Yes, Twitch I have seen some of them.
Henk
Probably the most potent was the Kawasaki KI.45 Toryu “Nick.” 
Anyone know if attempts were ever made to carry R4M’s on night fighters?
I havent, but the reason may have been that you have to get in awfully close in a WW2 Nightfighter before firing.
I wonder if Germany got its ideas from the Soviet RS-82?
Wilde Sau leader, Hajo Hermann never mentioned it in our conversation but I never directly asked if they were used either…
When you interviewed him, did he say anything about his idea’s to instigate suicide attacks on the allies?
Also, as a Lawyer he has defended such notables as David Irving and denies that Germany even started the War, did you ask him about this at all. I’m very interested in these things indeed and would be gratefull for any info.
I IIRC Hitler himself was very much against this suicide tactic. I believe in the end he decided the descision should be up to the individual.
How did you get to meet Herr Hermann, Twitch?
Hermann along with many top aces of many countries cused to come to the US for symposiums and functions with interested parties. I had access to him on a couple occassions the day before when I prety much asked him whatever I wished.
Sorry, we did not, however, discuss the possibility of night fighter suicide tactics.
I think he advocated day fighter suicide tactics. Did you ask him about denying the fact that germany started the war?
Hermann was pro suicide attacks on the bomber stream but Hanna Reitsch was quite radical on the subject. Both exported their ideas whenever possible. Only ardent Nazis liked the idea. Galland was against the idea and would hear none of it from Hermann. Even Hitler forbid Luftwaffe pilots to do kamikazis. There evolved Rammjaeger- “rammer” squadrons and the idea of ramming a heavily armored fighter into a bomber attempting to slice off the tail and bail out to survive was grim at best. In one op relatively green pilots used up a lot of Bf 109Ks and their lives in such attacks.
I would never ask anyone on the “other side” about starting the war. That is a disrespectful, leading question only to be answered if someone offered up their points of view on the subject of their own volition.
Its a pity you didnt ask him, I would have, not disrespectfull at all. In all I have read he is convinced that Germany didnt start the war. I would have liked to know why he thought this?
I am still searching for his reasons, any help is much obliged.
Info on the Sturmstaffel 1 unit home of the Rammjäger.
http://members.aol.com/Panzrbaer2/ss1.html
Interesting to note the armour was not placed in to aid ramming but to provide armour to the pilot.
The pilots of Sturmstaffel 1 flew FW 190 fighter aircraft modified with additional armor around the cockpit. This modification was later incorporated as a standard factory installation to the FW-190 series A-6, A-7, and A-8. The pilots initially wore specially-designed steel helmets, but these were found to be impractical during high-speed maneuvering.
Each pilot of Sturmstaffel 1 signed an oath that he would shoot down at least one bomber per mission or, as a last resort, ram an enemy bomber. Thus was born the Rammjäger (Ramming Fighters). In practice, there may have been only one case in which a Sturmstaffel 1 pilot intentionally rammed a bomber, but due to their close-in tactics, many unintentional collisions did occur.
Their death rates…
A total of 36 pilots flew with Sturmstaffel 1, a squadron which normally had 14 pilots on the roster at any given time. 30 of those pilots died in action, two have died since the war, and four survived to attend the reunion.
also from www.freenet.de/freenet/wissenschaft/ pm_specials/kamikaze/04.html
Suicide as war weapon for European a strange conception. When the aviator Hannah Reitsch tried to make Hitler tasty the employment of German Selbstmordschwadronen otherwise by any means the zimperliche dictator did not react rejecting. He regarded the Kamikaze employments of the Japanese as indication of almost despair.
Thus it approved only a “Rammjaeger” project in such a way specified, whose task was it to ram hostile airplanes with German machines. nevertheless so, the pilots would have Hitler’s appeasing thesis with the collision a chance to save itself with the parachute.
On 7 April 1945 120 ramming hunters started against 1800 US combat aircraft. A disaster: Only 15 hunters returned from the attack, from the remaining survived straight still 28 pilots. The American losses were with eight machines. Goebbels wrote into its diary: “the first employment of our ramming hunters did not lead to the success, which we had promised ourselves of it.”
