5 ms·

The V-2

46 points by spking 8y ago

i_am_proteus 8y ago
Werner von Braun's goal as a scientist/engineer was always to travel past Earth. That the V-2 (and later U.S. military rockets) were stepping stones to that goal did not seem to bother him as long as he made progress. Oft quoted regarding the V-2, perhaps apocryphal: "The rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet."
- T-A 8y ago
  It's been a few years since I last posted this, so I think I'm in the clear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down. That's not my department, says Wernher von Braun."
  - spking 8y ago
    Another fun one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXIDFx74aSY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXIDFx74aSY
  - fake-name 8y ago
    Tom Lehrer is brilliant. We will all go together when we go (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIoBrob3bjI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIoBrob3bjI) is my favourite.
  - bullen 8y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80DzifHHIxk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80DzifHHIxk
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  As a German I have very mixed feelings about von Braun. On the hand he was an impressive engineering leader but he was also a war criminal that used slave labor under terrible conditions without hesitation. I would have prefer him going to jail for a few years after the war.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    On the plus side, he helped the Nazis waste a tremendous amount of resources that could have prolonged the war if used more effectively. I don’t know how much credit you can give him for that since it wasn’t his intent, but it’s something.
    - kristianp 8y ago
      On the V2, or something else?
      - mikeash 8y ago
        On the V-2. It cost the Germans more than it cost the Americans to develop the atomic bomb, and had no military benefit for the Germans.
        jopsen 8y ago
        Most notably, the Americans had more funds to burn through..
        mikeash 8y ago
        Right. It’s not that it cost them more, relative to their much smaller economy. It just cost more, period.
        tobylane 8y ago
        Not specifically disagreeing with the "no military benefit" but this is a map of V-2 use on England. https://www.wrsonline.co.uk/big-ben-rocket-strikes/1944-v2-rocket-attacks-map/ https://www.wrsonline.co.uk/big-ben-rocket-strikes/1944-v2-r...
        mikeash 8y ago
        Now compare with the locations of military bases, war-related factories, etc. It’s not precisely zero. The civilian casualties had an economic impact which would have affected the war effort, and at least a few soldiers were killed as well. But it’s negligible.
- ilyagr 8y ago
  From the "trivia" section of the article (not sure what their source is). "Von Braun was heard to say that it would have been preferable to develop rocketry for space travel rather than war. But if it was necessary to develop a war rocket to reach space, he was willing to do so. Dornberger ordered von Braun not to mention space in Hitler's presence" Terryfying, considering that the V2 led to space and eventually the moon exactly according to his plan.
FrojoS 8y ago
Website crashes on iPhone. Anyone has an alternative link, eg pastebin please?
- Xylakant 8y ago
  Works for me in FF on iPhone, but stalls a bit when loading.
- sshanky 8y ago
  For me also, on chrome in Android.
jcelerier 8y ago
no giscardpunk -> no funk
redwood 8y ago
I've been watching Man in the High Castle and one of the interesting aspects of the story is the contemplation of the pace of German technological innovation had they won the war.
- lenticular 8y ago
  It's really highly exaggerated, both in that show and in popular culture. Nazis would not have travelled to Mars by the 1960s, and they wouldn't have supersonic civilian airliners. Nazism crippled German science, math, and technology. If you remember your math courses, many things have German names. You'll notice that's mainly pre-1933 works. The mathematical establishment at Gottingten and elsewhere, which included many Jews and people married to them, was eviscerated. Ditto for physics. The only place they were unambiguously ahead of Allied technology was rocketry. Our bombers were superior, Soviet tanks were superior to what the Germans had, and the fighters were comparable. Even with rocketry, the allies would have caught up even without Operation Paperclip. Nazism really doesn't have any upsides.
  - skookumchuck 8y ago
    Jet engines were way ahead of the Allies. Modern jet engines trace back to the German designs.
  - redwood 8y ago
    I don't mean to describe this as an "upside" but one of the key aspects of fascism is the unification of business elites and the government which can lead to very fast industrial advancements at the expense of many other things that are certainly far more important
- deepnotderp 8y ago
  But then the Soviets would've been wiped out, and Korolev and co actually beat the former Nazis to orbit and to the moon (lunar rovers), even with less resources and experience.
RachelF 8y ago
Interesting that the V-2 project cost $2 billion. This is around the same as the Manhattan project, and 1 billion less than the B-29 programme. The V-2 was ludicrously expensive, especially compared to the V-1 which the RAF estimated cost around 120 pounds (~$500) each. The V-2 project probably hastened Germany's defeat by consuming high tech components like turbines and electronics that could have been better used in aircraft.
- phasetransition 8y ago
  The cost vs the Manhattan project as a drain on German resources is one of the major thesis points in "The Rocket and the Reich."
- skookumchuck 8y ago
  If the V-2 had been used to attack staging areas for the D-Day invasion, etc., it might have been effective. But randomly blowing up a building here and there accomplished nothing for the war effort. The Allies' bombing attacks on German homes had similarly useless effects. See "Fire and Fury" by Hansen. For a fascinating book on the development of the V-2, see "V-2" by Dornberger.
- rixed 8y ago
  It might just be a widely held misunderstanding that the V2's purpose was only meant as a ballistic missile. But if I remember correctly it was also, and probably initially mostly, meant as a psychological and political weapon, the objective being to convince British population of the necessity to reach a separate agreement with Germany, so they could end the war on that front before moving against the Soviet Union. Therefore the best weapon had to be frightening but not necessarily very efficient from a deaths per invested dollars measurement. The response from the British state is also to be understood as a political move: they responded with the large bombimg raids over German cities (using plain old death-toll effective bombers), thus signifying that there would be no separate peace agreement with the UK. According to this narrative, it sounds like the German war plan was naive to believe other great powers would agree to let Germany conquer Russia, more than naive regarding the efficiency of the V2 as a weapon. Anyway, just a reminder that ultimately it's all about politics not technology. A good source I can remember about the V2 story during the war, from the UK point of view, was this book: Most secret war, by R.V. Jones
davidgould 8y ago
The best book on the V-2 is still Pynchon's Gravitys Rainbow.

