(B2431) wrote in message ...
From: "Keith Willshaw"
Date: 2/19/2004 10:21 AM Central Standard Time
Message-id:


"ArtKramr" wrote in message
...
Nuff said.



Or bombed it

Keith


Or laughed at it after the war. They really should have mass produced the
piloted version of the V-1. Just think, we could have killed more pilots that
way, the Nazis would have wasted money and material and, most imporantly, put
them in the air flying a straight line and making an easy target.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired


The Reichenberg was a effectively a near suicide weapon but the
Germans did take care that it wasn't a forgone conclusion. Unlike the
Japanese Baka in which the pilot was sealed in his cockpit it did have
an escape system: parachute, terminal autopilot and a two seat two
cockit versions were made to train pilots presumably with a simulated
escape.

The As 014 pulse jet was continiously tweeked to improve its speed.
With a slightly lightend warload (like the latter buzz bombs) and the
tweeked engines which had shown themselves to work at 495mph I expect
a speed of 495mph would have been possible or at least necessary for
the Reichberg to work. Enough to evade interception. Dodging radar
directed guns with proximity fuses might have been more difficult but
even there the weapon would have been capable of some degree of
weaving. Still such a weapon if it can be made survivable enough for
say a 33% or more hit rate and the targets are chosen carefully IT is
a mathematically sensible use of resources if it destroys and kills
more than it costs. Me 109s in the last stages of the war had an
attrition rate of 30%. It takes balls to get in the air in that
situation and in some ways their missions would have been almost more
pointless than a suicide mission.

If it ever got down to the wire do you think the allies would be
capable of producing the men for this kind of mission? Sure WWII
aircrew had around the 50% chance of completing a tour of duty (about
the same as Ed Rasimus had flying thuds over Vietnam). but to face
odds like that or like 95% on a single mission? Today I don't you
could find such people.