Soviet V1 during WWII

I was browsing thru russianspaceweb.com recently and found two interesting articles there. It appears that the SU tested a prototype rocket powered cruise missile and a ramjet rocket in 1939 right before WWII. What if the two were combined to create something similar to the German V1 cruise missile? Would such a weapon be practical on the eastern front and if so what would be its targets?

http://russianspaceweb.com/212.html
http://russianspaceweb.com/vr3.html

merkulov_ramjet_scale_2.jpg
212_scale_1.jpg
 
Well, you need big fixed ramps, and then you have 150 or so miles of range.

No so useful on the Eastern Front, IMO
 

Deleted member 9338

The only initial targets are large urban areas. Limited tactical use.
 
I think they would just opt to design a super-katyushka with twice the range. Military planning was all about keeping it simple and practical in those days. And nothing is more practical then a rocket / flying bomb launcher built upon a 20 year old truck and able to be operated by farmers sons fresh from the fields.

Also the V1 was in its final layout actually a defensive weapon because it kept the offensive party -the allies- open to attacks, therefore forcing them to commit part of their forces to patrol their home airspace and hunt down the launch sites. After 1943, the USSR was the offensive party, so the idea to use a V1-lookalike to force the Germans into defensive was already moot. Before 1943, Germany was the offensive party, but their tactics for dealing with the threat would just be to overrun the launch bases.
 
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If its anything like the V1, it will suffer from horrendous accuracy and will be of little strategic use. The German V1's were lucky to hit London.
 
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Well, you need big fixed ramps, and then you have 150 or so miles of range.

Well... Was there anything big worth hitting 50-100 miles behind the front? (I'm assuming here that the Soviets would set up their ramps well back from the front to make it less likely to have them taken out by German aircraft or land counterattack.)

I could see it maybe being a useful weapon to harry the Germans.

Still... I think the Soviets would get alot more utility from a weapon with more mobility and more application on the front lines - like a flying bomb with a range of 50 miles that could be carried on a light-medium weight truck. If the flying bomb was cheap enough to be an economical replacement for massed artillery, it might help accelerate growth of the Soviet ability to inflict mass artillery barrages.

If they can't make flying bombs cheap enough, then the weapon has no real use until nuclear warheads come in or better guidance systems are available.

fasquardon
 
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