Mistel (German for "mistletoe"), was the larger, unmanned component of a composite aircraft configuration developed in Germany during the later stages of World War II. The composite comprised a small piloted control aircraft mounted above a large explosives-carrying drone, the Mistel, and as a whole was referred to as the Huckepack ("Piggyback"), also known as the Beethoven-Gerät ("Beethoven Device") and Vati und Sohn ("Daddy and Son").
The most successful of these used a modified Junkers Ju 88 bomber as the Mistel, with the entire nose-located crew compartment replaced by a specially designed nose filled with a large load of explosives, formed into a shaped charge. The upper component was a fighter aircraft, joined to the Mistel by struts. The combination would be flown to its target by a pilot in the fighter; then the unmanned bomber was released to hit its target and explode, leaving the fighter free to return to base. The first such composite aircraft flew in July 1943 and was promising enough to begin a programme by Luftwaffe test unit KG 200, code-named "Beethoven", eventually entering operational service.
my gosh, the things i never learned in school! i woulld have thought, due to the rarity of raw materials in the latter part of the war, that this would not have been a very sensible way to bomb targets: using up at least one bomber per raid...
Desperate times I guess. They may have been compensating for a shortage of pilots. Plus the lost bomber doesn't need to be completely airworthy. It just needs to be able to take off... once! It must have been devastating the first few times - like the Kamikaze - but once the Allies got the measure of it I guess it'd be pretty easy to shoot down.
4 comments:
booster airplane? remarkable what they came up with back then...
Mistel (German for "mistletoe"), was the larger, unmanned component of a composite aircraft configuration developed in Germany during the later stages of World War II. The composite comprised a small piloted control aircraft mounted above a large explosives-carrying drone, the Mistel, and as a whole was referred to as the Huckepack ("Piggyback"), also known as the Beethoven-Gerät ("Beethoven Device") and Vati und Sohn ("Daddy and Son").
The most successful of these used a modified Junkers Ju 88 bomber as the Mistel, with the entire nose-located crew compartment replaced by a specially designed nose filled with a large load of explosives, formed into a shaped charge. The upper component was a fighter aircraft, joined to the Mistel by struts. The combination would be flown to its target by a pilot in the fighter; then the unmanned bomber was released to hit its target and explode, leaving the fighter free to return to base. The first such composite aircraft flew in July 1943 and was promising enough to begin a programme by Luftwaffe test unit KG 200, code-named "Beethoven", eventually entering operational service.
[From Wiki]
my gosh, the things i never learned in school! i woulld have thought, due to the rarity of raw materials in the latter part of the war, that this would not have been a very sensible way to bomb targets: using up at least one bomber per raid...
Desperate times I guess. They may have been compensating for a shortage of pilots. Plus the lost bomber doesn't need to be completely airworthy. It just needs to be able to take off... once! It must have been devastating the first few times - like the Kamikaze - but once the Allies got the measure of it I guess it'd be pretty easy to shoot down.
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