Taifun rocket ready in 1943

[T. A. Gardner]

Regardless of the foregoing in the last two posts, the problems with this system remain.

Easily 70 to 100% of the time its going to be a barrage weapon. That is it's fired in mass at a bomber formation, not an individual bomber. When optical aiming is unavailable due to jamming, cloud cover, or night that's all you'd have, a box barrage.
So, you'd be firing a mass of these rockets towards a predicted position the bombers would reach when the rockets arrived in the sky. They'd definitely be aimed off prediction an overwhelming portion of the time, if not always. For this a time fuze would be necessary as you want all of them to detonate.

I'll give one example of the ineffectiveness of box barrages. On 10/25/44, the USAAF attacked Hamburg with 720 bombers. It was 10 10th's overcast and the Germans had to use radar to aim their batteries. The majority of US bombers carried Carpet jammers and were releasing chaff that pretty much blotted out all the radar systems making it impossible to aim by using them. The Germans resorted to a box barrage.
44 Heavy flak batteries with 8.8, 10.5, and 12.8 cm guns fired a total of 24, 416 shells shooting down a single bomber.

Taifun wasn't the answer to the AA problem, it was just an alternative to what already didn't work.

[Grzesio]

So, you'd be firing a mass of these rockets towards a predicted position the bombers would reach when the rockets arrived in the sky. They'd definitely be aimed off prediction an overwhelming portion of the time, if not always.

And this is exactly the way, regular Flak operated.

For this a time fuze would be necessary as you want all of them to detonate.

I don't want them to detonate, I want them to HIT an aircraft. Read carefully, what stg 44 wrote three posts earlier, please.

And for a time fuze a fragmentation warhead would be needed. There was even a study of a solid fuelled Taifun with a frag warhead, but due to an increased weight its performance was barely better than of the 8,8 cm Flak L/56 shell.

[T. A. Gardner]

[I don't want them to detonate, I want them to HIT an aircraft. Read carefully, what stg 44 wrote three posts earlier, please.

So, you fire hundreds hoping one actually hits an aircraft that 70% + of the time you can't see and don't have a fire control radar that's accurate enough to aim the launcher with sufficient precision to give the rocket a chance of doing that. Aside from that humongous problem, without a time fuze, the misses will rain down on Germany to detonate on the ground. Unlike video games the misses don't magically disappear... I'd say a time fuze is mandatory even if you have an additional contact fuze.

And for a time fuze a fragmentation warhead would be needed. There was even a study of a solid fuelled Taifun with a frag warhead, but due to an increased weight its performance was barely better than of the 8,8 cm Flak L/56 shell.

Then why switch? That's probably the conclusion the Germans reached. "We have an unreliable liquid fuelled rocket, the solid fuel variant is just being looked at and doesn't look all that promising. The accuracy's a bit better than an 88, but since we have to fire these things in a big barrage anyway, they'll end up being mostly used in box barrages. Adding a fragmentation warhead to make them effective in that way leaves them no better than the 88's shells... Which are cheaper and easier to produce not to mention they're already in production..."

I'd say that's the conclusion the Germans reached. The British already reached it years earlier with the UP rocket.

[stg 44]

[I don't want them to detonate, I want them to HIT an aircraft. Read carefully, what stg 44 wrote three posts earlier, please.

So, you fire hundreds hoping one actually hits an aircraft that 70% + of the time you can't see and don't have a fire control radar that's accurate enough to aim the launcher with sufficient precision to give the rocket a chance of doing that. Aside from that humongous problem, without a time fuze, the misses will rain down on Germany to detonate on the ground. Unlike video games the misses don't magically disappear... I'd say a time fuze is mandatory even if you have an additional contact fuze.

The Germans were averaging between 12-16,000 88 shells per bomber downed in 1944, so hundreds of rockets is a VAST improvement. And BTW the timed mechanism can be propellants themselves; like a chemical fuse, when it runs out the warhead detonates. German light flak shells had a tracer element that functions as a destruction mechanism just like that without a mechanical fuse. Seriously though do you just toss this stuff out as an argumentative tool or did you really not consider how a rocket can self destruct? Even if it took 16,000 rockets per downed bomber, if they are cheaper than an 88mm shell it is cost effective improvement over the historical situation in 1944.

