Category: War
Despite around-the-clock bombing by British and American heavy bombers, the Germans during World War II produced an ever-increasing volume of advanced military materiel right up until the end of the war.
Even though they had terribly limited resources and were being squeezed on all sides, they still managed to field the first true assault rifle, genre-defining attack submarines, and surface-to-surface missile systems that the rest of the world would take a generation to best. However, what they really excelled at was jet airplanes.
The Americans had the P59 Airacomet, and the Brits the Gloster Meteor. The P59 never amounted to much. The Meteor did see limited service during WWII, mostly in chasing down V1 buzz bombs. By contrast, the German Me 262 was a veritable scourge in the skies over Western Europe in the latter days of the war.
The Me 262 had a top speed of 560 mph and sported four bomber-killing 30mm automatic cannon in the nose. To put that in perspective, the vaunted P-51 Mustang topped out at 440 mph. The Me 262 badly outclassed everything in the skies at the time.
It was indeed the swept-wing Me 262 that got all the press. However, the Germans also produced a corresponding twin-engine bomber that actually earned more love from Hitler. The Arado Ar 234 Blitz was a unique design powered by a pair of Junkers Jumo 004B-1 axial flow turbojets, the same powerplants that drove the Me 262.
Blitz is the German word for Lightning. Der Führer envisioned the Ar 234 as a war-changing wonder weapon that would seize the initiative and, once again, take the fight to the Allies. Fortunately for us all, the Ar234 was too little, too late.
Arado Ar 234 History
Development of the Ar 234 began in the latter days of 1940, when the Third Reich’s rampaging legions seemed unstoppable. The airframe was developed in short order, but it was February 1943 before the unique Junkers Jumo turbojet engines first became available. The Ar 234 saw its maiden flight on 30 July 1943.
The original plan called for a max production of 500 airframes per month by 1945. The Luftwaffe envisioned bomber, night fighter, and strategic reconnaissance versions of the plane. However, the exigencies of total war curtailed those projections drastically. Overall production by war’s end was only 214 machines.
Early versions of the plane did not include conventional landing gear, per se. These variants used a discardable wheeled trolley for takeoff akin to the Me 163 rocket plane. Landing was effected via a set of retractable skids that took up very little space in the cramped fuselage. However, in addition to having no braking ability at all, the prospect of having a dead airplane resting on the runway until somebody could get out, jack it up, and drag it into a revetment was obviously not tactically viable. Test pilots who landed these machines on damp grass described the experience as setting the airplane down atop a bar of wet soap.
Later versions did indeed include conventional landing gear. They also experimented with a variety of different engine configurations, predominantly driven by a chronic lack of Junkers Jumo powerplants. Regardless, by the time the Ar234 was ready for prime time, the Nazis were desperate. They had to make do with what they had.
Details of the Ar 234 Blitz
The Ar 234 was actually a really weird airplane. With a top speed of 461 mph and a practical payload of 3,300 pounds’ worth of bombs, the Ar234 offered significantly better performance than any comparable medium bomber then in service. However, the Blitz bomber certainly had its eccentricities.
For starters, the revolutionary turbojets drank a whole lot of gas at a time when the Germans were chronically short of the stuff. Around-the-clock strategic bombing prioritized petroleum processing facilities, making the production and delivery of quality fuels increasingly difficult.
Additionally, the Ar 234 was designed for speed and high performance. The plane’s slender fuselage left no room for internal weapons once the landing gear and prodigious fuel tanks were accounted for. As a result, the Ar 234’s weapons were carried externally on racks underneath the plane.
The really strange bit, however, pertained to the crew arrangements. The Ar 234 was a single-pilot aircraft. There was no gunner, bombardier or navigator. Toward the end of the war, producing competent, trained pilots became one of the weakest links in the German logistics chain.
However, it is asking a lot to expect a single aviator to fly an advanced twin-engine jet bomber through hostile skies infested with Typhoons, Mustangs, Thunderbolts and Spitfires and then accurately drop bombs on a well-defended target. As a result, German engineers developed some truly exotic tools in a failed effort to help those hapless guys out.
Forward visibility in the Arado Ar 234 Blitz was actually quite good. The entire nose of the plane was glazed for an exceptional field of view. However, the pilot still could not readily see the ground where he was dropping his bombs. Additionally, early models included a pair of rear-firing guns intended for use as defensive weapons. In an effort to allow one crewman to do all that stuff, the Germans included a curious periscope system that was meant to perform several different functions.
When directed rearward, this periscope was supposed to allow aiming of the two defensive machine guns. Doing this effectively while flying the airplane evasively was found to be quite literally impossible. The rear-firing weapons were deleted from later variants.
