Taifun rocket ready in 1943

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Taifun rocket ready in 1943

#1

Post by stg 44 » 26 Jan 2017, 04:03

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taifun_(rocket)
What if the Taifun rocket project bore fruit in mid-1943 thanks to the development of a solid fuel version? Historically post-war the US Loki and Super Loki rocket projects were the development of the Taifun and had to abandon the liquid fuel engine to work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki_(rocket)
Though the problem of firing them en masse from the same launcher was never overcome with US research (they didn't find an obvious solution and abandoned further work rather than pursue it), they could be launched individually at a bomber box and be useful. So what if say the project started earlier and wasn't based on a liquid fuel so that it is ready for mid-1943? it would be launched from spaced launchers so as not to disrupt the flight path of follow up rockets; apparently they could reach 1200m/s and reach a 25,000 feet altitude in about 5-6 seconds compared to an 88mm shell that took about 30 seconds. Would the weapon have been worthwhile against daylight bombers for point defense?

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Re: Taifun rocket ready in 1943

#2

Post by Svrclr » 26 Jan 2017, 05:46

It depends on:

1) is it accurate enough to get anywhere near a B-17. I think you would have to have entire batteries of launchers with enough delay on a single launcher to avoid the disruptions. Then, can the rockets fill the area around the B-17 with enough rockets to get one or more hits. It took thousands (~4000?) 88mm rounds to bring down 1 heavy bomber, so if you can aim them well enough to hit with a big enough warhead it is not that difficult to imagine such a rocket system causing a lot more damage to bombers than conventional Flak.

The problem I have with it, is I just don't think they are going to be that accurate. If there is any sort of "wiggle" as they leave the launcher, that is a lot of leverage and it will be off target as it flies down range.

2). Is such a solid fuel available? I know little about rocket fuel, but the wiki article seems to suggest that the reason to use a liquid fuel was to get the high velocity, and it is the velocity that is key for AA work.

If they had such a rocket fuel, it seems like you could make some sort of AT rockets or airborne air to air rocket and be even more effective. But getting super high velocity in rockets is something that has rarely happened, even in modern day weapons. And that is without the supply problems that an isolated Germany would have or advanced chemistry.

3). Provided such a rocket fuel exists, can the germans produce enough of it to produce a useful number of rockets for AA and other roles. High velocity would be useful for artillery, AT, and air to air duties. Such a rocket fuel would be prized, and then you have to wonder if german would have the resources to produce it en masse. Otherwise, it is like the Walter U-Boat, a demonstration project without an application because the fuel is too expensive.


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Re: Taifun rocket ready in 1943

#3

Post by stg 44 » 26 Jan 2017, 06:14

The initial concept was a launcher with 30 rockets on an 88mm rotating platform that could track targets; the problem (not sure if it was just the Loki design) was that the ripple fire in rapid succession, necessary to saturate a target, would disrupt the follow on launches with the back blast of the launch and perhaps the residual smoke would impact things. I don't know. It certainly is possible with enough of a delay between launches it wouldn't be so much an issue, but then you miss out on the massed rockets saturating a target. Of course if you do a 'mega-battery' of such launchers (the Germans were massing something like 32x 88 guns into one super battery to economize on radar and computing assets later in the war) with each say firing 1 rocket per 2-3 seconds you could saturate a target reasonably well, but again you're relying on mass to hopefully hit the target. Of course the Loki was meant to hit high altitude jet bombers in the 1950s, so perhaps given that we are talking about slow bomber boxes at what would be medium altitudes for the 1950s it wouldn't be an issue. Each rocket was supposed to cost about 25 Marks, so not super expensive. So what 32 lauchers with 30 rockets each would be 960 fired rapidly into bomber boxes with contact fuses. You're bound to get multiple hits if that is all done is a matter of a minute or two when they are making level bombing runs in formation. So say 3 hits, each probably a kill, results in 320 rockets per kill. Even if the rockets are 2-3x the cost of a standard 88mm shell that is still a savings except for the 'best' average of 2000 shells per kill in 1942. By 1943 it is less expensive then per kill.

