Nazi German's V-1 began life as a robot bomb; then almost became a manned air defense missile! (March, 1991)

This is an article that covers material I have not seen anywhere else.

Field Marshal Erhard Milch and Major von Kornatzki proposed the formation of a squadron of special “elite storm fighters.” There task would be to attack fleets of US planes head-on, ramming a bomber and destroying that bomber and possibly ohers.

Sounds like the baka bomb? In this case, there is one crucial difference; the Nazi plan allowed for the pilot to eject from the craft before it hit another plane. Thus, this was not a kamikaze type of attack, although other details matched the concepts used later by the Japanese.

The FZG-76 is another term for the V-1. They could go up to 400 mph and were made of cheap materials. The idea of a manned version would involved ones that would be catapulted into the air for takeoff, much as the Japanese planned for the baka bombs if Japan itself was invaded, or they could be carried aloft by bombers. This, again, would have resembled the Japanese baka bomb being carried by a Betty-type bomber.

The concept of manned V-1s was actually tested out. The first five test pilots crashed; the sixth one, a woman, solved the problem that caused the first five crashes. She flew her craft for twenty minutes and then landed.

In June of 1944 the program was put into full test mode, with various forms of the bomb craft being tested. A craft was readied for flight tests. The testers figured that the explosion would destroy the rammed plane and any planes with 1,000 yards of that one.

Some 175 of the craft (the Reichenberg IV) were completed, but, for some unknown reason, the entire program was dropped.

The article doesn't speculate on how effective these modified manned V-1s would have been. I think they might have had the same problem the baka bombs did, and that was the bomber that would carry them was the weak link; shoot that down, and the baka bomb was useless. That happened numerous times in the Pacific theater.

Still, it had a range of over 200 miles, so it's possible a bunch of them could be launched at the same time from a good distance away from an attacking bomber fleet. It would definitely have had a psychological impact on the pilots of the attacking planes. Why is was not used is a mystery, especially since it was cheap to build and, at least in theory, would have left the pilots alive.

Main Index
Japan main page
Japanese-American Internment Camps index page
Japan and World War II index page