THE
ROCKET TEAM WW2 GERMAN V-1 V-2 ROCKET WERNER von BRAUN PEENEMUNDE (w/DVD)
SOFTBOUND BOOK in ENGLISH by
FREDERICK I ORDWAY III & MITCHELL SHARPE
For the first time The Rocket
Team is now accompanied by a DVD-Video featuring nearly five hours of rare
footage of the Rockt Team's extraordinary legacy.
This remarkable collection
includes hours of rare historical footage of early German rocket pioneers from
the 1920's.
A host of video clips of rocket
launches from the 1920's to the 1960's including a documentary on America's
first satellite Explorer 1.
Two extremely rare lectures by
Wernher von Braun, filmed ten years apart, explaining his vision for manned
space flight.
Very low-generation color film
footage of the V-2 being launched in the 1940's from Peenemunde and White
Sands, New Mexico.
The final tests before America
ventured into space is featured in documentaries aout the early flights of von
Braun's Redstone.
Official government footage
explaining the huge undertaking that became von Braun's Saturn rocket with
period animations.
The first primates in space were
the famous Able-Baker monkeys. A documentary from the early days of the space
race explores their flight.
A tribute to Mr Missile Major
General Holger Toftoy, the man who brought the Rocket Team together in America.
-----------------------------------------
Additional Information from
Internet Encyclopedia
The V2 (German: Vergeltungswaffe
2, lit. 'Retaliation Weapon 2'), with the technical name Aggregat
4 (A4), was the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile,
powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the Second
World War in Nazi Germany as a "vengeance weapon" and assigned to
attack Allied cities as retaliation for the Allied bombings of German cities.
The V2 rocket also became the first artificial object to travel into space by
crossing the Kármán line (edge of space) with the vertical launch of MW 18014 on 20 June
1944.
Research of military use of
long-range rockets began when the graduate studies of Wernher von Braun were
noticed by the Wehrmacht Heer. A series of prototypes culminated in the A4,
which went to war as the V2. Beginning in September 1944, more than 3,000 V2s
were launched by the Wehrmacht against Allied targets, first London and later
Antwerp and Liège. According to a 2011 BBC documentary, the attacks from V-2s
resulted in the deaths of an estimated 9,000 civilians and military personnel,
while a further 12,000 laborers and concentration camp prisoners died as a
result of their forced participation in the production of the weapons.
The rockets travelled at
supersonic speeds, impacted without audible warning, and proved unstoppable, as
no effective defense existed. Teams from the Allied forcesthe United States,
the United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Unionraced to seize major German
manufacturing facilities, procure the Germans' missile technology, and capture
the V-2s' launching sites. Von Braun and more than 100 core R&D V-2
personnel surrendered to the Americans, and many of the original V-2 team
transferred their work to the Redstone Arsenal, where they were relocated as
part of Operation Paperclip. The US also captured enough V-2 hardware to build
approximately 80 of the missiles. The Soviets gained possession of the V-2
manufacturing facilities after the war, re-established V-2 production, and
moved it to the Soviet Union.
Development history
During the late 1920s, a young
Wernher von Braun bought a copy of Hermann Oberth's book, Die Rakete zu den
Planetenräumen (The Rocket into Interplanetary Spaces). In 1928 a Raketenrummel
or "Rocket Rumble" fad in the popular media was initiated by Fritz
von Opel and Max Valier, a collaborator of Oberth, by experimenting with
rockets, including public demonstrations of manned rocket cars and rocket
planes. The Rocket Rumble was highly influential on von Braun as a teenage
space enthusiast. He was so enthusiastic after seeing one of the public
Opel-RAK rocket car demonstrations, that he constructed and launched his own
homemade toy rocket car in a crowded sidewalk and was later taken in for
questioning by the local police, until released to his father for disciplinary
action.
Starting in 1930, von Braun
attended the Technical University of Berlin, where he assisted Oberth in
liquid-fueled rocket motor tests. Von Braun was working on his doctorate when
the Nazi Party gained power in Germany. An artillery captain, Walter Dornberger,
arranged an Ordnance Department research grant for von Braun, who from then on
worked next to Dornberger's existing solid-fuel rocket test site at
Kummersdorf. Von Braun's thesis, Construction, Theoretical, and Experimental
Solution to the Problem of the Liquid Propellant Rocket (dated 16 April 1934),
was kept classified by the German Army and was not published until 1960. By the
end of 1934, his group had successfully launched two rockets that reached
heights of 2.2 and 3.5 km (1.4 and 2.2 mi).