The Loki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki_(rocket)
maximum height: 55 km
maximum speed 6,275 km/h

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Re: Taifun rocket ready in 1943

#4

Post by thaddeus_c » 27 Jan 2017, 02:12

cannot find a reference to (any) tests done on Rheinbote with one or more of its four stages removed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinbote

(a solid fuel rocket, described as fastest of their projects)

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Re: Taifun rocket ready in 1943

#5

Post by T. A. Gardner » 27 Jan 2017, 03:03

You might want to peruse "The Battle of Palmdale"

http://steeljawscribe.com/2007/08/28/ch ... f-palmdale

An F-89 in the 50's was sent up to intercept and shoot down an errant F6F drone that got away from control at China Lake California... Lots of FFAR fired and the drone wasn't a maneuvering target. It finally ran out of gas and crashed...

As for ground launched...

The British UP projectile... These were used on land mounts and on ships by Britain from the start of the war through about the end of 1940 with very little success. I can find two claims by rocket batteries. One by Battery Z at Cardiff shooting down a Do 17 and another the Aberporth trial battery shooting down an unspecified aircraft.

As for shooting down a high flying bomber? I'd say the chances are pretty slim to nil. First, you have to accurately target the position of the bomber to the arrival of the rocket barrage. Since there will be inaccuracies in estimating the bomber's speed, altitude, and the rockets are slower than shells fired from a gun, the CEP gets large quickly.

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Re: Taifun rocket ready in 1943

#6

Post by stg 44 » 27 Jan 2017, 06:33

T. A. Gardner wrote:You might want to peruse "The Battle of Palmdale"

http://steeljawscribe.com/2007/08/28/ch ... f-palmdale

An F-89 in the 50's was sent up to intercept and shoot down an errant F6F drone that got away from control at China Lake California... Lots of FFAR fired and the drone wasn't a maneuvering target. It finally ran out of gas and crashed...

As for ground launched...

The British UP projectile... These were used on land mounts and on ships by Britain from the start of the war through about the end of 1940 with very little success. I can find two claims by rocket batteries. One by Battery Z at Cardiff shooting down a Do 17 and another the Aberporth trial battery shooting down an unspecified aircraft.

As for shooting down a high flying bomber? I'd say the chances are pretty slim to nil. First, you have to accurately target the position of the bomber to the arrival of the rocket barrage. Since there will be inaccuracies in estimating the bomber's speed, altitude, and the rockets are slower than shells fired from a gun, the CEP gets large quickly.
Neither really have any barring on the situation, as the German FFARs did have lots of documented bomber kills in the last month of the war. Hitting a bomber box size target is a lot easier than hitting one small drone from a Cold War jet.

The Z Batteries used a very different projectile to the Loki or Taifun missile, for one they were a rotated rocket and were designed to be short ranged weapons to hit low flying aircraft. Very different from what the Taifun and Loki were for and the design to keep them accurate. Plus the British rockets were fired with cordite, a different propellant than what the Germans used for solid fuel rockets.

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Re: Taifun rocket ready in 1943

#7

Post by Svrclr » 27 Jan 2017, 07:29

stg 44 wrote:The initial concept was a launcher with 30 rockets on an 88mm rotating platform that could track targets; the problem (not sure if it was just the Loki design) was that the ripple fire in rapid succession, necessary to saturate a target, would disrupt the follow on launches with the back blast of the launch and perhaps the residual smoke would impact things. I don't know. It certainly is possible with enough of a delay between launches it wouldn't be so much an issue, but then you miss out on the massed rockets saturating a target. Of course if you do a 'mega-battery' of such launchers (the Germans were massing something like 32x 88 guns into one super battery to economize on radar and computing assets later in the war) with each say firing 1 rocket per 2-3 seconds you could saturate a target reasonably well, but again you're relying on mass to hopefully hit the target. Of course the Loki was meant to hit high altitude jet bombers in the 1950s, so perhaps given that we are talking about slow bomber boxes at what would be medium altitudes for the 1950s it wouldn't be an issue. Each rocket was supposed to cost about 25 Marks, so not super expensive. So what 32 lauchers with 30 rockets each would be 960 fired rapidly into bomber boxes with contact fuses. You're bound to get multiple hits if that is all done is a matter of a minute or two when they are making level bombing runs in formation. So say 3 hits, each probably a kill, results in 320 rockets per kill. Even if the rockets are 2-3x the cost of a standard 88mm shell that is still a savings except for the 'best' average of 2000 shells per kill in 1942. By 1943 it is less expensive then per kill.

