In article ,
robert arndt wrote:
(ANDREW ROBERT BREEN) wrote in message ...
In article ,
Thomas W Ping wrote:
I could've sworn that a couple of years ago, I read somewhere of a
German rocket powered (don't *think* it was an air breather), possibly

The Germans made a moderate amount of use of two types of ASM from
1943 to mid-1944, after which ECM and fighter opposition pretty well
ruled further use out. The teo types were the Henschel;193 (293?),
which was a rocket-assisted HE weapon, first used in 1943, with the

The Germans actually conducted tests with glide torpedos in WW1 with
the Siemens-Shuckert torpedo glider. They were testes from Zeppelins Z
XVIII, L25, and L35. They were to be launched from 1,500 m but the
airships proved too slow; instead, production of close to 100 glide
torpedos was intended for the aircraft Zeppelin-Staaken R IV... but
there is no record of any being tried in combat.

This wasn't unique - by the end of WW1 the RN was trialling ship-
launched guided weapons (essentially small, unmanned, radio-controlled
aeroplanes - I've seen a picture of a S- or T- class destroyer carrying
one on a foredeck catapult but I'm nuggered if I can remember where
it was I saw it..

IIRC the idea was dropped as it was thought that improvements in AA
weapons (probably the multiple pom-pom) made it obsolete, though
I'm sure I've read that there were similar proposals in the 1930s,
probably after the Queen Bee firing trials where it proved very hard to
actually hit an aeroplane (as opposed to putting the pilot off,
which was what most AA fire of that era did).

Problem with all of these radio-controlled devices was their extreme
vunerability to jamming.

--
Andy Breen ~ Interplanetary Scintillation Research Group
http://users.aber.ac.uk/azb/
"Who dies with the most toys wins" (Gary Barnes)