Germany's big Mistake, no Proximity Fuse in WWII 

Thank goodness!

That would be some weapon!!

Maybe with a very buff loader

This number is for the very elite Aryan artillerymen.

i just watched that part and was headed to the comments lol

Yes, quality videos, much research.

that is pretty common with WW2 vets. My father was the same - only told us a few funny stories, and nothing about what he actually did and witnessed. The more they fought and risked their lives, the less they talk about it.

We need a collab with Greg

Good analysis

Like and comment mate. We'll get him there one day😊. Have a lovely day.

I was told that ht first use of VT shells over land was at the Battle of the Bulge. I don't know who sanctioned the order but it must have been from pretty high up the command chain.

@@gordonwood1594 The Order came from Eisenhower. The Fuze's were in Theatre already.

Pretty sure it was in normandy

@@gotanon9659 No, they held them back until the Battle of the Bulge, where they devastated infantry formations in the open.

@@gotanon9659 Wrong, 2 days after the start of the Battle of the Bulge was when the embargo for use of VT fuzes over land was lifted.

There is a video on youtube about the first use of the VT fuse on a radar controlled naval gun. The navy vet said they fired one shell and the enemy plane exploded. One shell one strike completely unheard of prior to the proximity fuse.

German troops recovered unexploded proximity fuses during the battle of the bulge (it was Skorzany) and passed them on for analysis. They themselves guessed it was some kind of magnetic effect.

The miniaturization came out of hearing aid technology. The first round fired was a single vacuum tube radio oscillator fired from a 37mm gun. Many survived firing.

Are you sure about that? 1930s and 1940s hearing aids were bulky things with separate battery packs the user strapped to his leg, under his clothing. They were not the tiny things we're accustomed to seeing now. In fact, I wonder if the reverse is true: hearing aid technology leaped forward because of the proximity fuse work. Just my two cents worth.

@@paulmaxwell8851 I’m absolutely sure. The BuOrd history says the first vacuum tubes they tested had been developed for hearing aids. The dropped the shells backward onto concrete floor to simulate the G forces and then fired them from 37mm rounds. These formed the basis of the first experiments. The damage to the valves was examined and modification improved them.

William, I bow to your greater knowledge on this.@@williamzk9083

William, I stand corrected. Thank you.

Hitler did not like waiting.

They also had an acoustic one for their air to air missile program (not a joke they actually had one and it worked kinda)

The British version of Operation Paperclip found records of work on acoustic, as well as, I think, radio and magnetic?

Makes sense. Germany's economy was crap even before the war. After the war kicked off, it got even worse.

But I believe the B-29s could fly missions higher then the much more plentiful 88s could reach.

​@@michaelbizon444b-29 flying lower than b-17

@@michaelbizon444 The 8.8cm FLAK 37 was ineffective much above 25,000ft but the 8.8cm FLAK 41 could reach the B-29 (about 39000ft). The 12.8cm FLAK 40 was the most powerful AA gun of the war and could also reach to 40,000ft. Both guns had only about 800 examples made. The 12.8cm FLAK 40 because it was so expensive and the 8.8cm FLAK 41 because it''s technical problems weren't solved till 1944.

@@williamzk9083 And the bombers were just as inaccurate or worse at max altitude cause they had the same over rated Norden's. If the resources in our new scenario were put into the heavy AAA and not V-1 & V-2 missiles they could have had more of the bigger better guns. Not good for bomber command I think.

Also just using data from October to November

The atomic bomb does its primary damage through the heat and blast. Any bomb is governed by what is called a tyrannical equation. To double the radius of effect, the bomb size must be cubed. An airburst of a conventional .25 ton bomb (500 pounds) compared to the estimated 21000 tons of Fat Man. A 7.5 ton Daisy cutter could make a blast diameter of 250 feet. The effective area of the 500 pound bomb was like 30 feet. Another consideration is which method is best for bomb effect. You don't want to waste energy on overkill. The scale of the atomic bomb makes it ideal for an air burst. Ground burst is used for hardened targets, but in a city that would result in an overkill zone (dead is good enough, very dead is wasteful). I think air-dropped bombs had a .01 second delay to allow for some penetration if it hit a house (blast wave damage). If it did hit the ground, it would transmit some shock so a near miss might collapse a wall. For mortars and artillery, VT fuses were used for antipersonnel purposes, sending shrapnel downwards against troops in the open. The V-2 warhead was 1.1 ton, so would have had an effective diameter of like 40-45 feet. Even aiming at big cities, the accuracy was dodgy. Atomic bombs also use barometric fuses as backups.

