dans mon souvenir, les anglais avaient mis au point des fusées attachées a un parachute, et ce afin de freiner les avions adverses en plein vol. Impossible de savoir ou j'avais lu ca, mais je me souviens clairement d'un Pilote de JU 88 expliquant comment il avait été abattu par ces fusées.
Thibaud
Bonjour à tous;
Voici ce que j'ai trouvé sur internet à ce sujet (
http://www.dcr.net/~stickmak/JOHT/joht1 ... eapons.htm), c'est en anglais , je ne trouve rien français...
Sometimes a weapon can have effects that are secret even from the people using it. The Parachute and Cable (or PAC) was a British weapon intended to bring down German bombers. The idea was that a cable would be lifted into the air by a rocket into the path of a bomber. The bottom end of the cable carried an explosive device, and there was a parachute at the top. The parachute served two functions. Once the rocket burned out the canopy slowed the cable's fall, and if the cable caught a bomber's wing the drag from the parachute would pull the cable across the wing until the explosive made contact and detonated. (Early versions simply had a second parachute at the bottom, with no explosive. They were intended to entangle propellers. Later variations included hanging the cables from barrage balloons.) Proponents of PAC expected Nazi bombers to drop from the skies in droves
At first the weapon seemed to have - at best - limited effectiveness. Some enemy aircraft were downed, but far more simply flew away after clear hits. PAC began to fall out of favor. But then interesting reports began coming in, from interrogations of captured German pilots, and conversations overheard by underground operatives across the Channel. These accounts related horror stories of engines going dead, later to be found mysteriously tangled in what looked like huge lengths of piano wire. Worse, the cable had a parachute on one end, creating high drag on the side with the dead engine. As a final terror, on landing a dangling explosive charge could blow up the plane, damage the runway or both! And if the cable didn't catch on something, but dragged across the wing, it sawed through the metal! (Several aircraft are documented as having a wing pulled off simply by the shock of impact with the cable, including a Wellington bomber used in early trials.)
Other accounts soon supported the effectiveness of the device. A few aircraft were unfortunate enough to pick up several PAC at once. These were rapidly dragged to a stall and literally fell out of the air! Imagine the effect seeing this had on the crews of other German bombers in the same formation.
So while the PAC wasn't nearly as effective at directly downing bombers as hoped, it definitely had an adverse effect on German aircrew morale. However, the PAC was not really a success for defending Britain. For one thing, it wasn't as accurate as traditional antiaircraft fire, which was steadily improving. The device never really worked like it should have, either. In addition there were safety concerns. The explosive charges were supposed to self-destruct before reaching the ground. Unfortunately, they didn't always, thus creating a hazard for unsuspecting civilians. There was also the problem of dropping steel cables across electrical transmission wires. And all that steel could be put to better use in other applications.
Sea-borne versions were less problematical in many of these respects, and so the PAC was much more often used aboard ships than on land. The ocean going PAC - placed mostly aboard small ships, such as merchant marine vessels, which didn't have the room or the crew for the heavy antiaircraft defenses of large military craft - is credited with downing 9 enemy aircraft.
Though it started out as a secret weapon, the Parachute and Cable was too spectacular in its operation to remain one, and was actually taken off the Secret List in 1943