Zeppelin Rammer

The Zeppelin Rammer was a theoretical concept for a German 'secret weapon' against the allied bomber fleets reigning supreme over Nazi Germany in the last years of World War II. The name is a combination of Zeppelinwerke and ramming.

A relatively conventional aircraft with straight, constant-chord wings, the plane was to be towed or carried aloft by another plane, then released upon contact with an enemy bomber fleet. Igniting a Schmidding 533 solid-fuel rocket engine, it was to make a first attacking pass, firing its 14 nose-cone mounted RAM 5cm rockets before the attacking the enemy bomber's wings and tails directly with a ramming attack." [http://books.google.com/books?id=wx7myVYenMcC&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=%22zeppelin+rammer%22&source=web&ots=trm78cAzaE&sig=h_6jDVA5oms4J62W1rAb57mMudw&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=12&ct=result Germany's Secret Weapons in World War II] (excerpt via Google Books) - Wood, Paul & Ford, Roger, Zenith Imprint, 2000, ISBN 0760308470, Page 144]

The plane was however not intended as a suicide weapon - instead, its wings, the main weapons of its ramming attack, were to be strongly reinforced with steel leading edges and metal tubing, and it was expected that the pilot would be able to survive the attack to land in any convenient field for the airplane to be reused later. However, no mockups or prototypes of the "Rammer" were ever built, and the lack of any official designation may have indicated that the concept was not taken fully seriously amongst the developers either.

References

External links

* [http://www.luft46.com/misc/zrammer.html Zeppelin Rammer] (example drawings on the 'Luft46.com' website. Accessed 2008-08-11.)