I'm not sure that's true. The majority of destruction caused by a V2 was not caused by blast, but the by the circa 3500 tons of soil, and debris lifted by the fairly deep detonation, which then fell back from well over 1000' onto the target area. It's true the blast effect was reduced by the deep explosion, but it's not the blast that was its primary means of causing damage.

@@Fidd88-mc4sz The debris certainly would cause a lot of damage and holes in roofs etc., but a lot of it would be repairable given time. But a shock wave can flatten buildings in one go, leading to the classic pictures of blitzed houses in which only the chimneys are still standing. A V2 exploding while still falling at supersonic speed would create a devastating shock wave spreading even faster ahead of it. The damage would depend on what sort of structures it hit (which with a V2's primitive guidance was largely random) but it would shatter ordinary houses and kill anyone exposed.

@@philiphumphrey1548 That's as maybe, what I'm saying is that that's not the way it worked, it was never meant to cause damage primarily by blast. (although the blast damage was not inconsiderable, nevertheless. The falling debris did cause a complete collapse of roofs and floors, and blew the walls out too, leaving much the same damage as a blast bomb at surface level. And this is the problem when looking at photographs of V2 damage of a built-up area, it actually looks like blast damage, leading to people thinking that's what they're looking at....

@@Fidd88-mc4sz I would disagree. It would leave a crater like 8 feet deep (3m). If it hit the ground, there would be a shock transferred to the ground, but most of the gas expansion would be directed upwards. If the bomb penetrated a building, blast overpressure was enough to bring it down. If it came down near a building, ground wave could cause a wall to collapse. For anti-personnel, even the Germans at the time knew that saturating an area with smaller blasts was more effective, with the butterfly bomb (and bomblets in Vietnam). Excess pressure or excess shrapnel was overkill. By focusing on smaller explosions making for more even shrapnel distribution, it maximized the effective area.

-The USAAF estimated that a German proximity fuse would meant that the B-24 would need to be removed from service due to its lower operational ceiling. In general proximity fuses are 4-5 times more effective per round. The 8.8cm FLAK 37 (muzzle velocity 800m/s) had an engagement time of about 11 seconds at 30,000ft so it was ineffective above 25,000ft. The more powerful 8.8cm FLAK 41 (muzzle velocity of 1000m/sec) could engage up to 39,000ft might even have removed the B-17 requiring the faster B-29 -The Germans did have a proximity fuse for the 88 but despite successful test rounds being fired never got it into production. (I'll explain in a post elsewhere) -There was another type of fuse the double-fuse or doppelzunder that while not a proximity fuse was 3.5 times more effective against US Bomber formations. The standard 88 fuse was timer only. There was no nose contact fuse. (they were considered too dangerous). Many rounds that would have been direct hits would simply detonate harmlessly below the bomber due to timer errors. The ones that were direct hits would pass relatively harmlessly through the bomber and detonate usually too far above or more likely the timer mechanism would jam from the impact and defuse the round. -Eventually a safe nose contact fuse was developed and it was found by going for a direct hit and firing with the fuses set to detonate 100m above the target the rounds were 3.5 times more effective. A round that missed might still hit another bomber in the formation. Overall the firing this way was 3.5 times more effective against formations and 2.5 times more effective against individual bombers. The Germans did a lot of statistical analysis and successfully tested the theories in Feb 1945 too late to have any effect.

​@@williamzk9083 Thank you for the additional information. I have always wondered why Germany did not field a proximity fuse to combat the Allied bombing campaign. I am grateful (existentially, for sure) that Germany did not have this technology when my father went to Europe as part of the US Army 8th Air Force in December of 1944. Because bomber losses had declined by that time, my father never flew a combat mission but instead got stuck flying familiarization flights around England as they cherry picked replacements out of the aircrews he was a part of (he was a navigator and apparently navigators were not getting killed or wounded at the same rate as other positions in the B17 did). Thank goodness on behalf of my existence!

