Aircraft rockets of WWII

[Romani]

It's always said that Germany was the country with the most advanced rocket science in WWII, but it also seems that they weren't as successful in the practical applications. I've always been mystified by the Wurfgranate 21, those huge rockets often mislabelled as mortars underslung in large pipes under the wings of German airplanes. Despite their impressive size, they look so clumsy when compared to the rockets carried by a Typhoon or Sturmovik that one wonders why they didn't just copy them.

Well, I just came across this website,

http://www.tarrif.net/wwii/guides/a2g_rockets.htm

looking for the above rocket, and made some startling discoveries:

The site is poorly organized, you have to continue reading until the last page and you find a parent directory with scanned images from a paper

http://www.tarrif.net/wwii/img/manua..._rocket_study/

you have to download each page and view it on an image viewer to read it.


Summing it up:

-Rockets are horribly unaccurate weapons, in fact allied rockets sucked, and it was the Germans the ones that improved on the design with the R4M wich fortunately came too late.

-The myth of the Typhoon as a tank buster. In fact, fighter bomber contribution in Normandy was "interdiction" of roads rather than actual destruction. The real success was in destroying the truck transport rather than armored vehicles. Germans and Soviets realized rockets were no good and switched to cluster bombs.

-Nothing could beat a Stuka in precision bombing. Even the late war Typhoons and Thunderbolts were unable of diving so steeply and bomb with such precision. The Stuka failure is that it was unable to defend itself and needed air supremacy to operate, but the concept was a valid one and the accuracy unmatched until modern guided bombs were developed. And the Ju87G was a much better tank buster than the Typhoon, probably the Henschel 129 as well.

[Simba]

Granted, the 'Unrifled Projectile' wasn't that reliable - but with good training, rocket attacks could be devastating. RAF Coastal Command Beaufighters and Mosquitos of the Banff Wing carried out very accurate attacks against enemy shipping and escort vessels in the teeth of heavy return fire. And No.6 Squadron RAF's Hurricane IVs blasted hell out of German targets along the Italian and Adriatic coastlines in the last year of WW2.

And I bet you'd have ducked if a Fleet Air Arm Swordfish II had taken aim at you with eight solid-head or 60lb high-explosive UPs.