V1 and V2 rockets

[vehelpfulguy]

Just watched film Operation Crossbow about building of V1 and V2 rockets. How did the Germans get them to fly and land in the correct place?. Was it a case of point them to London and put enough fuel in so it runs out over London or was there anythng more sophisticated ?

[shaneystar2]

All very complicated and according to my son they had gyroscopes in them ..I am none the wiser but Wiki may be helpful.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Army_and_V1_ and_V2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V2_rocket

[jake-the-peg]

The V1 and 2 rockets were developed under the leadership of Werner Von Braun at Penemunde on the German coast.

As Shaney says a basic inertial guidance system which is basically a gyroscope mounted so that it's free to move in all directions. If the rocket starts to move off course the gyroscope seems to move to the sensors and a correction can me made.

http://www.v2rocket.com/start/makeup/sci12.jpg

But there was also a radio guidance beam.



After the war Von Baun was the leading light in NASA's space project and the Americans shipped loads of captured V2's back to the US

You can read more on the technical details of this here:

http://www.v2rocket.com/start/makeup/design.ht ml

[vehelpfulguy]

Some of the after war activities with V1 and V2 and Von Braun were covered in the recent BBC series "Space Race"

See here

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0461887/

[jno]

Gather round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun,
A man whose allegiance
Is ruled by expedience.
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown.
"Ha, Nazi Schmazi," says Wernher von Braun.

Don't say that he's hypocritical,
Say rather that he's apolitical.

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.

Some have harsh words for this man of renown,
But some think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude,
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun.

You too may be a big hero,
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero.
"In German oder English I know how to count down,
Und I'm learning Chinese," says Wernher von Braun.

- Tom Lehrer

[Golden Shred]

The production of the V2 was at the Dora-Mittelbrau Concentration Camp. I had a friend (at that time aged 20) who was tortured there and died 6 weeks after the Camp was liberated by the Americans in April 1945 from the injuries inflicted on her by the Germans.

[Clanad]

Actually, von Braun didn't have any hand in designing the V1. The design concept and aerodynamic part of the V1 was designed by Robert Lusser, while the engine (a pulse jet) was designed by Fritz Gosslau. the V1 wasn't actually aimed, per se. The crude auto-pilot was quite clever though. it was, as JTP states, aided by a gyroscope for stability. However, a small, wind driven propeller on the front of the machine drove a long threaded screw on which a nut and washer rested. As the washer reached a pre-determined position, based on time and distance calculations, it caused a guillotine-like device to cut a control cable forcing the bomb into almost a vertical dive. The later V2's were designed and perfected by von Braun and were true rockets... their guidance systems, though crude by today's standards, were advanced for the time. Neither device were considered successful, although they did cause a great deal of fear in England... understandably.
The British planted false reports that the V1's were overshooting their intended targets, so the German's responded by shortening the time/distance calculations causing the bombs to fall far short of their intended targets...

[jake-the-peg]

Why do you say they were considerred unsucessful?

8,000 V1s killed 2,000 Londoners and wounded 25,000 without having to risk any german pilots.

The V2 averaged over 5 deaths per attack.

They failed to turn the war but at that stage it is hard to see how they could have. Had they been available in 1940 things might have been very different - especially if the U-boat lauched one had worked as that would have placed New York in the firing line

[Clanad]

Actually, about 9,250 V1's were fired against London, but less than 2,500 reached their target. In flight they were almost as vulnerable as their ramps: about 2,000 were destroyed by anti-aircraft gunfire; 2,000 by fighter planes, and almost 300 by barrage balloons. The V2, on the other hand, resulted in about seven thousand civilians killed in London by the V-2, an average of over 5 deaths per attack. (Source The German "vengeance weapons" - V1, V2 and V3). Again, even one death was catastrophic for that person as well as England as a whole, but on a purely military assessment, Its guidance systems were too primitive to hit specific targets, and its costs were approximately equivalent to four-engined bombers, which were more accurate, had longer ranges, carried many more warheads, and were reusable. Moreover, it had diverted resources from other, more effective programs. The cost of the V2 program are estimated to have been as high as $21 billion in 2005 U.S. dollars...

Nevertheless, it had a considerable psychological effect and as such was effective. And, as stated, each death took far more of a toll than its own immediacy...

[Golden Shred]

Von Braun and about 400 other German engineers designed, resided and produced the V 2 at Dora. At its peak this activity required the labour of more than 22,000 concentration camp victims. Most of the victims were incarcerated underground in tunnels in the Harz mountains. They were of all nationalities identified by the Germans for elimination. My friend was English. Von Braun maintained throughout the remainder of his wretched life in America that although he lived and worked at Dora he had absolutely no knowledge of what was going on. Also, his most famous remark is "My job is to make the rockets go up, where they come down is not my responsibility".

[jake-the-peg]

Ah I saw that financial evaluation too - It rather looked as if they'd factored in the development costs - but obviously not the development costs of the weapons they compared them to which in one sense is fair but in another not. especially when you consider that the war-time economy of Germany was propped up with slave labour and theft.

I'm also not convinced that the fact that they could not be accurately targeted was important - ideally if they'd have been able to take out a specific target they would have been devastating but London is a big target.

But I still think that the main issue was when they became available. If V2s especially had been around at the stage in 1940 when the RAF was beginning to turn the tide of the Battle of Britain we might be looking at a very different world.