German Anti-Air Missiles of World War 2 

Hope you guys enjoyed this video. It serves as kind of an introduction to guided missiles and yes, a similar video for Air-to-Surface missiles is in the works! One little cultural reference to the 'Rheintochter'. It seems likely that the name is a reference to Richard Wagners Opera 'Der Ring des Nibelungen' and is also translated as 'Rhinemaidens' BUT I have yet to find concrete proof so I don't mention it here. o7

"Horizontally challenged" A fat rocket

If there is one thing I have learned in my 16 years of WW2 Independant study, is that there is ALWAYS something you don't know. Excellent video as always Bismarck!

Bismarck and MHV are very quickly becoming one. It is only a matter of time until the marriage is announced, I welcome this anschluss.

Nothing brings a smile to my face faster then a German discussing rockets.

Great information. I knew Germany had prototype AA rockets just not so many varying designs. Thanks, I'm going to look into it further.

Dankeschon. I find it interesting that the Feurlilie resembles a great deal the design of Spaceships in 1950's scifi films made in the US and in Japan. The carriage assisted angle launch was used in the George Pal classic film " When World's Collide ' .

The Germans tested their proximity fuze in April, 1945. The average number of rounds per destroyed aircraft was 320 according to a book I have. If this was tested with the 105mm FLAK 38, it mean one aircraft for every 2 400 kg rounds. It is difficult to see how useful the anti aircraft missiles would be without understanding the effect of the warhead blast. E.g. A A4 or FzG 76 fitted with a proximity fuze might be interesting.

Some AA missiles were being developed in Czechoslovakia before war, but never finished into some serious production.

You've got to wonder why the Germans couldn't perfect a proximity fuse.

I had the pleasure of seeing one of the few remaining ENZIANS at the RAAF Museum at Point Cook near Melbourne Australia

Bismarck, do you know why the Germans were obsessed with inverted V engines during WW II? And why other nations didn't have it so?

Question: How come the Luftwaffe never bombed the ice road at Leningrad?

Finally, a video on this! I've always been fascinated by SAMs in ww2

There are some of these at the Steven Udvar Hazy Center outside the Dulles airport in Virginia. There is a Wasserfall at the USAF Museum in Dayton Ohio,unfortunately it’s not restored and is in storage at the restoration facility.

If you're really lucky, you can find a copy of Willy Ley's Rockets, Missiles, and Space Travel, which includes several chapters on German missiles from WW2.

Watched a documentary which mentioned the Fire Lily before. Thanks for more info.

Great vid Bismarck. If you have the time, would you be able to do a video covering the Dornier-335 Pfiel if you have time? It's one of my favorite designs but not a lot of information about it. Very interesting plane.

The missile knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't. By subtracting where it is from where it isn't, Or where it isn't from where it is (whichever is Greater), it obtains a difference, or deviation. The guidance subsystem uses deviations to generate corrective Commands to drive the missile from a position where it is to a Position where it isn't, And arriving at a position where it wasn't, it now is. Consequently, the position where it is, Is now the position that it wasn't, And it follows that the position that It was, is now the position that it isn't. In the event that the position that it is in is not the position that It wasn't, the system has acquired a variation, The variation being the difference between Where the missile is, and where it wasn't. If variation is considered to be a Significant factor, it too may be corrected by the GEA. However, the missile must also know where it was. The missile guidance computer scenario works as follows. Because a variation has modified some of the information The missile has obtained, it is not sure just where it is. However, it is sure where it isn't, Within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn't, Or vice-versa, and by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of Where it shouldn't be, and where it was, It is able to obtain the deviation And its variation, which is called error.

Feuer Frei! *Rammstein intensifies*

HELP! I'm stuck in an endless loop of watching videos about german rockets!

Great video again as always, Bismarck. Warm regards from Nigeria here! The Rheintochter: at 2:24, your graphic of it seems "lopsided" - is this how it actually was? Or was this simply a graphics error?

Hello Bismarck. I came across your channel recently and have started watching. You did another good job in presenting the surface-to-air antiaircraft missiles here; but I haven't been able to find a video by you about the German's use of air-to-air missiles in WW II. I'm pretty sure I read something about their use, especially in an anti-bomber role, maybe in Adolf Galland's book. I even thought I saw a fleeting glimpse of a rack of light rockets under the wing of an Me262 in some video I watched recently - not yours, though. Did you make such a presentation?

