Nazi Germany’s Totally Bonkers Picket Manned Missile

On this channel, we’ve lined our justifiable share of bizarre, great, and typically totally bonkers German ‘secret weapons’ from the Second World Conflict, from rocket-powered fighters that typically dissolved their pilots alive to midget submarines cobbled collectively from outdated torpedoes, piggyback bombers filled with explosives, jet fighters designed to be flown by youngsters, and even weaponized area shuttles. However in terms of madness, few weapons can evaluate to the Bachem Ba 349 Natter. Much less a fighter jet than an antiaircraft missile with a person strapped inside, the crude, hastily-built Natter was considered one of many ingenious makes an attempt to save lots of Germany from the relentless Allied bombing marketing campaign. That is the story of probably the most determined weapons of the Second World Conflict.

By 1944, German cities had been being pounded to rubble by round the clock Allied bombing raids, with the Individuals bombing by day and the British by Night time. With a lot of its factories and airfields broken or destroyed by the bombing and the majority of its forces already dedicated to the Japanese Entrance, the German Air Power or Luftwaffe discovered itself desperately wanting plane, gasoline, and pilots, and struggling to carry off the Allied onslaught. The Nazi Excessive Command thus turned to quite a lot of high-tech “marvel weapons” in a determined try to stem the tide. These weapons included the Messerschmitt Me-262 Schwalbe, the world’s first operational jet fighter; the rocket-powered Messerschmitt Me-163 Komet; and guided surface-to-air missiles just like the Rheintochter, Enzian, Schmetterling, and Wasserfall. Nevertheless, none of those superior weapons got here near fixing the issue – for quite a lot of causes. As lined in our earlier video The German Rocket Fighter That Dissolved Its Pilots Alive, whereas the Komet was quicker than any modern Allied fighter plane, the fuels utilized by its engine had been extraordinarily risky and had an inclination to explode – or, because the title of that video suggests, dissolve its pilots – throughout tough landings. It additionally had an especially brief endurance, forcing Komet squadrons to be stationed near the targets they had been defending and the plane to glide to a touchdown as soon as their gasoline ran out. This made the plane extraordinarily weak. The exact same drawback bothered the Me-262 jet fighter, with the bulk being shot down by marauding Allied fighters as they got here in for a touchdown. In the meantime, whereas Germany’s varied guided missile tasks confirmed promise, they had been too complicated and developed too swiftly and too late to turn out to be viable weapons by the point the conflict ended. They had been additionally developed individually by completely different branches of the German armed forces, resulting in wasteful duplication of effort and competitors for scarce sources. However what actually doomed these tasks was the massive portions of uncooked supplies and manpower they required to provide – sources Germany was swiftly operating out of. So, on September 10, 1944, the German Air Ministry or RLM issued a set of necessities for an “Emergency Fighter” that may very well be produced in giant numbers utilizing non-strategic supplies and semi-skilled labour and flown by pilots with solely minimal coaching. One design to return out of those necessities was the Heinkel He-162 Volksjager or “individuals’s fighter”, which we’ve already lined in our earlier video The Jet the Nazis Designed to be Flown by Youngsters. However a much more radical was an idea submitted by engineer Erich Bachem of Fieseler Plane Works in Kassel.

38 years outdated on the time, Fieseler had till 1942 been the technical director of Fieseler, the place he had contributed to the design of the highly-successful Fi 156 Storch army liaison plane. In February 1942, nonetheless, he left the corporate to type Bachem-Werke GmbH, an plane elements provider based mostly in Waldsee. Bachem’s submission for the Emergency Fighter Program neatly solved a lot of the points which had plagued earlier air defence weapons, equivalent to the necessity for weak runways for takeoff and touchdown; and the necessity for classy computerized steerage methods. As a substitute of taking off from a runway, Bachem’s rocket-powered fighter was launched vertically from a tower like a missile, although in contrast to a missile it was guided to its goal by a human pilot. After finishing its mission the craft, which had no touchdown gear, merely break up aside, with the pilot and the costly rocket engine parachuting again to earth to be reused for a future mission.

