About This File
Bachem Ba349 Natter (Viper)
The disposable wooden rocket point defense fighter.
A poor man’s Me163? In some ways it was better.
In 1943 due to the increased allied bombing of Germany, the Reichsluftfehrstministerium (RLM, German Air Ministry.) issued a specification for a point defence fighter to counter the allied bomber threat.
Emphasis for this fighter being placed on ease of manufacture by an unskilled workforce, and to use the least amount of strategically important materials.
Dr Eric Bachem’s proposal consisted of an airframe of wood and glue construction, which made manufacture easy and low cost using unskilled labour using simple hand tools in small dispersed workshops. With just rudders and differential use of elevators for pitch and roll control and no landing gear to simplify construction even more. Only the Walter 109-509A rocket engine (As used in the Me-163.) being the only advanced component. This would parachute back to the ground after the mission. Apart from the engine the only other metal parts was the armour plate for the pilot and some of the control linkages.
Launching vertically, boosted for 10 seconds on four Scmidding 109-533 solid-fuel booster rockets, climbing automatically to altitude with the pilot taking control once the target comes into visual range.
Ba-349 and Me-163 comparison.
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Ba-349
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Me163
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Initial Climb
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42,500 fpm
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16,400 fpm
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Max Speed
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621 mph
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595 mph
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Empty Weight
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2,414 lbs
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4,206 lbs
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Max Weight
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5,004 lbs
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9,502 lbs
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Fuel Weight
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625 litres
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1386 litres
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Endurance
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4 min: 22 s
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7 min: 30 s
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Range
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36 miles
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22 miles
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Engine
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Both use HWK-509 A-1rated at 3748 lbs thrust
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Accident Rate
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Unknown-never active
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80% loss due to take off + Landing
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The Ba-349’s initial climb is a lot higher due to the extra thrust from the Scmidding 109-533 boosters also that the Ba-349 is half the weight and half the fuel load of the Me-163. The Me-163 was rather high-Tec and exotic (For the 1940’s) with some unforgiving handling characteristics. (A lot more Me-163 pilots were killed taking off and landing than ever were killed in combat.) Whereas the Ba-349 was more conventional and made mostly of wood and the take off and `landing’, though unorthodox, also with its own risks could almost be considered as automatic.
The Natter was considered a semi disposable fighter, with only the Walter 109-509A rocket engine being reused. Hitler and Goering envisioned fleets of these aircraft stationed close to valuable assets, defending the Reich from allied bombers and allow time for the Reich to change the tide of the war. In truth the allies had so destroyed the German infrastructure that producing and transporting even basic materials’ in large enough numbers would be close to impossible. In the end the Natter never got a chance to counter the threat it was designed to defend against with allied ground forces overrunning the Natter launch sites before any batteries became operational.
Thanks go to:
Steve Mills, (His Fi103 (V1) was the starting point for The Natter)
David Austin (For the panel from his T-28 Trojan)
Etienne Hallauer (For the authentic WWII era German flight instruments)