Even if Germany had these AA missiles would they have been enough to stop 1000 American bombers on their daily raids? Imagine being a German fighter and just seeing the sky ahead of you littered with 1000 American B-17s. It must have been insane

Your research is thoroughly impressive

Having read something about these missiles in the past I have wondered why the Enzian, or something like it, was not thought of earlier. Germany had used guided anti ship missiles in 1943, So being able to guide the missile towards a wing box of some 36 USAAF aircraft would have been feasible. The missile could have been wire guided so there was no need for any sophisticated on board guidance system. It would have been launched from a modified 88 mm AA gun base, and as the 88 could be mounted on a tank hull this would have made them mobile. If the guidance system had been separate from the launcher this would mean the launcher could have launched the missile from a concealed then moved before any marauding allied aircraft turned up. The missile exploding within a USAAF bomber formation could have caused havoc. In his book "I Flew for the Fuhrer" the author, Heinz Knoke, mentions that his squadron did drop bombs into USAAF formations and did damage and destroy a number of aircraft this way. So launching a battery of four missiles within a formation could have caused serious disruption. In 1942 Germany decided that as the war was going so well all funding to defence projects with would not come into service within 12 months would be stopped. You have to wonder how much that decision was regretted when they saw British Lancaster bombers carrying navigation radar. Does "not counting your chickens before they're hatched" translate into German? And so we see them scrambling around trying desperately to come up with solutions like this.

Wäre interessant zu erfahren was die Reichweite dieser Raketen ist.

You must remember Germany NEEDED these, Allies didn't nevertheless similar items were under development in the UK and USA.

" we uhhhh get some strange SAM readings here sir... "

I always thought it interesting that weapons like these had so many fins on them.

perfect man! thx a lot 👌👌

Great video, Chris...👍

The missile knows where it is at all times.

just been reading about brakemine and seaslug missiles, never realised seaslugs development began in ww2

Germans certainly outdid themselves with names here.

It should be remembered that AAguns up to 155mm were front line land weapons into the 1960’s US Navy forces deployed AA missies very early after the war (Terrier and Talos) in this case these systems had the infrastructure of large ships with radar, magazines and well trained crews that could support the systems

Klasse Video

"Oh for the love of god these bloody missiles again!" "I am going to personally shoot the German genius who thought that up!" Sorry. Just had a spark of nostalgia from my childhood.

Love the Germans and their engineering.

Neato video. Seen a good lot of the AA rockets at the RAF museum in Cosford.

In 1946 people in Greece saw a ufo and the wasserfall both,!

Hey Bismarck! I was under the impression that Flak means Flugabwehrkanone, thus Flakrakete would not make much sense. In my time in the German army of modern times, we called these things Flarak, which would "decode" to Flugabwehrrakete. I'd wager that the term Flarak was also used pre 1945.

Thanks for research, subscribed

Isn't it great how war makes everything innovate really quickly.

Once again, instead of focussing on one or two designs, the Germans decided to just have a stab at all of them.

love the effort you put into your work keep it up!!!!

Wow. Awesome technology that time and far ahead the „competitors“

Were these multi-stage weapons? what kind of propulsion did they used? HTP decomposing-turbopumped liquid motors? hypergols? kerolox? solids? we need to know

Flakraketen, Kampfwagenkanonen, etc etc - German names for military equipment really needs to be universal. Would you rather have an armored car, or einer schwerer geländegängiger gepanzerter Personenkraftwagen? I rest my case.

The German's are the most Intelligent people and nation in Europe . The most great thinkers in recent history are the German's .

I just realized that if germans gave these rockets a shaped charge instead it would be The very first ATGM

Funny how Hitler delayed this weapon because of the defensive nature of these missiles

Jesus Christ, if Germany made those earlier I'd be speaking fluent German by now.

Rheintochter were also characters in the ring cycle too, am I remembering correctly?

Infra red for night time fighting was also available to german tanks nightpanthers with huge red lamps or lights on the turret just before the end. heat seaking missles where on theyre way i bet.

Can't help recalling the alledged message to Moscow during one of the Arab/Isreali wars, "Stop sending surface to air missiles, send surface to aircraft ones".

In the 1960's and 70's the North Vietnamese fired off nearly 8,000 SAMs at American aircraft for a total of 205 kills. Given the decades of development and major electronics advances up to that war I doubt any of the German AA missiles would have done any better than this.

1:50 here you say the wasserfall is the only supersonic missile but at 2:24 you say the rheintochter is the "first supersonic missile in the mix" I am confused yet entertained by your great video

Somewhere (and of course I now can't find the reference) I read an account of an RAF aircrew who claims that he saw an anti-aircraft rocket fired as his plane flew towards its target. Whether it was an AA rocket, or a V2 test, or something else entirely isn't clear.

German anti airplane missiles was only in a Test Phase problem was the heat signatures and of course the friend enemy situation if you had your planes intercept the enemies you had loses also.

I feel like half a ton of explosives would be hard to miss with in the target rich environment during large scale strategic bombing actions.

