Fritz X strikes Roma

[besilarius]

First hit on Roma.

[Staggerwing]

Fritz X- The GBU-15's grandaddy.

[mirth]

Fritz X- The GBU-15's grandaddy.

Every guided weapon's granddaddy.

[Staggerwing]

For unpropelled (other than inertia and gravity, that is). For self-propelled we'd have to go with Grandpappy Henschel Hs 293.





(Note the Fieseler Fi 103 in the background as well.)

[mirth]

Lets not quibble. It will only invoke pontificating from Star :P

[Keunert]

fake fake fake!

read the history books you noobs. italy was an ally of germany. they did not fritz each other up.

::)

[Capn Darwin]

Yes read history... ;D

The Germans developed a series of stand-off weapons, e.g., the guided bomb Fritz X, which scored some early successes. On 9 September 1943, the Germans managed to sink the Italian battleship Roma and severely damage her sister ship, the Italia, while they were underway to surrender. The first one hit Roma amidship between 90 mm AA gun mounts, piercing deck and side, then exploded, halving her speed; the other one hit above deck between turret #2 and the conning tower. It caused an explosion that threw the turret outboard and affected the boilers, starting a major fire that detonated the main magazines. 1,353 lives were lost; only 596 survivors, most badly burned, were rescued.

[besilarius]

Not that I would like this to have happened, but the Roma class had rather poor deck armor, making them very vulnerable to bombing attack.  (Reportedly, the designer was assured that level bombers couldn't hit a moving ship.  Dive bombing was not known apparently.)

Would be interesting to know how the Fritz would work against good armor protection schemes like Yamato, Iowa, South Dakota.

[Staggerwing]

Capn, Take (almost) everything Keunert says with a grain of salt. He is a bit of a jokester who sometimes uses oblique references and puns.

Right Kenny?  :D

[GDS_Starfury]

Those could hurt an Iowa or Yamato.  3000 pounds of guided hurt.

[mirth]

Guide it through the deck armor and it would really hurt.

[besilarius]

Do you know if it had an Armor Peircing cap?  Or just rely on brute weight?

[Staggerwing]

Not sure but Fritz-Xs were used to disable HMS Warspite. One of the bombs actually made through all decking and exploded against the bottom of the double hull, knocking a huge hole in it and putting the ship out of commission for quite a while.

Her deck had 3" of armor so if we add the thickness of the other five decks that were penetrated we will know if the Yamato's deck could have held.


Here's some folks debating the question. It's where I got my info from, including their links.

http://warships1discussionboards.yuku.com/sreply/174298/Fritz-X-v-Yamato

[GDS_Starfury]

well its 2300 lbs of metal and 700 lbs of explosive so Im guessing it was armor peircing.

[mirth]

well its 2300 lbs of metal and 700 lbs of explosive so Im guessing it was armor peircing.

Guiding it is the key. I don't think the Roma was a particularly hard target to hit. Good luck hitting an Allied battleship underway and fully defended by AA and proper fighter cover.