2014, 01:26

If the Japanese had kamikaze attacks why not the Germans? They should have made teams of suicide bombers and dropped them behind allied lines. They could then blow themselves up taking out allied soldiers out with them. Why didn't the Germans do this?

steverodgers801
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Re: No German suicide bombers?

#2

Post by steverodgers801 » 19 Feb 2014, 01:53

They tried with a unit of fighters who crashed into bombers just before bailing out. wasn't very successful because German had no safe place to gather their planes. Mostly there were fanatics willing to die, but suicide was just not in the nature of most Germans.


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Ironmachine
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Re: No German suicide bombers?

#3

Post by Ironmachine » 19 Feb 2014, 09:12

Well, the manned version of the V-1 would have been suicidal in practice, if not in theory.

flakbait
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Re: No German suicide bombers?

#4

Post by flakbait » 20 Feb 2014, 04:59

No, the pilot of a V-2 could await getting within 10` of the ground, popping the hatch and jumping the last 10 feet down...

Alixanther
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Re: No German suicide bombers?

#5

Post by Alixanther » 06 Mar 2014, 16:55

The "real" problem does not reside in the term "suicide" but in the term "bombers". They were already overstretched on various technological issues, airforce being one of them, if not the most critical. So yeah, suicidal bombers would have had no point.

Some fighter pilots went suicidal from frustration, if and when they saw they could not bring down Allied bombers the easy way. Hardly a daily habit.

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Sheldrake
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Re: No German suicide bombers?

#6

Post by Sheldrake » 06 Mar 2014, 22:38

The mortality rates in the U Boat service were higher than for Japanese Kamikazis

Alixanther
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Re: No German suicide bombers?

#7

Post by Alixanther » 07 Mar 2014, 01:00

Sheldrake wrote:The mortality rates in the U Boat service were higher than for Japanese Kamikazis
Yeah, some U-boat attack must have been suicidal. Proves my point, although bombers would have been cheaper to make yet at least as uneffective as the U-boats against the Allied-controlled sky. The vast distances in the Pacific and the impossibility to put the whole ocean under radar surveillance made the kamikazes possible. That wasn't the case in Europe.

Gotzingen
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Re: No German suicide bombers?

#8

Post by Gotzingen » 24 Apr 2014, 23:29

It's a cultural thing. Very few Western soldiers disembowelled themselves to atone for disgrace -- as opposed to taking their own lives to avoid capture.

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