Rocket shadow.

[Last_Knight]

The great rockets, and missions into space were a product of Germany in the pre-war and war years of World War 2. The Nazi Germany we all love to hate gave us so much more than death and destruction. Although these designs were for terrorism uses, they became that famous Apollo 11 to land on the moon. Even the man heading up the project of the Apollo 11 rocket was a former member of the Nazi party and even in the SS. Von Braun, a German and technology director of the Nazi party. He witnessed and was involved in the first flight by a liquid fuel rocket in 1931.

In 1940 Von Braun was given the position of technology director of the Nazi party and told Hitler he could have a rocket capable of hitting London with reasonable force within 3 years. This was cancelled by Hitler in 1940 as he believed it to be useless as he had already conquered Europe without the use of rockets.

Still, Von Braun and his team continued tests on the rocket, known then as the A4, on the beaches of north Germany. It was an amazing design, the only problem was control on take off, which in short, was solved by the Von Braun team with the use of gyros. When this was perfected an A4 rocket lead its most succesful flight yet, it landed within 2.5 miles of its intended target which was 125 miles away and it flew 60 miles high, that's into space. This was in 1944.

Before this was achieved the Germans and Allies were using rockets, the Panzerfaust, the Calliope, the Katushya and so on. However the Germans had even better rockets, the air launched Henschel 293, a radio guided missile. This was used on ships.
The Germans also produced an anti-aircraft missile that was in the late war years. Although I don't know its effectiveness.
The most famous German 'rocket' was the V-1 or doodlebug, this used two engines, which the first ejected after it reached 250 miles per hour. It then went on the same alitude and in the same direction until it hit a pre-designated area and it engine cut out. This was very effective and of the 7000 launched into Britain 6000 people were killed. The British AA gunners soon found it easy to destroy these things because of their constant speed and alitude, also the Meteors could catch them and shoot them down.

Back to the A4, it weighed 25 tonnes, had a 1 tonne warhead and was 60ft long. It's capability to be launched from mobile platforms, like the Iraqi Scuds, let it be launched even when the fixed sites in France and Germany had been destroyed. They just moved around on wagons in Holland, launching them at Britain. The rocket would climb 60 miles into the air, fly over to Britain and crash down at 2,500 miles per hour, the British didn't see or hear it. There were two explosions when it hit, the intial explosion and the rocket breaking the sound barrier a few seconds afterwards. The A4 was renamed the V-2, vengance rocket two this was the first ballistic missile.

Now, on to a more modern design, inter-continental ballistic missile or ICBM, this was also first designed by the Germans. As the A10 it was a collection of V-2s together and as one ran out of fuel it would fall away and the next would start up. This was on the drawing boards and in the test stages when the war ended. It could of easily reached America, the Americans didn't know how lucky they were. This system is still used on space rockets to this day.

All the scientists in Germany were taken by either the Soviets or Americans and with their past forgotten lead the Soviet and American rocket programmes throughout the cold war. The Apollo 11 rocket was headed up by Von Braun himself, a former member of the SS.

[mykfin]

Yep! The guns were still warm when the Americans pinched the best brains of the German rocket programme from under the noses of the USSR.

It just shows how well advanced German rocket technology was at this time.