- Yes
- No
caid’s suggestion #74
I would like to suggest a quite obscure vehicle and quite interesting too, the Mowag 12 cm Raketenwerfer mit Radantrie
The Raketenwarfer or Rocket carrier is simply a way of naming a multiple rocket launcher system. In this case, the vehicle was a proof of concept proposed to the Swiss army to use Multiple rocket launchers for long-range artillery on a mobile platform such as tanks and armored car. this very vehicle was built on the base of the MOWAG Kreuzlingen armored car to offer a low cost and high mobility to the rocket launcher.
While the vehicle has a stabilizer, it is only meant to meet the high accuracy of the rockets at longer ranges. the rocket has been low recoil but not recoilless. are used to fire at a distance of up to 15.4 km. the high rate of fire requires the best stability of the platform as the rocket launcher system is designed to fire all 20 rockets in 4 seconds which is an incredibly high fire rate. technically the stabilizer isn’t needed. the rocket launcher also stands on the deck of the vehicle over the ammo compartment. it was designed to be aimed manually from the outside and fired remotely from a safe distance. the concept was to have multiple rocket systems firing at the same target together which required a bit of preparation before doing it. the fire angle can be adjusted with wheels on the side of the turret. As almost all roof LMG and HMG are magically triggered by the crew inside the tanks, I do not think it would be so sketchy to allow the turret to work with the crew inside the vehicle. The concept was never adopted by the Swiss army. most likely due to the lack of accuracy and the need to have such weapons. besides, rockets are usually much more expensive than shells, and in 1955 the shells were pretty decent in accuracy, firepower, and fire rate at the same range.
Firepower
The firepower of this vehicle will be surprisingly good. while being a rocket launcher and having only HE rounds, it would be nothing comparable to vehicles such as the 15 cm Pz.W.42 or the BM-31-12 in term of playability. this vehicle does not simply feature more rockets, it also features serial another thing that makes it quite different
- It can fire forward at the horizon (sorry BM-31-12)
- it can fire all rockets in 4 seconds
- it can carry 20 extra rockets
- the turret has a good transverse angle
- each rocket carries a sweet load of HE (maybe not as much as the BM 31-12 but still better than the 15cm PZ W 42)
- the most important, the rockets can be quite fast!
the 12 cm rockets do not only carry 2.9 kg of Trotyl explosive which is TNT, it also feature a nice velocity of 600 m/sec which is about the velocity of a 75mm M3 gun used on the Sherman. this means, that if you want to fight another vehicle in direct fire, this thing will be fit for the task. those rockets will be capable of engaging moving targets at a decent distance with enough accuracy not to be too clumsy. the fire rate reaching 300 rounds in minutes. it was designed to fire all the rockets in 4 seconds. That means 5 rockets in seconds. it’s barely slow enough to allow a player to fire a single rocket at the time for accurate fire. the 2.9 kg of HE filler contained in each rocket should give a penetration of around 34mm at any angle. that means that no tanks have enough armor to be immune to this round. if you fire the turret, the blast will usually penetrate the hull of the tank. about any tanks will be penetrated and, therefore, could be killed. the vehicles with exposed crew nearby may be also affected even if it wasn’t a direct hit. in comparison, those rockets are equivalent to a 20 kg conventional bomb. it might be useless for the eyes of a plane, but when you can easily aim at a tank, this can prove deadly. there are also 4 types of ammunition which all carry the same warhead. the only difference is the length of the propeller which allows for a longer velocity. all rockets have different velocity ranging from 6 to 15 km
the turret is manually operated and since the targeting is intended to be done from a distance and the smaller degrees off may result in hundreds of meters off the targets, I would suspect to be quite slow to aim as many turns of the wheel may be needed to move the turret of any angle. this is going to be the main flaw of this turret I guess. I will give it a speed of 6° sec just as a placeholder as honestly, I am just assuming It would be slow based on the logic and not the actual source. i may be completely wrong there.
the turret includes 20 rocket tubes and an additional 20 rockets are carried in the ammunition compartment just under the turret. the gun’s crew which includes 2 men is responsible for reloading the rockets in the turret manually. this may take some time. but who needs to fire 20 powerful rounds without a short break once in a while anyway?
Mobility
mobility is another feature this armored car will have. the weight of the vehicles only reached 9.2 tonnes when loaded for combat. the rockets weighing between 30 and 39 kg each will be worth about 1.5 tonnes alone. this vehicle is one of the few that could have a substantial improvement in mobility when running out of ammunition. the engine is not very powerful provides 136 HP which is not bad for the weight but not great for a military vehicle. this allows the vehicles to reach a decent speed of 70 km/h and a power weight ranging between 14 and 18 hp-tonnes (depending on the ammunition carried… The transmission includes 5 forward gears and 2 backward gears. I do not know the ratio of each gear but I will guess it will allow a decent backward speed of around 15 km/h.
Protection
the vehicle is only lightly armored. this means it would only be protected adequately against LMG fire. anything larger than a LMG will easily penetrate it. the crew includes a driver and 2 gunners carried inside the truck on the left side of the engine compartment. the vehicle has been tiny, I will only guess they are crowded there. but at least the shrapnel will not so easily take it out. the ammunition carried in the back contains quite a lot of explosives. a single detonation of one of those rounds may destroy the vehicle. overall, this vehicle lacks survivability, only its small size helps it.
Source
All the sources are taken in the Swiss federal archive
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