At the time, many Germans were
interested in American physicist Robert H. Goddard's research. Before 1939,
German engineers and scientists occasionally contacted Goddard directly with
technical questions. Von Braun used Goddard's plans from various journals and
incorporated them into the building of the Aggregate (A) series of rockets,
named for the German word for mechanism or mechanical system.
After successes at Kummersdorf
with the first two Aggregate series rockets, Braun and Walter Riedel began
thinking of a much larger rocket in the summer of 1936, based on a projected
25,000 kg (55,000 lb) thrust engine. In addition, Dornberger specified the
military requirements needed to include a 1-ton payload, a range of 172 miles
with a dispersion of 2 or 3 miles, and transportable using road vehicles.
After the A-4 project was
postponed due to unfavorable aerodynamic stability testing of the A-3 in July
1936, Braun specified the A-4 performance in 1937, and, after an
"extensive" series of test firings of the A-5 scale test model, using
a motor redesigned from the troublesome A-3 by Walter Thiel, A-4 design and
construction was ordered c. 193839. During 2830 September 1939, Der Tag der
Weisheit (English: The Day of Wisdom) conference met at Peenemünde to initiate
the funding of university research to solve rocket problems.: 40 By late 1941, the Army Research
Center at Peenemünde possessed the technologies essential to the success of the A-4. The
four main technologies for the A-4 were large liquid-fuel rocket engines,
supersonic aerodynamics, gyroscopic guidance and rudders in jet control. At the
time, Adolf Hitler was not particularly impressed by the V-2; he opined that it
was merely an artillery shell with a longer range and much higher cost.
During early September 1943,
Braun promised the Long-Range Bombardment Commission: 224 that the A-4 development was
"practically complete/concluded", but even by the middle of 1944, a
complete A-4 parts list was still unavailable.: 224 Hitler was sufficiently
impressed by the enthusiasm of its developers, and needed a "wonder
weapon" to maintain German morale, so he authorized its deployment in
large numbers.
The V-2s were constructed at the
Mittelwerk site by prisoners from Mittelbau-Dora, a concentration camp where
20,000 prisoners died.
In 1943, the Austrian resistance
group including Heinrich Maier managed to send exact drawings of the V-2 rocket
to the American Office of Strategic Services. Location sketches of V-rocket
manufacturing facilities, such as those in Peenemünde, were also sent to the
Allied general staff in order to enable Allied bombers to perform airstrikes.
This information was particularly important for Operation Crossbow and
Operation Hydra, both preliminary missions for Operation Overlord. The group
was gradually captured by the Gestapo and most of the members were executed.
Technical details
The A4 used a 75% ethanol/25%
water mixture (B-Stoff) for fuel and liquid oxygen (LOX) (A-Stoff) for
oxidizer. The water reduced the flame temperature, acted as a coolant by
turning to steam and augmented the thrust, tended to produce a smoother burn,
and reduced thermal stress.
Rudolf Hermann's supersonic wind
tunnel was used to measure the A4's aerodynamic characteristics and center of
pressure, using a model of the A4 within a 40 square centimeter chamber.
Measurements were made using a Mach 1.86 blowdown nozzle on 8 August 1940.
Tests at Mach numbers 1.56 and 2.5 were made after 24 September 1940.
At launch the A4 propelled
itself for up to 65 seconds on its own power, and a program motor held the
inclination at the specified angle until engine shutdown, after which the
rocket continued on a ballistic free-fall trajectory. The rocket reached a height
of 80 km (50 mi) or 264,000 ft after shutting off the engine.
The fuel and oxidizer pumps were
driven by a steam turbine, and the steam was produced by concentrated hydrogen
peroxide (T-Stoff) with sodium permanganate (Z-Stoff) catalyst. Both the
alcohol and oxygen tanks were an aluminum-magnesium alloy.
