the "Kurt" device?

witchbottles

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Could the Luftwaffe have pulled off a repeat performance of Operation "Chastise" in 1943 with their reverse engineering and improvement of the dambuster bomb? The Kurt device as it was code named was an improved version with a more reliable trigger for its warhead at depth, and a rocket-assisted bounce. Apparently, Churchill feared just this - and ordered many studies within a month of the Eider See dam beach from "Chastise" - designed to prevent the LW from counter-attacking in a similar manner and devastating many low lying areas along England's rivers. Yet the "Kurt" project was canceled after FliegerKorps X proved in the Aegean the effectiveness of the rocket assisted TV guided bombs.

Was this yet another of Hitler's blunders with the LW? how damaging would a pair or a trio of severe breaches in key dams in the UK in mid-1943?
 

witchbottles

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Paul Brickhill mentions it in his book "The DamBusters" - which made me look a bit farther -as some of Brickhill's information in that book is not accurate- mostly concerning how the Lancs devised methods of altitude tracking and then aiming devices, along with who was responsible for considering this idea ( not the engineer, but Air Ministry, devised the plan itself.) - I do not think those inaccuracies were effective of Brickhill's research- rather, they were a by-product of the material still being classified by the Air Ministry at the time of his writing the book.

Martin Shaw's BBC documentary tracing the path of the Lancs that night covers the device in more detail, and Churchill's absolute insistence on protection from a reprisal raid series by the LW :


https://books.google.com/books?id=6ZcACwAAQBAJ&pg=PA175&lpg=PA175&dq=Luftwaffe+bouncing+bomb&source=bl&ots=kqnRfQi_yw&sig=SUpLcQ4yy2j3yu-N-GktvfBn3nY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjT3u2N5c3ZAhVM12MKHVK8DycQ6AEIXDAL#v=onepage&q=Luftwaffe bouncing bomb&f=false

German bouncing bomb[edit]

A German official with the bomb recovered from the wreckage of Flt Lt Barlow's Lancaster
After Operation Chastise, German forces discovered an Upkeep bomb intact in the wreckage of the Lancaster commanded by Flt Lt Barlow, which had struck high tension cables at Haldern, near Rees, Germany and crashed; the bomb had not been released and the aircraft had crashed on land, firing none of the detonation devices.[45] Subsequently, a 385-kilogram (849 lb) version of Upkeep, code-named "Kurt" or "Emil", was built at the Luftwaffe's Erprobungsstelle, or "test site", on Germany's Baltic coast at Travemünde, one in a network of four such establishments in Nazi Germany. The importance of back-spin was not understood and trials by a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 proved to be dangerous to the aircraft as the bomb matched the speed at which it was dropped. Attempts to rectify this with booster rockets failed and the project was discontinued in 1944.



Flower, Stephen. (2004). Barnes Wallis' bombs : Tallboy, Dambuster & Grand Slam. Tempus.

Murray, Iain (2009). Bouncing-Bomb Man: the Science of Sir Barnes Wallis. Haynes.

(A couple of reference works on the subject)

there is some discussion of KG 200 in here also:

TITLE
Kommando
SUBTITLE
German Special Forces of World War Two
AUTHOR
James Lucas
PUBLISHER
Frontline Books
PRINT PUB DATE
2014-02-24

From Bouncing Bombs to Concorde: The Authorised Biography of Aviation Pioneer Sir George Edwards OM

Robert Gardner, Sir John Major
The History Press, Jun 22, 2006

KG 200

J. D. Gilman, John Clive
Avon Books, 1978

KG 200: the true story

P. W. Stahl
Jane's, 1981


Those should suffice fairly well in describing the "Kurt" rocket assisted bouncing bomb and its tested release from FW-109D models.

KRL ,Jon H
 
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