V2 rockets

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#41

Now to get a bit of topic I must say that the US space programe has put me off the last few years taking a lot of risks with lives like for instance. They knew that the Columbia space shuttle hade great problems even before they went up and thus costing taking 7 lives just like the Challenger shuttle wich I must say was just before my birthday and that was the one that should have actualy told NASA that something is wrong but their investigations proved bull because they lost another one in 2003 and that was again human error from the NASA ground crew that take care of the shuttle and the mannegers of NASA.

The Russian Shuttle was way ahead than that of the US allthough it was build years after the US shuttle but had way better features than that of the US. Now you may ask but what happend to it, well money again made it go down and when the USSR came to a downfall so did it and was destroyed in a windstorm when the roof of the hanger it was tored in collaped and destroyed it. Its name was BURAN. The boosters of the shuttle is great and does not have the foam of the us boosters and feul tank.

Take a look for yourselfs and you will see it is tru. The Russians did lose more people than the US.

Henk

#42

We had a great debate on the US space programme here. I cant find it though, which is a pity.

As Danni says though, get back on topic please…

#43

Wilco.

I suppose the main problem with the V2 and development by the three different countries was that Britain was still a shell of a country with massive debts and folk living in pre-fab shelters (not nice) and had to rebuild.

Although Russia was similarly affected they had always placed life pretty low in the scheme of things.

America on the other hand was reletively well off, and had no major reconstruction to persue. ALso I think their economy works better when they are spending so away went the space race.

Many of the designs the Germans had at the time, no matter how crazy, would have been looked at by all. THose that were unworkable would have bee scrapped., as they now had the time to look at tehm.

In the last days of the reich, if you convinced Hitler, Goring et al, then you got the precious resources. Regardless of how mental your scheme was.

Many scientists, indeed any German, would have surrendered Westwards rather than East. So alot of knowledge would go to the Americans for use. But like I mentioned, the slave labour who were unable to go west would have been captured bythe East, and of course so were the actual launch facilities.

#44

http://www.ww2incolor.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=24812&highlight=#24812

I think this is the thread firefly, it is locked in the 2005 archive.

#45

Yes thats the one, thanks for that I spent ages looking for it yesterday.

#46

I cheated mate.

I knew Mike.M was on the thread because he used to be a USAF firefighter providing protection for the space programe. He only has 300 odd posts to search, so was easy to find.

#47

Because we were absolutely positively skint post-war? A situation which was encouraged by the US to encourage “decolonialisation”.[/quote]

Off-topic, but interesting:

The author appears to be rather disturbed by all of these project cancellations and tends to blame the present lack of a large British aerospace industry which would have brought much lucre into the British Isles’ economy upon the post WWII Labour Party’s drastic economic measures taken to stop all public expenditures, especially in aviation research and development to be able to say to the voting public that they are saving millions of £ of the taxpayers’ money. Therefore the Labour Party should be kept in office to save more £ and let the other nations waste their money following up on the researches done by the war time Germans.

My emboldment.
http://www.aahs-online.org/BkReviews/Proj_Canceled.htm

#48

Another interesting V Weapons website -

http://www.flyingbombsandrockets.com/index.html

#49

Whilst mooching around for info on the Backfire bomber I came across this.

Op Backfire, the systematic stripping of information about such weapons as the V-2. I hope to look in to it a bit more as I have time, but any info out there is most welcome.

This part in the wikipedia lends a reason why Peenemunde (in the Russian zone) was visited by the British.

Before the Soviets took occupation of that area, the British were given the opportunity to gather material themselves.

Enjoy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Backfire_(WWII)

#50

And in researching Op Backfire I find a new signature for myself…

“All right,” the critics said, “let’s build the super V2 if we must…but let’s have less of this worship of things German. The Germans didn’t win the War.” It was a danger signal, a denial of science. The man who builds a a swing doesn’t plant a tree and wait for it to grow. He selects an established tree and secures his ropes to the stoutest branch.