The turbopump, rotating at 4,000
rpm, forced the alcohol and oxygen into the combustion chamber at 125 liters
(33 US gallons) per second, where they were ignited by a spinning electrical
igniter. Thrust increased from 8 tons during this preliminary stage whilst the
fuel was gravity-fed, before increasing to 25 tons as the turbopump pressurised
the fuel, lifting the 13.5 ton rocket. Combustion gases exited the chamber at
2,820 °C (5,100 °F), and a speed of 2,000 m (6,600 ft) per second. The oxygen
to fuel mixture was 1.0:0.85 at 25 tons of thrust, but as ambient pressure
decreased with flight altitude, thrust increased until it reached 29 tons. The
turbopump assembly contained two centrifugal pumps, one for the alcohol, and
one for the oxygen, The turbine connects directly by a shaft to the alcohol
pump and through a flexible joint and shaft to the oxygen pump. Hydrogen
peroxide converted to steam, using a sodium permanganate catalyst powered the
pump, which delivered 55 kg (121 lb) of alcohol and 68 kg (150 lb) of liquid
oxygen per second to a combustion chamber at 1.5 MPa (218 psi)
Dr. Thiel's development of the
25 ton rocket motor relied on pump feeding, rather than on the earlier pressure
feeding. The motor used centrifugal injection, while using both regenerative
cooling and film cooling. Film cooling admitted alcohol into the combustion
chamber and exhaust nozzle under slight pressure through four rings of small
perforations. The mushroom-shaped injection head was removed from the
combustion chamber to a mixing chamber, the combustion chamber was made more
spherical while being shortened from 6 to 1-foot in length, and the connection
to the nozzle was made cone shaped. The resultant 1.5 ton chamber operated at a
combustion pressure of 1.52 MPa (220 psi). Thiel's 1.5 ton chamber was then
scaled up to a 4.5 ton motor by arranging three injection heads above the
combustion chamber. By 1939, eighteen injection heads in two concentric circles
at the head of the 3 mm (0.12 in) thick sheet-steel chamber, were used to make
the 25 ton motor.
The warhead was another source
of trouble. The explosive used was amatol 60/40 detonated by an electric
contact fuze. Amatol had the advantage of stability, and the warhead was
protected by a thick layer of glass wool, but even so it could still explode during
the re-entry phase. The warhead weighed 975 kilograms (2,150 lb) and contained
910 kilograms (2,010 lb) of explosive. The warhead's percentage by weight that
was explosive was 93%, a very great percentage when compared with other types
of munition.
A protective layer of glass wool
was also used for the fuel tanks so the A-4 did not have a tendency to form
ice, a problem which plagued other early ballistic missiles such as the balloon
tank-design SM-65 Atlas which entered US service in 1959. The tanks held 4,173
kilograms (9,200 lb) of ethyl alcohol and 5,553 kilograms (12,242 lb) of
oxygen.
The V-2 was guided by four
external rudders on the tail fins, and four internal graphite vanes in the jet
stream at the exit of the motor. These 8 control surfaces were controlled by
Helmut Hölzer's analog computer, the Mischgerät, via electrical-hydraulic
servomotors, based on electrical signals from the gyros. The Siemens Vertikant
LEV-3 guidance system consisted of two free gyroscopes (a horizontal for pitch
and a vertical with two degrees of freedom for yaw and roll) for lateral
stabilization, coupled with a PIGA accelerometer, or the Walter Wolman radio
control system, to control engine cutoff at a specified velocity. Other
gyroscopic systems used in the A-4 included Kreiselgeräte's SG-66 and SG-70.
The V-2 was launched from a pre-surveyed location, so the distance and azimuth
to the target were known. Fin 1 of the missile was aligned to the target
azimuth.
Some later V-2s used "guide
beams", radio signals transmitted from the ground, to keep the missile on
course, but the first models used a simple analog computer that adjusted the
azimuth for the rocket, and the flying distance was controlled by the timing of
the engine cut-off, Brennschluss, ground-controlled by a Doppler system or by
different types of on-board integrating accelerometers. Thus, range was a function
of engine burn time, which ended when a specific velocity was achieved.: 203204 Just before engine cutoff,
thrust was reduced to eight tons, in an effort to avoid any water hammer
problems a rapid cutoff could cause.
Dr. Friedrich Kirchstein of
Siemens of Berlin developed the V-2 radio control for motor-cut-off (German:
Brennschluss).: 28, 124 For velocity measurement, Professor Wolman of Dresden
created an alternative of his Doppler: 18 tracking system in 194041, which used a ground signal transponded by the
A-4 to measure the velocity of the missile.: 103 By 9 February 1942, Peenemünde engineer Gerd deBeek had documented the radio
interference area of a V-2 as 10,000 metres (33,000 feet) around the
"Firing Point", and the first successful A-4 flight on 3 October
1942, used radio control for Brennschluss.: 12 Although Hitler commented on 22
September 1943 that "It is a great load off our minds that we have
dispensed with the radio guiding-beam; now no opening remains for the British
to interfere technically with the missile in flight",: 138 about 20% of the operational
V-2 launches were beam-guided.: 12 : 232 The Operation Pinguin V-2
offensive began on 8 September 1944, when Lehr- und Versuchsbatterie No. 444: 512 (English: 'Training and Testing
Battery 444') launched a single rocket guided by a radio beam directed at
Paris.: 47 Wreckage of combat V-2s occasionally contained the
transponder for velocity and fuel cutoff.
The painting of the operational
V-2s was mostly a ragged-edged pattern with several variations, but at the end
of the war a plain olive green rocket was also used. During tests the rocket
was painted in a characteristic black-and-white chessboard pattern, which aided
in determining if the rocket was spinning around its longitudinal axis.
The original German designation
of the rocket was "V2", unhyphenated exactly as used for any Third
Reich-era "second prototype" example of an RLM-registered German
aircraft design but U.S. publications such as Life magazine were using the
hyphenated form "V-2" as early as December 1944.
Production
23 June 1943 RAF reconnaissance
photo of V-2s at Test Stand VII.
On 26 May 1943, the Long-Range
Bombardment Commission, chaired by AEG director Petersen, met at Peenemünde to
review the V-1 and V-2 automatic long-range weapons. In attendance were Speer,
Air Marshal Erhard Milch, Admiral Karl Dönitz, Col. General Friedrich Fromm,
and Karl Saur. Both weapons had reached the final stage of development, and the
commission decided to recommend to Hitler that both weapons be mass-produced.
As Dornberger observed, "The disadvantages of the one would be compensated
by the other's advantages."
On 7 July 1943, Major General
Dornberger, von Braun, and Dr. Steinhof briefed Hitler in his Wolf's Lair. Also
in attendance were Speer, Wilhelm Keitel, and Alfred Jodl. The briefing
included von Braun narrating a movie showing the successful launch on 3 October
1942, with scale models of the Channel coast firing bunker, and supporting
vehicles, including the Meillerwagen. Hitler then gave Peenemünde top priority
in the German armaments program stating, "Why was it I could not believe
in the success of your work? if we had had these rockets in 1939 we should
never have had this war..." Hitler also wanted a second launch bunker
built.
Saur planned to build 2,000
rockets per month, between the existing three factories and the Nordhausen
Mittelwerk factory being built. However, alcohol production was dependent upon
the potato harvest.
A production line was nearly
ready at Peenemünde when the Operation Hydra attack occurred. The main targets
of the attack included the test stands, the development works, the
Pre-Production Works, the settlement where the scientists and technicians lived,
the Trassenheide camp, and the harbor sector. According to Dornberger,
"Serious damage to the works, contrary to first impressions, was
surprisingly small." Work resumed after a delay of four to six weeks, and
because of camouflage to mimic complete destruction, there were no more raids
during the next nine months. The raid resulted in 735 lives lost, with heavy
losses at Trassenheide, while 178 were killed in the settlement, including Dr.
Thiel, his family, and Chief Engineer Walther.: 139152 The Germans eventually moved
production to the underground Mittelwerk in the Kohnstein where 5,200 V-2
rockets were built with the use of forced labour.