Bismarck, did you get a chance to see Dunkirk yet? If so, did you notice the Jericho Sirens on the Stukas sounded "off"?

Informative video! One bit of criticism, though: NATURAL BORDER? HOW DARE YOU?!

the mass comparison is a bit misleading, as flak could be used as area denial measure.

Wait a second…ur voice sounds familiar, do u play war thunder with bo time?

got to love all those bizarre names.

Great information !!!

I'm wondering when someone will address the Haunebu projects.

Next do a Video on german guided Bombs :)

Hey Bismarck, could you make a video on Dutch aviation (Fokker D.XXI and G.I for example) in and around World War 2?

Ich werde nie verstehen, warum MHV und du nicht die Videos auch auf deutsch machen. Da hättet ihr die Generation 50+ als Zuschauer die nicht so firm im Englischen sind.

Blood and sand did it ill be damned mark you without radar guidance how accurate are they knowing the OKW needle point

I remember a story some time ago where a guided missile fired from a German bomber on D Day sunk a destroyer the one and only time. It was guided from the aircraft it had a cable tether, the funny thing I haven't mention of it since..

what goes up, comes back down. Was flack a problem on the ground

Sorry that the Idiots in the Luftfahrtsministerium made wrong decision. Lot of damages from enemy bombs could have been be avoided.

It would have been much better to invest in this tech than the v series. Man, they had great names

Do you have delta-V information for these rockets? Its kind of annoying having to guess by just the top speed and thrust duration. Greetings from Holland ^^

Airborne radar Lichtenstein was the far greatest German tech at the time. This SAM missiles were impractical then.

gave a small amount of information about a type of anti aircraft weapon that I knew nothing about. were any other countries looking into this type of defense between 1918 and 1945?

Hey, Bismarck. Have you read the book fly for your life? If not, I highly recommend it

In my opinion, the Luftwaffe could have used a rocket system on their fighters against B17 formations, to great effect. They could have used BF110 with no or few guns - carrying a battery of 30 rockets under each wing. The rockets would be fast, unguided, and set to detonate at 1000m. The BF110 would fly up behind a bomber stream, with a special setting for throttle and trim, that would give the 110 identical speed cruise as a B17, and a range finder, which would indicate 1000m - This could be as simple as a marker on the sight, which would exactly fit the wingspan of a B17 within it, if it was 1000m away. The BF110 pilot aims carefully and looses the rockets in groups of 10 at a time, or all at once if preferred. This system would be an immense success, and in no way comparable to the mortar tubes slung under BF110 and FW190s, which created too much drag and fired slow projectiles that had very curved trajectory. Another benefit of this system, is that the BF110 at 1000m form the bomber stream, is far enough away that the B17s multitude of .50 Cals, would struggle to achieve a hit.

The Rheintocker was captured by the Soviets. After testing and upgrades to the guidance and targeting system, it was fielded as the SA-2

The Allies aircrews didn't have a clue what the hell they were looking at when they encountered a German SAM so nicknamed, what they thought were some kind of aircraft, as "Foo Fighters". Allied aircrews would report encounters with the mystery "Foo Fighters" back at base, to intelligence.

It might been some what effective at first but it would have been a short lived advantage

Question this German AA missile count as Wunder Waffe?

Very interesting video! Enzian is BAE.

Soweit ich weiß war die Flak 38 10,5 cm nur relativ kurz in Gebrauch, da diese nicht so hoch schießen konnte wie die 8,8 cm Flak ... und selbst dann waren die Gegner (vor allem gegen Ende des Krieges) zu hoch um sie effektiv zu beschießen.

(Off topic) Bismark, if they exist in the game, can you show off the PTAB aerial bomb in IL-2 Shturmovik Battle of Stalingrad?

i dont think they couldve even built out enough missiles to stop teh sheer size of the bomber raids that they were facing.

Wouldn't an image of a man standing beside these rockets be a better size visualization?

Warthunder & COBI you know what to do! :D

There are a few on display at RAF Cosford museum.

Enzian looks like something out of KSP

BV246 Hagelkorn? Where does this line up?

Interestingly, the US Army came to similar conclusions regarding efficiency about AAA and the failure by Germany to prevent even a single strategic bombing raid from reaching its target, when they were designing the Nike missile system to defend against nuclear armed long range bombers, which, if even one bomber got through to strike an American city, would level that city.

Is there value in damaging the a/c if not downing it difficult for Germans to analyse that for obvious reasons

16000 rounds to down one plane? This number seems too absurd to be real. The 8.8cm is not a small gun

Infrared seekers for some of these missiles were developped, too........

imagine being a p-51 pilot in world war two and then all the sudden getting yeeted out of the sky by some weird new German rocket thingy

There’s some of these at raf cosford