  • Ivan Southall, Woomera, 1962

Please read the following it is quite interesting.

http://www.v2rocket.com/start/chapters/backfire.html

It turns out we may have been wrong in some of our claims earlier. This particular quote contradicts Twitch with his “Russians only found urinals” claim. It turns out that the commander of the operation to extract 100 V2s back to the USA Hamill dropped the ball a bit…

Hamill was not told that the factory would be in the Soviet zone of occupation. Consequently, quite a number of missile parts were left for the Soviets to discover.

Also this sort of proves my point (which was still wrong) about the destruction of documents and facilites at Peenemunde…

At this point the Americans had the missiles, they had the top scientists, but they were still missing the all-important Peenemünde documentation. Fourteen tons of Peenemünde documents had been hidden by Peenemünde engineer Dieter Huzel in an abandoned iron mine in the isolated village of Dornten in early April. Von Braun had ordered the documents hidden to prevent their destruction by SS General Kammler, and to also use them as a bargaining chip in negotiating their fate with the Allies. As it happened, Karl Otto Fleisher was the only person remaining in the Nordhausen area who was aware of the general location of the V-2 documents hidden by von Braun’s group. Staver tricked him into revealing the location of the papers on May 20. In less than a week, the Dornten area was scheduled to fall into the hands of the British. A frantic scramble then ensued to transport the documents back to Nordhausen, where they were quickly shipped to Paris, and then to the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.

Twitch has explained about Op Paperclip, Op Backfire was the British Op, which in one way was a belated attempt to get info and also predated Paperclip.

The Germans of the Vengence Division were not totally impressed with being handed over to the Brits when they had their hearts set on a life across the pond…

On the afternoon of July 21, 1945, von Braun’s specialists were called to a meeting. It was announced that from among them a select group would be surrendered to the British to conduct some type of specific work with rockets. Most of the rocket scientists were horrified at the thought of being turned over to the British. Some felt that the British attitude towards the V-2 specialists might be less than cordial considering the fact that London had been on the receiving end of the V-2s. Ultimately, they did not want to remain in British hands and feared they might miss their opportunity to work for the Americans. However, they had no choice.

The Brits and the Americans had been vieing over who would get the scientists even before the end of the war but even though the Americans got to keep them the Brits had ample time to interrogate them. And reluctantly gave them back to American custody after much prodding fromthe Americans.

the British agreed to return the Germans on the condition that four or five of the top scientists could be fully interrogated in London about technical information. As it turned out, there was never a technical discussion for the Germans in London. Von Braun, Dornberger, and several other Peenemünde department chiefs were driven through the streets of London to show them the destruction that the missile had wrought

Bit of British Vengence here

General Dornberger was kept by the British. Dornberger probably knew more about the V-2 organization and systems than anyone else, but the British didn’t want his technical knowledge, they wanted to execute him. Since SS General Kammler was nowhere to be found, the British fully intended to bring Dornberger to trial at Nuremberg as the person responsible for the bombardment of London with V-2s.

Hmm, how close could we have been…

On December 23, 1946, a study group of the British Interplanetary Society headed by R.A. Smith and H. E. Ross submitted a redesign of the V-2 rocket to the British Ministry of Supply. The adaptation consisted mainly of a pressurized cabin in the nose of the rocket in place of the warhead and control compartment, which would enable a man to be launched as a passenger on the flight. The cabin was designed to detach, allowing the astronaut to experience several minutes of weightlessness before it parachuted back to Earth. The proposal was not adopted. However, the concept was very similar to the one eventually used by NASA.

Op Backfire gleened far more information about the V2 than even the Germans knew at the time, simpley because they didn’t have the time to collate and analyse this data.

#51

“All right,” the critics said, “let’s build the super V2 if we must…but let’s have less of this worship of things German. The Germans didn’t win the War.” It was a danger signal, a denial of science. The man who builds a a swing doesn’t plant a tree and wait for it to grow. He selects an established tree and secures his ropes to the stoutest branch.