A counterpoint would be that straight flying heavy bombers would be much easier to hit than a diving and evading small kamikaze plane. Also while Japanese kamikaze planes had to be firmly shot down to stop them, the Germans only had to deal moderate damage to prevent the bombers from dropping their load and make them turn back.

I have had the same book since it was published back in the late 60s. The subtitle was "Blueprint for Mars". I was amazed why the German's did not continue work on the different SAMs listed in the book. Thanks!

fwiw if you look at old school documentaries on the VT fuze on YT, they describe the effect of the fuze as increasing the "effective surface area" of the target. And if you look closely at 4:32, you'll see an illustration of this. Apparently the fuze was optimized to detect targets on the side of the shells. So it did provide some lateral improvement aswell.

Yes but the main thing is it detonates the shell at the airplane's level, correcting for timing errors of a time fuse. But if it's 500 yards away when it passes, won't make much difference. Obviously still way higher than without, and VT plus radar direction would be devastating I'm sure. @@WBtimhawk

Technically the US combined its research on optical/IR research from the VB/GB guided bomb project with with the useful parts of german research to combine it with the sidewinder

Thanks good catch. The annotations are corrected

HA cool, I live a few hundred yards where the concept was invented and protypes built (Christchurch in England). Its a fascinating story, and the prototype development is really interesting.

Something that is triggered by infrared today are automatic porch lights. It sends out infrared light and when something solid breaks the field at a certain distance enough of the light is reflected back to the IR sensor. They were actually using those sensors to set off IED’s, specifically EFP’s, by the time I got to Baghdad. So our humvees and most other vehicles would have Rhino’s on the front. A box on a bar extending out some 6 plus feet from the bumper that would get hot using glow plugs. The heat, or IR radiation, would set off the Passive Infra-Red sensors and detonate the IED’s early.

You can search for, for example, "Strela-10 missile proximity sensor overview and partial teardown" here in RU-vid (infrared proximity sensor). The channel has fascinating (disassembly) videos of military components, missile parts etc.

The Germans had proximity fuse for the 8.8cm gun which was test fired in 1943-1944 with about 1000s test fired with an effectiveness of 95 against elevated ground targets. (netting). The code name was Kuhglochen and it was by Rheinmetall-Borsig. -The fuse was in development in 1940 but development was halted during the emergency that was the Battle of France due to a Fuhrer Order that all weapons development that could not be completed within 6 months should be suspended. It took a long time to reactivate the program (late 1942). -The Existence of the fuse was reveled to British Intelligence in the Oslo Report which was delivered to British Intelligence in November 1939 along with the shock hardened vacuum tube called a cold cathode thyratron tube. The cold cathode thyratron was a tube(or valve as British call it) filled with Argon at 0.5 bar pressure. It had a cathode, an anode and a striking anode. When a voltage was applied to the striking anode current would conduct from anode to cathode. It didn't require a heating element. The valve was extremely sensitive and the voltage very precise and repeatable. -The Germans had already been using the shock hardened cold cathode tubes to arm their bombs and set impact time delays. -With the Oslo letter tube and other tubes being found in bombs the British restarted their own proximity fuse program just as the Germans suspended theirs. -The man in charge, physicist john cockcroft had an atomic bomb to develop so the work was handed over to the US. The US fuse entered production in 1942 but the British test fired their own fuse in 1942 but by then US fuse was in production. (see Louis Brown: Radar technical and military imperatives) . The British fuse was detonated remotely when the relfection from a coner reflector merged with the target. A double pulse triggered detonation. They'd hoped to track the shell as well. -The Germans had planed to cuse cold cathode tubes in 2 ways on FLAK shells. A/ by using them as electronic timers and B/ Using them as proximity fuses that trigger of the aircraft electrostatic field. -A shell in flight and an aircraft have a powerful electrostatic field. The German shell had an whisker aerial on one side of the shell. As it spun through the air at 500 RPM the field around the shell was even. If an aircraft was in the vicinity the field was disturbed. The 500Hz was filtered and rectified and if sufficient would fire the cold gas thryratorn which would discharge a capacitor through a fuse link primer detonating the shell. A nose contact switch was present ass a backup and it could obviously be timed to self destruct a little beynd the bomber target. -About 1000 round were fired in 1943/44 with a range up to 4m. Improved circuits of 10m and 15m were developed but not tested. Production did not occur because the factory was over run in early 1945. The cold gas tubes needed a little radium to trigger fast enough and this cause a delay as tetrode tubes which did not need radium were developed. -The Fuse is briefly mentioned in Wolfgang Samuel book "American Raiders" and also Igor Witkoski's "Truth about the Wunderwaffe" which gives illustrations and CIOS references. (wrong but I found them in a US archive depository)

