Warriors killed in battle went to Walhalla, where they would drink and fight all day.
Those that died of disease and old age etc went to Hel (hell), a rather miserable place.
The Luftwaffe expended a large amount of their Bf 109K models in this operation. Both Hajo Hermann and Hanna Reitch were proponents of suicide missions.
Yeah the tiny Hanna had some pretty extremist ideas.
The semi-kamikaze ( or kamikaze depending your opinion) aircraft proposed for Hanna and Skorzeny was the Fieseler Fi 103 Reichenberg IV
a manned version of the V1 bomb. The nose in this aircraft carry nearly a ton of HE:
Teorically the pilot had some chances to bail out before put his aircraft in the aatcking shallow dive, but those are few if any.
The Reichenberg IV was not the only desing for this dramatic purpose, check this from Daimler Benz.
Daimler Benz DB Project “F”
Yes, that were some crazy ideas. The Fieseler Fi 103 Reichenberg IV were totaly crazy. I would never fly in such a flying bomb. The Daimler Benz ideas were also not so good. With the time and technology wasted on this they could have made the other aircraft in greater numbers, but you can not say that these thing are not interesting.
I love to read about these things that you never normaly see.
Great pics and info Panzerknacker and everyone who posted here.
Henk
Little more here…
GERMAN ‘KAMIKAZES’
On April 7, 1945, the first German ‘kamikaze’ attacks on Allied aircraft took place west of Hannover. Driven by desperation, the volunteer pilots in their ME-109s fired their cannons at point blank range into a stream of American bombers and then ramming them. Twenty-three bombers were destroyed this way and another twenty-eight shot down by the escorting jet fighters during the battle. On the eastern Front, twelve Luftwaffe pilots, led by Rudolf Escherich from the Fighter Squadron ‘Udet’ volunteered to form a suicide mission to crash their planes into bridges spanning the river Oder. The mission was a failure, many of the planes being shot down before they reached the target and others failed to find the bridges as the area was blanketed with smoke. With the Red Army across the Oder, further suicide missions were abandoned.
Link… http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/1944.html#lesser_known_1944
Nice info Panzer.
Yes the german kamikazes are less know that the japanese, but the useless and I might ad… idiotic sacrifice was the same. :?
I seen something else last night… its not quite “kamikazee” but close. The Germans used speed boats packed with explosives… and these were to of been driven into the Allied armies as they tried to cross the Roer River… and when they were erecting pontoon bridges. The Germans would bail out and the boat would coast till it hit home.
I thought that was interesting.
That metod was also used by the italians with grat succes.