Raming Soviet Bison Bombers 1950s

C

casey jones

Charter Member
I had read an article in Wings magazine about the North American Air Defense Command in the 1950s...then we had 3 all waether intercepters to guard against Soviet Bombers crossing the artic circle to attack targets in Canada and the US, the 3 all weather intercepters we relied on were the F-94C Starfire, a super version of the T-33, the F-89 Scorpian, and the F-86D Saber Dog all carried the "Mighty Mouse" rockets in pods which were not guided but fired off like a shotgun blast at the Soviet Bomber formation. Sometime in 1952 a letter was circulated unofficial to the aircrews if they werewilling to ram ten Soviet Bombers as a last ditch effort to stop them. Some aircrews said yes they would...the letter was then pulled from circulation.


Cheers

Casey
 
Not exactly a new idea. Both the JAF and the Luftwaffe had that scenario in their last ditch efforts plans. As I recall there were even specifically designed aircraft in Germany for that "job". Though I don't think any of them really made it into the action.
So it stands to reason that if all else failed that option was on the table in the cold war was well.
 
As an official policy it seems a lot to ask, since chances of survival would be slim. Even if you got out of the plane, being found and rescued in the remote areas where this might occur would be a long shot.

However when one considers that one man's sacrifice might save hundreds of thousands from a nuclear bomb, it might seem worth it.

There are many accounts from WW2 of airmen intentionally ramming enemy aircraft, usually in the 'heat of the moment' , and some were able to survive.
 
I don't know about specifically designed aircraft, but I know both the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy and the Luftwaffe had special units with aircraft which were adapted for ramming 'Viermots'. The nature of these adaptations were rather different according to which side you were on, though.

In Germany, these special units were called 'Rammjäger' units - literally 'ramming fighter', and contrary to what you might expect, most of them were equipped with Bf-109s, even though the Fw-190A would seem to be a more logical choice (with its large radial and sturdy frame, contrary to the 109's in-line and sleek fuselage). Most of these 109s were flown by relatively inexperienced pilots, who had only received a minimal training, or by bomber crews who had gotten a rudimentary conversion to fighters, and were equiped with a belly tank and an armoured windshield, but in most cases they were unarmed or only had one 13-mm gun with 50 rounds. Incidentally, most of them were factory-fresh 109G10s, K1s and K2s.

The most famous of these 'Rammjäger raids' was the 'Rammkommando Elbe', which took place on April 7th 1945, when about 120 Messerschmitts took off to disrupt a raid on oil refineries in central Germany. The tactic was to let the 109's take off and have them climb to 33000 ft, and to have them dive into the bomber streams. Of the 120 aircraft deployed on that raid, about 80 were lost, most of them because of cockpit icing, crashes and shoot downs; only 17 109's were lost through the ramming of American bombers.

Other than that, incidental rammings occurred as well - an often-employed tactic among Luftwaffe fighter pilots was to approach the bombers from the rear and hack their tail or empannage off using their propellor, if they exhausted their ammo during a bomber intercept mission.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, the Japanese were employing the same kind of tactics against the B-29s, only in their case it was not expected for the pilots to come back alive. In fact, some of the mission-specific adaptions made this highly unlikely if not impossible: for instance, the Shinten Seïku-taï of the 53rd Sentai used Kawasaki Ki-45 'Nick' twin-engined biplace fighters, which had their offensive and defensive armament removed as well as all unnecessary equipment, and had a contact-fuse bomb placed in the rear cockpit, so the aircraft would explode and destroy the rammed bomber on contact. No chance for the pilot to come alive out of that one...

Interestingly, the Russians employed the same tactic as well. So, for instance, Soviet fighter units were briefed during the Cold War that, as a last-ditch effort, they were allowed to ram an opponent. For instance, during the incident on May 1st 1960 which saw Francis Gary Powers shot down in his U-2, Captain Mitenkov of the 356th IAP had been scrambled with an unarmed Sukhoi Su-9 (one of two just delivered to his unit), with the distinct orders to intercept and ram the U-2. Of course, an S-75 Dvina (SA-2 Guideline) got to Powers first, the rest is history.

