AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 187 / 347

Plate 187 of 347 · Second World War · Vertically launched rocket interceptor

Bachem Ba 349A Natter

Ba 349A Natter, painted as Bachem Ba 349A Natter, the only original survivor, held by the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and stored at its Paul E. Garber Facility, Suitland, Maryland: a single-seat, vertically launched rocket interceptor of 1945, built largely of wood, with a Walter HWK 109-509 rocket motor in the tail, short straight wings spanning 3.60 m, a cruciform tail with a lower fin and a framed cockpit hood, shown level on a timber cradle in flight configuration with the launch boosters jettisoned and the nose cap off to show the honeycomb of 24 rocket tubes: dark green nose and forward fuselage, worn through to the plywood round the nose rim and lower flanks, a blue-grey hood, light grey-green rear fuselage, wings and tail, and a black swastika outlined in white on the fin (shape from the Bachem works drawing BP 20A of March 1945 checked against photographs of this aircraft).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as Bachem Ba 349A Natter, the only original survivor, held by the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and stored at its Paul E. Garber Facility, Suitland, Maryland: a single-seat, vertically launched rocket interceptor of 1945, built largely of wood, with a Walter HWK 109-509 rocket motor in the tail, short straight wings spanning 3.60 m, a cruciform tail with a lower fin and a framed cockpit hood, shown level on a timber cradle in flight configuration with the launch boosters jettisoned and the nose cap off to show the honeycomb of 24 rocket tubes: dark green nose and forward fuselage, worn through to the plywood round the nose rim and lower flanks, a blue-grey hood, light grey-green rear fuselage, wings and tail, and a black swastika outlined in white on the fin (shape from the Bachem works drawing BP 20A of March 1945 checked against photographs of this aircraft). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (787 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (Ba 349A); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Ba 349A Natter modelled here.

History

The Ba 349A Natter

By the summer of 1944 the American bomber streams over Germany were more than the Luftwaffe’s fighters could stop, and the Air Ministry asked for cheap point-defence interceptors that could be built quickly from simple materials. Erich Bachem, formerly technical director at Fieseler, proposed the BP 20: a small, mostly wooden aircraft that would be fired straight up from a launch tower, climb to the bombers under rocket power, attack them with a salvo of rockets from its nose, and then break apart so that its pilot could come down by parachute. The Air Ministry turned it down, but after Bachem won the support of Heinrich Himmler the decision was reversed within a day, and the SS ordered production at Bachem’s works at Waldsee in Württemberg.

The Natter, or adder, was built largely of glued and nailed wood by woodworking firms, with a Walter rocket motor of the kind used in the Me 163 Komet in its tail and four solid-fuel boosters on its sides, which burned out and fell away seconds after launch. Its short, straight wings had no ailerons; it was steered by its tail surfaces, under an autopilot for the climb, until the pilot took over near the target. On 3 November 1944 an unpowered Natter was towed to about 3,000 m behind a Heinkel He 111 near Neuburg an der Donau for the first gliding flight, and on 22 December the first unmanned vertical launch was made from the Heuberg training area near Stetten am kalten Markt.

On 1 March 1945 the test pilot Lothar Sieber made the first crewed vertical launch at Heuberg. Soon after leaving the tower the Natter pitched over onto its back, its cockpit hood came off, and it dived into the ground some kilometres away, killing Sieber. Further unmanned launches followed, and a small operational group was formed to defend southern Germany with Natters fired from wooden towers, but the Allied armies arrived before any was used against a bomber. About 36 were built. Four were captured by American troops at St. Leonhard im Pitztal in Austria in May 1945, and one of them is the only original Natter to survive.

This airframe

Ba 349A Natter, National Air and Space Museum

NASM A19600313000The airframe modelled

This Natter is one of the four captured by American troops at St. Leonhard im Pitztal in the Austrian Tyrol in May 1945. It was shipped to the United States for evaluation, examined at Freeman Field, Indiana, and passed from the US Air Force to the Smithsonian in 1949. It is the only original Natter in existence and is kept, in fragile condition and not on public show, at the Smithsonian’s Paul E. Garber facility at Suitland, Maryland; none is in a UK museum. The museum catalogues it as a Ba 349 B-1, though most histories describe it as an A-series machine. The model shows it as photographed by the museum, set level on a simple timber cradle like the one it rests on in store, with its wings fitted, which in store are detached: a dark green nose and forward fuselage worn through to the plywood round the rim of the nose and along the lower sides, a blue-grey cockpit hood, a light grey-green rear fuselage, wings and tail, and a black swastika outlined in white on the fin. The jettisonable nose cap is left off to show the honeycomb of 24 rocket tubes, as on the aircraft today, and the launch boosters are not shown. Its shape comes from Bachem’s own works drawing of March 1945 checked against photographs of this aircraft; the swastika has been photographed only on the starboard side, and the port side is assumed to match.

Where to see one

Not on charge

An original is held by the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in the United States, and reproductions are displayed in Germany.

All 347 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.