Delta Force
Banned
That's quite light. Were the racks heavy or quite draggy? Modern helicopters can carry far more rockets than that.
WI:Germans produce R4M rockets earlier
- Thread starter hasdrubal barca
- Start date
That's quite light. Were the racks heavy or quite draggy? Modern helicopters can carry far more rockets than that.
Modern helicopters have their maximum speed also capped by other factors than the weight and drag.
Also note that the Tiger, Apache and Mi-28N all have different weights and power plants, but all of them have a better power-to-weight ratio than a FW 190.
Deleted member 1487
Who was stupid enough to not twist the fins and thereby add spin to the rocket?
Everyone but the Germans in WW2. Even the Germans didn't get them into service prior to 1945.
hammo1j
Donor
This is an interesting topic hasdrubal barca and an entirely plausible AH.
The R4M was a simple device and at a stretch you could even have a BoB with Hurricanes using this technology against German bombers. If the Nazis had concentrated on this instead of crazy projects like the V2 it would have affected WWII although not its outcome.
Lets say that the rocket was ready en masse in Jan 1944 just when the USAAF returned to Germany with the Mustang. It would still be possible to inflict a hammer blow similar to Schweinfurt where 20% of bombers were lost in a single mission assuming all units were R4M armed. Two or three such blows would be enough to make the USAAF re-consider tactics despite as in OTL the P51s exacting a heavy toll of Me109s and 190s.
The alternatives would be to join the RAF in night bombing or bring the superior B29 to the Western front before it was used in Japan.
The RAF was finding night bombing very difficult and had to stop attacking Germany. The cause was that the German Nightfighters used the electronic emissions of British bombers to home in on them resulting in losses of 10%. The British eventually got lucky in mid 1944 when a Ju88 landed on one of their airfields revealling its secrets. The US without night experience would have suffered losses higher than the RAF which were already unacceptable.
That leaves the B29 which OTL was not available till June. In the meantime the USAAF would concentrate on D-Day targets in France as the RAF had to.
This would result in attrition of the Lw but not like in OTL.
D-Day would procede but without the complete air superiority OTL. The B29 with P51 escort would be a much improved weapons system for attacking precision targets such as oil and ball bearing but it would be touch and go as to whether losses would be sustainable and I would be interested in others opinions on B29/P51 vs Me262/Fw190D which would be available in greater quantities.
The RAF if they rediscovered their night time stealth would be little affected by the R4M since stealth was the key to their fight.
I think the eventual outcome would be Germany fighting on an extra couple of months. In the East the end would still come for Japan in August when the A bomb came along, but their cities would not have been razed by the B29s.
The R4M was a simple device and at a stretch you could even have a BoB with Hurricanes using this technology against German bombers. If the Nazis had concentrated on this instead of crazy projects like the V2 it would have affected WWII although not its outcome.
Lets say that the rocket was ready en masse in Jan 1944 just when the USAAF returned to Germany with the Mustang. It would still be possible to inflict a hammer blow similar to Schweinfurt where 20% of bombers were lost in a single mission assuming all units were R4M armed. Two or three such blows would be enough to make the USAAF re-consider tactics despite as in OTL the P51s exacting a heavy toll of Me109s and 190s.
The alternatives would be to join the RAF in night bombing or bring the superior B29 to the Western front before it was used in Japan.
The RAF was finding night bombing very difficult and had to stop attacking Germany. The cause was that the German Nightfighters used the electronic emissions of British bombers to home in on them resulting in losses of 10%. The British eventually got lucky in mid 1944 when a Ju88 landed on one of their airfields revealling its secrets. The US without night experience would have suffered losses higher than the RAF which were already unacceptable.
That leaves the B29 which OTL was not available till June. In the meantime the USAAF would concentrate on D-Day targets in France as the RAF had to.
This would result in attrition of the Lw but not like in OTL.
D-Day would procede but without the complete air superiority OTL. The B29 with P51 escort would be a much improved weapons system for attacking precision targets such as oil and ball bearing but it would be touch and go as to whether losses would be sustainable and I would be interested in others opinions on B29/P51 vs Me262/Fw190D which would be available in greater quantities.
The RAF if they rediscovered their night time stealth would be little affected by the R4M since stealth was the key to their fight.
I think the eventual outcome would be Germany fighting on an extra couple of months. In the East the end would still come for Japan in August when the A bomb came along, but their cities would not have been razed by the B29s.
could have produced V-1 by Jan 1944 also if it had received priority over the V-2, Operation Steinbock could have been V-1 campaign with air and land based V-1 launches protected by fighters armed with R4M rockets, would not have lost all the 300+ bombers that happened OTL.
In April 1944, on no night the RAF lost more than 3.8% of the bombers employed. The raids include Aachen (352 bombers), Cologne (379), Düsseldorf (596), Essen, Friedrichshafen (323), Karlsruhe (637).
Naturally, in May 1944 Bomber Command focused much more on the anti-transportation campaign against the rail network in France. They also launched raids against German military concentrations in France, and as part of the deception campaign, against fortifications in the Pas de Calais area. All of that was, very obviously, because of Overlord, and they were going to focus on that for a few months more. Even so, during that month (May 44), Aachen, Brunswick, Dortmund, and Duisburg received sizable raids.
They were also attacking the V1 launchers under construction in the winter of 1943-44.