Even more recently, in 1981, a Canadair CL-44 of Transporte Aéreo Rioplatense was destroyed in a ramming incident when it strayed into Azerbaijani airspace. The aircraft had been delivering arms to Iran, and was on its way back to Larnaca, when it was intercepted by a Sukhoi Su-15. When the CL-44 commenced evasive action, the Su-15s pilot steared his plane into the freighter's tail, causing it to crash - the CL-44s four crew were killed, while the Su-15s pilot managed to eject.
 
Hi Nikko,

Just one of the examples is this Zeppelin Rammer. It never did go into production or service. This type of AC development was handled by the lesser developers, the Messerschmitt and FockeWulf staff was too busy getting the main fighters to the front lines.

http://www.luft46.com/misc/zrammer.html

As I recall there were flying examples by Junkers, Arado and some others.

JG200 is the one singular division formed solely with that intent, but there were other earlier incidents were squadron orders went above and beyond what Himmler had promised when he said that any pilot bringing back an undamaged fighter with ammunition remaining will be court martialed.

Pilots of JG 1, 2 and 3 modified their 190s with armor plating on the wings etc and used the ramming tactic repeatedly.

A little copy and paste here for more detail on this here:

The Weapon of the Sturmflieger

Due to the new mission of SturmStaffel 1, better equipped aircraft had to be used to effectively combat the heavy bombers at close ranges. The Focke Wulf 190A-series was known to be a good bomber interceptor. The only problem was that closure time for stern attacks by Fw190s was very slow, leaving the Fw190s vulnerable to both bomber gunners and escorting fighters.

SturmStaffel 1 soon adopted the baby-brother of the 'Sturmbock.' They used Fw190A-5s and A-6s and added 5 inch armor plating called Panzerplatten to critical areas of their aircraft. The unit also added 30mm glass panels to the side of the canopy and to the quarter-panels of the windscreen.

These new and heavier aircraft resulted in double the fuel consumption rate, and soon fuel drop tanks were added, further weighing down the new converted aircraft.

Armament on these early 'Sturmbocks' were the same as the normal FW190A5s and A6s.

Reich Defense

SturmStaffel 1 was among the first units to adopt Reich Defense (Reichsverteidigung) bands. These bands helped pilots distinguish each unit from the other. SturmStaffel 1 chose to adopt the black-white-black band scheme.

Sturm units would soon incorporate the new Fw190A8 and A9 versions into their units and along with the earlier modifications of Sturm aircraft, they soon also incorporated Rustsatze (Field Conversion Kits). The most numerous one used by the Sturm units was the R8 kit which equipped the Fw190A8 with armor glass and a Mk108 30mm cannon in the wing. The new 30mm cannons meant that bombers could be brought down with just a few well placed hits. But the it added still more weight, making the nimble Fw190 sluggish.

The Luftwaffe's Sturm units suffered tremendous losses from enemy escorts. SturmStaffel 1 alone suffered roughly 350% loss of pilots during its short time in the war. Yet the Sturm units were the most groups at bringing down the endless streams of 4-engined bombers that were devastating Germany by day.

End of Copy.

Some of that was later repeated of course in the similarly idiotic Volkssturm where very young kids and very old men "defended" the Fatherland way past the point of no return.

By the way not all FW190s were powered by BMW801 engines. The high altitude D models were powered by inline Jumo engines.

Cheers
Stefan
 
In the mid 40's there was a flying wing aircraft from Northrop called the XP-79. It was designed to be rocket powered and built to ram enemy bombers slicing through their wings and tails. The wing leading edges were built very strong for this form of attack. The rocket engine never worked very well so it had 2 jet engines instead. Production models would have had guns as well. The pilot flew from a prone position to handle high G forces. The sole aircraft crashed during testing.
 
In addition to okamis post. There is a book, by "Arno Rose" (was the author as far as I know) "RAMMJÄGER" ... Very interesting ! But I don't know if it is also available in english. If you find it... believe me , its worth to read !!!
 
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