The Second World War is one of the conflicts in the history of mankind, rich in all kinds of technical, engineering inventions. Some certain things can be extremely difficult to understand these days. For example, why in Germany, in the Luftwaffe they installed some kind of rings on planes.
Let's find out what function they actually performed and whether they were in any way useful.
The plane is a minesweeper.
As is very often the case in military affairs - everything is at the same time simple, but at the same time interesting and even ingenious. Surely everyone from the school history course remembers that Adolf Hitler, in his plans to seize world domination, had his own plans for Great Britain. The war with her before the opening of the eastern front was almost the most important priority for the Nazis. Of course, it didn't work out to take the British Isles just once or twice. The British snapped very well not only in the air, but also at sea. At the same time, the biggest headache for the Nazis was sea magnetic mines.
For neutralization of magnetic mines.
In order to solve the problems with sea minefields, the Germans decided to create a special minesweeper aircraft, which could clear mines by forced detonation of traps in the most important directions. Actually, for this, large mysterious rings were placed on airplanes, which worked as a magnetic antenna transmitter. Such a machine appeared back in 1940. Having barely passed the tests, the plane immediately ended up in the armed forces.
The design of the circular magnetic antenna was very simple. Most often, its diameter was 14.6 meters. Inside, 44 turns of wire were hidden, which carried out the transmission of magnetic waves.
The solution is very effective.
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In order for the antenna to work and do its job, it needed to be supplied with electricity. The aircraft generator did an excellent job with this task. Thus, flying over sea minefields at a sufficiently low altitude, the plane made their detonators go off. It seemed to Mina that a ship passed over her and she exploded.
Not only the Germans did this.
Note: such aircraft were used not only in the Battle of England. Subsequently, they were quite actively used by the Germans on the Eastern Front. Aircraft appeared on the Second Front. They were also seen at one time in the Baltic and Black seas.