46 points by spking 8y ago

Werner von Braun's goal as a scientist/engineer was always to travel past Earth. That the V-2 (and later U.S. military rockets) were stepping stones to that goal did not seem to bother him as long as he made progress. Oft quoted regarding the V-2, perhaps apocryphal: "The rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet."

T-A 8y ago
It's been a few years since I last posted this, so I think I'm in the clear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down. That's not my department, says Wernher von Braun."
- spking 8y ago
  Another fun one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXIDFx74aSY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXIDFx74aSY
- fake-name 8y ago
  Tom Lehrer is brilliant. We will all go together when we go (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIoBrob3bjI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIoBrob3bjI) is my favourite.
- bullen 8y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80DzifHHIxk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80DzifHHIxk
maxxxxx 8y ago
As a German I have very mixed feelings about von Braun. On the hand he was an impressive engineering leader but he was also a war criminal that used slave labor under terrible conditions without hesitation. I would have prefer him going to jail for a few years after the war.
- mikeash 8y ago
  On the plus side, he helped the Nazis waste a tremendous amount of resources that could have prolonged the war if used more effectively. I don’t know how much credit you can give him for that since it wasn’t his intent, but it’s something.
  - kristianp 8y ago
    On the V2, or something else?
    - mikeash 8y ago
      On the V-2. It cost the Germans more than it cost the Americans to develop the atomic bomb, and had no military benefit for the Germans.
      - jopsen 8y ago
        Most notably, the Americans had more funds to burn through..
        mikeash 8y ago
        Right. It’s not that it cost them more, relative to their much smaller economy. It just cost more, period.
      - tobylane 8y ago
        Not specifically disagreeing with the "no military benefit" but this is a map of V-2 use on England. https://www.wrsonline.co.uk/big-ben-rocket-strikes/1944-v2-rocket-attacks-map/ https://www.wrsonline.co.uk/big-ben-rocket-strikes/1944-v2-r...
        mikeash 8y ago
        Now compare with the locations of military bases, war-related factories, etc. It’s not precisely zero. The civilian casualties had an economic impact which would have affected the war effort, and at least a few soldiers were killed as well. But it’s negligible.
ilyagr 8y ago
From the "trivia" section of the article (not sure what their source is). "Von Braun was heard to say that it would have been preferable to develop rocketry for space travel rather than war. But if it was necessary to develop a war rocket to reach space, he was willing to do so. Dornberger ordered von Braun not to mention space in Hitler's presence" Terryfying, considering that the V2 led to space and eventually the moon exactly according to his plan.