  • Ivan Southall, Woomera, 1962

Ummm… sort of. The problem is that the Germans had a lot of rather bad engineers, and never properly productionised those designs they had which were good. Much of the work on the late war “high technology” projects (jet engines, high speed aircraft and the like) was little more than dirty paper, and following up on it would have set allied research back some years.
To be honest, the V-2 really didn’t solve very many difficult problems. Most of them had already been solved by either Goddard in the 1930s or remained to be solved by the US and Soviets in the 1950s.

#52

Sorry pdf, I was sort of using this as a signature to prove what you have just said.

It is in response to the “flights of fantasy” thread and the other instances of German adoration on the site.

#53

British scientists had the earliest opportunity to see major parts of V-2 - notably all parts of guidance system.
Below is fragment of memoir of the Flying Officer K. Szrajer:

"One of the biggest achievements by the Polish Underground Forces in World War II was its operation called “Trzeci Most” (Third Bridge). It was carried out as a joint operation with the British Special Operations Executive – the SOE, which gave it a cryptonym “Wildhorn III”. Its objective was to smuggle pieces of the V-2 rocket – the German wunderwaffe – out of occupied Poland, so the British could study them. At this stage, British still did not know what capability the rocket might had and what to expect from its use against Britain. After their primary site at Peenemünde was bombed, the Germans established a launching site at Blizna, Poland, from where they continued to test V-2. Poles set up a chain post of small units responsible for beating the Germans to the sites of impacts of the tested rockets. One of those V-2 had landed in a marsh close to the bank of the River Bug near village of Sarnaki, some 80 miles east of Warsaw. Members of the Polish Resistance found it before Germans did, and since it was sticking out, pushed it deep into water making it invisible. Later they recovered it and a team of Polish engineers, under Jerzy Chmielewski, dismantled most vital parts. They were spirited out of occupied Poland by means of air transport. Kazimierz Szrajer reminiscences:
These events took place in July 1944, toward the end of my operational tour on Halifaxes. I was with the 1586 Flight stationed at Brindisi, Italy. I was called by our squadron leader who informed me that I was assigned to the British crew of a Dakota for a assignment to Poland. We were to land there for a pickup. He advised me to be physically and morally prepared for this flight. I felt deeply honoured and for a next few days I was excited, impatiently waiting for my assignment.
Finally, in a morning of July 25th, I was informed that the flight would take place that night. The plane was to land at Brindisi to pick me up. I suddenly realized that I never flew that type of aircraft, and started be a little apprehensive. My commander assured me that I’ll do just fine and that the British pilot would brief me about plane’s systems and a take-off procedure. That exactly what happened. I took F/Lt Culliford , a New Zealander, about five minutes to introduce me to Dakota. After referring me to instruments, fuel and undercarriage system, he made a fully qualified co-pilot. Our plane had two extra tanks installed in the fuselage, what extended its range significantly and allowed us to stay airborne for at least 13 hours. Our crew consisted of: F/Lt S.C. Culliford (pilot), F/O K. Szrajer (co-pilot and translator), F/O J.P. Williams (navigator) and F/Sgt J. Appleby (wireless operator). It was to be my twentieth flight to the occupied Poland.
We took off from Brindisi at 7:30 p.m. escorted by a Polish Liberator. It was mostly for our psychical comfort, since both planes were easy target for German fighters. On board we had some equipment and four passengers. Not only the common sense but also strict regulations prohibited us from knowing whom they were. After the war I learned from different sources that our passengers were: Kazimierz Bilski, Jan Nowak, Leszek Starzynski and Boguslaw Wolniak.
During crossing of the Yugoslavian coast nightfall came. Until that moment I had a radio contact with our escort, which took its own course. Ours led through Yugoslavia, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Over Hungary we saw AA in action, but far from us and apparently stimulated by somebody else. Our orientation point for landing was the outlet of the River Dunajec to the River Vistula. We reached it according to plan, right on time. Down there they waited for us, and after signals exchange, the lights appeared on four corners of the landing strip. Pilot made two attempts before putting down the plane. Right after we stoped I opened the door to established contact with the receiving party. I was welcomed by por. Wlodzimierz Gedymin who commanded on the ground. Our passengers left, the equipment was unloaded and took five new passengers. They were: T. Arciszewski, J. Retinger, J. Chmielewski, T. Chciuk and C. Micinski. Jerzy Chmielewski was in possession of the V-2 parts and written report on them. He was responsible for the watch on Blizna.
After only several minutes on the ground we got ready to take off. It turned out that the field was oozy. Our Dakota was stuck in the mud. I immediately realized my situation: I was on a Polish soil and I could join the Polish Resistance and in few days meet my family and friends. The Polish officer was asking me a lot of questions about certain people, Polish units, etc. while there was no time to waste. We franticly tried to free the aircraft, all in vain. We were running out of time and we discussed burning the plane. Finally, after an hour and five minutes on a ground, we succeeded and took off for home.
We still had a big problem on our hands. In our desperation to budge the aircraft we severed their hydraulic hoses to eliminate the possibility of the wheels’ locked breaks. This prevented us from lifting up the undercarriage. Flying with the wheels down created a drag what threatened with running out of fuel before reaching our base. We filled the hydraulic tank with whatever fluid we could get: water, thermos tea, whatever. By the time we passed the Tatra Mountains, we had the wheels up. Then I went to see to our passengers and instruct them about parachute harness in case of need. Back in the cockpit I took over the controls. It was a beautiful, starry and calm night and we all calmed down, calculating that after three hours of flight we’ll back home and relatively safe. I reflected on the group of people we left in behind us, who already for five years fought with the hated occupant, and who put a lot of effort into the “Third Bridge”. Our successful flight back to Allied territory with the parts of V-2 was their triumph.


