Post anything about V-1 and V-2 rockets
Picture is from this site http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/~jeff/115a/history/v2.html
From a techno point of view I suppose the V2 was impressive, not so sure about the V1 though.
But once again I think it was probably a diversion of effort. Still it got Von Braun a decent career, makes you wonder doesnt it, man uses slave labour for years and knows about it, but is welcomed with open arms because he has some skill.
Mind you every governement did it I suppose.
At that time it was a major advancement in technology, but I think too much time and money was put into the program. The V-1s and V-2s were easy prey for the RAF.
No V2s were ever shot down - they’re ballistic missiles & came in at Mach a lot.
No V2s were ever shot down - they’re ballistic missiles & came in at Mach a lot.[/quote]
oh… oops 
Thanks for clearing that.
But what’s about baloons who placed over the London .
To deter low-flying and dive bombers. Nothing to do with V2s at all (balloons were used in WW1 and all of WW2).
Ok
Ther’s something more about rockets :
Altogether more than 5,000 V-2s were built during the war. More than 4,300 were launched between Sept. 6, 1944, and Mar. 27, 1945, against London and southeastern England, Antwerp, and other targets.
Many exploded before reaching their targets or were misdirected. Much rocket technology after the war was based on the V-2.
http://pages.zdnet.com/vancell/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/buzzb2.jpg
http://pages.zdnet.com/vancell/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/v1lunch.jpg
Technically the V1 was not a rocket but the first cruise missile. It was powerd by a Schmidt-Argus pulse jet engine (Schmidt the inventor and Argus Aircraft engine company in Berlin the manufacturer) running of AVGAS and atmospheric oxygen.
It was controlled by a gyroscope and a barometric altimeter. Basically it was just told in which direction to fly at which altitude and after a certain time relating to target range a clockwork mechanism cut off the fuel to the engine, causing the missile to drop. Sometimes the mechanisms went wrong. My railway AA gunner grandfather told me that in 1944 his unit was deployed at the channel coast close to Calais, right beside a V1 launching site (actually the V1s were launched right over their heads). Once a V1 went haywire and circled the launching site until it ran out of fuel ----> BOOM!
The V1 flew at about 600 km/h and could therefore be caught by fast fighter planes (either shot down or have the gyro destabilised by nudging the wingtip using the fighter’s wingtip, causing it to crash), or shot down by AAA.
The V2 was a much more complicated missile, the ancestor of today’s ICBMs, only that it used liquid fuel (LOX / Alcohol, plus highly concentrated H2O2 as fuel for the turbo pump).
There was no defense against the V2, which, after stopping the engine, became solely the subject of gravity and came down at appr. Mach 5. Directional control was achieved during the launch phase, using gyroscopes and servos controlling graphite rudders in the rocket jet.
The rockets which was used by the Americans to launch the Explorer satellite into orbit (Juno) and the first two astronauts into ballistic trajectories (Jupiter C) where essentially improved and Americanised V2s.
Except for modifications to ease manufacture and to improve power (range, payload, also use of transistors instead of vacuum tubes in the electronics), they were technologicaly identical with the V2 .
Jan
The Hawker Tempest and Meteor were the most used allied fighters to shoot/bring down the V1, but most were shot down by the AA guns which were deployed to the coast from the London area. Still quite a few got through.
remember hearing that the V PROGRAM cost as much as the us manhatten project…
if the germans didn’t decide to do it, they could’ve build a heavy bomber fleet or a lot more tanks, u boats.
v attacks caused 50k causalties i think. the worst was when a v-2 hit a woolsworth store, couple hundred dead.
1944 Luftwafe have a little fighters and bombers all been destroyed ,germans …they are build more plains ,rocket’s been expensive .
Germany had a nuclear program (i think) why didnt they use the V money for that!
Germany had a nuclear program (i think) why didnt they use the V money for that![/quote]
they had a nuclear program before anyone else. then the brit commandos messed up their heavy water facility.
The Germans had a very embryonic nuclear programme. The Heavy Water plant was scuppered as a just in case scenario, not because they had any real chance of making a weapon.
In essence the Germans may have had more chance of developing nuclear weapons if they hadnt had a deliberate state policy of murdering and persecuting other groups. A lot of the work done on the nuclear programme in the Allies was carried out by ex-German Jews…
You have to wonder about a society that was prepared to write off the likes of Einstien eh…
If Britich not destriyed fascilities in Norwey maybe germans build some nukes.
No way, not for the next five years.
The main aim of the German nuclear program was to develop a working power reactor to power the German industry. Germany is notoriously short of natural energy sources, most of our homegrown energy is coal (both anthracite and lignite), but the mines are well known and easily destroyed by an enemy (Anthracite in the Ruhr area and the Saarland, lignite from strip mines around Aachen, Cologne and Leibzig). There are very small reserves of oil in the Emsland area and around Hannover. This was the reason why Hitler ordered to hold Stalingrad at all cost, because he wanted to capture the Caspian Sea oil fields around Baku.
The Germans used a different approach from the Americans. Due to a calculating mistake they decided to build a reactor based on heavy water using natural uranium instead of a graphite moderater (which btw requires the graphite to be extremely pure).
Heisenberg knew that a bomb was possible, but to built a bomb you’d need either highly enriched U235 or Pu239. A unranium enrichment plant is first very big and noticable (therefore built by the US in remote areas) and also uses lots of electricity.
Theoretically the Germans could have used a working reactor to breed Pu239 out of U238, but then they still would have needed to seperate this not easy to handle metal (it is very reactive and tends to combust spontaneously in contact with air) from the highly radioactive fission products out of the used fuel rods, then they would have had to understand the highly complex metalurgy of Pu (which undergoes several phase changes in it’s solid form depending on temperature, which all influence the criticality of a nuclear fission device) and to build a highly complex implosion type bomb. The simple gun approach used by the Americans for the Hiroshima type U235 bomb doesn’t work with Pu due to it’s higher reaction rate with neutrons.
Also, Pu as it is chemically gained from the used fuel rods it is contaminated with significant quantities of Pu240, which acts as a reactor poison by absorbing neutrons, so you are back to an isotope enrichment problem.
This still doesn’t mention the difficulties of getting the geometrics of an implosion bomb right (explosive lenses etc.).
At Haigerloch in spring 1945 Heisenberg et al were close to getting their first experimental reactor critical, but this is just the first step.
While the sabotage attempts in Norway defintely delayed German nuclear research (but by this time the equipment from the plant in Norway and the remaining stock of heavy water were on the way to Germany, the German military were less worried about additional sabotage attempts by the Norwegian resistance, but by the almost daily Allied bombing raids on the plant. They figured that sooner or later the Allies will hit the plant and up to then they just escaped direct hits by luck), bigger obstacles were Nazi ideology (German Physics, as opposed to modern “Jewish” physics, which included almost all modern research, including quantum theory and relativity), backfighting for resources and competition for a rare uranium metal ( the military wanted to get the stocks available in Germany to manufacture AP shells) and Htler’s order to stop any research which wouldn’t provide a working weapon within 6 months.
Jan
Hitler want’s too to conquer Kavkaz becouse he need fuel for tanks and plains ,southeast been primary goal for germans ,becouse fuel and he want to meet with japanese in asia.
He was already before going after the Romanian oil fields. At the same time research into making fuel (Hydrocarbons) out of coal was enforced and several synthetic fuel plants were built (using the Fischer-Tropsch or Bergius process).
Jan
Excellent post, summed up everything I wanted to say but didnt have the knowledge to expand. Thank you.