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The V-2 rocket was an early ballistic missile
used by Germany during the later stages of World War II against mostly British and Belgian targets.
Pre-operational history
As early as 1927 members of the German Rocket Society had started experimenting with
liquid-fueled rockets. By 1932 the Reichswehr started taking notice of their developments for potential long-range artillery use, and a team led by General Walter
Dornberger was shown a test vehicle designed and flown by Wernher
von Braun. Although the rocket was of limited ability, Dornberger saw Von Braun's genius and pushed for him to join the
military.
Von Braun did so, as eventually did most of the other members of the society. In December 1934 Von Braun scored another success with the flight of the A2 rocket, a small model powered by ethanol and
liquid oxygen, with work on the design continuing in an attempt to
improve reliability.
By 1936 the team had moved on from the A2 and started work on both the A3 and A4. The
latter was a full-sized design with a range of about 175 km (109 miles), a top altitude
of 80 km and a payload of about a tonne. This
increase in capability had come through a complete redesign of the engine by Walter Thiel. It was clear that Von Braun's designs were turning into real weapons, and Dornberger moved the
team from Kummersdorf (near Berlin) to a small town, Peenemünde, on the island of Usedom on Germany's Baltic coast, in order to provide more room for testing and greater secrecy.
The A3 proved to be problematic, and a redesign was started as the A5. This version was completely reliable, and by 1941 the team had fired about 70 A5 rockets. The first A4 flew in March 1942, flying about 1.6 km and crashing into the water. The second launch
reached an altitude of 11 km before exploding. The third rocket, launched on October
3, 1942, changed things by following its trajectory perfectly. It landed 193 km away,
and became the first man-made object to enter space. (By the modern international
definition, the first object to enter space was a V2 launched in the U.S. on May 10,
1946.)
Production started in 1943 on the Vergeltungswaffe 2 (reprisal weapon 2), or
the V-2 as it became better known, at the insistence of Göbbels'
propaganda ministry. The Allies were
already aware of the weapon. At a test site at Blizna in Poland a fired missile had been recovered by Polish resistance
agents from the banks of the Western Bug, and vital technical details had
been given to British intelligence. The British launched a massive bombing campaign against Peenemünde which slowed testing and
production considerably.
Dornberger had always wanted a mobile launch platform for the missiles, but Hitler
pressed for the construction of massive underground blockhaus structures from which to launch them. V-2s arrived from a
number of factories in a continuous stream on several redundant rail lines, and launching was almost continual.
Construction of the first such site started at Eperleques in the Pas-de-Calais area in 1943, but the British
spotted it almost immediately and started a massive bombing campaign that eventually forced the Germans to abandon it. Another
site was then started nearby in a huge quarry and called La Coupole, but it wasn't long before that too was bombed into submission. Eventually they gave up on the
area and moved to the south near Cherbourg, but once again the site was
discovered and bombed -- this time while the cement was still wet.
The plan was changed to build large truck-towed trailers for the missiles. An entire convoy for the missile, men, equipment
and fuel required about thirty trucks. The missile was delivered to a staging area on a Vidalwagen and the local crews
would fit the warhead. Launch teams would then transfer their missile to their own
Meillerwagen and tow it to the launch site. There it was erected onto the launch table, fueled, and launched.
The missile could be launched practically anywhere, roads running though forests being a particular favourite. The system was
so mobile and small that not one Meillerwagen was ever caught in action.
Operational history
V-2 mass production was conducted at the Mittelwerk tunnel system under the Kohnstein mountain, part of the Mittelbau-Dora slave
labour camp complex, near Nordhausen, Germany. By late 1943 over 10,500 forced laborers were in Kohnstein and many died due to the conditions and heavy labour. For
example, 2,900 died between October 1943 and March 1944, but others died during transfers and other work. The majority of the
slaves were Russian, Polish and French, although there were also prisoners of war, foreign workers and Germans forced to
compulsory work.
The first unit to reach operational status was Batterie 444. On September
2, 1944 they formed up to launch attacks on Paris, recently liberated, and eventually set up near Houffalize in Belgium. The next day the 485th moved to The Hague for operations
against London. Several launch attempts over the next few days failed, but on the 8th
both groups fired successfully.
This was the tip of the iceberg. Over the next few months the total numbers fired were:
On 3 March 1945 the allies attempted to destroy V-2s and launching equipment near The
Hague by a large-scale bombardment, but due to navigational errors the Bezuidenhout quarter was destroyed, killing 500
civilians.
