The sky-high aircraft and aviation thread

Far more interesting to me is the Showa/Nakajima L 2 D, which was a license-built version of the DC-3 (that plane was so awesome, even our enemies used them!). As the war continued, they started changing up the materials used in the design, and an all-wood version was developed by war's end.

They had that disturbing obsession for suicide aircraft though. They wanted to use the Ohka as a human guided suicide missile. They also had several other designs that look more like experimental fighter craft then suicide bombs with wings.

The Ohka worked, after a fashion. Though from what I remember, more got shot down while being carried on their Betty bomber carrier than plummeted into Allied shipping.

Pity they didn't use it for something other suicide attacks.

@Teufel

The Okha was essentially a piloted cruise missile. What else could they have used it for, unless they found a way to remove the human pilot, which would likely have had unacceptable risks for the Betties carrying it?

The Germans formed their own suicide unit at the war's end, the Leonidas Squadron (an ironic name, given the kicking the Germans got from the Greeks).

edited 19th Apr '14 7:38:04 AM by Achaemenid

The Ohka and the kamikaze attacks were the impetus behind the development of Project Nike and various Air-to-Air missiles. The problem with crusie missiles in that era was that computers filled a room. That's why Northrop's flying wings never took off: too unstable to fly with a combat load, nukes were too big for it.

Both Ohka and the V-1 were studied by the US. The V-1 became the JB-2 Loon and the granddaddy of the US cruise missile fleet.

Achae: They could have used it as a large rocket projectile for starters. They could used the German guided weapon tech instead. They could have made it a rocket boosted glide bomb dropped by the parent craft. Or used the rocket tech to develop a fighter craft instead of a another suicide weapon.

Instead they chose to waste pilots in the name of fanaticism.

The V-1 was self-guided, true enough, and it and the Okha were broadly similar, but one was a cruise missile intended to be used against land targets while the other was mostly an anti-shipping missile. Developing a disposable guidance system that could hit London or at least any bit of British soil from a launch in France was easy enough, hitting ships or even small Pacific islands with airfields on them though, much harder.

The real kicker was the V-2 though: 1000kg of high explosives on a sub-orbital trajectory and unlike the V-1, you wouldn't even hear it coming: Just a sudden massive explosion and a city block's gone.

Unlike the V1 though they are not being fired at the same distances which helps a bit.

While the allies learned to foil the German radio guidance that existed at the time, wire guided was an option, even early primitive IR guidance was known. They could have cut down how far out they fired and just used aiming system to line it up on target and fire several at the target craft.

That I believe was part of their initial plan; the thing was eventually supposed to be launched from land installations and direct from ships.

Did the Japanese even have that, though? Japan-German co-ordination and co-operation was extremely difficult at the best of times, and the Germans lost a couple of subs delivering equipment/scientists to Japan. Also, the two anti-ship German guided missiles required the attacking aircraft's bombadier to maintain visual contact with the missile and the target until impact; the Japanese would have been slaughtered trying that.

I don't disagree that it was a stupid-ass thing to build, but once they were actually made, it's hard to see what other use they could be put to or a simple way of converting them, seeing as how it had been designed from the ground up to be manned, and as it had a pathetic 23 mile range (assuming a bomber took them up first). It was over-designed for the flare-guidance route (compare a Baka bomb to a Fritz X) and too short-ranged to be a fighter.

Incidentally, when the Japanese did develop their rocket fighter, the Mitsubishi J8M Shusui (a Komet knockoff) the planned fighting instructions called for pilots to ram the enemy after expending their ammunition. By that point in the war, everything Japan built was a suicide weapon, whether it was designed as such or not.

edited 19th Apr '14 1:00:19 PM by Achaemenid

Any of that would've left the bomber launching extremely vulnerable though, at least as so much as an ordinary torpedo attack.

The Gyroscopes are not exactly hard to make. There is also wire guided tech which isn't exactly all that hard to rig up either. They cold have easily asked the Germans for all the tech. The Germans had no trouble sharing said tech with the Japanese and in fact sent them various related tech including a Pulse Engine in 1943. What did they do? Take the tech and make a suicide craft. Not a cruise missile, experimental anti-shipping missile, or even a jet fighter. They made a suicide craft.

Using the Ohka as a rocket boosted glide bomb or even a large rocket could be done sans gyroscope. It's not like the Japanese were technologically incapable of that.

The ships being a "small target" is an exaggeration. Unless they are bombing landing craft most ships were fairly large especially on a broadside approach. Especially a broadside of many war ships including cruisers, battleships, and carriers. Even a near miss was quite nasty with a 50yd blast severely damaging a US vessel in one of the few Ohka attacks.

Sorry folks there really is no excuse for the stupidity that was the Ohka just psychotic fanaticism at it's worst.

