Rocket NOBA?

[witchbottles]

I have recently come across two separate references both identifying more than one use of Wurzkopf rockets in fire support of units in the Kurland Pocket fired from destroyers and minesweepers of the Kriegsmarine. anyone ever contemplate a SSR use of Rocket NOBA?

KRL, jon H

 

[von Marwitz]

I have recently come across two separate references both identifying more than one use of Wurzkopf rockets in fire support of units in the Kurland Pocket fired from destroyers and minesweepers of the Kriegsmarine. anyone ever contemplate a SSR use of Rocket NOBA?

KRL, jon H

"Wurzkopf" rocket? Never heard of that.

Please describe the weapon in more detail. Then I might come up with something.

von Marwitz

 

[Paul M. Weir]

While NOBA has special rules for low angle fire and direction, due to the different nature of Rocket OBA from any source, I would advise against treating Naval sourced Rocket OBA differently except with regards to the Observer. Compared to gun artillery, WW2 rocket fire is relatively short ranged, almost always fired between roughly 30° and 60° (IE medium to high angle) so will not have the same problem with shallow angle 'dead zones' and is less accurate and more dispersed, regardless of the source.

Once you have SSRed the Observer, I would treat it as normal land based Rocket OBA.

 

[Justiciar]

US PT Boats were also armed with Mk 10 rockets. Not that that helps the OP much, just rather suggesting here they were about.

Also Russian BKA boats used Katy in direct fire role on the Danube and in Budapest.

 

[witchbottles]

"Wurzkopf" rocket? Never heard of that.

Please describe the weapon in more detail. Then I might come up with something.

von Marwitz

spelling was wrong here it is though....

30cm WURFKORPER M FL 50

surprised rather that you are unaware of such weapons.



also came in a 32 cm variety and a 38cm variety.

KRL, Jon H

 

[von Marwitz]

spelling was wrong here it is though....

30cm WURFKORPER M FL 50

surprised rather that you are unaware of such weapons.



also came in a 32 cm variety and a 38cm variety.

KRL, Jon H

Jon,

I was confused by "Wurzkopf" rocket, which would literally translate into something like tree-trunk-head rocket. So I was intrigued by you having come up with some sort of "Wunderwaffe" I had not heard of...

There are some late war German rocket launchers or multiple rocket launchers that are little known. Some of these were mounted on small naval vessels or Fährprahm or Artilleriefährprahm type vessels. These rocket launchers were mostly intended for AA purposes though. One of them was a rocket pulling up a steel cable of considerable length that was intended to be raised into the path of low flying aircraft attacking the vessel. The cable would (hopefully) hit the wings or other parts of the aircraft and slice into them. There were also single tube 8.6cm rocket launchers (IIRC) that propelled rockets with a comparable impact like a 88mm AA gun AA round.

Another multiple rocket launcher of which I dimly remembered a picture of it mounted on a Fährprahm was the Flak-Raketenwerfer "Föhn". There is a picture of one of these on the height directly above the Remagen Bridge.

Finally, I remembered having assisted in the translation on an article by Torsten Cumberland Jacobsen on the 21cm Raketen-Abschußgerät (RAg) M42 from Danish into German, which is closely related to the 38cm RAg M43. These were rocket launchers with quite a massive payload to be used vs. landing craft and submarines. These rockets were hard hitters, however, they were used land-to-sea and not sea-to-land.

The 30cm Wurfkörper M FL 50 is one type of rocket for the German rocket lauchers well known as "Nebelwerfer". That particular type was loaded with Flammöl (thus FL), i.e. the liquid used for flamethrowers. It was not uncommon to load Nebelwerfer batteries with two thirds of its rockets having a HE payload and on third of the flamethrower-liquid (i.e. FL type).

I am not too deeply informed about the history of the German Kriegsmarine, its units and operations. I was aware of the Kurland pocket receiving significant NOBA support but I did not know that this included Nebelwerfer-like rocketry.

An interesting fact: Despite it being late 1944 or even 1945, the Kurland pocket received extended NOBA support by various heavy German surface vessels such as "Prinz Eugen", "Admiral Scheer", "Admiral Hipper", and "Lützow". NOBA support of these heavy cruisers around 15,000 tons included 8x 8 inch guns and 12x 4.1 inch guns. During operations around 20. Nov. 1944, "Admiral Scheer" fired 514 heavy rounds on land over the course of two days, 43 of which were rated direct/critical hits. Quite unbelievable that such large units were able to operate in the balitc close to the coast effectively so late in the war and quite telling about the ineptitude of the Russian airforce and Russian submarines to counter this. Imagine what happened to Japanese vessels of that size during such times.

von Marwitz

 

[witchbottles]

Jon,

I was confused by "Wurzkopf" rocket, which would literally translate into something like tree-trunk-head rocket. So I was intrigued by you having come up with some sort of "Wunderwaffe" I had not heard of...

