Submarines and their Weapons - Aircraft of World War II

cooling it and supplying it with sufficient fuel. The
calculations had shown that to obtain 'the required
thrust, it would be necessary to deliver almost 125kg
(2751b) of fuel to the combustion chamber every second.
The earlier rockets had required very much less,
and it had been sufficient to pressurise the propellant
tanks with nitrogen. But now it was necessary to
devise a means of actually pumping the fuel and the
liquid oxygen from tank to burner. The method chosen
was a steam turbine, and the means of generating
the steam was the same as that used in the Vl's launch
catapult: the near-explosive decomposition of T-Stoff
into super-heated steam when it came into contact
with the catalyst Z-Stoff. The turbine thus powered
produced around 675hp and ran at 500()rpm.
TO THE MARGINS OF SPACE
Thanks to a long catalogue of setbacks (and, we may
imagine, the need to keep the project at least partially
hidden from those who would have preferred more
resources to have gone into their own laboratories),
the hand-built prototype A4 was not ready for static
testing until 18 March 1942, and even then, it exploded.
Von Braun's team built another one, which
exploded too, but eventually they managed to make
enough progress to dare a test flight. Scheduled for 13
June, it was a failure. Von Braun returned if not to the
drawing board, at least to the workshop, and readied
another prototype. After a second failed test launch,
on 16 August, happily for von Braun and Dornberger,
the third attempt on 3 October proved more successful.
The missile flew over 200km (125 miles) to an
altitude of 85km (53 miles) and thus into the ionosphere
at the margins of space; it returned to earth
within 4km (2.5 miles) of its intended target. Now all
that remained was to sell the concept as a weapon of
war; by late 1942 that was not much of a problem.
Hitler endorsed the V2 programme, as it soon
became known, on 22 December, It was held up by
shortages of strategic materials and by the RAF,
which sent a mixed force of 596 aircraft to drop 1828
tonnes (1800 tons) of bombs on Peenemünde on the
night of 17 August, losing 40 aircraft and killing
around 800 people on the ground - most of them conscripted
Polish labourers, but including Dr Thiel -
and setting back the programme by perhaps two
Left: Some captured A4 rockets were launched from sites
in Germany into the German test target zones. Here,
British personnel prepare to launch a V2 using the original
equipment, including the 'Meillerwagen' erector/launcher.
SURFACE-TO-SURFACE MISSILES
months. It had seemed for a while that the Armysponsored
A4 would lose out to the Air Force's Fi
103, but a demonstration of both before high-ranking
government officials in May 1943 came at a bad time
for the latter, and the A4 programme survived. As the
war situation worsened that year, Hitler became more
and more interested in the A4, eventually giving it the
highest priority, allocating production facilities at one
of Henschel's factories and at the Zeppelin works at
Friedrichshafen. Both sites were bombed before production
could start up, in fact, and A4s were instead
assembled at the 'Mittelwerke' underground factory
at Nordhausen from components manufactured all
over occupied Europe. First deliveries were made in
July 1944, and from September, the month when the
V2 campaign started, a steady output of over 600 a
month was maintained. Meanwhile, a training and test
unit was established and launch sites were selected.
There were two opposing views as to how the V2s
should be deployed. The Oberkommando des Heeres
(OK.H - Army High Command) wanted huge, wellprotected
fixed sites, and selected three locations in
Northern France from which rockets could be
launched against England. The first of these, at Watten,
near St Omer, was destroyed by the USAAF on
27 August 1943 while construction was still in an
early phase; the second, at Siracourt, and the third, in
a quarry at Wizernes, were truly massive affairs, over
one million tonnes (one million tons) of reinforced
concrete being cast into a protective dome, beneath
which storage and launch chambers, and accommodation,
were hollowed out. They were both destroyed
by the RAF in July 1944 as part of Operation Crossbow
(the broader campaign to destroy the VI launch
sites) using 'Tallboy' penetration bombs, and finished
off with remotely controlled B-17 Flying Fortresses,
packed with explosive, the following month. With
that, the thoughts of the high command turned to the
sort of mobile launchers that Dornberger had been
advocating all along.
30-VEHICLE BATTERY
Given the complexity of the missile itself, the launch
procedure was quite straightforward. One of the
trucks in the battery's 30-vehicle convoy carried a circular
launch platform fabricated from steel, which
incorporated a blast deflector. This was set up on the
ground at the rear of the missile transporter and levelled
by means of screw jacks in its four legs. TheFR-
Anhanger-S missile transporter, commonly known as
the 'Meillerwagen' after its manufacturer, was