V-2 rocket
File:V-2-launch.jpg
German test launch.
The V-2 rocket was an early ballistic missile used by Germany during the latter 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 Bliza 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 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, 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
Dora : production chain.
Dora : crematorium.
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 slaves 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:
- At the Netherlands
- Maastricht 19
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
File:V2 us.jpg
US test launch.
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 the USSR where Groettrup headed up a group of just under 250 engineers. Starting with the V-2 they developed a number of new missile designs which would eventually lead to the SCUD missile. However, their designs 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 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
- The V-2 rocket plays a major part in Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow.
- The lunar rocket in Hergé's Tintin comic books Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon looks like a V-2, as do most science fiction rockets of the 1950's. What is unique about Hergé's book is that they also feature the chessboard test-pattern.
See also: List of missiles, German missiles of WW2