The above source is a bit ropey.
From some sort of History DVD.
Berlin, 18 February 1943: In the sport palace realm propaganda Minister Goebbels swears the listeners in on the “total war”. But that is for the Germans already long cruel reality. For night the allied bomber fleets fly and destroy night into the realm area a city after the other one.
The Air Force guidance reacts with the structure of night interception relays. First the German pilots without aids try to seek out the “flying fortresses”. Among Colonels Kammhuber headlights do not point the way to the hunters the “light night interception” are crowned from success nevertheless. With the “led night interception” a fighter controller from the soil leads pursuit over radio. Finally the hunters are equipped with radar, until during the operation “Gomorrha”, a series of air raids on Hamburg in July 1943, which allied 30 cm long tin-foil tapes throw off, which make a radar detection impossible.
Colonel Hajo Hermann counters with the “wild sow”: Night interception without guidance and without consideration for the own Flak. Eyes and instinct of the pilots are now the most important night-vision devices. Parallel the Germans develop the SN-2-Geraet “deer antlers” the notionless British against the tin-foil tapes lose on 30 April 1944 at one night of 95 bombers.
In the east the Russians advance, in the west fail the Ardennenoffensive. Ramming hunters are to get the bombers of the sky. With the spectacular command “Elbe 45 2,000 ramming hunters are to ascend at one blow” in March '. But it is missing at pilots and machines, so that on 7 April only 130 ramming hunters are used, that ram 24 bombers.
The film shows singular, partially unpublished material, high-decorated pilots and many other eye-witnesses.
Found World War Two Fighters Forum. Here http://ww2fighters.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=1584&pid=10114&mode=threaded&show=&st=& the site is full of gimps mind…
check out this for a signature (a guy called “TimeBandit”)
Oh surrrre! It’s all fun and games, until someone gets a wing blown off!
Or this from the signature of “Ramjeager”!!!
see WW2FF
My lifestyle determines my deathstyle - Metallica
Those of you, who are interested in playing games or talking to people who really know their stuff on planes may wish to give them a whirl.
Edited for personal reasons.
Twitch wrote:
I would never ask anyone on the “other side” about starting the war. That is a disrespectful, leading question only to be answered if someone offered up their points of view on the subject of their own volition.
How is that twitch? Historians do it all the time. Otherwise we would have pretty slanted views on the start of all wars wouldn’t we?
I ask aces questions of air combat and details about their aircraft and weaponry. “Did you dump flaps in tight turning combat with the 109? How many cranks did it take to raise the wheels with the manual retractor? What particular enemy aircraft did you not like to go up against and why?” These are the things that readers care about- the esoterica of air combat. It’s a rather moot point to ask question we already know the answer to.
True, although how many cranks doesn’t really bother me that much, but a person whose beliefs are so at odds with what we believe should surely be asked why he believes such things.
That’s YOUR choice. It wasn’t mine when we talked. It had nothing to do with Wilde Sau tactics.
Well well well, 1000ydstare I think and I know that if we all thought alike it would be bull. Now I do not think that we all are the perfect person on this earth and we are not have the right to judge anyone because we are not perfect, or are we all? No, we are not.
That is what makes everyone of us who we are and no one can change this.
Henk
Well, i didn’t suggest you judge him. You can just ask questions. He may be able to put forward a perfectly logical reason. Maybe he believes that teh Poles kicked it off, or International Zionism or the space goats. Who knows.
Just ask him on his views. Yes we are all different. But like I say I would have been more interested in his views on the start of the war than how many cranks to lift a flap.
Besides which there will be enough preserved aircraft lying around that you can go and test how many cranks to lift a flap. Things such as the view that alien space goats started WW2 will be lost when the person whose mind they are in dies.
Geez Henk, nobody gets it. Just forget it man! Why bother? Everything on this board gets picked apart obsessively simply for the sake of it. I interview the aces of Russian, Germany, Britain and the US for my needs with my questions about combat, not politics. But it seems that’s not good enough. If anyone else desires to ask aces questions go ahead. Oops! Many are dead now so you can’t but I have their tapes. Hehehe!