The periscope could also be rotated forward and used to control the aircraft during dive-bombing missions. That looks great on paper. However, when used in this capacity, the image seen by the pilot was vertically reversed. That meant that the controls responded in reverse of what the pilot saw, but only in the vertical plane. Up was down, and down was up.
As I said, that’s asking a lot of a guy managing a machine all by his lonesome with half the planet trying to blast him out of the sky. Additionally, egressing from the plane in an emergency involved unstrapping and exiting via a cramped hatch in the floor. Nobody ever was quite sure who was supposed to be controlling the stricken airplane while the pilot tried to pull this off.
Operational Use of Ar 234
There were never enough qualified pilots or engines, and the gas issue became critical in the war’s final months. However, the Arado Ar 234 was used to attack the Brussels train station as well as the Antwerp shipping docks. A few examples were encountered in the ground attack role around Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.
The most high-profile missions of the war for the Ar 234 involved a maximum effort on the part of the Luftwaffe to drop the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine at Remagen. Though this effort was ultimately successful, Allied engineers bridged the river nearby in short order, rendering these efforts superfluous.
The Ar 234 was used as a fast reconnaissance platform. Accurate intelligence was critical to allow the German high command to allot dwindling defensive resources, and the speedy Blitz bomber excelled in this role. Regardless, most completed Arado Ar 234 Blitz bombers still never saw action for lack of fuel, engines and pilots.
Ruminations
The real limiting factor in the use of the German jets was actually metallurgy. The tendency of a metal part to elongate or stretch when subjected to heat and stress is called creep. Turbine blades in modern jet engines are good for thousands of thermal cycles and tens of thousands of flight hours. By contrast, the Junkers Jumo 004B-1 turbojet engine typically had to be replaced every 10 flight hours or so. As soon as the turbine blades stretched to the point where they contacted the engine housing, they were done.
The Ar 234 Blitz was nonetheless a truly groundbreaking design. Sleek, fast, and well ahead of its time, had the logistics and engineering been up to the task the Blitz bomber really could have had an outsized influence on the war. The Germans still would have lost, but it might have taken a bit longer. We should all, therefore, be thankful for the primitive state of 1940s-era German materials science.
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The Voice Of The Guns (1940)
“If war was made more terrible, it would have a tendency to keep peace among the nations of the earth.” – Richard Gatling, Inventor of the Gatling Gun
Richard Gatling was born in Hertford County, NC, on December 12, 1818. His father was a prosperous farmer and inventor, and the son was destined to inherit the “invention bug.”
After three of his sisters died at a young age from disease, Richard Gatling decided to study medicine, and graduated from the Ohio Medical College in Cincinnati in 1850. He moved to Indianapolis the same year, and in 1854 married the daughter of a prominent local physician. There is no evidence that Richard Gatling ever practiced medicine after leaving medical school, but he was always referred to as “doctor.”
Gatling was a born inventor. Between 1857 and 1860 he patented a steam plow, a rotary plow, a seed planter, a lath-making machine, a hemp rake, and a rubber washer for tightening gears. One day in 1861, with the Civil War only a few months old, Dr. Gatling’s inventive fervor suffered a shock that would turn his mind from machines of peace to machines of war. From his Indianapolis office window, Gatling watched in horror as wounded and maimed soldiers were unloaded from a train—casualties from the southern killing fields.
The doctor was aware that the conflict was being waged in Napoleonic fashion. Men faced each other in solid ranks—aimed, fired, reloaded—and, on command, charged headlong into the blazing guns of the enemy. For several nights Richard Gatling could not sleep. A single idea occupied his thoughts. What if a few soldiers could duplicate the firepower of a hundred men? Troops would no longer be able to stand still and shoot at each other. And the running charge would be impossible, because the attacking force would be mowed down like tall grass.
Gatling reasoned that if he were able to invent a machine that could plant seeds swiftly, accurately, and in precise rows, he should be able to devise a mechanical gun that would spray bullets like water from a garden hose.
Invention of the Gatling Gun
Within a few weeks, the doctor had completed the drawings for his innovative weapon, the “Gatling gun,” and took the sketches to a machinist to manufacture.
The first Gatling gun consisted of a cluster of six rifle barrels, without stocks, arranged around a center rod. Each barrel had its own bolt, and the entire cluster could be made to revolve by turning a crank. The bolts were covered by a brass case at the breech. Cartridges were fed into a hopper, and as the cluster revolved, each barrel was fired at its lowest point, and then reloaded when the revolution was completed.
The gun was mounted upon a wheeled carriage. Two men were required to operate the weapon—one to sight the target and turn the crank, the other to load the ammunition.
A working model was completed within six months, and a public demonstration was held across Graveyard Pond in Indianapolis. The abrupt, rapid noise of gunfire could be heard for five miles and, at 200 rounds per minute, the bullets cut a 10-inch tree in half in less than 30 seconds.