The same design had been proposed by Wernher von Braun, designer of the notorious V-2 ballistic missile, again in 1939, however this had been rejected by the RLM. And regardless of Germany’s determined state of affairs and the various benefits of Bachem’s design, it too was turned down in favour of the extra typical Heinkel P.1077 proposal. Undeterred, Bachem sought the assistance of embellished Luftwaffe ace and Basic Adolf Galland to push by means of his design, however as soon as once more the RLM was uninterested. Fortunately, nonetheless, the inter-service rivalry rampant in Nazi Germany quickly got here to Bachem’s rescue as his design caught the eye of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS. Impressed by the proposal, Himmler signed an order to construct 150 plane utilizing SS funds, tapping SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler to move the event effort. Kammler had already performed a number one function in one other secret weapons program, creating the notorious Mittelwerk underground manufacturing unit at Nordhausen, the place V-2 ballistic missiles had been constructed utilizing slave labour. Certainly, Kammler proposed an analogous association for producing this new interceptor, however Erich Bachem vehemently opposed this suggestion. In the meantime, realizing that the SS was growing an plane outdoors their jurisdiction, the RLM positioned their very own order for 50 airframes, which they formally designated the Bachem Ba 349 Natter. And as aspect word, whereas many sources translate “Natter” as “adder” or “viper”, the time period truly refers to non-venomous species such because the widespread European grass snake.

Measuring solely 6 metres lengthy and 4 metres large, the Natter was a really primary plane, with easy, stubby rectangular wings and cruciform tail surfaces. Constructed primarily of wooden held along with glue, the Natter may very well be assembled from poor-quality supplies by semi-skilled labour in as little as 1000 man-hours. The craft was powered by the identical Walter HWK 109-509 rocket engine because the Messerschmitt Me-163 Komet, which burned a mix of Hydrazine Hydrate and Hydrogen Peroxide gasoline to provide 1140 kilograms of thrust. Nevertheless, for the reason that Natter was launched vertically, extra energy was offered on takeoff by 4 Schmidding SG-34 strap-on stable rocket boosters producing 1,200 kilograms of thrust every. The Natter was launched from a 20-metre tall triangular launch tower which may very well be extra simply hid than the massive runways utilized by the Komet, with the wings becoming into information slots to forestall the plane from twisting because it rose. As soon as freed from the tower, the Natter could be guided to its goal altitude of round 6,000 metres by a easy autopilot or – as was later deliberate – by way of radio steerage from the bottom. Because of its prime pace of 1,000 kilometres an hour, the Natter would attain operational altitude in simply 4.6 minutes, whereupon the controls would unlock, permitting the pilot to information his plane in the direction of the incoming allied bomber formation. At this level the primary engine would have run out of propellant, turning the Natter right into a high-speed glider. As soon as aligned together with his goal, the pilot would jettison the plane’s plastic nosecone to disclose the primary armament: a battery of 19 Heber R4M 55mm Orkan or twenty-four 73mm Henschel Hs 297 Föhn unguided rockets. These weapons – once they truly managed to hit their targets – had been extremely efficient, with one Me-262 pilot describing their results as:

“Shattered fuselages, broken-off wings, ripped-out engines, shards of aluminium and fragments of each measurement whirled by means of the air. It appeared as if somebody had emptied out an ashtray.”

It was additionally proposed to arm the Natter with the identical 30mm MK 108 autocannon because the Me-262 and even a concrete nostril to be used in ramming assault, although Erich Bachem vehemently nixed the latter proposal, insisting that his design was not a suicide weapon. Certainly, the Natter’s pilot was supplied with a metal armour plate behind his seat and an armoured windscreen to extend his possibilities of surviving a mission.

As soon as his foremost armament was expended, the Natter pilot would rapidly descend to an altitude of round 3,000 metres, flatten out his glide slope, and provoke the escape sequence. This concerned the pilot unlatching his harness, jettisoning the cover, and releasing a lock on the base of his management column. This allowed him to tilt the column ahead and unlock the nostril launch mechanism. He would then pull one other lever on the cockpit flooring to launch the nostril, which might be pulled freed from the fuselage by aerodynamic forces. This, in flip, would deploy a small ribbon parachute from the fuselage, pulling it away and throwing the pilot ahead by way of inertia. As soon as away from the plane, the pilot would open his personal parachute and descend to the bottom, whereas the rear fuselage parachuted individually for eventual restoration and reuse. Every mission would take lower than 10 minutes from begin to end, with the Natter having an operation radius of round 12 kilometres – sufficient to defend a single manufacturing unit or different strategic web site. This made the Natter a type of level defence interceptor – a job now largely crammed by unmanned guided missiles.

