Rocketry was originally developed in China when firework displays and gunpowder were invented. Hyder Ali, prince of Mysore, India, developed the first war rockets in the 18 th century, using metal cylinders to hold the combustion powder needed for propulsion.
Then, eventually, came the A-4 rocket. Later called the V-2, the A-4 was a single-stage rocket developed by the Germans and fueled by alcohol and liquid oxygen. It stood The A-4 had a payload capacity of 2, pounds and could reach a velocity of 3, miles per hour.
The first A-4 was launched from Peenemunde, Germany on October 3, It reached an altitude of 60 miles, breaking the sound barrier. It was the world's first launch of a ballistic missile and the first rocket ever to go into the fringes of space. Rocket clubs were springing up all over Germany in the early s.
The German military was searching for a weapon at the time that would not violate the Versailles Treaty of World War I but would defend its country. Artillery captain Walter Dornberger was assigned to investigate the feasibility of using rockets. Dornberger visited the Rocket Society. Von Braun worked on the project through the spring and summer of only to have the rocket fail when it was tested by the military. But Dornberger was impressed with von Braun and hired him to lead the military's rocket artillery unit.
Von Braun's natural talents as a leader shined, as well as his ability to assimilate great quantities of data while keeping the big picture in mind. By , von Braun and Dornberger had a team of 80 engineers in place, building rockets in Kummersdorf, about 60 miles south of Berlin. With the successful launch of two rockets, Max and Moritz, in , von Braun's proposal to work on a jet-assisted take-off device for heavy bombers and all-rocket fighters was granted.
But Kummersdorf was too small for the task. A new facility had to be built. Peenemunde, located on the Baltic coast, was chosen as the new site. Peenemunde was large enough to launch and monitor rockets over ranges up to about miles with optical and electric observing instruments along the trajectory. Its location posed no risk of harming people or property. Dornberger held a public test of the A-2 and it was successful.
However, a far grimmer statistic is that many more, at least 20,, died constructing the V2s themselves. The prisoners — many pulled from other concentration camps for their technical skills such as welding — worked around the clock in an underground factory called Mittelwerk near the Buchenwald concentration camp in central Germany. They lived under appalling conditions, with no daylight, little sleep, food or proper sanitation.
Many were executed for attempted sabotage. Eyewitness accounts describe prisoners being hanged from cranes above the rocket assembly lines.
Despite his complicity in the conditions at Mittelwerk, the engineer who designed the V2, Wernher von Braun, came to be feted as a hero of the space age. The Allies realised that the V2 was a machine, unlike anything they had developed themselves. At the heart of the V2 was a powerful motor capable of taking the rocket more than 80km 50 miles above the Earth in a trajectory of some km miles. One of the most important new technologies developed for the V2 was an automatic guidance system, which operated independently of controllers on the ground.
Any deviations in course and rudders fitted to the fins on the side of the rocket would automatically adjust the heading and trajectory to keep it on target. Not surprisingly, when the war ended, the Americans, Soviets and British scrambled to get their hands on V2 technology. On 15 November , a little more than two months after the first V-2s were fired against Paris and London, the U. Army Ordnance Corps awarded the General Electric Company a contract to prepare captured V-2's for flight tests and to develop missiles based upon German designs, with the overall name of Project Hermes.
Upon the brief occupation of Mittelwerk by the U. During that period, the Americans were also fortunate in the surrender of Wernher von Braun and his key team members.
Under Operation Paperclip originally Operation Overcast , a total of of these men were eventually sent to the U. Under Hermes, the U. The first successful land recovery of a V-2 nosecone by parachute was accomplished in February On 17 December , a single stage V-2 reached a record altitude of miles, the highest ever reached alone by this vehicle.
The last captured V-2 flight was made at White Sands on 28 June In Project Bumper, which comprised eight rounds, the V-2 also served to test the feasibility of a two-stage liquid-fuel rocket. The altitude record stood for many years and was perhaps first broken on 20 September when the first the U.
Army's three-stage Jupiter-C test missile attained an altitude of miles. On 24 July Bumper No. In this case the two-stage rocket was fired for velocity in a hypersonic aerodynamics test. Among other notable V-2 flights were: a launch on 24 October in which motion picture cameras took films of Earth from a 65 mile altitude and covered 40, square miles; a series of flights, starting on 20 February , known as Project Blossom, in which containers with fruit flies and various types of seeds were carried to test the effects of cosmic rays, the canisters with these life forms recovered by parachute; a U.
Navy-sponsored flight up to miles on 7 March in which the first photographs of Earth were taken at this height; a shipboard launch under the name of Operation Sandy from the U. Albert I who was anesthetized in preparation for the flight unfortunately died before the liftoff due to breathing problems. Albert II survived the flight to 83 miles and withstood peak forces of 5. Two other monkeys met the same fate. The Museum's specimen and another V-2 now in La Coupole, in Wizernes, France were part of the almost 1, enemy and Allied war time artifacts that were especially collected for the then National Air Museum under the direction of General of the Army Henry H.
The Air Force made the official transfer on 1 May The actual history of the Army Air Forces' acquisition of both V-2s may never be known due to the loss of relevant documents.
From an available photo of this specimen at Park Ridge, ca. The alternate black and white patterns of the fins aided tracking and determining the rocket's attitude during test launches. Because of the enormous logistical problems and limited manpower available to handle all the Park Ridge material, not until late November did the V-2s travel by train from Chicago to Washington, D. They were then trucked to the Museum's storage facility at Suitland, Maryland, by February It was not until that the better of the two rockets underwent restoration, entailing 2, man-hours of work in preparation for the new National Air and Space Museum, which opened for the Bicentennial celebration on 1 July However, the display rocket lacked key parts.
The thrust ring, graphite exhaust vanes, servo motors, potentiometers, chain and sprocket drive for the movements of the air rudders, and other tail section components, were provided by the Royal Air Force Museum at Hendon, England, while the launch stand A came from NASA Marshall Space Flight Center at Huntsville, Alabama. A section of one of the fins of the Museum's V-2 is purposely removed to permit viewing of the chain and sprocket drive.
The V-2 was normally carried into combat on a rocket trailer and hauled and erected into its upright vertical firing position by a Meilerwagen. There was also an array of related ground support vehicles which included a heavily armored fire control vehicle that ran on tank tracks, a tractor-pulled liquid oxygen transporter, and alcohol tankers.
The Museum does not possess a Meilerwagen nor other V-2 support equipment in its collections. The V-2 on display at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum represents one of about twenty-one known examples of this rocket worldwide. Other extant V-2 rockets are at the following locations:.
Neufeld, Michael J. After the war, the U. Steel; graphite jet vanes, some wooden construction elements in fuselage; aluminum tanks not present. Overall: 11 ft. Skip to main content. You are here Home nasm A V-2 Missile. Previous Next. View Exhibition. Summary Long Description. Construction The V-2 is cylindrical, tapering down towards the base, with four clipped rectangular fins, and tapering down toward the top with an ogival warhead ending in a sharp pointed nose.
History The V-2 A-4 evolved from secret experimental tests made between and by the German Army on smaller lox-alcohol liquid-fuel rockets, designated A-1 and A-2, of kg lbs. Acquisition The Museum's specimen and another V-2 now in La Coupole, in Wizernes, France were part of the almost 1, enemy and Allied war time artifacts that were especially collected for the then National Air Museum under the direction of General of the Army Henry H.
The Science Museum, London, U. Planet Dora. Edited with an Introduction by Michael J. Neufeld Boulder, CO, DeVorkin, David H. Dornberger, Walter R. Kennedy, Gregory P.
0コメント