"John Mullen" wrote in message ...
"Taki Kogoma" wrote in message
...
On 1 Jun 2004 15:21:56 +0100, (ANDREW ROBERT BREEN)
allegedly declared to rec.aviation.military...
In article ,
Prowlus wrote:
Does anyone know why the allies didn't consider using their air
lauched rockets as air-to-air weapons during the war when the jets
started appearing? I thought it would have been a good idea to ward
off any attack from ME-262s or me-163s which were too fast to attack
with guns.

The VVS was using air-air rockets against the Japanese over Manchuria
in 1938 or so. They made quite extensive use of them in the early
part of the war against Germany (before giving them up as ineffective,
iSTR).

Compared with the allies (well, the Russians) the germans were very slow
in trying air-to-air rockets.

And the nature of the intended targets (relatively large and slow
bomber formations rather than small, fast, and nimble fighters, jabos,
etc.)
made the german AA rocket a viable option at that point in the war.

The Luftwaffe did of course use AA rockets against US and UK bombers in
thelatter stages of the war. The Me-262 was certainly equipped to fire them.

John

They, the 55mm R4M were excedingly effective. 1 in 24 hit and
destroyed its target and as an Me 262 carried 24 of them they had a
success rate of almost 100% when using this weapon.

The Me 262 had a EZ 42 computing gyro gun sight, and some I believe
received the FuG 244 ranging radar that could via the "Elfe" computer
inject the firing solution into the gun sight for the cannon and I
believe unguided R4M 55mm
misiles as well though I'm not sure if the FuG 244/Elfe combo was ever
used in combat.

Clearly a stream of such missiles if competently aimed would be
effective against large bombers. I suspect post war versions of such
missiles could have been fitted with proximity fuses.

They Germans also had a larger missile under developement that had a
shaped charge that scattered a forward focused fragmentation charge
that was activated by a timer fuse set be Elfe.

The timer activated 21cm Wgr 21 rockets that was launched in pairs
from FW190s and Me109s were very effective untill escorts began
harrasing the heavily laden aircraft.