FrojoS 8y ago

Website crashes on iPhone. Anyone has an alternative link, eg pastebin please?

Xylakant 8y ago
Works for me in FF on iPhone, but stalls a bit when loading.
sshanky 8y ago
For me also, on chrome in Android.

jcelerier 8y ago

no giscardpunk -> no funk

redwood 8y ago

I've been watching Man in the High Castle and one of the interesting aspects of the story is the contemplation of the pace of German technological innovation had they won the war.

lenticular 8y ago
It's really highly exaggerated, both in that show and in popular culture. Nazis would not have travelled to Mars by the 1960s, and they wouldn't have supersonic civilian airliners. Nazism crippled German science, math, and technology. If you remember your math courses, many things have German names. You'll notice that's mainly pre-1933 works. The mathematical establishment at Gottingten and elsewhere, which included many Jews and people married to them, was eviscerated. Ditto for physics. The only place they were unambiguously ahead of Allied technology was rocketry. Our bombers were superior, Soviet tanks were superior to what the Germans had, and the fighters were comparable. Even with rocketry, the allies would have caught up even without Operation Paperclip. Nazism really doesn't have any upsides.
- skookumchuck 8y ago
  Jet engines were way ahead of the Allies. Modern jet engines trace back to the German designs.
- redwood 8y ago
  I don't mean to describe this as an "upside" but one of the key aspects of fascism is the unification of business elites and the government which can lead to very fast industrial advancements at the expense of many other things that are certainly far more important
deepnotderp 8y ago
But then the Soviets would've been wiped out, and Korolev and co actually beat the former Nazis to orbit and to the moon (lunar rovers), even with less resources and experience.

RachelF 8y ago

Interesting that the V-2 project cost $2 billion. This is around the same as the Manhattan project, and 1 billion less than the B-29 programme. The V-2 was ludicrously expensive, especially compared to the V-1 which the RAF estimated cost around 120 pounds (~$500) each. The V-2 project probably hastened Germany's defeat by consuming high tech components like turbines and electronics that could have been better used in aircraft.

phasetransition 8y ago
The cost vs the Manhattan project as a drain on German resources is one of the major thesis points in "The Rocket and the Reich."
skookumchuck 8y ago
If the V-2 had been used to attack staging areas for the D-Day invasion, etc., it might have been effective. But randomly blowing up a building here and there accomplished nothing for the war effort. The Allies' bombing attacks on German homes had similarly useless effects. See "Fire and Fury" by Hansen. For a fascinating book on the development of the V-2, see "V-2" by Dornberger.
rixed 8y ago
It might just be a widely held misunderstanding that the V2's purpose was only meant as a ballistic missile. But if I remember correctly it was also, and probably initially mostly, meant as a psychological and political weapon, the objective being to convince British population of the necessity to reach a separate agreement with Germany, so they could end the war on that front before moving against the Soviet Union. Therefore the best weapon had to be frightening but not necessarily very efficient from a deaths per invested dollars measurement. The response from the British state is also to be understood as a political move: they responded with the large bombimg raids over German cities (using plain old death-toll effective bombers), thus signifying that there would be no separate peace agreement with the UK. According to this narrative, it sounds like the German war plan was naive to believe other great powers would agree to let Germany conquer Russia, more than naive regarding the efficiency of the V2 as a weapon. Anyway, just a reminder that ultimately it's all about politics not technology. A good source I can remember about the V2 story during the war, from the UK point of view, was this book: Most secret war, by R.V. Jones

davidgould 8y ago

The best book on the V-2 is still Pynchon's Gravitys Rainbow.