Europe 1945

[capney]

At the completion of WWII my father was part of the force who travelled across Europe to investigate the Equipment available to the Germans.
With his trusty Leica camera he came back with a historic images I would like to share with you.
Apologies to those who have no interest in this subject but these pictures need preserving.

This first one is indeed a rarity.
Taken at Volkenrode it is one of the very few flying bombs equipped with a cockpit...


I shall post some more tomorrow

[capney]

An Me-109e somewhere in Germany at the end of WWII

[capney]

I have no idea where this was, and Im having problems identifying the aircraft. Wherever,whatever its taken a right pasting.

[capney]

My Father

[capney]

Do-17

[capney]

JU-52

[capney]

Me-110

[DAG]

First pic: Never seen one on the ground but saw plenty flying over North London up to the age of 6.

Will never forget that dreadful sound it made and each time you heard it, you prayed it just kept going but when the sound suddenly stopped overhead you knew it was going to drop very close by! Something like 5 seconds I would say of silence and then the crash!

Your father looks proud sitting up there! Great pics Robert!

[kedigato]

Great pics, Robert!

You are lucky that you still have the pics that your father took all those years ago. So many have been lost over the years, so it is good when someone still has some and shares them with others.

Re the first pic - how did it work? There is a cockpit, I can see that, but I can't see that the plane has wheels, looks to be sitting on a trolley. It also has no propellers.

Then, how about the bomb? If there was a pilot, how did he manage to take off and drop the bomb? Was he taken up under another plane and clinked out, to do a rollover so he could then clink the bomb out??? Then glide home???

I bet you are laughing your head off at my silly questions, Robert, but I really don't know. Guess I should look on the net.

I remember my Dad telling us about the planes with the glass-fronted noses with machine gunners sitting there.

[capney]

Not silly questions at all.and I shall do my best to answer them.
The V1, Duddlebug, buzz bomb, or the Fieseler Fi 103 was indeed a cruise missile.
Several hundred where launched to-wards England from France.
Mounted on a rail "ski" launch sites popped up in secluded places.
The engine was started first (using a compressed air line) while the craft was stationary on the ramp. The low static thrust of the jet engine and very high stall speed of the small wings meant that the V-1 could not take off under its own power in a practically short distance, and thus required an aircraft catapult launch
Guided by a guidance system it used a simple autopilot to regulate height and speed. A weighted pendulum system provided fore-and-aft attitude measurement to control pitch.Simple put there was a little propeller up front counted its turns and determined how far it had gone.
Then an automatic system would kick in and make the machine go into a steep dive and exploding the warhead on impact.
It was powered by a simple pulse jet and the characteristic buzzing noise that I can imagine David can still remember.
This noise was produced by shutters at the front of the engine that opened and closed 50 times a second.

Why the cockpit on the one in the picture?
Ok. probable two reasons:
1- during first testing the missile crashed several times without finding a solution. So a cockpit was installed for man controlled flight.
At that time there was a famous German aviator called Hanna Reitsch....She tested the prototypes of the V-1 rocket, in 1944. The first powered flight only went a kilometer, and the early prototypes showed a tendency to crash. To resolve these problems, a piloted flying bomb was developed, with the warhead replaced by a cockpit.
I seem to recall that towards the end of the war there was also a plan for suicide pilots to pilot the flying bomb to accurately reach their target.
The warhead up front was Amatol-39 with a weight of 1,870Lbs, a powerful explosive punch that is estimated killed 22,892.

[DAG]

Regarding the pulse jet, an engineering friend of mine's ambition was to build a model pulse jet but was unable to for 2 reasons.

First the expense and shear difficulty in producing those shutters you refer to especially to small scale.

Secondly he said it was highly illegal to fly one but I can't remember why.

BTW There was a film made about the development of the Duddlebug but I can't remember what it was called. Arney thinks it was Operation Crossbow. George Peppard was in it, I bet Robert will know it well?

[pete]

Operation Crossbow was the V2 I think Dag.

I remember the V1 film, they had a woman pilot flying it, cant remember the name of it though
.
I was brought up on those kind of films. ;D

Interesting pictures capney, I might dig out some of my fathers one day, he was in North Africa and Italy mostly from 1941ish onwards, in the RAF.

[capney]

That would be good if you could that Pete.

[pete]

I'll need time to go through his stuff.

He was not a great photographer by any means.

But I'm sure the pictures are around somewhere.