in some book or other, i came across a brief account, or rather a mention, of this supposedly happening. An Il-2 group decided to be original, hooked up cables with grappling hooks at the end to their planes and ran them across a field-full of german communication lines, thereby ripping the crap out of the wires. the planes then proceeded to, according to the account, “hide”. when engineers showed up to fix the mess, they got torn up as bad as the wires but in a more conventional way involving the il-2s’ guns.
now, i love the story but i’m having doubts as to just how true it was. it’s not that i don’t think you can do the grappling hook trick. there shoudl’ve been planty of hard points to attach a cable to. the il-2 is already ridiculously heavy so pulling a small hook through a plowed field or some meadow wouldn’t bring it down. even if the thing did snag, it’s just be a matter of using a weak enough cable that it’d act as a fuse of sorts and break before anything bad happened. you could probably even just use a plain rope and have the rear gunner holding the end.
what i do have doubts about is the hiding part. how does an il-2 hide? it’s not going to land nearby and take off when a truck rolls onto the field. it’s not a dive bomber so it’s not going to climb to 3000 meters and come down at a 90 degree angle to get a jump on the enemy. i guess there could be low visibility letting it hide at 500 meters or so but then it probably wouldn’t see the enemy either. They could just circle nearby but then they’d probably be seen before they saw a truck coming. The only thing i can think of that would make sense is if they tore up the wires, left on a patrol or for some specific target and caught the repair crew on the way back or another flight finished the job.
No I don’t! You just have to dig up where you read that one. I have a few references on the topic I read recently that included some fascinating anecdotes about unusual uses for the Shturmovik. Several involve the use of Il-2 as a flying Bus crammed with personnel in the undercarriage! They disabled the undercarriage-up lever in the cockpit to prevent crushing the poor passengers.
The other tale I recall was the novel method of shooting up some German Aerodromes at the end of WWII. They would actually land the Il-2 then taxi up to the target, launch rockets and then fly away again. This seems a little foolhardy to me but it guaranteed better accuracy.
Finally I know there is some controversy over whether Maritime Il-2 ever carried torpedoes. Apparently not - unless you can proove otherwise.
All this I know… But sadly nothing of your tall story.
I could see if the commo wires were strung up off the ground- say between trees or poles or something. But dragging an anchor on the ground- man, seems like catching a good root would be enough to make the plane nose over… I dunno. Seems like one mistake and you’d have one heckuva emergency brake! [;)]
The hide part makes sense. I’ve seen helicopters “hide” by flying away and staying low, then come swooping back low and fast. i could see a plnae do that. Fly away at tree top level, get a few miles off, then bring it back around.
Of course, the Russians seemed to try some very unorthodox things, so who knows. I always heard stories of them dropping troops in deep snow without parachutes. Don’t know if it’s true, but I would’ve hated to have been the guy who tested the theory. “Oh, sorry comrade. We thought it was 10 meters of snow. Didn’t realize it was 10 centimeters.”
land to shoot at stuff? that one seems a bit odd. it probably wouldn’t be too unsafe if it’s a small airfield with no heavy A^3 since the place could take small arms fire but the problem i see here is that the plane would be pointing upwards while on its gear which means a) the missiles would fly high and b) you couldn’t really see anything out the front so it might be easier to aim it from the air. i think of this from lots of experience in il-2 the game whereby on landing back at the base i’d ‘drive around’ and try to blow up some of the buildings (i was bored!). let me tell you, it’s not as easy as it looks unless you’re 2 meters away from the target in which case you might as well just kamikaze into it in the first place. [:)] you sure it wasn’t just land, dispatch some sappers, grab them back up and take off?
as far as viability of the draggin anchor thing, it’s not as bad as it sounds. if it’s a plowed field, there shouldn’t be any roots or stuff to snag on besides the wires. and even if it does snag, i’m guessing the rope would break first or at least it should’ve been rigged up that way.
I don’t know about dragging a grappling hook across the ground . . . I tow gliders which involves a 200’ long rope attached to a tow hitch on the tailwheel spring. I’ve snagged the rope on tree limbs at the end of the runway and it’s been very exciting. This rope is designed to break at a pretty low force with a weak link to keep from damaging either the glider or the tug. I’ve almost stalled before when the rope snagged and it didn’t break. The glider while on tow can easily over power the tugs control authority and make the tug uncontrollable if it gets too far out of position. So dragging a grapple along the ground seems dubious at best. Banner tow planes use the same hitch we have with a grapple at the end. They snag the banner which has it end held aloft on poles. They avoid putting the hook on the ground. Check the NTSB files for banner tow accidents while picking up the banner. Even under very controlled conditions its a near deal.
skybolt: what are you towing the gliders with? i wouldn’t disagree with you of course since you have the closest to direct experience to this but even if dragging a hook across a plowed field is suicidal it may still have been done. i mean this is from the same people whose standard infantry anti-tank weapon was ~15mm and required being 30 yards from the tank. plus, they might’ve only done it once and its effectiveness was blown out of proportion for propaganda.
could a phone cable be torn if the other end of the rope was held by hand?
The Moroccan aerobatic patrol “La Patrouille Verte” takes off with their planes ( little prop planes, I think they are Siai Marchetti, but I can verify if needed ) tied from one wing end to the wing end or another one, the other wing end to the wing end of another one, etc. I don’t remember at this time of many they are, but must be around 6-7. So they take off altogether, make several figures then separate breaking the ropes. I saw them do it, it’s very odd.
During WWII it was not uncommon to hear the ordes or request for volunteers to “let’s try this”, the bouncing damb bomb comes to mind. Also Dolittle, Enola Gay and etc. …stay[8D]
I tow with a PA-25 Pawnee crop duster, and a PA-18 Super Cub. Definitely lighter aircraft to be sure, but you don’t want to snag a fixed object on the ground with any aircraft. Think of all the wire strikes that have brought down all sort of aircraft and helos. Not to say that something wasn’t tried in desperate times of war, but the idea of using a grapple as an airborne plough doesn’t seem very likely. . . >skybolt: what are you towing the gliders with? i wouldn’t >disagree with you of course since you have the closest to >direct experience to this but even if dragging a hook across a >plowed field is suicidal it may still have been done. i mean >this is from the same people whose standard infantry anti->tank weapon was ~15mm and required being 30 yards from >the tank. plus, they might’ve only done it once and its >effectiveness was blown out of proportion for propaganda.