Dr. Gatling patented his gun on November 4, 1862, but he had a difficult time selling it to the Army. General James Wolfe Ripley, chief of ordnance, was not impressed with the weapon and remarked: “You can kill a man just as dead with a cap-n’-ball smooth-bore.”
Gatling was unperturbed, however, and took his diagrams to a manufacturing company in Cincinnati. Twelve of the Gatling guns were built, and a few of them were sold to General Benjamin Butler for $1,000 each. Butler later used the Gatlings to hold a bridgehead against Confederate cavalry at the James River.
In early trials of the Gatling gun, it was regarded by the military as a supplement to artillery. The tests that were conducted compared the range and accuracy of the machine gun with the range and accuracy of grapeshot fired by artillery pieces.
Richard Gatling continued to modify and improve the weapon, and in 1865 patented a model that was capable of firing 350 rounds per minute. A demonstration was held at Fortress Monroe. This time the ordnance department was impressed and ordered a hundred guns. The Gatling gun was officially adopted by the U.S. Army on August 24, 1866. It was first manufactured by Cooper Arms in Philadelphia, and later by the Colt Arms Company of Hartford, Conn.
Europe and Abroad
Dr. Gatling traveled throughout Europe selling his weapon, and new models were continually being designed. A short-barrel variety was purchased by the British and mounted on camels. This so-called “camel gun” was also used by the U.S. Army and Navy.
As settlers moved west after the Civil War, Army garrisons in forts along the frontier housed Gatling guns. Gatlings were also attached to cavalry expeditions. A Gatling detachment under Lieutenant James W. Pope accompanied General Nelson A. Miles’s campaign into west Texas. On August 30, as an advance party of Army scouts entered a trail that led between two high bluffs, about three hundred Indians charged down the cliffs. At the sound of gunfire, Pope quickly brought up his Gatling guns. The rapid, withering fire scattered the attacking warriors, and they fled in confusion.
During the same year, a battalion of 8th Cavalry, commanded by Major William R. Price, was ordered out to suppress an uprising by several Indian tribes, including Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Kiowa. Price was able to successfully fight off several surprise attacks by hostile bands with two Gatling guns.
But in the most famous battle of the Indian Wars, the Gatling was strangely absent. On June 22, 1876, Maj. Gen. George Armstrong Custer and his 7th Cavalry rode out from their Powder River camp and headed for the Little Big Horn River. Custer had been offered three Gatling guns but refused them.
He felt that the Gatlings—mounted on horse-drawn carriages—would slow his cavalry troop down in rough country. Custer also believed that the use of such a devastating weapon would cause him to “lose face” with the Indians. Whether or not the Gatlings could have saved Custer and his 200 men is questionable. Some accounts report the column of Indians that retreated after the battle as being three miles long and a half-mile wide.
During the next few years, the Gatling gun participated in a number of battles, including those with the Nez Perce. The warriors under Chief Joseph fought 13 engagements against the U.S. Army, many of which were standoffs. Finally, on September 30, 1877, in the Bear Paw Mountains of Montana, General Nelson Miles, with 600 men and a Gatling gun, attacked Chief Joseph’s camp. After four days of bitter fighting, Chief Joseph could hold out no longer. As he surrendered his rifle to Miles, the valiant Indian leader said, “My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.”
The Gatling Gun In Africa
During the latter part of the 19th century, Gatling guns became more and more popular, and were used in the many wars that flared during the 1880s and 1890s. The 1879 war between England and the African Zulu tribes was the first major land action in which the Gatling gun proved to be a deciding factor. A small British army, commanded by Lord Chelmsford, defeated a much larger Zulu force under King Cetywayo. In one encounter, a single Gatling mowed down more than 400 tribesmen in only a few minutes.
After his victorious campaign, Lord Chelmsford wrote: “They [Gatling guns] should be considered essentially as infantry weapons. They can be used effectively, not only in defense, but also in covering the last stage of an infantry attack upon a position—where the soldiers must cease firing and charge with the bayonet.”
By the time Dr. Gatling died in 1903, the automatic machine gun had arrived on the scene. It was powered by the discharging gases of its fired cartridges, and was simpler and more economical to use than the manually operated guns. In 1911, the U.S. Army declared the Gatling gun obsolete.
But Richard Gatling’s legacy did not die with him. In September 1956, the General Electric Company unveiled its 6-barrel aerial cannon called the Vulcan. For several years, General Electric had made a detailed study of every rapid-fire gun, and its engineers had found that Dr. Gatling’s original patents offered the most promise for the development of firepower necessary for fast jet fighter aircraft. The Vulcan was also put to use on attack helicopters and gunships.