I love this comment section, thanks so much, crazy insights! @@williamzk9083

Holy smokes! Thank you for all this information! Very interesting.@@williamzk9083

The 90mm "Triple Threat" was the primary AA gun used by the US in the same role as the German 88 and I've never seen a listing for proximity fused ammo for it, however in 1944 they started using an advanced radar system with it that had an automatic elevation and azmith adjustment slaved into the gun, essentially auto tracking where previous to that the radar was just ranging.

​@dukecraig2402 pretty sure US army 90mm guns did receive VT fuzing.

25pdr (88mm) received VT fuses in 1944, with the smallest fuse developed for the 3"/50(76mm) also showing up in 1944. The standard fuze was No 117 direct action (DA). No 119 (DA and graze) was also used. Combustion or mechanical time fuzes were used with base ejection shells and mechanical time with graze were used with HE. Proximity fuzes were used from the end of 1944 and subsequently replaced by CVT fuzes.

You look at this to much through the lens of the Allies. Had Germany taken this route, given the pervasiveness of 88mm and 105mm guns, a VT fuse for those would have been the top priority. Also, radar/doppler isn't the only way to achieve the effect, various other ways of varied effectiveness were studied by the different sides.

@@MrZazzles94 Just as an assumption I'd think they did to but I just can't find anything in print verifying it. I know that they used the 90mm as a field piece extensively and after the Battle of The Bulge they used proximity fuses on infantry caught in the open so I'd assume they used with if but like I said I just can't find it on a list.

But it was perfected by the Americans. The British never got past tests in UP’s and didn’t know if VT could be developed for cannon shells.

Only the planes actively flying through such a cloud of chaff could hope to enjoy its effects. But that tinsel would probably not be good in an air intake. I don't think chaff would help much more than it already was for VT fuse shells. The shells aren't gojng to be confused much by chaff that is behind and below the target bomber. The gun targeting, if done solely off of radar signature, MAY be confused by chaff.

Hearing aid tubes.

It's not that QC was bad. It was that building vacuum tubes that can survive being fired out of a 5" gun is extremely hard. The initial version they had worked 80% of the time and was ready for mass production. How long would it have taken to make a version that worked 95% of the time? 6 months? A year? More? Could they produce as many of the 95% version as the 80%? The choice was an 80% reliable fuse now or a more reliable fuse at an unknown future date.

@@Crosshair84 ; what you said is very true. Building submini tubes was not easy and to resist thousands of G's even harder. But the documents from the time indicate the tube QC standards was not being met by the manufacturers.

The Americans deployed an anti ship glide bomb using an active radar seeker. Ironically late navy Shipboard SAM project in mid-44 actually tried doing just that.

Thanks for the catch, I pinned a correction as the units should be rounds per minute.

@@WWIIUSBombers Oh.

The 128mm Flak 40 was rated for 10 to 12 rounds per minute off a single mount or 20-24 off the twin Flakzwilling 40/2 mount. The 128mm round is almost dimensionally identical but more than twice the weight compared to the 127mm/5”/38 used by the US Navy with proximity fuses. The 128 twin mount on a tracked chassis would be truly scary as an antitank weapon. (The US Army Ordinance Museum has one of the 34 built).

They didn’t have enough men in sheds.

They spent their money on other things, not always in a cost-effective manner.

Incompetence.

The Allies would have jammed them, just like they Jammed Fritz X and The Hs-293.

@@richardvernon317 and exactly how long do you think it would have taken to figure it out what it was without a captured example? The Japanese certainly never did.

