The Zeppelin Rammer, Another napkinwaffe concept for the lulz

The name refers to manufacturer Zeppelinwerke, so unfortunately this is not, as you might think at first glance, an aircraft intended to ram zeppelins. It is, however, a work of great lulz. Basically a proposal that never got past the "what if" stage. A rocket propelled glider, it would first be towed up to reach a bomber formation. The pilot then ignited a rocket engine, propelling it in true Wile E. Coyote fashion into a single pass spraying a bunch of rockets in the hopes of hitting something. On the second pass it would ram through the wing or tail of a bomber with its specially reinforced wings, and the pilot would then glide down to a landing now that his plane was out of fuel.

Of course, a picture is worth a thousands words.


Could not resist posting this after seeing that.

http://www.luft46.com/misc/zrammer.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin_Rammer

ramming was fairly common in WWII so sounds fine to me.

the weight from the reinforced wings will only allow this ramming fighter to attack much slower bombers

and what of the countermeasures that bombers will deploy?

Ah, teh 'Natter'.

Fired from vertical rails, ZLL-style point-defense as airfields were kinda getting bombed regular-ish.

And the front-end blew off by explosive bolts and hit the bombers on ballistic trajectories. The Rocket component was deemed too expensive and was issued its own parachute for recovery.

Strangely enough, the pilot was never intended to be harnessed into the plane, as it was hoped the deaccelleration of the rear compartment and the superior ballistic coefficient of the front would assure adaquate separation.

Countermeasures were to be saturated by several of these, each armed with a salvo of 44 R4M rockets.

Natter made it to trial-runs and manned flight-testing.
Bachen BP-20, ZLL trial flight: 1 March 1945.
Test Pilot: Lothar Sieber.

The designer then went-on to make Violins in Argentina until 1956. He died four years later in Germany due to cirrhosis.

At least, that's the story the Ian Allen publishing firm is selling

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Oh, wrong plane, Natter was the slightly more successful competitor.
The Zep-Rammer had 80mm of bulletproof glass and nearly 28mm of armor-plate in the leading-edges.

Unpowered handling-trials were cunducted in January of 1945. Hitler only ordered 16. No working models were ever produced.

Dis is lulz

iirc the USAAF did something like this too except it was jet-powered

Reinforced wings were common on WW2 fighters actually, especially in the USSR.