Wind-tunnel assessments carried out on the Institute for Aerodynamics for Berlin in September 1944 revealed the design to be steady at speeds of as much as 500 kilometres per hour, permitting preliminary growth to proceed as deliberate. The primary prototype, designated M1, was manufactured at Bachem’s new manufacturing unit at Waldsee within the Black Forest and delivered in October 1944. Fitted with momentary touchdown gear and towed behind a Heinkel He 111 bomber, the plane was used for a collection of captive glide assessments. Whereas the primary 4 flights went completely, in the course of the fourth the Natter turned unstable, forcing check pilot Erich Klöckner to bail out. When it was decided that the tow cable and momentary touchdown gear had interfered with the craft’s aerodynamics, pilot Hans Zübert made a daring untethered gliding flight to show the design as soon as and for all. The plane carried out completely, permitting the challenge to proceed with powered flights.

The primary vertical, unmanned launch of the Natter passed off on December 18, 1944 at Ochsenkopf close to Württemburg. Because the Walter rocket engines weren’t but prepared, the plane was powered solely by the Schmidding boosters. Sadly, on account of a design flaw within the launch tower, the plane crashed quickly after liftoff. The subsequent launch on December 22, nonetheless, was fully profitable, as had been the following 10 launches. In early 1945, the Walter engines lastly arrived, and a full-up check launch with all engines and a dummy pilot was carried out on February 25. As soon as once more the launch went completely, with the dummy being recovered intact. Nevertheless, the residual propellants within the engine exploded on influence with the bottom, destroying the rear fuselage.

Although Erich Bachem pushed for additional unmanned assessments, the SS was anxious to get the Natter into fight and ordered {that a} manned flight be accomplished as quickly as doable. A 28-year-old Luftwaffe check pilot named Lothar Sieber volunteered to make the flight, which was scheduled for February March 1. The check plane, M23, was fitted with a radio telemetry system to file flight information and an intercom to permit Sieber to speak with the launch bunker earlier than launch. In the course of the flight itself, nonetheless, Sieber could be on his personal – similar to the anticipated future pilots of the Natter. Simply previous to launch, Erich Bachem briefed Sieber as he lay on his again within the cockpit, reassuring him that the plane was steady and could be straightforward to regulate ought to it begin going off beam. Minutes later, all 5 rocket engines ignited with a deafening screech and the Natter roared up the launch tower, making Lothar Sieber the primary human in historical past to trip a vertically-launched rocket. This feat wouldn’t be repeated till April 12, 1961, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin turned the primary human to achieve outer area. However quickly after the Natter cleared the launch tower, issues began going critically improper. At an altitude of round 150 metres, the Natter immediately pitched up by 30 levels and entered an inverted loop, slowly pulling again to near-horizontal earlier than disappearing into the clouds. About 30 seconds later, the plane slammed into the bottom a number of kilometres away, killing Sieber immediately. It was later decided that the cover latch had not been correctly secured, inflicting the cover to fly open and knock Sieber unconscious. The autopilot then disengaged as designed, permitting the plane to plunge uncontrolled to the earth. Intriguingly, information collected from the telemetry system indicated that on his means down, Sieber briefly turned the primary human to interrupt the sound barrier – and for extra on one other Luftwaffe pilot who claimed to have completed the identical feat and survived, try our earlier video Did a German Pilot Break the Sound Barrier 2 Years Earlier than Chuck Yeager? on our sister channel Spotlight Historical past.

Regardless of this tragedy, the SS pressed on with the challenge, although the following – and last – 10 check launches had been all unmanned. In April 1945, ten plane and eight pilots had been earmarked for the Natter’s first operational mission, codenamed Operation Crocus. The launch towers for this operation had already been constructed on the finish of February in a forest referred to as Hasenholtz simply south of Stuttgart. The primary missions had been scheduled to be flown on April 20 – Adolf Hitler’s birthday – however on that day the U.S. tenth Armoured Division overran the realm, forcing the Natter crews to destroy their plane and retreat to Waldsee. 18 days later Nazi Germany surrendered, the Natter having by no means seen fight. In the present day, just one full Natter survives on the Nationwide Air and House Museum in Washington, D.C, captured by American troops in Piztal, Austria, in Could 1945.

Although the Natter was actually among the many most inventive and cost-effective of Nazi Germany’s anti-bomber weapons, even had it been launched earlier it’s uncertain it will have had any influence on the course of the conflict. The plane’s operational vary was just too small, and its motionless launch towers too weak to Allied air assault. And even when German trade, stretched skinny because it was, had managed to provide giant numbers of Natters, Germany merely had too few educated pilots to fly them. The plain fact was that Nazi Germany had already misplaced the conflict, and like all its fellow ‘marvel weapons’, the Natter program was merely a case of too little, too late.

Increase for References