scienceillustrated.com.au | 51“The rocket functioned perfectly, except it landed on
the wrong planet,” he says to a colleague after the first V-2
attack on London.
All in all, the Nazis manage to launch about 3,500 V-2
rockets towards Allied targets, but the new weapon is not
nearly sufficient to turn the tide of the war. When the war
ends in May 1945, it is clear that the
production of the V-2 rocket has cost
more lives than it has claimed. Some
12,000 slave labourers have died in
the manufacturing process, whereas
about 9,000 people have lost their
lives in the missile strikes.
V-2 IN AMERICAN HANDS
By the end of the war, Wernher von
Braun surrenders to the US, which is
desperate to get its hands on the
world’s leading rocket engineer and
his staff of excellent specialists.
The US hopes that the Germans
can guarantee the country a decisive vital arms lead in the
postwar era, but that is not what von Braun wants. He is
dreaming of developing rockets, which can reach the Moon
and conquer space.
Under the code name of Operation Paperclip, von Braun
and his team of 100+ rocket researchers secretly arrive to
the White Sands military facility in New Mexico in
September 1945. Lots of archive material concerning the
V-2 has been sent ahead, and in October, hundreds of
freight cars with V-2 components, which have been carried
across the Atlantic, arrive to the port of New Orleans. The
material takes up the space of all railway freight depots up
to 350 km from the city.
However, it is soon clear that the US
is not interested in using the German
rocket parts and scientists for building
space rockets. A new Communist
enemy is lurking in Russia, and just like
in Nazi Germany, von Braun and his
colleagues are told to build devastating
military missiles.
However, the stubborn German does
not give in. He persistently tries to
influence his new employers,
introducing one incredible space project
after the other. In 1954, he proposes
Project Orbiter, which is about making
the world’s first satellite orbit Earth. He has already
developed a design based on the V-2 rocket, which will be
able to handle the task. The Redstone rocket, which is more
powerful and accurate than the V-2, also has a nose cone,
which can be disengaged during flight to carry the satellite
into its orbit. However, von Braun's idea is not adopted.0102030405060708090100110120METRES
SATURN V(1967)
111 M(2020s)ITS
122 M(1943)V-2
14 MREDSTONEMERCURY
(1953)25 MSTATUE OF LIBERTY(1886)
93 MThe V-2 was the first space rocket
with liquid fuel, turbo pumps,
and aerodynamics which could
handle supersonic speeds. All
the new inventions were also
used in the next generations of
space rockets, which grew much
larger than the V-2. In order tobe able to lift still more cargo,
extra rocket stages with
detachable engines and fuel
tanks were added, making the
rockets grow. The V-2 was 14 m
tall, whereas the giant of the
future, the ITS, will measure no
less than 122 m.The "father" was soon outgrown
BULLET SHAPE ENSURES
STABLE FLIGHT
The rocket is shaped like the
German infantry's “S” rifle bullet.
Nazi experts have discovered
that this bullet travels stably –
even at supersonic speeds.SHEET METAL REINFORCES NOSE
The rocket's bow is reinforced by
a belt of thin sheet iron or "tin trousers".
The reinforcement is to prevent the rocket from
breaking into several parts in the air due to
heating of its body.WOOD FRAME DIVIDES CONTROL ROOM
The rocket's “brain” is a 1.4-m-long control chamber
divided into four partitions by thin plywood plates. The
wooden design makes the rocket lighter and separates
control instruments, batteries, radio equipment, etc.
A single rocket carrying about 1,000 kg of
explosives razed entire housing blocks in
London in a split second.FOX PHOTOS/GETTY