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The wiki for this flight[1] is unfortunately pretty thin. I'd really like to know the story behind how they got a V2 rocket out to White Sands and actually con

The wiki for this flight[1] is unfortunately pretty thin. I'd really like to know the story behind how they got a V2 rocket out to White Sands and actually conducted this flight. It has to be a fascinating story - one I hadn't even heard of until now. I assume this was broadly part of Operation Paperclip, and either fully assembled rockets or their components were moved out of Germany and to the United States at some point. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_No._13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_No._13 Edit: I take it back, the wiki does link the final project report[2] from 1952 that goes into detail about how this was accomplished. It's worth reading. [2] https://archive.org/details/finalreportproje00whit/page/2/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/finalreportproje00whit/page/2/mo...

flohofwoe 4y ago
Both the Americans and the Soviets shipped all material they could find about the V2 to their respective countries, this included both completely assembled rockets and parts which where then assembled and tested at home with the help of German specialists (the Soviets also had "their" group of German rocket scientists, just not as "high profile" as the group around von Braun). The first Soviet ballistic missile "R1" was an almost 100% clone of the V2 for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-1_(missile) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-1_(missile)
- Maursault 4y ago
  > Both the Americans and the Soviets shipped all material they could find about the V2 to their respective countries Really sucks, to put it mildly, because it kind of entwines space exploration with Nazis, attaching ethical questions to JWST and even to our beloved "One small step for..." audio clip. But maybe we can sift out whether the V2 would have been developed regardless of whether Nazis came to power in Germany. What if we had a time machine, and could very surgically stop the Nazis ever coming to power and prevent the Holocaust. Would it also cost us the V2 rocket and a lot of time getting to where we are now with space exploration? I know it is a dumb hypothetical, but I want to know Nazi tech is irrelevant.
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    There's not really a way to escape Nazi tech today. For another example, the Heavy Press Program brought industrial metal presses out of Germany and into the United States and Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Press_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Press_Program >Eight of them are still in operation today, manufacturing structural parts for military and commercial aircraft. They still hold the records for size in North America, though they have since been surpassed by presses in Japan, France, Russia and China. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ50nZU3oG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ50nZU3oG8
  - flohofwoe 4y ago
    Hard to say, the rocket technology was built on the space flight enthusiasm of some youngsters in the 1920's long before the Nazis came to power (Wernher von Braun being one of them) - but the German army at the time already started to show interest in such projects to circumvent restrictions imposed by sanctions from WW1, this was also possible because there was a new generation of young officers who learned different lessons from WW1 than the "old guard". This was also the time when close (and secret) military relations with the Soviet Union started by the way (also to work around sanctions). Other breakthrough technology was also developed in other countries (e.g. jet engines in England) but not taken serious enough (e.g. there wasn't a visionary individual ready to throw money at the problem like Heinkel in Germany). And (fast forwarding a few years into the war) once the Nazis went into panic mode when it became clear that the Luftwaffe is mostly useless, they basically started to throw all sort of "shit" against the wall hoping that something would stick (and it actually did): ballistic missiles (V2), cruise missiles (V1), anti-aircraft missiles (Wasserfall and Schmetterling), guided bombs (Fritz-X), and of course jet engines, but there were countless more projects that didn't go anywhere. I've also read that Germany was actually massively behind in high precision manufacturing compared to the US and UK, which may also partly explain the focus on "non-conventional" technology. So I guess it wasn't so much the Nazis directly, but the panic due to losing a war which caused the frantic exploration of all sorts of tech projects (but this war wouldn't have happened in the first place without the Nazis of course). Without such a crisis, the more conservative 'nay-sayers' might have supressed many more breakthrough ideas.

flohofwoe 4y ago

Both the Americans and the Soviets shipped all material they could find about the V2 to their respective countries, this included both completely assembled rockets and parts which where then assembled and tested at home with the help of German specialists (the Soviets also had "their" group of German rocket scientists, just not as "high profile" as the group around von Braun). The first Soviet ballistic missile "R1" was an almost 100% clone of the V2 for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-1_(missile) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-1_(missile)

Maursault 4y ago
> Both the Americans and the Soviets shipped all material they could find about the V2 to their respective countries Really sucks, to put it mildly, because it kind of entwines space exploration with Nazis, attaching ethical questions to JWST and even to our beloved "One small step for..." audio clip. But maybe we can sift out whether the V2 would have been developed regardless of whether Nazis came to power in Germany. What if we had a time machine, and could very surgically stop the Nazis ever coming to power and prevent the Holocaust. Would it also cost us the V2 rocket and a lot of time getting to where we are now with space exploration? I know it is a dumb hypothetical, but I want to know Nazi tech is irrelevant.
- remarkEon 4y ago
  There's not really a way to escape Nazi tech today. For another example, the Heavy Press Program brought industrial metal presses out of Germany and into the United States and Russia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Press_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Press_Program >Eight of them are still in operation today, manufacturing structural parts for military and commercial aircraft. They still hold the records for size in North America, though they have since been surpassed by presses in Japan, France, Russia and China. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ50nZU3oG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ50nZU3oG8
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  Hard to say, the rocket technology was built on the space flight enthusiasm of some youngsters in the 1920's long before the Nazis came to power (Wernher von Braun being one of them) - but the German army at the time already started to show interest in such projects to circumvent restrictions imposed by sanctions from WW1, this was also possible because there was a new generation of young officers who learned different lessons from WW1 than the "old guard". This was also the time when close (and secret) military relations with the Soviet Union started by the way (also to work around sanctions). Other breakthrough technology was also developed in other countries (e.g. jet engines in England) but not taken serious enough (e.g. there wasn't a visionary individual ready to throw money at the problem like Heinkel in Germany). And (fast forwarding a few years into the war) once the Nazis went into panic mode when it became clear that the Luftwaffe is mostly useless, they basically started to throw all sort of "shit" against the wall hoping that something would stick (and it actually did): ballistic missiles (V2), cruise missiles (V1), anti-aircraft missiles (Wasserfall and Schmetterling), guided bombs (Fritz-X), and of course jet engines, but there were countless more projects that didn't go anywhere. I've also read that Germany was actually massively behind in high precision manufacturing compared to the US and UK, which may also partly explain the focus on "non-conventional" technology. So I guess it wasn't so much the Nazis directly, but the panic due to losing a war which caused the frantic exploration of all sorts of tech projects (but this war wouldn't have happened in the first place without the Nazis of course). Without such a crisis, the more conservative 'nay-sayers' might have supressed many more breakthrough ideas.