The Loki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loki_(rocket)
maximum height: 55 km
maximum speed 6,275 km/h
The math seems to work out, assuming it is accurate enough.

As far as the comparison to the 88mm guns, the big difference isn't the cost of the shells. Your math is right, but the real expense of the 88mm is the gun, not the shells. And a Flak 36 gun has a lot of other uses for the field troops, so the ability to free up some Flak guns for the Atlantic wall, the fighting in Italy and Russia goes above and beyond the expense in money spent on just shells.

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Re: Taifun rocket ready in 1943

#8

Post by Svrclr » 27 Jan 2017, 07:44

T. A. Gardner wrote:You might want to peruse "The Battle of Palmdale"

http://steeljawscribe.com/2007/08/28/ch ... f-palmdale

An F-89 in the 50's was sent up to intercept and shoot down an errant F6F drone that got away from control at China Lake California... Lots of FFAR fired and the drone wasn't a maneuvering target. It finally ran out of gas and crashed...

As for ground launched...

The British UP projectile... These were used on land mounts and on ships by Britain from the start of the war through about the end of 1940 with very little success. I can find two claims by rocket batteries. One by Battery Z at Cardiff shooting down a Do 17 and another the Aberporth trial battery shooting down an unspecified aircraft.

As for shooting down a high flying bomber? I'd say the chances are pretty slim to nil. First, you have to accurately target the position of the bomber to the arrival of the rocket barrage. Since there will be inaccuracies in estimating the bomber's speed, altitude, and the rockets are slower than shells fired from a gun, the CEP gets large quickly.
The thing that is special about the Taifun rockets is their superior velocity. Anytime you are trying to hit a target, better velocity makes the whole aiming thing a lot simpler. It doesn't seem like the comparison you are making is a good one, if the rockets being fired in Palmdale were regular clusters of the traditional rockets. If they are flying at the traditional, slow flights fo the day, it would be fairly tough to hit any air to air target. That was why air to air rockets were reserved for firing at an entire box of heavy 4 engined bombers.

I just remain a bit skeptical, since rockets and missiles that fly at velocities like are being ascribed to Taifun are still not common place today. It just doesn't seem like a trivial thing to get a rocket to fly that fast. It strikes me that maybe that is too much to count on, especially in switching the type of fuel. Maybe someone else can comment on that, as I know little about rocket fuel.

Then there is the accuracy thing. Rockets have been used as military weapons for a long, long time (hundreds of years), and they have always been less accurate than conventional artillery. Once any weapon travels a long distance any slight inaccuracy in either the target location or course, or the intercepting course of the rocket, and the rockets would be way off target. The higher velocity simplies that a great deal, but being off by a fraction of a degree in aim still means the rockets could miss completely. And if that inaccuracy comes from the fuel burn or from wind or propellant from another rocket exerting unintended force on the rocket fins, then they could be very unpredictable when firing at targets at 25,000 ft.

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Re: Taifun rocket ready in 1943

#9

Post by thaddeus_c » 27 Jan 2017, 13:18

Svrclr wrote:I just remain a bit skeptical, since rockets and missiles that fly at velocities like are being ascribed to Taifun are still not common place today. It just doesn't seem like a trivial thing to get a rocket to fly that fast. It strikes me that maybe that is too much to count on, especially in switching the type of fuel. Maybe someone else can comment on that, as I know little about rocket fuel.
the reported speed of Rheinbote is nearly twice that of Taifun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinbote although my research is not showing removal of any of the four stages so that might have affected speed?

believe as used it had all problems of V-2 and none of the attributes, maybe they were too expensive to be used as flak weapon? however it was the one of the rocket projects actually used.