@@2IDSGT Intelligence is something you lack!!! You must be a Wehraboo Not very long. Signals Intelligence existed!!! Don't even need a jammer to beat this thing. Bucket loads of Window cut to the right wavelength will defeat a WWII radio Proximity Fuze easily. Just borrow some Mosquitos of the British to lay a window cloud above and in front of the Lead US Bombers to protect them, and they and everybody else throw out bucket loads of the stuff themselves. Allied Fighters would have problems however.

Eisenhower suggested had they been fired as they prepared the D-Day landings they would have disrupted the landing preparation.

The battle of Britain was about control of the channel airspace. I'm not sure how the notoriously inaccurate V1 could have affected the outcome if it couldn't hit the fighter airfields.

Actually wrong, they were on a par with the Allies in a lot of ways and ahead in some. Problem was their Electronics Industry pushed development and the Military couldn't work out what they wanted to do with it. There was infighting within the Industry about Patents and Licences, plus infighting between the Navy and Air Force about companies building stuff for the other service. The UK had the Military pushing Development within the Service Research Establishments, who did talk to each other, but only bought the Electronics industries in to build parts of systems until the war started. After this Information was shared between the Industries and the Establishments with a tri-service Co-ordination authority making sure that all three services (Navy, Army and Air Force) were aware of the latest developments. Patents and Licences were put on hold. USA started out the same way as the Germans, but after the British showed them what they had in 1940, they pretty much followed the British Example in at least sharing information between the various labs (plus talked to the British).

@@richardvernon317 Really? So they did have a proximity fuse all along? Or are you just making an unsubstantiated claim like all the wehraboos do?

​@@annoyingbstard9407 Germans had Proximity Fuzes in Mines and Torpedoes. They could have easily put them in rockets (they did have 5 projects on the go in 1944/45 that used noise of bomber engines as a passive trigger). They did build a production standard radar with a 20 Km range before anybody else in late 1935. The German Electronics Industries and Engineers were no worse than any other people involved in the development of Electronics. Where the Difference happened as regards Military electronics was integration of the Civilian Science and Engineering sides of system development with the Military users. In Germany it didn't happen. In the UK and US it did.

@@richardvernon317 You’re a little confused. They had magnetic mines and torpedoes, and quite primitive ones, as did every nation in the war. They’re really not the same thing as is being discussed here. Please don’t be offended if I don’t respond to any more of your comments.

@@annoyingbstard9407 They are Proximity Fuzes as by the Definition of the term, just as a Homing Torpedo is a Guided Weapon. Your Stupid comment was that the German Electronics industry was 10 years behind the Allies. It wasn't!! (P.S, I'm a Brit, did 30 years in the RAF on Air Defence Systems Maintenance and the first equipment's I worked and Trained on were not much more advanced than kit built during WW2. Plus I've written histories about Radar Development for a Museum that covers the subject). The British systems were mostly lashed up out of Off the Shelf equipment. Except for the first 5 Chain Home Equipment's, most of the rest of the CH network were built out of whatever equipment was available. None of the first Chain Home Low Radars were of a standard design, again lashed up out of what equipment was in good supply. The US had not got anything to a production standard by the start of the war in Europe. Germans had 50 completed Freya Radars sitting in the Factory waiting for the Luftwaffe to get around to training the people to use them.

Not a valid point, the US and the UK armies also had targeting computers, but a proximity fuse is still more effective, because you can't shoot at a specific plane, you aim for the center of the formation and hope it explodes close enough. With a radar fuse it would only explode if close enough and well aimed, but with timed fuses you can only aim well and hope to be lucky with the exact timing.

@@MrSam1er And you can tell me more about these two systems right ?

@@5co756 Look at the other videos on this chanel, it's pretty well researched. There is also the number of 3000 shells for one bomber with timed fuses, and 2000 shells for one bomber with contact fuses, this suggests that even contact fuses are better than timed fuses (these numbers are for german FLAK against allied bombers). So now replace these contact fuses with proximity fuses and every close call becomes a hit, this gives you a way better success rate than timed fuses.

@@MrSam1er First I wanted to know how these UK and US targeting computers were called , so I can research them . And second this were US numbers from WW2 and against kamikaze fighters in the pazific war . They never shoot at enemy bomber formations 10km up in the air , so it's hard to compare this .