Dowding and earlier RP's

[PMN1]

Dowding of Fighter Command: Victor of the Battle of Britain by Vincent Orange

Dowding had been invited to meet Sir Hugo Cunliffe-Owen, chairman of the British-American Tobacco Company, in 1934. He showed Dowding photographs taken in Germany of rockets designs for use in aircraft against air or ground targets, asking him to keep in mind the danger to his staff in Germany if word got out about these photographs.

Realising at once the immense importance of this information, Dowding sought permission from his Air Ministry colleagues to begin his own development programme. Permission was refused on the grounds that the Army was in charge of such matters. So with grim forebodings’ he handed this project over to his military opposite number. From time to time, Dowding attended firing tests at Portland Bill, the tip of a peninsula off Dorset on the south coats. They all failed, and after two or three years of negligible progress, the programme was cancelled, but Dowding did not learn of this until 1937 when he prevailed upon Henry Tizzard to use his influence to get the programme restarted and conducted with a great deal more enthusiasm. Rockets that could be carried under the wings of fighters did become formidable weapons against armoured vehicles and shipping by 1943, but Dowding believed they could have been available at least two years earlier.


What do people here think of this possibility?

[Ricky]

Rockets fired from under the wings of aircraft were available and used in WW1 (against balloons), so there is no real reason why they were not available at any time during the 1920s and 1930s.

[curmudgeon]

Rockets fired from under the wings of aircraft were available and used in WW1 (against balloons), so there is no real reason why they were not available at any time during the 1920s and 1930s.

... no real TECHNICAL reason ... but if the technology was deprecated and abandoned then there would be practical reasons. It takes some time to reinstall technologies that have been abandoned, including reproving them rather than being the beneficiary of incremental development. All the nay-sayers reappear and often with fervent, but now irrelevant, arguments.

If development went to the army and the army saw no reason of their own for the devices then the project would die, and if they did build devices these are likely to diverge from the interests of the airforce, especially as the developers would almost certainly not be exposed to the developing ideas of the airforce.

It took until mid 1943 for rockets to be added to anti-submarine aircraft.

[ChrisMcD]

He showed Dowding photographs taken in Germany of rockets designs for use in aircraft against air or ground targets, asking him to keep in mind the danger to his staff in Germany if word got out about these photographs.

What do people here think of this possibility?

I must admit that I am a bit baffled. No doubt Tony Williams will clear the matter up for us, but I thought that the Germans had not done any work on air to air or air to ground rockets till the R4M towards the end of the war.

Apart from anything else, why did they spend so much time fitting great big unwieldy guns into Ju 88's etc.

The RAF looked at bigger guns (ie Mollins gun, S cannon etc.) but rapidly adopted RP's

My understanding is that the UK development teams were redirected towards rockets by observing the Russian military manoeuvres in 1937 (?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-82_rocket

- but that the speed of UK development was dictated by the availability of the cordite propellant rods used in the shafts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP-3

So that the major usage was after 1941 and really got into it's stride with the Typhoon and Beaufighter

[Trexx]

Astounding.

It was the British that were first impressed and terrified by being on the receiving end of East Indian rocket barrages! Then adopted, improved and used them in turn, I find it remarkable that airplane launched rockets for World War Two ran into any roadblocks at all. What a curiosity!