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Re: Taifun rocket ready in 1943

#10

Post by stg 44 » 27 Jan 2017, 20:30

thaddeus_c wrote:
Svrclr wrote:I just remain a bit skeptical, since rockets and missiles that fly at velocities like are being ascribed to Taifun are still not common place today. It just doesn't seem like a trivial thing to get a rocket to fly that fast. It strikes me that maybe that is too much to count on, especially in switching the type of fuel. Maybe someone else can comment on that, as I know little about rocket fuel.
the reported speed of Rheinbote is nearly twice that of Taifun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinbote although my research is not showing removal of any of the four stages so that might have affected speed?

believe as used it had all problems of V-2 and none of the attributes, maybe they were too expensive to be used as flak weapon? however it was the one of the rocket projects actually used.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheintochter
This was the SAM version. As with all systems it was started too late for such a complex weapon and the guidance system to get operational by the time the war situation made it unworkable, that and the multiple programs competing for resources diluted what limited assets there were available.

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Re: Taifun rocket ready in 1943

#11

Post by T. A. Gardner » 27 Jan 2017, 21:16

stg 44 wrote:Neither really have any barring on the situation, as the German FFARs did have lots of documented bomber kills in the last month of the war. Hitting a bomber box size target is a lot easier than hitting one small drone from a Cold War jet.

The Z Batteries used a very different projectile to the Loki or Taifun missile, for one they were a rotated rocket and were designed to be short ranged weapons to hit low flying aircraft. Very different from what the Taifun and Loki were for and the design to keep them accurate. Plus the British rockets were fired with cordite, a different propellant than what the Germans used for solid fuel rockets.
I wanted to demonstrate that it can take lots of rockets to get a hit from the F-89 example. Here, 208 were fired for zero hits. The same goes for the systems in this thread. You'll be firing a lot to get a hit.

The British UP 3" rocket had a maximum ceiling of 22,200 feet (6770 meters) and a horizontal range of 12,200 feet (3720 m). It launched at 200 ft /sec and accelerated to a maximum velocity of 1500 ft /sec, about half of what the Taifun was supposed to reach in speed and with about two thirds the range.

I doubt that the German rockets would have been any more accurate than the UP, as both are fin stabilized and unguided. I also think that their being liquid fuelled is a serious drawback. You get the mixture wrong... bad things happen. It also complicates making and fueling the rocket.
Taifun was powered by a hypergolic mixture pressure-fed into the combustion chamber. The pressure was provided by small cordite charges that were fired into the fuel tanks, in the process bursting a pair of thin diaphragms to allow the fuel and oxidizer to flow into the combustion chamber. The Germans were never able to get the engine to work reliably, and the rocket was never deployed operationally.
From OP source.
This is most likely why the British went with a much simpler solid fuel version in the UP rocket.

Also note, that the OP source for Loki notes the following:
JPL eventually fired 3,544 Loki's at White Sands during the testing program. These tests demonstrated that the launch of one rocket would affect the flight path of the ones behind it, making the dispersion too large to be a useful weapon.
So, a mass launch would have increased dispersion almost certainly.

Another problem would be the reload time. You have a very short window for firing flak at a high flying bomber formation, minutes at most in almost all cases. Reloading a mass rocket battery will take several minutes at least, so the Taifun battery might only get one or two salvos off during a raid before the aircraft were out of range.
To complicate things, since the target(s) would often be above cloud cover, or flying at night (the RAF), the battery would have to rely on radar for aiming and that would mean operating against serious jamming.
I can't see this as being a useful alternative to guns or guided missiles at all. If anything, it's a waste of resources on an idea that simply won't achieve any significant results.
The one possibility it has, and only if you had real masses of these is as a time fuzed box barrage. It might be cheaper and just as effective as a gun fired one, but box barrages proved nearly worthless for the effort and cost of ammunition expended on them.

