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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."
and the births of (von Braun, Riedel, etc.) its ethos single handedly launched the world into the space age.
Never forget that.
If this is your cup of tea then please read "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon. [google].
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
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
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
It's my understanding that the Russian "Scud" rockets so beloved of wannabe regional powers are also V-2 derived.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Well it did. Off course. War has never been quite the same since...
Wasn't that the answer given, when the US president demanded to know how the Russians got Sputnik up before the Americans managed a similar feat? "Because their Germans are better than our Germans".
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Ahum, the extra 'f' is wrong in more than one way here...
Yes, the end of the article goes into the investigations of the war records of America's German scientists that occurred in the 70s and 80s.
I've always thought that was a little unfair of us. Sure, they committed a grave moral crime in using concentration camp labor, but it's very convenient of us to only care about that after we've used them for every bit of knowledge and skill they had and the space program was on coast. If the information had become public in the 50s or 60s, I imagine the government would have instead done its best to cover it up. Actually, come to think of it, that probably did occur to some degree or another.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Which entirely negates the credit of Germany with fathering rocket science, right?
With your /. username being what it is, are you declaring a preference? ;-)
No, I'm not trolling and I don't have time to get into the argument about wheter scientific knowledge carries a stain from the way it was acquired - that one could run and run.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
PBD:Frontline coverage of Iraqi scud missile variants
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
In the early 1940's, he wrote a letter to president Franklin D. Roosevelt urging him to start a project to build an atomic bomb because the German government had already started a little atomic bomb project of their own. Einstein believed that a weapon of mass destruction in the hands of the United States would not only end the war, but ensure safety to the rest of the world after the war as well. Roosevelt, being a believer in Einstein, became thrilled at this letter and took the plea into deep consideration. Soon, the project was underway.
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.
While the A4/V2 information may be of limited use to countries that don't already have a ballistic program, North Korea already has an advanced ballistic missile program, and builds missles based on Russian SCUD technology, itself loosely evolved from the original A4/V2 designs.
Further information on North Korean missile programs here
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
There was a movie biography of Wernher von Braun life produced in the 50's called I Aim for the Stars. I read somewhere that someone wrote on the bottom of a movie poster outside a theatre: I Aim for the Stars ... but sometimes I hit London.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
Um, is this a troll or are you absolutely ignorent of the second world war?
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
I guess we should consider ourselves very lucky that the Germans never had the time to develop a submarine-launched V2.. or they'd have been able to conduct accurate short-range attacks on targets in the UK (from offshore positions) and maybe even the USA.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
I think the article is about the scientific development, not the actual construction. And I think the fact that they were constructed with slave labour is fairly irrelivant since they would have been evil weapons even if they were created by well-payed union workers with health benifits, dental care and 8 weeks holiday a year.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Does He-4 denote a preference to pepsi over coke... if so maybe W-184 means someone may vote conservative and Au-197 could mean that someone is inclined to be biased in favour of wearing boxers rather than jocks.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
.....On 4 October 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik I..... .....America's first attempt to launch a satellite ....was an embarrassing failure..... ....The space race was underway..... (much snipping)
.
WTF? The Russians get into space and later on the space race is on? Hadn't the russians won (by being first into space?)
My pics.
- 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!
This is from space.com, written when von Braun died:
It is now well-known that von Braun was an honorary officer in the S.S., Hitler's feared security police, and that V-2 production was made possible by slave labor at both Peenemuende and Mittelwerk _ facts that were hidden or glossed over by the U.S. government and von Braun himself.
But scrutiny from journalists and scholars intensified in 1984 after one of von Braun's top men, Arthur Rudolph, left the United States and renounced his citizenship rather than face being tried for war crimes. The Department of Justice determined he was culpable for the condition of slave laborers at Mittelwerk; Rudolph, who died in Germany, said the S.S. was responsible, not him.
Von Braun's complicity in Nazi atrocities is less clear, Neufeld said. But there is at least one document _ a letter _ in which von Braun discusses a trip to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he apparently spoke to the commandant about obtaining more skilled laborers to use at Mittelwerk.
``The floodgates (of scrutiny) opened with Rudolph,'' said Neufeld, who published a book on the rocket team, ``The Rocket and the Reich.''
In ensuing years, newspaper and magazine stories as well as several books critical of von Braun were published. The accounts were fueled in part by concentration camp survivors angry that the scientist had become a hero in the United States.
The remaining members of the German rocket team say it's unfair to criticize them for their role at Peenemuende and Mittelwerk. They say that role must be viewed in the context of the times.
``During the war, practically everything was done with concentration camp labor,'' Dahm said.
Von Braun himself, Jacobi and others point out, was briefly imprisoned by the S.S., supposedly for talking about going to the moon. Germany was losing the war and the government wanted him to concentrate on missile production.
``What's the definition of slave laborer?'' said Jacobi. ``In a certain sense we were slave laborers. Under certain dictatorships you have to do certain things.''
Two sides to ever story. I'm not making judgement calls here on what was in the heart of von Braun and if he was indeed a true war criminal. One thing is for sure, von Braun's main ambition in life...one that set him on his course...was to reach the Moon.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
I was going to quote that, damn you :-)
Strictly speaking the first part only can be credited to von Braun. Mort Sahl added the second bit.