There are some late war German rocket launchers or multiple rocket launchers that are little known. Some of these were mounted on small naval vessels or Fährprahm or Artilleriefährprahm type vessels. These rocket launchers were mostly intended for AA purposes though. One of them was a rocket pulling up a steel cable of considerable length that was intended to be raised into the path of low flying aircraft attacking the vessel. The cable would (hopefully) hit the wings or other parts of the aircraft and slice into them. There were also single tube 8.6cm rocket launchers (IIRC) that propelled rockets with a comparable impact like a 88mm AA gun AA round.

Another multiple rocket launcher of which I dimly remembered a picture of it mounted on a Fährprahm was the Flak-Raketenwerfer "Föhn". There is a picture of one of these on the height directly above the Remagen Bridge.

Finally, I remembered having assisted in the translation on an article by Torsten Cumberland Jacobsen on the 21cm Raketen-Abschußgerät (RAg) M42 from Danish into German, which is closely related to the 38cm RAg M43. These were rocket launchers with quite a massive payload to be used vs. landing craft and submarines. These rockets were hard hitters, however, they were used land-to-sea and not sea-to-land.

The 30cm Wurfkörper M FL 50 is one type of rocket for the German rocket lauchers well known as "Nebelwerfer". That particular type was loaded with Flammöl (thus FL), i.e. the liquid used for flamethrowers. It was not uncommon to load Nebelwerfer batteries with two thirds of its rockets having a HE payload and on third of the flamethrower-liquid (i.e. FL type).

I am not too deeply informed about the history of the German Kriegsmarine, its units and operations. I was aware of the Kurland pocket receiving significant NOBA support but I did not know that this included Nebelwerfer-like rocketry.

An interesting fact: Despite it being late 1944 or even 1945, the Kurland pocket received extended NOBA support by various heavy German surface vessels such as "Prinz Eugen", "Admiral Scheer", "Admiral Hipper", and "Lützow". NOBA support of these heavy cruisers around 15,000 tons included 8x 8 inch guns and 12x 4.1 inch guns. During operations around 20. Nov. 1944, "Admiral Scheer" fired 514 heavy rounds on land over the course of two days, 43 of which were rated direct/critical hits. Quite unbelievable that such large units were able to operate in the balitc close to the coast effectively so late in the war and quite telling about the ineptitude of the Russian airforce and Russian submarines to counter this. Imagine what happened to Japanese vessels of that size during such times.

von Marwitz

no problems, thanks for some feed in info. Now I have several resources that identify rocket fire used in direct fire mode from amphib to shore targets fired from LST, from LVT, from LCP(L), from LCM, in short, from a variety of beach assault craft by the allies vs Japanese defenses . Since we have many LC and amphibs as counters, even a slew of armed machines, anyone ever think of providing rocket SA to them to simulate the direct fire use of such against shore targets?

KRL, Jon H

 

[Vinnie]

I don't think you can class the various allied rock etc armed landing craft as "direct fire" weapons. They were pretty much undirected carpet coverage weapon systems.

 

[witchbottles]

I don't think you can class the various allied rock etc armed landing craft as "direct fire" weapons. They were pretty much undirected carpet coverage weapon systems.

overall I would tend to agree. If you were considering say, a pre game bombardment SSR to depict LC launched rocket OBA - how would you handle the inherent inaccuracies of these things? One idea that came to mind for me would be like a BR:T naval bombardment, a 2 or 3 or 5 hex blast area, but have the possibility of having immune hexes within it, similar to a normal pre- game bombardment; or an automatic inaccurate and full drift on the blast area would be another. Then I got to thinking about the extended blast areas of NOBA, and why, i.e. the "over and short" rounds. So I thought along the lines of how one could possibly work with that to illustrate the rocket NOBA inaccuracies in a "battery fire" pre - landing situation.

I am not at all sure how it all sums up, but it is indeed interesting.

KRL, Jon H

 

[Kevin Kenneally]

An interesting fact: Despite it being late 1944 or even 1945, the Kurland pocket received extended NOBA support by various heavy German surface vessels such as "Prinz Eugen", "Admiral Scheer", "Admiral Hipper", and "Lützow". NOBA support of these heavy cruisers around 15,000 tons included 8x 8 inch guns and 12x 4.1 inch guns. During operations around 20. Nov. 1944, "Admiral Scheer" fired 514 heavy rounds on land over the course of two days, 43 of which were rated direct/critical hits. Quite unbelievable that such large units were able to operate in the balitc close to the coast effectively so late in the war and quite telling about the ineptitude of the Russian airforce and Russian submarines to counter this. Imagine what happened to Japanese vessels of that size during such times.

von Marwitz

The Russian Navy in the Baltic (subs) were not that good, even that late in the war of navigating through the minefields (Germans, Russian and Finnish), so they kept close to the deeper waters. As you explained, the Russian Air Force was a total joke still; no strategic air arm and the tactical aircraft were very tightly controlled.

As for the Admiral Hipper class ships, they did provide good support when they were available, but then again, the German Kriegsmarine (surface units) was considered the "bastard children" because of the amount of logistics support they required. I'm glad that the ships helped to contribute to the support of the land forces. I have always liked the Hipper class Heavy Cruiser and thought they were better than the British Heavy Cruisers.