Launch sites
After the Operation Crossbow
bombing, initial plans for launching from the massive underground Watten,
Wizernes and Sottevast bunkers or from fixed pads such as near the Château du
Molay were dismissed in favour of mobile launching. Eight main storage dumps
were planned and four had been completed by July 1944 (the one at Mery-sur-Oise
was begun during August 1943 and completed by February 1944). The missile could
be launched practically anywhere, roads running through forests being a
particular favourite. The system was so mobile and small that only one
Meillerwagen was ever caught in action by Allied aircraft, during the Operation
Bodenplatte attack on 1 January 1945 near Lochem by a USAAF 4th Fighter Group
aircraft, although Raymond Baxter described flying over a site during a launch
and his wingman firing at the missile without hitting it.
It was estimated that a
sustained rate of 350 V-2s could be launched per week, with 100 per day at
maximum effort, given sufficient supply of the rockets.
Operational history
One of the victims of a V-2 that
struck Teniers Square, Antwerp, Belgium, on 27 November 1944. A British
military convoy was passing through the square at the time; 126 people
(including 26 Allied soldiers) were killed.[51]
After Hitler's 29 August 1944
declaration to begin V-2 attacks as soon as possible, the offensive began on 7
September 1944 when two were launched at Paris (which the Allies had liberated
less than two weeks earlier), but both crashed soon after launch. On 8
September a single rocket was launched at Paris, which caused modest damage
near Porte d'Italie.: 218, 220, 467 Two more launches by the 485th followed, including one
from The Hague against London on the same day at 6:43 pm.: 285 the first landed at Staveley Road, Chiswick,
killing 63-year-old Mrs. Ada Harrison, three-year-old Rosemary Clarke, and
Sapper Bernard Browning on leave from the Royal Engineers,: 11 and one that hit Epping with no
casualties.
In September 1944, control of
the V-2 mission was transferred to the Waffen-SS and Division z.V.
Ruined buildings at Whitechapel,
London, left by the penultimate V-2 to strike the city on 27 March 1945; the
rocket killed 134 people. The final V-2 to fall on London killed one person at
Orpington later that same day.
Targets
During the succeeding months
about 3,172 V-2 rockets were fired at the following targets:
Belgium, 1,664: Antwerp (1,610),
Liège (27), Hasselt (13), Tournai (9), Mons (3), Diest
United Kingdom, 1,402: London
(1,358), Norwich (43),: 289 Ipswich (1)
France, 76: Lille (25), Paris
(22), Tourcoing (19), Arras (6), Cambrai (4)
Netherlands, 19: Maastricht
Germany, 11: Remagen
Antwerp, Belgium was a target
for a large number of V-weapon attacks from October 1944 through to the virtual
end of the war in March 1945, leaving 1,736 dead and 4,500 injured in greater
Antwerp. Thousands of buildings were damaged or destroyed as the city was
struck by 590 direct hits. The largest loss of life by a single rocket attack
during the war came on 16 December 1944, when the roof of the crowded Cine Rex
was struck, leaving 567 dead and 291 injured.
An estimated 2,754 civilians
were killed in London by V-2 attacks with another 6,523 injured,[64] which is
two people killed per V-2 rocket. However, this understates the potential of
the V-2, since many rockets were misdirected and exploded harmlessly. Accuracy
increased during the war, particularly for batteries where the Leitstrahl
(radio guide beam) system was used.[65] Missile strikes that hit targets could
cause large numbers of deaths 160 were killed and 108 seriously injured in
one explosion at 12:26 pm on 25 November 1944, at a Woolworth's department
store in New Cross, south-east London.[66] British intelligence sent false
reports via their Double-Cross System implying that the rockets were
over-shooting their London target by 10 to 20 miles (16 to 32 km). This tactic
worked; more than half of the V-2s aimed at London landed outside the London
Civil Defence Region.[67]: p. 459 Most landed on less-heavily populated areas in Kent due
to erroneous recalibration. For the remainder of the war, British intelligence
maintained the ruse by repeatedly sending bogus reports implying that the
rockets were now striking the British capital with heavy loss of life.
Possible use during Operation
Bodenplatte
At least one V-2 missile on a
mobile Meillerwagen launch trailer was observed being elevated to launch
position by a USAAF 4th Fighter Group pilot defending against the massive New
Year's Day 1945 Operation Bodenplatte strike by the Luftwaffe over the northern
German attack route near the town of Lochem on 1 January 1945. Possibly, from
the potential sighting of the American fighter by the missile's launch crew,
the rocket was quickly lowered from a near launch-ready 85° elevation to 30°.