Slashdot looked deep within my soul and assigned
me a number based on the order in which I joined
Correction:
"I aim at the stars, but sometimes I hit London."
-- Mort Sahl, who, incidentally, happens to be Jewish.
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
U-238 was also a german ww2 sub, but so was just about any U-xxx combination you can think of, so it seems like a very unlikely explanation for the user name...
donscarletti had it right the first time. He was also right about my name not denoting some arbitrary preference to anything. Just listen to him.
lol.. for some reason I completely forgot about that. In the context of a discussion about WW2 weapons I read your name as a U-boot identification code.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
The reason why the Soviets managed to get the first satellite into space is simple: a brilliant Russian rocket designer named Sergei P. Korolev, who passed away in 1966.
People forget that the Soviet rocket program in a very secret group called RNII was very underestimated by everyone else, because in the 1930's before the Yezhovchina Great Purge the Russians probably had some of the most advanced rocket development programs in the world--in some cases more advanced than the German programs at the time! Despite the Great Purge, Korolev managed to keep the majority of his development team at RNII together, and Korolev was actually working for SMERSH (Soviet counterintelligence) in the latter half of the 1940's studying German developments in rocket technology. That's why by the early 1950's the Soviet rocket program was probably more advanced than the US program, and that's why they were able to build the R-7 rocket designed by Korolev's team (which was far larger than any US equivalent rocket at the time) that carried the large-sized Soviet nuclear bombs with the side benefit of being able to launch payloads into orbit. The sheer size of the R-7 was also the reason why the Russians were able to launch unmanned probes around the Moon and launch the first manned flights. Because the R-7 was designed as an ICBM, it meant the ability to launch in a fairly short countdown sequence and used launch pads that could erect the rocket into firing position fairly quickly, too; that's why the Russians were able to launch reconnaissance satellites so quickly and had a pretty advanced space weapons program.
Don't forget the Avro Arrow, which the Canadian entry is named after, was a jet fighter that was very advanced for its time. The program was cancelled by the Canadian government due to pressure from the US government.
Most of the engineers who worked at Avro went to work for the US space program. Yet again picking the best scientists from the spoils of, this time, a political war.
It boggles the mind all those connections.
If you're in Canada visiting mention "Avro Arrow" and see what reaction you get even now all these years later.
Arrow info
http://prinzeugen.com/V2.htm
another project the US picked up and pursued.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Not really Jewish labour, Eastern European labour. Poles and Russian POW's. 30 million Russians died in the WW2, just 10 million were soldiers, about 5 million Poles died, that's the forgotten Holocaust.
Morally speaking, why doesn't Korolev get the same political backslash von Braun does, Stalin killed 30 million of his own people, and the Gulags were no different from Nazi concentration camps. Both Nazis and Communists had one thing in common, both ideologies required that enemies of the system be removed, to Nazis they were "the enemies of Aryan purity" the Jews, Gypises, gays and lefties, to Communists they were the "enemies of the working class" the middle class, the industrialists, intellectuals, including many Russian minorities.
I think fair use will stretch enough to allow me to quote one of his "Rocket Limericks" :
There once was a thing called a V2
To pilot which you did not need to
You just pushed a button
And it would leave nothing But stiffs and big holes and debris too
Sputnik made no scientific discoveries, it was pretty much just a simple relay, a propaganda machine. On the other hand, Explorer 1 was packed with scientific equipment and among others discovered the van Allen belts! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorer_1
Don't forget the Avro Arrow, which the Canadian entry is named after, was a jet fighter that was very advanced for its time. The program was cancelled by the Canadian government due to pressure from the US government.
Most of the engineers who worked at Avro went to work for the US space program. Yet again picking the best scientists from the spoils of, this time, a political war.
It boggles the mind all those connections.
If you're in Canada visiting mention "Avro Arrow" and see what reaction you get even now all these years later.
Even after all these years, there are still hundreds of thousands of angry middle-aged Canadian men hunched over their basement workbenches assembling small plastic models of the Avro--all the while cursing under their breath the 900lb gorilla who cost them their Arrow.
My fellow Americans, when the Canadians come flooding across the border with guns in their hands and murder in their eyes, don't go crying to your leaders about the world's longest uncontrolled border.
Lots of those Polish people were jewish, remember. Towards the end of the war, pretty much everyone was being used as slave labour by the Germans. It seems slave labour is a great way for a country to be productive. One has to look at the benefits the US received through slave labour to see its effectiveness.
Germans lost the productivity War because of one single thing, they didn't want to employ women like Soviets did, that's why Soviets, although with a lower industrial base, out-produced them, another thing was that Germans switched to wartime economy only in 1943... far too late. Use of slave labor wasn't too productive, as the slave-workers had no incentive to work effectively and with quality. This resulted in sub-pair products.
And it's definately not an American thing - most of the scientists responsible for these incredible achievments were not Americans (Bohr, Einstein, von Braun, Fermi, etc) and a large portion of the work was accomplished in England.