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Re: Taifun rocket ready in 1943

#12

Post by Grzesio » 05 Apr 2017, 13:34

is it accurate enough to get anywhere near a B-17.
It is not about accuracy, but the number of projectiles fired at the target. :)
Is such a solid fuel available? I know little about rocket fuel, but the wiki article seems to suggest that the reason to use a liquid fuel was to get the high velocity, and it is the velocity that is key for AA work.
The solid fuelled Taifun variant was developed a couple of months later than the liquid fuelled one and it generally offered the same performance, just being a little bit heavier. Both were put into production.
cannot find a reference to (any) tests done on Rheinbote with one or more of its four stages removed
the reported speed of Rheinbote is nearly twice that of Taifun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinbote although my research is not showing removal of any of the four stages so that might have affected speed?
There was a project of a two stage antiaircraft Rheinbote derivative indeed, carrying an incendiary shrapnel warhead made of a couple of segments detonated one after another.
I doubt that the German rockets would have been any more accurate than the UP, as both are fin stabilized and unguided.
But Taifun was some 2.4 times faster and rotated in flight, this suggests it was more accurate than the UP.
I also think that their being liquid fuelled is a serious drawback. You get the mixture wrong... bad things happen. It also complicates making and fueling the rocket.
Actually vast majority of the ordered production rockets were of the solid fuelled variant.
You have a very short window for firing flak at a high flying bomber formation, minutes at most in almost all cases.
I'd say even seconds rather than minutes.
The one possibility it has, and only if you had real masses of these is as a time fuzed box barrage.
The basic idea behind the Taifun was to use impact fuzes instead of time fuzes. According to statistical calculations as well as some initial test firings, expected kill ratio of the Taifun was some 4 times higher than in case of the 8,8 cm Flak.

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Re: Taifun rocket ready in 1943

#13

Post by T. A. Gardner » 05 Apr 2017, 21:57

Grzesio wrote: is it accurate enough to get anywhere near a B-17
It is not about accuracy, but the number of projectiles fired at the target. :)
It is about accuracy. If you have to launch hundreds of rockets to get a single hit and each rocket costs more than a shell, then it's very likely that the system becomes uneconomical.
The solid fuelled Taifun variant was developed a couple of months later than the liquid fuelled one and it generally offered the same performance, just being a little bit heavier. Both were put into production.
I can't find a single source that backs this up. The US and Russia post war both developed a solid fuel version of their variants of the Taifun, Loki and the R-103A after several years of testing the liquid fuel version and finding it had poor accuracy and inconsistent flight characteristics (due to the engine in good part). The US version used a rubber based solid propellant developed by the JPL that Germany didn't discover during the war. In any case, given the shortage of rubber in Germany during the war it would have been an unworkable solution for them.
I doubt that the German rockets would have been any more accurate than the UP, as both are fin stabilized and unguided.
But Taifun was some 2.4 times faster and rotated in flight, this suggests it was more accurate than the UP.
Not what the US and Russia found in extensive post war testing (Loki and R-103A). They found their Taifun copies to lack accuracy and that was made far worse by mass firing the rockets where the wake of the first launched upset the trajectory of following launches. The British got around this with the UP, at least on land, by limiting the launchers to single (Mk 1) or double (No. 2 Mk 1) rails and using more separate launchers.
I also think that their being liquid fuelled is a serious drawback. You get the mixture wrong... bad things happen. It also complicates making and fueling the rocket.
Actually vast majority of the ordered production rockets were of the solid fuelled variant.
I've found no evidence that the Germans developed a solid fuel version or that they manufactured one.
You have a very short window for firing flak at a high flying bomber formation, minutes at most in almost all cases.
I'd say even seconds rather than minutes.
The one possibility it has, and only if you had real masses of these is as a time fuzed box barrage.
The basic idea behind the Taifun was to use impact fuzes instead of time fuzes. According to statistical calculations as well as some initial test firings, expected kill ratio of the Taifun was some 4 times higher than in case of the 8,8 cm Flak.[/quote]

I'd say that whoever did those calculations should have been shot. There are documented cases of box barrages (essentially the same thing as proposed here) where dozens of gun batteries fired thousands of shells, in some cases well over 10,000, to shoot down a single bomber. I doubt that a massed rocket launch would do much better.