And for a time fuze a fragmentation warhead would be needed. There was even a study of a solid fuelled Taifun with a frag warhead, but due to an increased weight its performance was barely better than of the 8,8 cm Flak L/56 shell.

Then why switch? That's probably the conclusion the Germans reached. "We have an unreliable liquid fuelled rocket, the solid fuel variant is just being looked at and doesn't look all that promising. The accuracy's a bit better than an 88, but since we have to fire these things in a big barrage anyway, they'll end up being mostly used in box barrages. Adding a fragmentation warhead to make them effective in that way leaves them no better than the 88's shells... Which are cheaper and easier to produce not to mention they're already in production..."

I'd say that's the conclusion the Germans reached. The British already reached it years earlier with the UP rocket.

All fire is being done in predicted barrages by 1944, so having masses of cheaper, somewhat more accurate massed rockets to fire is an improvement, as you don't need an expensive gun or shell to deploy them.

The problem with the Taifun, assuming you got it to reliably work, is the launching mechanism, as you couldn't fire more than 1-2 from the same launcher between reloads because the smoke put out would disrupt the follow on launches in rapid succession. So the trick is how you get multiple launchers slaved to the same aiming mechanism with are close enough to hit the same point in the sky without disrupting one another and then having it be cheap enough and easy enough to make to be superior to the existing AA guns.

[Grzesio]

Aside from that humongous problem, without a time fuze, the misses will rain down on Germany to detonate on the ground. Unlike video games the misses don't magically disappear... I'd say a time fuze is mandatory even if you have an additional contact fuze.

And the Taifun had a selfdestructor, of course - either a simple delay train ignited by the engine combustion, either a mechanical one built into the fuze, depending of the rocket variant.
On the other hand, the R 4 M aircraft rocket used in pretty vast numbers in 1945 did not have a selfdestructor at all (although it originally had to have it too - a pyrotechnic and mechanical ones were still under development when the rocket was fielded).

[T. A. Gardner]

Had it gone into production, the Taifun rocket battery launch would have looked a lot like the launch of 3" rockets from a British No. 6 Mk 1 battery. A photograph of one of these mass launching rockets is shown in post 13 here:

https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/b ... ets.36187/

I would think the German launching system would have been similar to this British one.

As the photo shows, you'd be mass launching hundreds of rockets at a time, and it would take incredible luck to actually hit an individual aircraft with such a system. Worse, unlike guns, once you fired your rockets, the reload time would almost certainly preclude a second salvo before the planes moved out of range.

On the whole, this weapon as an antiaircraft system is pretty much a dead end.

[stg 44]

Had it gone into production, the Taifun rocket battery launch would have looked a lot like the launch of 3" rockets from a British No. 6 Mk 1 battery. A photograph of one of these mass launching rockets is shown in post 13 here:

https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/b ... ets.36187/

I would think the German launching system would have been similar to this British one.

As the photo shows, you'd be mass launching hundreds of rockets at a time, and it would take incredible luck to actually hit an individual aircraft with such a system. Worse, unlike guns, once you fired your rockets, the reload time would almost certainly preclude a second salvo before the planes moved out of range.

On the whole, this weapon as an antiaircraft system is pretty much a dead end.

I'm fairly sure that the Z-Battery type launchers I've seen from the Germans were only for short ranged point defense against fighter bombers, not against strategic bombers. There were supposedly some units built on an 88mm gun mount that would move and track like the AA gun with 30 launch slots, but have never seen an actual picture of it.

[T. A. Gardner]

I'm fairly sure that the Z-Battery type launchers I've seen from the Germans were only for short ranged point defense against fighter bombers, not against strategic bombers. There were supposedly some units built on an 88mm gun mount that would move and track like the AA gun with 30 launch slots, but have never seen an actual picture of it.