Tactical use on German target
After the US Army captured the
Ludendorff Bridge during the Battle of Remagen on 7 March 1945, the Germans
were desperate to destroy it. On 17 March 1945, they fired eleven V-2 missiles
at the bridge, their first use against a tactical target and the only time they
were fired on a German target during the war.[70] They could not employ the
more accurate Leitstrahl device because it was oriented towards Antwerp and
could not be easily adjusted for another target. Fired from near Hellendoorn,
the Netherlands, one of the missiles landed as far away as Cologne, 40 miles
(64 km) to the north, while one missed the bridge by only 500 to 800 yards (460
to 730 m). They also struck the town of Remagen, destroying a number of
buildings and killing at least six American soldiers.
Final use
The extent of damage caused to a
London residential area due to a single V-2 strike in January 1945.
The final two rockets exploded
on 27 March 1945. One of these was the last V-2 to kill a British civilian and
the final civilian casualty of the war on British soil: Ivy Millichamp, aged
34, killed in her home in Kynaston Road, Orpington in Kent. A
scientific reconstruction performed in 2010 demonstrated that the V-2 creates a
crater 20 metres (66 feet) wide and 8 metres (26 feet) deep, ejecting
approximately 3,000 tons of material into the air.
Countermeasures
Big Ben and Operation Crossbow
Unlike the V-1, the V-2's speed
and trajectory made it practically invulnerable to anti-aircraft guns and
fighters, as it dropped from an altitude of 100110 km (6268 mi) at up to
three times the speed of sound at sea level (approximately 3,550 km/h (2,206
mph)). Nevertheless, the threat of what was then code-named "Big Ben"
was great enough that efforts were made to seek countermeasures. The situation
was similar to the pre-war concerns about manned bombers and resulted in a
similar solution, the formation of the Crossbow Committee, to collect, examine
and develop countermeasures.
Early on, it was believed that
the V-2 employed some form of radio guidance, a belief that persisted in spite
of several rockets being examined without discovering anything like a radio
receiver. This resulted in efforts to jam this non-existent guidance system as
early as September 1944, using both ground and air-based jammers flying over
the UK. In October, a group had been sent to jam the missiles during launch. By
December it was clear these systems were not having any obvious effect, and
jamming efforts ended.
Anti-aircraft gun system
(proposed)
General Frederick Alfred Pile,
commander of Anti-Aircraft Command, studied the problem and proposed that
enough anti-aircraft guns were available to produce a barrage of fire in the
rocket's path, but only if provided with a reasonable prediction of the trajectory.
The first estimates suggested that 320,000 shells would have to be fired for
each rocket. About 2% of these were expected to fall back to the ground[further
explanation needed], almost 90 tons of rounds, which would cause far more
damage than the missile. At a 25 August 1944 meeting of the Crossbow Committee,
the concept was rejected.
Pile continued studying the
problem and returned with a proposal to fire only 150 shells at a single
rocket, with those shells using a new fuse that would greatly reduce the number
that fell back to Earth unexploded. Some low-level analysis suggested that this
would be successful against 1 in 50 rockets, provided that accurate
trajectories were forwarded to the gunners in time. Work on this basic concept
continued and developed into a plan to deploy a large number of guns in Hyde
Park that were provided with pre-configured firing data for 2.5-mile
(4.0-kilometre) grids of the London area. After the trajectory was determined,
the guns would aim and fire between 60 and 500 rounds.
At a Crossbow meeting on 15
January 1945 Pile's updated plan was presented with some strong advocacy from
Roderic Hill and Charles Drummond Ellis. However, the Committee suggested that
a test not be performed as no technique for tracking the missiles with
sufficient accuracy had yet been developed. By March this had changed
significantly, with 81% of incoming missiles correctly allotted to the grid
square each fell into, or the one beside it. At a 26 March meeting Pile was
directed to a subcommittee with RV Jones and Ellis to further develop the
statistics. Three days later the team returned a report stating that if the
guns fired 2,000 rounds at a missile there was a 1 in 60 chance of shooting it
down. Plans for an operational test began, but as Pile later put it,
"Monty beat us to it", as the attacks ended with the Allied capture
of their launching areas.
