The Vergeltungswaffe V-Weapons

This was the big fear, really - at least the V1 could be combatted in various ways, even if some of the ideas sounded far-fetched.

At the time, no-one could see a way to foil the V2 menace except destruction at source. The rockets struck absolutely without warning.

 

The V-2 could be tracked and often was on the various early warning radar systems the Allies had in use. Of course, this is of little consolation as, has been pointed out, nothing could be done to a weapon approaching its target at approxmately Mach 3.

 

Read more on the V weapons last night. I found it interesting that the V2 actually glided the last 150-200 miles by the little wings attached to its sides...So they doubled the reach from 200 miles by those wings!!



Learning new things every day...

 

G'day Kai

Thought that the V-2 launched straight up upto 80 kilometres and than went down to earth . The earth rotating underneath provided the range. Have to look it up.

Cheers Popski

 

Then you get a V-2 bang on your head! When you launch the missile, it is rotating at the same speed as the earth, so it falls in the same spot

 

We'll

Any whiz-kids could clear this up. Too long out of school to remember this one.

Popski

 

In this fortress-like concrete structure of Roquetoire (medium sized compared to other German works), there was established an ultramodern, ground-based, radio beam remote V2 guidance system . The system received the code name "Umspannwerk C" (transformer station C). This apparatus was conceived and built for guide-beam flight correction of the V2 rocket during launch. This was the only application of this concept put into action by the Germans.

Even though the Leitstrahlstellung radio beam operation would last only about a minute during a V2 launch and any jamming attempts would have required a known frequency of the beam, the Germans still kept this device top secret. In fact, the allies never discovered this system.

The Roquetoire Leitstrahlstellung facility was never fully operational because of the bombing and abandonment of the Wizernes site. The Leitstrahlstellung apparatus was to be adapted however, for full mobile use in Holland and Germany with the mobile V2 troops, with good results, late in the war.




http://www.v2rocket.com/start/deployment/leitstrahl.html

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and :

One quarter of all A4 rockets were guided with the Leitstrahlstellung.

http://www.v2rocket.com/start/makeup/design.html

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And:

During tests, the rocket was painted in a characteristic black/white chessboard pattern which aided in determining if the rocket was spinning around its own longitudinal axis.

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

[ 12. April 2004, 01:06 PM: Message edited by: Kai-Petri ]

 

Indeed

The great thing of this forum is that you have to get in your books from timt to time. I was wrong about the launch of he V2. It didn't go strait up but after going up about 40 km it was deflected 45 or 49 degrees towards the target.

Cheers Pop

 

Great Popski, thanx! It all adds to the whole picture of the flight of V2 I think.

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I found another piece of info that I thought was interesting.

The warhead was activated in the flight through two fuses, A and B. After 40 second flight the fuse A was shut and after 60 seconds flight the B fuse was shut and the warhead, the "Elefant", was activated . If the engine stopped before 40 seconds the B fuse was shut and made it impossible for the warhead to explode thus preventing the rocket that might be falling back to the launching area from exploding amongst the senders...

I guess they had learnt a lesson there...

 

Also phoney V1´s

V-1 Bomb or ?

 

A certain number of the V-1s fired had been fitted with radio transmitters, which had clearly demonstrated a tendency for the V-1 to fall short. Oberst Max Wachtel, commander of Flak Regiment 155 (W), which was responsible for the V-1 offensive, compared the data gathered by the transmitters with the reports obtained through the double agents. He concluded, when faced with the discrepancy between the two sets of data, that there must be a fault with the radio transmitters, as he had been assured that the agents were completely reliable. It was later calculated that if Wachtel had disregarded the agents' reports and relied on the radio data, he would have made the correct adjustments to the V-1's guidance, and casualties might have increased by 50 percent or more.[

V-1 flying bomb - Wikipedia