My point was, the Taifun would require some sort of launch system. I doubt you'd be firing it like this:



That means you'll need some sort of launcher and the No 6 Mk 1 the British were using looks like a workable design for it. You'd still need some sort of centralized fire control system if you intended it for high flying bombers and use at night or through clouds. The British No 6 had 2 10 round racks mounted one on each side of a cab with two operators using visual sights. One operator controlled elevation, the other controlled azimuth. The system used a 7.2 volt battery and electric firing circuit.

The smaller 7.3cm Föhn system launcher looked like this:



That's similar to the No. 6 so I'd think the Taifun launcher would be similar. But, in any case, I don't think the accuracy of this system would be on the order of aiming at a single aircraft. You'd pretty much be limited to a barrage at a bomber box. That would make fragmentation warheads more desirable as you're likely to get more collateral damage.

[stg 44]

There was the individual Loki launcher:

[Grzesio]

That means you'll need some sort of launcher and the No 6 Mk 1 the British were using looks like a workable design for it. You'd still need some sort of centralized fire control system if you intended it for high flying bombers and use at night or through clouds.

That's similar to the No. 6 so I'd think the Taifun launcher would be similar.

Taifun launchers were to be 30-shot conversion sets for the 8,8 cm Flak L/56 AA gun carriages. An individual "tube" of this launcher looked fairly similar to the one in the 2nd and 3rd picture above.
A Taifun battery, comprising of 12 launchers, had to operate exactly like a normal heavy Flak battery, i.e. conduct indirect fire aimed with typical fire director (i.e. Kdo.Ger. 40, just modified/adjusted for the Taifun ballistics).

But, in any case, I don't think the accuracy of this system would be on the order of aiming at a single aircraft. You'd pretty much be limited to a barrage at a bomber box. That would make fragmentation warheads more desirable as you're likely to get more collateral damage.

Taifun batteries were equivalent to heavy Flak gun batteries firing with impact fuzes. Fragmentation warheads would have only affected rocket's performance.

[T. A. Gardner]

So, if a battery consisted of 12 launchers of 30 rockets each, they fired 360 rockets. These would only take down an aircraft if one or more of them impacted the target plane. There would be no collateral damage to other aircraft as the rockets wouldn't detonate at altitude with fragmentation effects like shells.
Seems to me a good way to waste lots of rockets. The battery gets one shot and if it misses, that's that. Since the odds really good it will miss, that'd say that the system is a waste of effort.

[stg 44]

So, if a battery consisted of 12 launchers of 30 rockets each, they fired 360 rockets. These would only take down an aircraft if one or more of them impacted the target plane. There would be no collateral damage to other aircraft as the rockets wouldn't detonate at altitude with fragmentation effects like shells.
Seems to me a good way to waste lots of rockets. The battery gets one shot and if it misses, that's that. Since the odds really good it will miss, that'd say that the system is a waste of effort.

360 rockets and kill 1 bomber? Much better than the very best year of an average of 2000x 88mm shells to bring down a bomber in 1942. If those rockets are then cheaper than each 88 shell its a massive success. Especially then if you can fire multiple salvos per raid. Though the question is can they really get that kill rate?

[T. A. Gardner]

360 rockets and kill 1 bomber? Much better than the very best year of an average of 2000x 88mm shells to bring down a bomber in 1942. If those rockets are then cheaper than each 88 shell its a massive success. Especially then if you can fire multiple salvos per raid. Though the question is can they really get that kill rate?

I severely doubt that. I'd figure on more like several thousand shots to get one kill. I doubt you can demonstrate any evidence to support that the Taifun would come close to shooting down a bomber per 300 to 400 rockets launched.
I also doubt you'd get more than one salvo off. Hand reloading 30 rockets per launcher after a launch is going to take several minutes at a minimum. That means you get one shot off at a particular part of a raid, and maybe just one shot off at the whole raid.



I'd say Taifun in use would look something like that.