"Trying is only the first step towards failure." - Homer
Actually, I am ignorant. I apologize for the ignorant statement (I hate history). I thought it was a mistype in the post and didn't realize it was actually correct.
Wow. Somebody on Slashdot actually apologised for a post that made a mistake. I think this will herald in a new era of the internet.
I can't comment on the article, as I have not read it yet, but reading the article on /. it is somehow revealing that slave labor is not mentioned. Reading a lot of the things about the V2 one gets the impression that people like to forget this part of history.
As for slave labor being irrelevant, I think the thousands who died, and the thousands who survived it but had to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives would tend to disagree.
Finally, my dear mods, the V2 was produced with slave labor and if someone mentions this fact he is not a troll (your modding is disgusting), just as someone who claims that slave labor is irrelevant doesn't have to be considered insightful.
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."
One of the first broken V2s ever captured by, or, in effect given to the allies landed in southern Sweden in July 21st 1944. It was the result of a failed test flight, and it scared the living hell out of some relatives of mine.
Read more at Linus Walleij's site covering the topic. Interesting reading.
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
Considering that the armchair psychologist and the university-trained psychoanalyst dispense equal measures of bullshit.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
That being said, a little-known fact is that the V2 project killed twice more prisoners of war in Germany for their construction than English people. This was because of unfair treatment of POW by nazi Germany, and a more rational reason to blame nazi Germany than the mere fact of organizing its ripost to bombings.
Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
It's even more amazing. He admitted that he lacked knowledge in a subject area (history)!
Of course, his ignorance of history didn't stop him from posting in the first place, so we can all breath a little easier.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Use of slave labor wasn't too productive, as the slave-workers had no incentive to work effectively and with quality. This resulted in sub-pair products. [I'm sure you mean sub par.
But to amplify your comment, countless lives were saved because many slave laborers actively sabotaged production. Slave laborers in munition factories that survived the war reported that they did all they could to deliver duds.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Sputnik showed that something that was theoretically possible was also possible in practice. In other words, it was an experiment. Doesn't that qualify as science?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Although never deployed they did experiment with wire guided smart bombs which did work. I saw this BBC doco years back called "The Secret War" or something similar, about secret weapons etc in WW2. Among the amazing stuff was film of a smart bomb test using a dummy bomb on a target building, direct bulls-eye. Also they had a clip showing that in the Battle of the Bulge the Reich was trying to deploy one of its experimental jet bombers, holy sh*t eh, just as well the weather was no good.
Had some very clever scientists and engineers, those that hadn't been thrown in concentration camps that is. Nothing to do with the Nazis as such since they were really anti high technology ... more like neo-barbarians. But I digress.
Bitter and proud of it.
This is untrue. Sputnik was mainly a propaganda machine - it let the world know the Soviets had a rocket that could carry a 100kg satellite into orbit and therefore a 1000kg warhead to Washington. However the tracking of its orbit and decay did privide a lot of data on atmospheric density at orbital altitudes - something almost unknown at the time. This was intentional and the reason Sputnik was spherical.
Note that even the Soviets didn't initially know how much of a propaganda effect Sputnik would have. On the day after launch, Pravda had only a small article mentioning it. It was only the next day - after they had seen the world wide reaction - that Pravda had banner headlines.
The issue of slave labor is highly important because not only was the V2 a pioneering rocket that went into space in a suborbit on a war mission, the V2 was mass produced, and the fact that it was mass produced meant there were so many "war surplus" V2s to help jump start the U.S. space program. I have seen web pages talking about how space access is so expensive in comparison to how V2s were made cheaply and in large numbers, but people are forgetting that a tremendous amount of labor went into V2 production at a great human cost. Also, I think the word "slave labor" doesn't create the right impression of what took place. It creates an image of Germans in officer uniforms sipping mint juleps while camp inmates toiled over work benches and hummed tunes. The cruelty of the German slave labor system was the food rations and the deliberate undernourishment of the laborers. The rations were almost scientifically calculated to get the maximum amount of work out of a person before they turned into the human skeletons you see in the camp photos and soon died. If they gave the laborers no food at all they would have died much more quickly. While it was a terrible crime to take trainloads of people and kill them right away with poison gas, it was an even greater crime to kill people as slowly as one can imagine by just giving them barely enough food to work on munitions while giving people a false hope that while they were doing this work they were being spared the fate of the others killed by poison. I don't know if the "human subject experiments" of the Nazis contributed anything to medical knowledge, but it would be a great burden to know that some medical advance that everyone benefits from came from that venue. I think people should be aware of the human cost of the V2 program. As to the argument that the article talks about technology not production, technology and production are intertwined, and the large scale production of V2s made them available at war's end to the American program (don't think the Russians were able to get their hands on the actual V2s, but they did get their hands on some of the mid-level Germans involved in the program -- the high-level Germans worked mightily on ending up in American hands, Operation Paperclip and all of that. Also, if the Germans were unable to produce the V2 in large numbers, their would have been no interest in having developed the technology in the first place, and the slave labor was perhaps and enabler as to why the V2 was allowed to be developed in the first place.