One of the most unusual planes ever invented

Описание: One of the most unusual planes ever invented.



The Natter (Adder) was a World War II era German experimental point-defense rocket-powered interceptor aircraft which was to be used in a very similar way as unmanned surface-to-air missiles. After vertical take-off which eliminated the need for airfields, the majority of the flight to the bombers was radio controlled from the ground. The primary mission of the (inexperienced) pilot was to aim the aircraft at its target bomber and fire its armament of rockets. The pilot and the main rocket engine should then land under separate parachutes, while the wooden fuselage was disposable. The only manned test flight, on 1 March 1945, ended with test-pilot Lothar Sieber being killed.
Erich Bachem's BP20 was a development from a design he worked on at Fieseler, but considerably more radical than the other offerings. It was built using glued and screwed wooden parts with an armored cockpit, powered by a Walter HWK 509A-2 rocket, similar to the one in the Me 163. Four jettisonable Schmidding rocket boosters were used for launch, providing a combined thrust of 4,800 kgf (47 kN or 10,600 lbf) for 10 seconds before they were jettisoned. The plane rode up a rail for about 25 metres, by which time it was going fast enough for the aerodynamic flight controls to keep it flying straight.

The plane took off and was guided almost to the bomber's altitude using radio control from the ground, with the pilot taking control right at the end to point the nose in the right direction, jettison the plastic nosecone and pull the trigger. This fired a salvo of rockets (either 33 R4M or 24 Henschel Hs 217), at which point the plane flew up and over the bombers. After running out of fuel the plane would then be used to ram the tail of a bomber, with the pilot ejecting just before impact to parachute to the ground.

Despite its apparent complexity, the design had one decisive advantage over the competitors — it eliminated the necessity to land an extremely fast rocket aircraft at an airbase that, as the history of the Me 163 demonstrated, was extremely vulnerable against air raids.