Submarines and their Weapons - Aircraft of World War II

Right: A technician is photographed making last-minute
adjustments to the guidance system prior to launching an
A4 rocket, which has been brought to the vertical position
by the mobile erector.
(33001b) of thrust for 45 seconds instead of the 300kg
(6601b) for 16 seconds of the A2. More important,
perhaps, was the new method of stabilisation which
von Braun's team devised. Whereas the A2 was stabilised
by its centre section being spun by an electric
motor to create a gyroscopic effect, the A3 would
have small molybdenum 'rudders' (more accurately,
vanes) acting to deflect a portion of the exhaust
stream under the control of gyroscopes. The A3 also
had four rudimentary tail fins, though these hardly
extended outside the diameter of the body. Its payload
consisted of an instrumentation package, and it was to
return to earth on a parachute. The first A3 launch
took place on 6 December 1937 from the island of
Greifswalder Oie, off the Baltic coast. The new stabilisers
worked, but other elements of the design, in
particular the overall aerodynamics, were faulty, and
the rocket was never entirely a success, although three
examples were launched.
THEMOVETOPEENEMUNDE
By then, the research group was fast outgrowing the
facilities at Kummersdorf. The A2s were actually
launched from the island of Borkum, off the mouth of
the River Ems in the North Sea. In early 1936, the
HWA and the RLM joined forces to purchase a large
area of suitable land, an isolated peninsula around the
village of Peenemünde on the island of Usedom, off
the Baltic coast close to the present-day border with
Poland. They also bought the adjacent Greifswalder
Oie, and it was to this location that both moved their
rocket development programmes. The Army were
located to the east of the site, in an area known as
Heeresversuchsanstalt-Peenemünde (HVP), and
referred to as Electromechanische Werke (EMW) as a
cover, where Dornberger was appointed Head of
Weapon Test Section 11, with von Braun as his Technical
Director. It was here that the first successful ballistic
missiles the world had ever seen were developed
and tested, and the name Peenemünde soon took on a
new significance.
After the failure of the A3 to live up to expectations,
development work on the A4, which was
always intended to be a military rocket, was halted.
Instead, von Braun turned to the design of another
research rocket, the A5, somewhat larger than the A3
SURFACE-TO-SURFACE MISSILES