Komet attack! by ratfugel
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Description
If anybody ever lived on borrowed time,it was an Me 163 Komet pilot. Fractionally less perilous than a Kamikaze run, the extremely high approach speeds made accurate aiming and shooting an extremely difficult feat. Couple that with sitting on a huge keg of highly volatile T-Stoff propellant and then being subjected to enormous vertical 'G' forces prior to endeavouring to wage serious warfare at 40 to 50,000 feet. These guys deserved Iron Crosses even without victories.
Since the attack was always a short-lived affair, timing was always of the essence. However,the US aircrews, blithely chattering to each other over open radio links whilst stooging around for a couple of hours formating up prior to setting forth for the Reich, gave the German listening posts plenty of advance notice so that the Komets could be prepared and fired off exactly when required. Most obliging.
The attack technique was always simple. Climb higher than the approaching enemy, dive,fire, use the remaining speed to try it again. Go home.
Forgive the long spiel. Merely backing up the image for the unbelievers.
Comments (14)
ranman38
Who wouldn't believe that? Certainly better than the German kamikazes that crashed into bombers trying to sever a stabilizer then bail out. The Komet was an odd little experiment. Nice work.
sackrat
Outstanding !
kjer_99
Actually not that long a spiel and very informative for many, I'm sure. Also presented in an interesting way. Excellent writing to match an excellent air combat picture; the latter of which no one does better than you.
telber
brilliant
ollienorthie
great picture and a good history lesson.
proteus2
Nice man... Very Nice ! P.
Garlor
Would you believe that a restored is flying ? As a glider of course, no one is that crazy. Good story , I thought they only got one chance.
Fidelity2
Splendid. 5+.
ontar1
Excellent work!!!!!!!!!!
lookoo
Very nice rendition - and great postwork as usual ;) The Me 163 soon got the questionable reputation of a death trap. More pilots were lost in accidents than through enemy action. In action its biggest advantage was also its greatest drawback: its enormous speed. The rocket plane, the fastest in WWII, approached the bombers so fast that the pilot had only very little time to aim. Because of this a wholly new attack mode was developed but didn't see action before the end of the war: Flying underneath the bombers at high speed and having batteries of vertically shooting rockets launched which would be trigered by photocells. Interestingly, Germany sent blueprints and prototypes by U-Boat to Japan for license production (the same thing happened with the Me 262). Both U-Boats were sunk, however, the second U-Boat only after the blueprints had been handed over in Singapore. Based on this, the Japanese managed to built a few prototypes. One of them was test-flown and plunged like a nail into the ground, killing the pilot. Before the Japanese rectified the fuel supply problem which caused this, the war was also over in the Pacific.
pakled
Japan had it's own version (or similar) in the Baka bomb. Kind of a last-minute thing, didn't go very far with it. The creepiest thing about the Messerschmidts was I believe one of the pilots was dissolved by the peroxide fuel (not the 1% stuff you get, but absolutely pure)shortly after takeoff...
JaneEden
Thanks for the interesting info on this one. It is excellent work!!
Buffalo1
Wow! Great action render and history lesson. Didn't the Me-163 have under wing crosses?
Mousson
Great work, splendid image and coments!