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Re: Taifun rocket ready in 1943

#14

Post by stg 44 » 05 Apr 2017, 23:11

T. A. Gardner wrote: I'd say that whoever did those calculations should have been shot. There are documented cases of box barrages (essentially the same thing as proposed here) where dozens of gun batteries fired thousands of shells, in some cases well over 10,000, to shoot down a single bomber. I doubt that a massed rocket launch would do much better.
Um, box barrages are with timed fuzes, the opposite of what is suggested here with the impact fuse. The Germans found in combat test that it was 3-4x as effective to score a kill to use only impact fuses and rapid fire with AAA shells. They claimed to have it down to 350 shells per kill against bomber boxes in combat tests, but I've seen some evidence that it was more like 1400-1600 shells. Regardless the standard at the time was over 5000 shells per kill. Also the claimed speed of the Taifun was supposed to be nearly double that of the 88mm shell and kept it's speed, rather than the rapid bleed off of velocity of the unaerodynamic standard 88mm FLAK shell. So theoretically it could reach the target in 1/2-1/3rd the time of the standard 88mm gun. Assuming it remained stable in flight it had the capacity to be far more accurate than an 88mm impact fuse shell due to the time to target making aiming calculations far less inaccurate. If they could then saturate the predicted airspace with accurate impact fuse, high velocity, one shot kill rockets they could say use 300 and kill multiple bombers per salvo, FAR more cost effective than 5000 or even 1400x 88mm shells (in 1944 at the worse it took 16,000x 88mm shells to kill a bomber...a more expensive proposition than actually making the bomber!).
The issue is the accuracy of the rocket, how many launchers you'd need so that the exhaust of previous rocket launch wouldn't disrupt the ones behind it (the problem of the Loki), and getting a working rocket propellant (the Taifun did not work due to the liquid fuel engine, but the solid fuel version wasn't ready at the end of the AFAIK). German solid fuel rocket propellants weren't as good as the US one developed for the Loki in 1951.

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Re: Taifun rocket ready in 1943

#15

Post by Grzesio » 06 Apr 2017, 01:19

It is about accuracy.
No, it's not. If you engage a bomber formation, it's about statistics. :)
If you have to launch hundreds of rockets to get a single hit and each rocket costs more than a shell, then it's very likely that the system becomes uneconomical.
No, liquid fuelled Taifun, including fuel, was to be more than three times cheaper than an 8,8 cm Flak round.
I can't find a single source that backs this up.
I've found no evidence that the Germans developed a solid fuel version or that they manufactured one.
8O
Have you never heard of the Taifun P? It was presented by January 1945 and production of 50 000 was ordered in February (although tests showed, it had worse accuracy than liquid fuelled variant). The rocket was further developed by the Soviets already from 1946 in their NII Berlin, eventually leading to the RZS-115 rocket.
The US version used a rubber based solid propellant developed by the JPL that Germany didn't discover during the war. In any case, given the shortage of rubber in Germany during the war it would have been an unworkable solution for them.
The Taifun performance lays well within possibilities of common German solid propellants of the WW2 era, offering, say, 1800 Ns/kg specific impulse and 1 cm/s burning ratio. No wonder fuels are needed.
Not what the US and Russia found in extensive post war testing (Loki and R-103A). They found their Taifun copies to lack accuracy and that was made far worse by mass firing the rockets where the wake of the first launched upset the trajectory of following launches.
As far as I know, Soviets were pretty satisfied with their R-103, R-103A and R-110 rockets, which presented characteristics close to expected. They experienced a lot of problems with reliability of the liquid fuelled engines indeed, but alleged lack of accuracy can be tracked down to improper measuring method (to some degree at least :) ).
So theoretically it could reach the target in 1/2-1/3rd the time of the standard 88mm gun.
After initial ballistic tests it was established, Taifun reached 10 000 m in some 14-15 s, while an 8,8 cm shell climbed to just under 10 000 m in 28 s.

By the way - I'm not too convinced, the disturbance caused by preceding rockets in ripple fire was a real problem with the Loki. For example, test firing of 48 rockets in ripple fire in April 1954 gave vertical and lateral probable errors of 6.5 and 6 mils respectively at the 30 000 ft slant range and 1300 mils elevation.

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