Cat: You mean just as vulnerable as they were to intercept already especially the expanded defensive rings. I see no difference at all. They are bombers they are vulnerable without air escort.

edited 19th Apr '14 1:14:23 PM by TuefelHundenIV

@ Sabre:

If I remember correctly, few Japanese fighters actually had radios, and those that did were not of very good quality.

I beg to differ.

First the battle ships were not that fast at whopping 36 mph going in a straight line not only were the planes faster the rocket propelled weapon was significantly faster. The weapon could easily cover the distance to target before the target could travel very far or do much to try and maneuver out of the way. This isn't a free fall bomb or aerial torpedo this a rocket boosted projectile that can clock in at over 650mph.

At that speed assuming you attack at the absolute max range of 20 NM it can cover that distance in under two minutes. The shorter the distance the quicker that weapon is going to close on it's target. Its max range had more do with limitations of the projectile and not the difficulty of penetrating the defensive screen which was expanded to intercept the Betty's anyway.

2nd the Japanese were a far cry from exhausting all other options. They were already familiar with rocket weaponry that didn't require the user to commit suicide in it's use. They didn't even try any number of possible alternatives and jumped right into the suicide weapon without even attempting to find an alternative. They got that German Pulse Jet Engine and immediately looked into suicide craft. Not jet fighters or possibly advanced rocket weaponry. They didn't even consider possibly using it as a sort of dive bomb weapon. All you have to do make the thing fly straight is to balance it and put on some fins.

3rd they were a lot more technologically advanced then you are giving them credit for. They developed their own gyroscopically spin stabilized rocket and it worked. They had improved radar of all sorts by the end of the war.

4th Even if they just hit the outer rings of the defensive screen the kind of damage they did is nothing to sneeze at. At 50yds air burst it knocked a destroyer out of the fight with the blast alone. One destroyer that wasn't sunk was so horribly damaged it was a total loss. It went clean through another destroyer which was lucky as the warhead shout out the other side and sank into the water before it blew. Another destroyer was snapped in half by one hit.

These are not weak weapons. The projectiles speed and powerful warhead were quite very dangerous even to the more heavily protected battleships. that was why they expanded the defensive rings outward to intercept them before they could ever launch. Even smaller bombs that are near misses have been shown to do some nasty things to the hull of a battleship. Never mind a over 1.3 ton warhead that these things were packing.

The aim wouldn't have to be perfect to do a lot of damage. This is one of those weapons where close counts. It would not be hard to figure out firing solution to shoot several at a high value target with dumb fire rockets. Have the Betty's shoot a volley at something important like the battleships and carriers. Even with the suicide pilot on board, quite a few bombers never came back in the first place so why not go for broke. Instead of wasting pilots in a suicide craft they could use them in more bettys, fighter escorts, or as pilots in general. Penetrate in as deeply as you can and then launch.

Giving a carrier or a battleship a dead on hit with one of these would definitely get the ships attention and likely mean it isn't going to do any fighting until it gets repaired.

Fair enough. I was thinking more along of the lines the large rockets aimed at shipping when used by assorted attack and strike craft. A dumb fire weapon that was lots of punch.

Getting to the key targets would be hard but if you are going to likely lose your bombers I have to wonder why they didn't try and get as deep as they could even with the Ohka with pilot.

Tuffle you have to remember that the bombers the IJN had were called the "Flying Lighter" or "Flying Cigar" because they had no armor or self sealing fuel tanks. Betty bombers were shot out of the sky with ease. They were a Glass Cannon like the Zero.

edited 19th Apr '14 9:13:21 PM by TairaMai

Army pulling AH-64's From national guard. They'll get UH-60's instead.

Replace Apaches with Blackhawks?

I mean I guess the National Guard isn't out attack helicoptering things so they don't need them.

The entire OH-58 fleet is being scrapped. The "official" line is that the UH-60's will allow the National Guard to do more "homeland-y" stuff: disaster relief, transport, Soldiers at the Rear that sort of thing.

Other think that this stinks like yesterdays sushi. The Guard will trade 172 Apaches for 111 Blackhawks...

Aren't they getting replaced with Eurocopters tho?

Only if we can get a license to have them built in 48 different states and call them AmericaCopters. at twice the listed price.

re: Japanese radio technology: That really was a sad state of affairs considering that a key part of their naval victories in the Russo Japanese War was that Japanese radio technology was far in advance of the Russian Navy.

re: Standoff weapons: Guidance was always a big problem for standoff weapons. Hell, the US had the damndest time designing a torpedo that would just guide itself in a straight line (we've mentioned before the distressing number of American ships which successfully torpedoed themselves due to a torpedo getting stuck in a turn...) And I'm not talking about American torpedoes in the 19th century, I'm talking about the ones they used in World War II. There's a reason it took something like 20-30 years for anyone to come up with a workable cruise missile