With the Germans no longer in
control of any part of the continent that could be used as a launching site
capable of striking London, they began targeting Antwerp. Plans were made to
move the Pile system to protect that city, but the war ended before anything
could be done.
Direct attack and disinformation
The only effective defences
against the V-2 campaign were to destroy the launch infrastructureexpensive in
terms of bomber resources and casualtiesor to cause the Germans to aim at the
wrong place by disinformation. The British were able to convince the Germans to
direct V-1s and V-2s aimed at London to less populated areas east of the city.
This was done by sending deceptive reports on the sites hit and damage caused
via the German espionage network in Britain, which was secretly controlled by
the British (the Double-Cross System).
Assessment
The German V-weapons (V-1 and
V-2) cost the equivalent of about US$500 million.[77] Given the relatively
smaller size of the German economy, this represented an industrial effort
equivalent to but slightly less than that of the U.S. Manhattan Project that
produced the atomic bomb. 6,048 V-2s were built, at a cost of approximately
100,000 ℛ︁ℳ︁ (£2,370,000 in 2011)
each[citation needed]; 3,225 were launched. SS General Hans Kammler, who as an
engineer had constructed several concentration camps including Auschwitz, had a
reputation for brutality and had originated the idea of using concentration
camp prisoners as slave laborers for the rocket program. More people died
manufacturing the V-2 than were killed by its deployment.
... those of us who were
seriously engaged in the war were very grateful to Wernher von Braun. We knew
that each V-2 cost as much to produce as a high-performance fighter airplane.
We knew that German forces on the fighting fronts were in desperate need of
airplanes, and that the V-2 rockets were doing us no military damage. From our
point of view, the V-2 program was almost as good as if Hitler had adopted a
policy of unilateral disarmament.
Freeman Dyson
The V-2 consumed a third of
Germany's fuel alcohol production and major portions of other critical
technologies:[80] to distil the fuel alcohol for one V-2 launch required 30
tonnes of potatoes at a time when food was becoming scarce.[81] Due to a lack of
explosives, some warheads were simply filled with concrete, using the kinetic
energy alone for destruction, and sometimes the warhead contained photographic
propaganda of German citizens who had died in Allied bombings.
The psychological effect of the
V-2 was considerable, as the V-2, traveling faster than the speed of sound,
gave no warning before impact (unlike bombing planes or the V-1 flying bomb,
which made a characteristic buzzing sound). There was no effective defence and
no risk of pilot or crew casualties. An example of the impression it made is in
the reaction of American pilot and future nuclear strategist and Congressional
aide William Liscum Borden, who in November 1944 while returning from a
nighttime air mission over Holland saw a V-2 in flight on its way to strike
London:[83][84] "It resembled a meteor, streaming red sparks and whizzing
past us as though the aircraft were motionless. I became convinced that it was
only a matter of time until rockets would expose the United States to direct,
transoceanic attack."
With the war all but lost,
regardless of the factory output of conventional weapons, the Nazis resorted to
V-weapons as a tenuous last hope to influence the war militarily (hence Antwerp
as V-2 target), as an extension of their desire to "punish" their
foes and most importantly to give hope to their sympathizers with their miracle
weapon. The V-2 did not affect the outcome of the war, but it resulted in the
development of the intercontinental ballistic missiles of the Cold War, which
were also used for space exploration.
Unfulfilled plans
A submarine-towed launch
platform was tested successfully, making it the prototype for
submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The project codename was Prüfstand XII
("Test stand XII"), sometimes termed the rocket U-boat. If deployed,
it would have allowed a U-boat to launch V-2 missiles against United States
cities, though only with considerable effort (and limited effect).[87] Hitler,
in July 1944 and Speer, in January 1945, made speeches alluding to the
scheme,[88] though Germany did not possess the capability to fulfill these
threats. These schemes were met by the Americans with Operation Teardrop.
