A9/A10 & Antipodal Bomber article

Pat Flannery wrote:

That's why the running board wings on the A9 weren't a problem in the
manned version...you weren't going to be landing.

Wrong. The initial design with the strakes was found to be
aerodynamically unstable, and thus more conventional wings were
added... along with studies for *less* conventional wings. it had
nothign to do with manueverability, but with extending glide range
while remaining stable.

"The most ambitious and, perhaps, delusional of the Nazi space schemes was a 1945
project for an orbital space station armed with a death ray, a huge space mirror.


Which seemed to exist *nowhere* except in the mind of some hack
journalist at "Life" magazine and his artist buddy. The description
faintly matches up with an idea published by oberth in the late 1920's,
but only faintly. The design as described is stunningly flawed and
unworkable; von braun's team would have figured it out in about 10
seconds. Von braun *did*, on the other hand, have full knowledge of
Oberths idea, which was vastly less flawed (but still flawed).


"Raumwaffe, 1946" is every bit as full of post-war bull**** as stories
about completed German nuclear bombs or supersonic Nazi flying saucers.
One should be careful not to take Amazing Stories uncritically.

wrote:


Wrong. The initial design with the strakes was found to be
aerodynamically unstable, and thus more conventional wings were
added... along with studies for *less* conventional wings. it had
nothign to do with manueverability, but with extending glide range
while remaining stable.


The wind tunnel designs don't look any too bizarre; just things like
X-15/F104 style trapezoids through the selected design.
One source I found said he swept wing was the original design and the
strakes were the later design, another just the reverse of that.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:

The wind tunnel designs don't look any too bizarre; just things like
X-15/F104 style trapezoids through the selected design.
One source I found said he swept wing was the original design and the
strakes were the later design, another just the reverse of that.

Sigh. See the "Raumwaffe, 1946" article in the last issue of APR. Much
of what you've trotted out recently is easily demolished there, with
copies of the original wartime drawings... not just post-war
imagination.

wrote:

Sigh. See the "Raumwaffe, 1946" article in the last issue of APR. Much
of what you've trotted out recently is easily demolished there, with
copies of the original wartime drawings... not just post-war
imagination.




BTW; I tracked down (ref. #693) from Wade's Encyclopedia Astronautica
regarding the manned A9/A10 project to attack NY and other eastern U.S.
cities: http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/a9a10.htm
Ref # 693 is this: "(# 693) - Dornberger, Walter, Peenemuende, Moewig,
Berlin 1985 Comment: German-language account of the development of the
V-2 by the Commander of the Peenemuende rocket development centre."
Now I don't what conclusions you reached, but I think that Werner von
Braun's boss and head of the V-2 project might actually know more about
this than even you.
Using a person as a guidance system sounds more Japanese than German,
but it fits in very nicely with their other weapon system working along
these line... that being the manned Fi-103 "Reichenberg" piloted V-1,
which was also intended for precision manned attacks on important
targets with almost no chance for the pilot's survival.
I don't know what the plans were at the beginning of the war were, but I
think one can be sure that by the time the Projekt Amerika phase of the
project arrived in late 1944, the high command would have no trouble
whatsoever sending someone to their doom in a A-9; it would fit right in
with Hitler Youth flying the He-162 Volksjagers, ramming attacks on
Allied bombers by "Sturmbock" Fw-190 fighters, Natters, Zeppelin
Rammers, and all their other loopy ideas for getting people killed in
exotic ways.
It would also be a hell of a lot easier, faster, and cheaper to do than
developing some sort of a guidance system for U-boats to steer the
missiles by as it crosses the ocean. For starters, if you do it that
way, and one of your U-boats gets sunk out in the Atlantic, the whole
plan is going to fall apart. If the A9 is manned he can just stay on
course and hope for the best; if he misses New York City he can still
pick something important looking as a target of opportunity and head for
it instead.
Put yourself in Wvb's position at the end of the war...do you tell the
Americans you had developed a ICBM design to drop a bomb somewhere along
the east coast, or do you tell them you designed a transatlantic
Kamikaze design to kill President Roosevelt?
That last one isn't going to go over at all well. So the A9 becomes an
experimental research plane that doesn't seem to have any real
mission... or maybe it's for reconnaissance. Whatever it's for, it's not
a assassination weapon, that's for sure. :-D

Pat
Pat