1944. Polish pilots of the 1586 Flight in Brindisi, Italy. Second from stands F/O Szrajer.


Kazimierz Szrajer being decorated with Cross of Valour.

By pure luck, this mission was almost scrapped by the last minute, when unexpectedly, a day before the operation, the Germans set up an outpost with two FW190s fighters on the very strip designated for Dakota to land. Fortunately, they left the same day and Resistance was able to prepare everything on time. Jerzy Chmielewski who brought V-2 parts with him to England could speak no English and categorically refused to give them away until he had an order from only two Polish officers on British soil he knew able to issue it. The pole set on his treasure and threatened with a knife anybody who made an attempt to have a look on it. The stalemate lasted for several hours before he obtained the authority to relinquish his collection. Undoubtedly, it was yet another vital contribution of the Polish nation to the Allies war effort."

Here a few links with interesting info:

http://www.biocrawler.com/encyclopedia/V-2

http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/v2.htm - Really good!

http://www.v2rocket.com/

http://pedia.nodeworks.com/B/BL/BLI/Blizna

http://www.project1947.com/gr/grchron1.htmhttp://www.project1947.com/gr/grchron1.htm

http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/best_enemy/chapter_06.htm

Link below is interesting too, but in Polish. Site was set by bloke which lives in Pustkow, little village near Blizna.
I can assume that he get his information from relatives which witnessed visit of British scientists when soviets took the area in 1944.
According to him soviets took Blizna 1 of August 1944.
British mission headed by Sanders, (no first name mentioned), arrived at
3-rd of September 44 and stayed until 22 of September.
They packed many wooden cages with rocket parts.
After their departure soviets combed the whole area and took more parts.

I don’t know where info come from, but he stated that during transport soviets replaced parts with metal scrap.
It would be interesting to find if soviets allowed the same British team to Peneemunde.

http://republika.pl/pustkow/blizna.html

Cheers,

Lancer44