The V-2 was militarily ineffective. Its guidance systems were too primitive to hit specific targets, and its costs were
approximately equivalent to four-engined bombers, which were more accurate (though only in a relative sense - see discussion in
strategic bomber), had longer ranges, carried many more warheads,
and were reusable. Nevertheless, it had a considerable psychological effect as, unlike bombing planes or the V1 Flying Bomb, which made a characteristic buzzing sound, the V-2 travelled
faster than the speed of sound, with no warning before impact and no
possibility of defense.
Post-War V-2 usage
At the end of the war a race started to retrieve as many V-2 rockets and staff as possible. Under Operation Paperclip three hundred train loads of V-2s and parts were
captured and shipped to the United States, as well as 126 of the
principal designers, including both Wernher von Braun and
Walter Dornberger. For several years afterward, the United States
rocketry program made use of the supply of unused V-2 rockets left from the war. One of these modified V2s, in a test flight in
the late 1940s, reached a then-record altitude of 400 km (250 miles). Many of these
rockets were used for peaceful purposes, including upper-atmosphere research.
Von Braun went to work for the US Army's Redstone Arsenal, eventually settling in Huntsville, Alabama in 1950. He quickly became the father of almost
all US rocketry, working on the Redstone, Jupiter, Jupiter-C, Pershing, and Saturn
rockets.
The USSR also captured a number of V-2s and staff, letting them set up
in Germany for a time. In 1946 they were moved to a site near Moscow in the USSR where Groettrup headed up a group of just under
250 engineers. The first Soviet missile was the R-1, an exact copy of the V-2
manufactured in the USSR. Starting with the R-1 (soon followed by its evolved version R-2) the Soviets developed a number of new
missile designs which would eventually lead to the SCUD missile.
The designs produced by the German team in Moscow were not put directly into production; instead, local designers would
incorporate the better features into their own designs. In this way the Soviet Union built up its own rocket design experience.
The German team was eventually repatriated in the 1950s after the local design teams had drained them of all their knowledge.
The British also captured a small number of V-2 missiles, and launched several of them from a site in northern Germany under
Operation
Backfire. However the engineers involved had already agreed to move to the US when the test firings were complete. The
Backfire report however remains the most extensive technical documentation of the rocket, including all support procedures,
tailored vehicles and fuel composition.
Technical details
The V-2 had an operational range of about 300 km (200 miles) carrying a 1000 kg (2000 lb) warhead. The V-2 had an accuracy CEP
of 11-miles (17 km). This means at a 200-mile (300 km) range, the V-2 could only be aimed to hit somewhere within an 11-mile (17
km) circle. With that kind of accuracy, it could be aimed to hit a city, but not a factory. Modern missiles, the Minuteman for example have a CEP of 320-feet (100 metres) at a 6,000 mile (10,000 km)
range.
The V-2 was propelled by a mixture of alcohol (ethanol) and water, combined with liquid oxygen. The turbo fuel pumps were propelled by hydrogen peroxide. The water-alcohol mixture was kept in a tank of aluminium to save weight, which put a high pressure on German war
economy, as this metal was rare and valuable.
The alcohol-water fuel was pumped along the double wall of the main combustion burner, so that the chamber would at the same
time heat the fuel and be cooled by it so preventing melting due to the 2500-2700 Celsius temperature. The fuel was then pumped
into the main burner chamber through 1224 nozzles, which assured the correct mixture of alcohol and oxygen at all times.
Some later V-2s used "guide beams" (i.e. radio signals transmitted from the ground), to navigate the missile toward its
target, but the first models used a simple analog computer that would
adjust the azimuth for the rocket, and the flying distance was controlled by the
amount of fuel, so that when the fuel ran out "brennschluss", the rocket would stop accelerating and soon reach the top
of the (approximately parabolic) flight curve.
The painting of the operational V-2s was mostly a camouflage ragged pattern
with several variations, but in the end of the war a plain olive green rocket also appeared. During tests, the rocket was painted
in a characteristic black/white chessboard pattern which aided in determining
if the rocket was spinning around its own longitudinal axis.
Influences
See also: List of missiles, German missiles of WW2
References
- King, Benjamin; Kutta, Timothy (1998). IMPACT. The History of Germany's V-Weapons in World War II. Rockville Center,
New York: Sarpedon Publishers. ISBN
1-885119-51-8.
External links
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