Post-war use
At the end of the war, a
competition began between the United States and the USSR to retrieve as many
V-2 rockets and staff as possible.[90] Three hundred rail-car loads of V-2s and
parts were captured and shipped to the United States and 126 of the principal
designers, including Wernher von Braun and Walter Dornberger, were captives of
the Americans. Von Braun, his brother Magnus von Braun, and seven others
decided to surrender to the United States military (Operation Paperclip) to
ensure they were not captured by the advancing Soviets or shot dead by the
Nazis to prevent their capture.
After the Nazi defeat, German
engineers were relocated to the United States, the USSR, France and the United
Kingdom where they further developed the V-2 rocket for military and civilian
purposes.[92] The V-2 rocket also laid the foundation for the liquid fuel
missiles and space launchers used later.
United States
Operation Paperclip recruited
German engineers and Special Mission V-2 transported the captured V-2 parts to
the United States. At the close of the Second World War, more than 300 rail
cars filled with V-2 engines, fuselages, propellant tanks, gyroscopes, and
associated equipment were brought to the railyards in Las Cruces, New Mexico,
so they could be placed on trucks and driven to the White Sands Proving
Grounds, also in New Mexico.
In addition to V-2 hardware, the
U.S. Government delivered German mechanization equations for the V-2 guidance,
navigation, and control systems, as well as for advanced development concept
vehicles, to U.S. defence contractors for analysis. During the 1950s, some of
these documents were useful to U.S. contractors in developing direction cosine
matrix transformations and other inertial navigation architecture concepts that
were applied to early U.S. programs, such as the Atlas and Minuteman guidance
systems as well as the Navy's Subs Inertial Navigation System.
A committee was formed with
military and civilian scientists to review payload proposals for the
reassembled V-2 rockets. By January 1946, the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps invited
civilian scientists and engineers to participate in developing a space research
program using the V-2. The committee was initially named the "V2 Rocket
Panel", then the "V2 Upper Atmosphere Research Panel", and
finally the "Upper Atmosphere Rocket Research Panel".[95] This
resulted in an eclectic array of experiments that flew on V-2s and helped
prepare for American manned space exploration. Devices were sent aloft to
sample the air at all levels to determine atmospheric pressures and to see what
gases were present. Other instruments measured the level of cosmic radiation.ere considered successful.[96] A supposed V-2 launched on 29 May 1947
landed near Juarez, Mexico and was actually a Hermes B-1 vehicle.
The U.S. Navy attempted to
launch a German V-2 rocket at sea- one test launch from the aircraft carrier
USS Midway was performed on 6 September 1947 as part of the Navy's Operation
Sandy. The test launch was a partial success; the V-2 went off the pad but
splashed down in the ocean only some 10 km (6 mi) from the carrier. The launch
setup on the Midway's deck is notable in that it used foldaway arms to prevent
the missile from falling over. The arms pulled away just after the engine
ignited, releasing the missile. The setup may look similar to the R-7 Semyorka
launch procedure but in the case of the R-7 the trusses hold the full weight of
the rocket, rather than just reacting to side forces.
The PGM-11 Redstone rocket is a
direct descendant of the V-2.
USSR
The USSR also captured a number
of V-2s and staff, letting them stay in Germany for a time.[99] The first work
contracts were signed in the middle of 1945. During October 1946 (as part of
Operation Osoaviakhim) they were obliged to relocate to Branch 1 of NII-88 on
Gorodomlya Island in Lake Seliger where Helmut Gröttrup directed a group of 150
engineers.[100] In October 1947, a group of German scientists supported the
USSR in launching rebuilt V-2s in Kapustin Yar. The German team was indirectly
overseen by Sergei Korolev, one of the leaders of the Soviet rocketry program.
The first Soviet missile was the
R-1, a duplicate of the V-2 manufactured completely in the USSR, which was
launched first during October 1948. From 1947 until the end of 1950, the German
team elaborated concepts and improvements for extended payload and range for
the projects G-1, G-2 and G-4. The German team had to remain on Gorodomlya
island until as late as 1952 and 1953. In parallel, Soviet work emphasized
larger missiles, the R-2 and R-5, based on further developing the V-2
technology with using ideas of the German concept studies.[101] Details of
Soviet achievements were unknown to the German team and completely
underestimated by Western intelligence until, in November 1957, the satellite
Sputnik 1 was launched successfully to orbit by the Sputnik rocket based on
R-7, the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile.