The Zeppelin Rammer (german: Rammjäger) was a design proposal by

Luftschiffbau Zeppelin Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH is a German aircraft manufacturing company. It is perhaps best known for its leading role in the design and manufacture of rigid airships, commonly referred to as ''Zeppelins'' due to the company's prominence. The name ...

intended to use

aerial ramming Aerial ramming or air ramming is the ramming of one aircraft with another. It is a last-ditch tactic in air combat, sometimes used when all else has failed. Long before the invention of aircraft, ramming tactics in naval warfare and ground warfare ...

against the allied bombers attacking

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Description

A rocket-powered small aircraft with straight, constant- chord wings, the aircraft was to be towed or carried aloft by another aircraft and released when near enemy bombers. Igniting a

Schmidding Wilhelm Schmidding from Bodenbach, Germany, was a World War II constructor of rocket engines used for RATO. Factories were in Schmiedeberg, and from summer 1943, in Buschvorwerk (Riesengebirge, Niederschlesien, today Krzaczyna). Engines * Sch ...

533 solid-fuel rocket engine, it was to make a first attacking pass using the 14 nose-mounted

R4M R4M, abbreviation for ''Rakete, 4 kilogramm, Minenkopf'' ( en, Rocket, 4 kilogram, Mine-head), also known by the nickname ''Orkan'' ( en, Hurricane) due to its distinctive smoke trail when fired, was a folding-fin air-to-air rocket used by the ...

55 mm rockets, before attempting to ram the enemy bomber's wings or tail.
Germany's Secret Weapons in World War II"> Germany's Secret Weapons in World War II
(excerpt via

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...

) - Wood, Paul & Ford, Roger, Zenith Imprint, 2000, , p. 144 The aircraft was expected to survive the ramming of the bomber, owing to the strength of its wing which had a steel leading edge. It would have landed on a retractable skid.Michel Van Pelt, ''Rocketing Into the Future: The History and Technology of Rocket Planes'', p. 100 Owing to the high risk for the pilot inherent in its operation this aircraft is sometimes referred to as a

suicide weapon A suicide weapon is a weapon designed to be used in a suicide attack, typically based on explosives. History Suicide weapons have been used both in conventional warfare, as well as in terrorism. In the Second Sino-Japanese War, Chinese used ...

,German Suicidal Aircraft
/ref> however it was originally not intended as such. After January 1945 an order for sixteen prototypes was placed but the Zeppelin factory was subsequently destroyed by bombers, ending all work on the project.

References

External links

Flying ramsZeppelin Rammer model (in Russian)
{{LZ Navbox Rocket-powered aircraft 1940s German experimental aircraft Research and development in Nazi Germany Abandoned military aircraft projects of Germany

Description

See also

References

External links