Nazi Smart Bombs and China's Ship-Killing Missiles

[DTomato]

Thought this would be of interest. https://medium.com/war-is-boring/f826cfac42b

Michael

[mikmykWS]

Great article.

Guessing the picture of the Fritz bomb is the one on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. Went there some years ago and well worth the trip. Airpower Australia has a pretty good article on early guided bombs as well.Its another one of those systems that could have impacted the duration of the European War.

Anybody remember LucasArts Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe? Wasn't the premise behind that one that the Nazi's had gotten some of these programs off the ground? Great sim btw!

Mike

[Maromak]

Agree. Great game.

[Dagooz]

Oh yeah, I remember that one. Loved the way you on one hand had to assign ressources and research and at the same time it was a flight sim. I wonder where I hid those floppys... And the drive to take them

[NakedWeasel]

The Discovery Channel did a documentary on the Fritz. Apparently there's a German citizen, who is a descendant of a Luftwaffe pilot, and recreated a couple of Frittz PGMs for televised testing from a Confederate Air Force B-25 over here. Both weapons missed the target shape in the desert, but not by much.

The question at the end, was; How might the war have turned out if the Nazis had large numbers of Fritz bombs to attack the Allies on D-Day?

Personally, I don't see that massive losses at Normandy would have been a total deal breaker. Just a speed bump.

[thewood1]

Not much...they didn't have any planes to get there.

[mikmykWS]

Luftwaffe would have take serious losses trying anything and were well away from Normandy as an act of self preservation. Fritz was radio controlled but required optical sighting and invasion started just after dawn which didn't give it much time to be used while getting the most out of each hit (hitting full ships etc). They may have been most effective disabling the bombardment ships but again not worth the crippling losses the Luftwaffe would have suffered. The offensive war was more or less lost by then anyway and it was best to lose the Luftwaffe defending Germany.

The key to Europe IMHO was the loss of the Battle of the Atlantic and the air war over Britain. Had Germany succeeded in both that likely would have been it for the Allies or at least a negotiated stalemate with them. Using all this wonderful tech in both these battles would have been key but it was mostly squandered with the one big exception being the U boats.

Mike

[mrfeizhu]

Kamikazes were not a deal breaker at Okinawa, if the war was going badly for the allies Germany would have been the first country to have the honor of first atomic bomb not Japan

[mikmykWS]

I agree but not sure to what end. The Russians would been in the best position to capitalize on it. Interesting stuff to think about it.

Mike