Henschel Hs 293
German anti-ship radio-controlled glide bomb used in World War II
The Henschel Hs 293 was a World War II German radio-guided glide bomb. It is the first operational anti-shipping missile, first used unsuccessfully on 25 August 1943 and then with increasing success over the next year, damaging or sinking at least 25 ships. Allied efforts to jam the radio control link were increasingly successful despite German efforts to counter them. The weapon remained in use through 1944 when it was also used as an air-to-ground weapon to attack bridges to prevent the Allied breakout after D-Day, but proved almost useless in this role.
Development
The Hs 293 project started in 1940, based on the Gustav Schwartz Propellerwerke pure glide bomb, designed in 1939. The Schwartz design did not have terminal guidance; instead, it used an autopilot to maintain a straight course. It was intended to be launched from a bomber at sufficient standoff distance from anti-aircraft fire. A Henschel team, under Herbert A. Wagner, developed it the following year by adding a Walter HWK 109-507 rocket engine underneath, providing 590 kgf (1,300 lbf; 5.8 kN) thrust for ten seconds. This allowed the bomb to be used from a lower altitude and at an increased range. Some examples used a BMW 109-511 engine, with 600 kgf (1,300 lbf; 5.9 kN) of thrust.
“Henschel Hs 293” enters the record as german anti-ship radio-controlled glide bomb used in World War II. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Henschel, German and anti-ship can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q586159. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1943, 1944, 1940 and 1939.
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This entry incorporates text from “Henschel Hs 293” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.