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Aviation History
1950
1950 - 0840.PDF
54O FLIGHT, 4 May 1950 HICH-ALTITUDE INTERCEPTION What the Defending Fighter Must Face : Are Guided Missiles the Answer ? By G. MclNTOSH SOME experts hold that total destruction of all enemybombers is the only possible defence in an atomicwar. Whether this is true or not is beyond the scope of this small venture in crystal-gazing, as the published data is too scanty; but, as it is as well to err on the safe side, we will take it that every enemy bomber must be stopped. I have assumed that the bomb will be delivered by a bomber, for the following reasons. It has been calculated that to produce one atomic bomb requires the same effort as is involved in making an equivalent destructive load of normal high - explosive bombs, namely, about 2,000 tons. Hence, even a country as powerful as America is not going to be able to scatter them indiscriminately. If this is true, the stockpile at the start of a war would consist of hundreds, not thousands of bombs, and it would take at least a year to replace them. This is, of course, merely a rough guess, but even so it is accurate enough to indicate the probable use that would be made of the bombs. Each bomb would have to do the maximum amount of damage to the enemy, by destroying either towns or vital installations. The latter seems most likely, since during the last war it was con- sidered that the bomber effort would have been better used against things like oil, or transport, rather than in area- bombing of towns. When it comes to actually dropping the bomb, one again has to do guessing, as reports are so varied, some saying the atom bomb must be accurately placed to be effective (at Nagasaki the destruction is sup- posed to have been localized by small hills) and others the reverse. If the first view is true, and the bomb must be accurately aimed, it is not a job for rockets or robot- navigated missiles, and the only sure means of delivery is a piloted aircraft. Working on this assumption, the next thing is to decide on the type of bomber we would have to deal with if, in a few years' time, this country was being attacked by some power which had occupied the whole of Europe. Since the enemy would have a much longer perimeter to defend, he would not be able to provide a complete defence screen, so that by means of intruders, rather like the "Rats" in the recent Foil exercises, we could force his bomber airfields far enough away to prevent the use of small supersonic bombers. The bombers would then be rather after the style of the B-47 Stratojet, cruising some- where about 50,000 feet at speeds just below the speed of sound, and being capable of short bursts at supersonic speeds. The bomber would not, one imagines, fly faster than sound all the time, as the fuel consumption would be prohibitive; but it is quite on the cards that after- burning, or something of the kind, could be kept in reserve to boost the speed. Having thus forecast the type of bomber likely to be seen in three or four years' time, we will now see what it means in terms of interception. As the bomber will be flying at over 40,000 feet, the earliest possible radar warning will be given when it is roughly 150 miles away. This distance may be increased if use is made of airborne radar warning-posts—rather on the lines of the special Constellation the Americans have developed—but as this might be annulled by aircraft loss or unserviceability we must assume that the ground warning system is the only one operating. I am also going to neglect bombers flying at lower altitudes, since they are much easier targets from IN our issue of April 6th, WjC. £. Colon, ' D.F.C., A.F.C., A.F.R.Ae.S.. discussed the new problems of defence with which technicians and tacticians are faced as a result of the development of the high-speed, high-altitude jet bomber. He concluded that interception methods as we have known them in the past are largely a dead ktter, and that a new approach must be made—perhaps by the use of the ground-to-air guided missile. In the present contribution—which is not in any way a commentary on the previous article—another writer gives his opinions on this controversial subject. He, too, thinks that guided missiles may be the solution, and suggests some design features the interception point of view. If the bomber is spotted at 150 miles, then the warning period is only 15 minutes, in which time it must be identified, its course plotted, action decided on by the defending controller and fighters scrambled and vectored; then, finally, the fighter has to shoot the bomber down. All this seems rather a lot to get through without a hitch in such a short time—rather too much if there are to be no mistakes, especially where one slip in the chain of action is likely to mean the end of a town the size of Coventry. Taking the individual items in this time-table and looking at them more closely, the narrow margins allowed if the operation is to be a success become even more evident. Control, I believe, requires about five minutes between sighting and the scrambling of the fighters, if they are to have any idea of the enemy's intentions. With the high fuel-consumption of jet fighters, and even more so for possible future rocket intercepters, there is not much chance of this figure being cut down, as the defenders will not have sufficient endurance to allow them to stand off while the controller decides where they are to go. They can be alerted earlier, however, so that as soon as the order to scramble is given they will be off. At the moment we have fighters which can climb to 40,000 feet in eight minutes, so that in a year or two specialized intercepters? using rocket boosters should be able to get to 50,000 feet in five minutes from take-off. By this time the bomber is 50 miles from the coast, where it could be intercepted if the fighter had a climbing speed of 600 m.p.h. Not too fantastic a figure at the present rate of development!. Adding those factors, we find that the fighter has 50 miles and five minutes for the kill, so now we will see what this entails. Manoeuvrability Limited In the past, one of the fighter's main advantages over the bomber has been its greater manoeuvrability; the balance of fire-power and speed has swayed to and fro, but the fighter has always managed to keep ahead in manoeuvrability. Now, however, the bomber is winning a lead in manoeuvrability by flying at high altitude, where the fighter is limited to normal accelerations of roughly the same order as its target. This limitation is due to the convergence of the stalling and compressibility limits as altitude increases. Though this situation is likely to be eased slightly when supersonic fighters come into service, the increase may not be enough to give the fighter the margin it needs to guarantee a kill, for the attacking air- craft has to turn '' inside'' the target to keep it in its sights, thus suffering a higher acceleration. To keep in its sights a high-speed bomber in' a 2g turn, the fighter would have to apply up to $g in a stern attack, and some-, thing like &g in a head-on attack. The g restriction crops up:.> again if the first attack fails and the fighter has to go round again, as the fighter has to make a wide, sweeping turn which means that the next attack will have to be made twenty miles farther on. This would not matter much if the fighter was practically able to guarantee a kill at the first attempt^ but, even with improved gun-sights this is not very likely" to be certain. If radar gun-laying was used the accuracy- would probably be greater, but this increase in accuracy would only be effective if there was sufficient fire-power to saturate the target area, and could be used only from a dead-steady firing platform. It would be unfortunate for
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