Deichselschlepp or 'Air Trailer'. A Fiesler Fi103 (V1 flying bomb) modified to be used as a towed auxiliary fuel tank for the Arado AR234.

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earl_of_lemonparty@reddit

Everything about this screams "terrible idea", even by late war Axis wonder weapon standards.

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Aleksandar_Pa@reddit

The very fact that you need to tow anything behind your fast jet is the proof your Wunderwaffle program has failed in its infancy.

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I dont think its that bad, the Ar 234 was functional without the extra fuel, just like any other plane with a drop tank ever was, and by the time it would get into combat the towed tank would be empty and jettisoned. Even if combat happened earlier, the whole point is that you can drop the drop tank anyway, lost fuel be damned.

And a conventional drop tank of this size wouldnt really fit, even two smaller ones that come up to the same volume.

Not that this tank was necessarily intended for the Ar 234, that was just the test aircraft.

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Aleksandar_Pa@reddit

And a conventional drop tank of this size wouldnt really fit, even two smaller ones that come up to the same volume.

Why wouldn't they fit? As a matter of fact, why wouldn't even one bomb fit inside the fuselage?

They simply designed an airframe too small to be of practical use as a bomber.

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TheCynicalBlue@reddit

It wasn't meant to be a bomber, it was a recon plane they strapped bombs to. It had no bomb sight in it or bomb bay.

Strapping bombs and a release mechanism to a plane is "easy". You could get junior engineering students to make you a design in a fortnight. Drop tanks are a different beast. You need to pump fuel to the right places , at the correct rates, make a system to quickly detach all of that while closing the fuel lines and shutting down the pumps, while fitting the original frame.

The problems that arise with that are, asymetric loads which can cause the plane to tumble and inproper sleaing of the fuel tanks in the plane causing a leak. Both are bad when you're trying to stay in the air, let alone a dog fight.

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Raguleader@reddit

My favorite example of "you can sling bombs off of just about anything if nobody stops you" is the Civil Air Patrol modifying Fairchild 24s to carry a single 100lb bomb in their undercarriage. Fairchild, when they found out about this, issued a maintenance memo suggesting that the best way to do this on that plane was "Don't", but if they were going to do it anyways, here's how to do it with the smallest chance of catastrophic failure.

Whenever folks talk about the bonkers desperate stuff the Germans did in 1945, I just point out the bonkers desperate stuff the US was doing in 1942.

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TheCynicalBlue@reddit

I dunno man, the coal power fighter ramjet that was meant to crash into bombers rather than having guns is fucking mental. It looks like a UFO.

It's insane even by the standards of the Me163 which melted its pilots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lippisch_P.13a

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Raguleader@reddit

To which I say... no you've got a good point there.

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builder397@reddit

In addition to the plumbing the other comment went in depth on, there is also wing area and weight. You can't just strap 2.5 tons of aviation fuel to each wing and hope the plane goes up at the end of the runway. And that's if the wings don't fall off from the weight alone. Even if you used all three bomb hard points, max bomb load is 1500kg, that isn't even halfway there. If you loaded each hardpoint with the biggest bomb or equivalent drop tank disregarding the max total weight you'd be at 2000kg. Also not even halfway there. Giving the drop tank it's own wings takes care of most of these problems.

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TheCynicalBlue@reddit

It was originally made for the Me 262 to turn it into a "bomber"/strike fighter.

Possibly my favourite source and description of the idea in the first 30 seconds. https://youtu.be/6VaLwo2DZKI?is=4zV-_U5hNgVQImfx

I imagine some clever sausage basically asked themselves "what if we take all the HE out of this aerodynamic death trap and filled it with petrol to keep our recon planes in the air for longer?". All the testing had been done by some pressumably unlucky fuckers, it's there, it's already aerodynamically shapped, and you can shove a lot of pertrol into it, if you cant detach it it will probably be empty by the time you arrive at base instead of being filled with 2000kg of high explosive, and best of all it means you dont get sent to fight the russians while you figure out how to get the less-shit idea working! Champagne all round.

Now get in the fucking plane Erich, it's fine, the allies wont shoot you our of the sky in your slow and unwieldy piece of shit.

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xoknight@reddit

Wouldnt the drag of this thing negate its entire purpose

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The_Duc_Lord@reddit (OP)

I'd reckon you'd use it to replace the fuel consumed to get to altitude and ditch it once it's empty.

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builder397@reddit

Nah, this thing carried 5 tons of fuel, no way you would use up this much on takeoff.

Besides, Ar 234 and some other planes had RATO units that would aid in takeoff and get ditched, which were much more economical.

Whole point was extending range, God knows how much and where they wanted to go with it. Or what plane would use this contraption, because the Ar 234 was only the test aircraft, but any number of planes could probably be modified to tow this trailer.

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MiguelMenendez@reddit

I’m pretty sure the engineer planned one guy, all the way to South America.

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Sandy_W@reddit

Now...in an ocean of idiocy, that's a bright shining light of a useful answer to a serious problem that the late-war Nazis had, "How do I get out of here before we're all killed?". Practical? Probably not. Maybe it'll work when you're desperate? Yeah. And it is a lot more available at a moment's notice from a Bavarian mountain hideout than a u-boat would be, which was the 'official' bugout method.

It would have to be at least two people, though. The guy who authorized it probably didn't know how to fly, or to navigate in the air either for that matter. He'd need a pilot.

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