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60 Years Later: The V2 And The Space Race
securitas writes "In a two-part feature written sixty years after the V2 rocket was first launched on London, BBC News Online's Paul Rincon describes the Soviet-American space race, German V2 rocket technology and how the USSR and USA divided Germany's best scientists between them. The second part addresses the technological lineage of both space programs, the creation of NASA, intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) development and the V2's legacy. Another feature provides some context, following the history of the development of the V2 rocket from its precursors that began with space flight enthusiasts like Wernher von Braun and Walter Riedel, through its use as a terrifying weapon in the London Blitz, to the recruitment drive by the Americans and Soviets. Today the V2 rocket is being used as the basis for the Canadian Arrow X Prize team. The Arrow team has some pages on V2 history and the main engine thrust chamber. For those interested you can read more at the A4 / V2 Rocket Resource site."
told me on how they were afraid of the V2. The V1 made a loud humming noise and only became dangerous when the engine stopped. The V2 was faster than sound, meaning no advanced warning. It just went boom.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
One of my profs was in the German air force as a radar mechanic. At the end of the war he was driving a truck back from Norway. The Americans were at Penemunde (sp?) and he tried to surrender to them. "Are you a rocket scientist?" they asked. When he said no, they didn't want him. However they were willing to trade his side arm for a tank of gas and he could go down the road and surrender to the British.
They might be a bit deluded when they think of themselves as a master race (well, only some of them do) but if they were to qualify it as a "master engineering race" then I think there'd be a lot less of us that would argue with it. From rockets to cars, they are excellent engineers.
If you are interested in "our" Germans from the parent's statement, do a google on "operation paperclip". It's very interesting... the US program to extract as many German scientists out of post-Nazi Germany as possible.
-- james
PS I mean to stir no racial tension by the use of "master race", merely referring to the use of a very well known phrase
- Surface-to-surface missiles
- Guided air-to-air missiles
- Jet fighter planes and jet bombers
- Airplanes transparent to radar
- Information science (before computers)
- Encryption technology (only comprimised due to physical reasons, i.e. someone stole one)
And many others. It's scary to think of what would have happened if they had a few more years to develop before attacking the world.Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
If you would like to see a very good comparison between the US and the USSR space race, starting all the way back in WWII Germany, you should go to The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, KS. The Hall of Space exhibit starts with the German slave camps building the V1 and V2 rocket, and goes all the way through to Apollo/Soyuez.
It is one of the few places on Earth where you can see an intact V1 and V2 rocket.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Even if used at short range, the V2 was never "accurate". It had extremely primitive guidance, and was no better than throwing a dart at a map of an entire metropolitan area. There was no way to make it hit an individual high-value target.
EXN.ca an article on the Canadian Discovery Channel about the relationship between Avro Arrow and NASA.
"When they were flying the Arrow," explains Gainor, "they decided that only one person should talk to the pilot, and that person should have experience as a pilot. At NASA, to this day, all the conversations with the crew are done through the capcom, which is always another astronaut."
All the V2's killed just about 4000 people, but in the process wasted innumerable resources that might have otherwise been spend on manufacturing ammunitions, airplanes and tanks that had a much better kill ratio per work hour invested, V2 was actually lousy as a weapon because of its immense costs. Only reason why it existed was because Albert Speer made it for some reason his own pet project and sold the idea to Hitler. The whole project cost about ½ of the US Manhattan project, but of the kill ratio was underwhelming low. Now the good deal happened post war when US and CCCR combined the nuke with the rocket and got nuclear ballistic missiles. Hitler's biggest mistake was the fact he never used chemical weapons, allied intelligence was in fact terrified of idea of German subs being modified to carry V-2, thus opening the possibility of chemical attack on say New York or Washington.
In "Leap of Faith" (Harper, ISBN 0-006-109877-9
... Joaquin "Jack" Keutner, with whom I worked in the early days of Mercury on the Redstone rocket program. Jack had some hair-raising flying stories to tell. In an attempt to improve the accuracy over the target, some V-1s were modified with a cockpit to allow for a pilot [air-dropped from a] twin-engine Junkers bomber. After being dropped free, he would air-start the "Flying Bomb." When they got within range of London he would release the bomb, then turn toward the French coast and ride the rocket home."
p. 172 "As we always said at the time, our Germans are better than their Germans.
"The visitors to Wehrner's house included
p. 173: "At war's end, a manned V-2 was sitting on the pad at Peenemunde, all tested out, fueled up, and ready to go. It would have been launched on a low-energy easterly orbit, Jack explained. The plan: to drop a warhead on New York City. That 1945 manned rocket flight -- sixteen years before the first U.S. manned rocket flight -- came within a week or so of being launched."
"Wehrner confided to me that the Germans were testing more than rockets at Peenemunde. "Some of the craft we were developing," he said, "were far ahead of anything the rest of the world had or knew about."
p. 170: After a V-2 first hit London, Wehrner remarked to his colleagues, "the rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet."