FIRST STEPS TOWARD SPACE - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

NUMBER 10 267
were changed to a new model called the 10.8-cm
rocket.
New ideas for the use of the rockets were developed
by Unge when he started to calculate how
the heavy guns on armored vessels could be replaced
with batteries of his aerial torpedoes. Fixed batteries
for coast defence were also suggested, as well
as rocket-armed dirigibles. However, most of the
experimental work during 1913 and 1914 was with
the life-saving rockets.
One of Wilhelm Theodor Unge's later ideas was
a system to propel and guide rockets, aeroplanes,
and airships by using the reaction force of a jet of
gas. Unfortunately this idea will be a secret forever,
because it is only to be found in a 1909 patent application
which Unge did not carry through; the
application is therefore marked secret, according to
the patent law of that time.
Wilhelm Theodor Unge, retired as lieutenant
colonel from the Army, died in 1915. Subsequently,
in 1917, the Mars Company went into liquidation,
and was dissolved in 1922 after having been managed
by his sons.
REFERENCES
1. Unge, Fliegender Torpedo (Stockholm, 1907).
2. Swedish Patents 5,556, 10,036, 10,257, 19,113, 19,130,
19,417, 19,946, 26,814, and 26,991.
3. Unge's notebooks from 1899-914 in Swedish Kungl.
Armemuseum Archives.
4. The correspondence between W. T. Unge and Alfred
Nobel, 1891 to 1896, in Nobel Foundation Archives.