FIRST STEPS TOWARD SPACE - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

NUMBER 10 165
quarry near Prague. Even his family learned of this
activity only by chance, when he come home one
day injured. Naturally, since that work involved
military secrecy no photographs of the actual devices
have been found. All we have located is a
photograph (Figure 8) of two models of these
rockets. The projectiles were streamlined and provided
with fins. At their rear was located a metal
cartridge for the solid propellant. These rockets,
moreover, were launched by being fired from a gun.
Thus they were really a combination of projectile
and rocket, a grenade-rocket similar to the British
infantry anti-tank grenade rocket (PIAT) of World
War II. The projectile, according to confirmed reports,
had a range of 1.6 miles (2.5 km) with little
dispersion.
Ocenasek wanted to share the designs for this new
weapon with Czechoslovakia's foreign allies. In this
he was unsuccessful, and the plans remained all
through the war sealed up in the house where he
lived. He died on 10 August 1949 and his son died
six years later, on 3 August 1955. His tombstone at
the Olsary Cemetery is shown in Figure 9.
(Professor Pesek's presentation concluded with a
motion picture film showing the 2 March 1930 public
demonstration of Ludvik Ocenasek's first-generation
rockets at the White Mountain near Prague.)
FIGURE 8.—Two models of Ocenasek's grenade rocket.
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FIGURE 9.—OcenaSek's grave in the Olsary cemetery in Prague.
NOTES
1. M. Guerin, "Nouveau moteur a explosion et lampe a
arc-systeme L. OcenaSek," Le Monde Industriel, 13th year,
31 December 1908, pp. 438-39.
2. Louis Davia, "Exposition jubilaire de Prague," Encyclopedic
Contemporaine, 1908, p. 204.
3. Theodor Prochazka, "Seek to Go on Flight to Moon;
Five Men and a Girl in U.S. Write to Inventor; Take Joke
Story Seriously," The New York Sun, 20 March 1930, p. 24.
4. Goddard, "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes,"
Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. 71, no. 2, December
1919, pp. 67-68.
5. Theodor Prochazka, "Mail by Rocket Is Latest Plan;
Czech Inventor Working on Device to Cross Ocean; Confident
He Will Succeed," The New York Sun, April 1930. See
also "News From Abroad," Bulletin of the American Interplanetary
Society, no. 1 (June 1930), p. 4.