Von Braun rockets on Encyclopedia Astronautica

If this was posted before, forgive me, but I just spotted it. Mark Wade
has put up a new section devoted to Wernher von Braun's rocket designs
of the 1950's, such as appeared in the Colliers articles and Disney
programs; and will appear any-year-now in David Sander's "Man Conquers
Space" movie: http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/vonbraun.htm

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:

If this was posted before, forgive me, but I just spotted it. Mark Wade
has put up a new section devoted to Wernher von Braun's rocket designs
of the 1950's, such as appeared in the Colliers articles and Disney
programs; and will appear any-year-now in David Sander's "Man Conquers
Space" movie: http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/vonbraun.htm

Two of the designs there are the A-11 and A-12. I've been tryign to hunt
them down for some years myself, and have coem to this conclusion:
They're bull****.

Actually, I believe that von Braun may have thought about such space
launchers during the war years, but probably never put anythign on
paper. But after the war, while being interrorgated by the US Army,
suddenly he had these concepts for very impressive vehicles... job
insurance. I've been in tought with a few of the remaining Peenemunde
rocketeers over the years, and they have all claimed that the A-11 was
not soemthign that was worked on in Germany.

Specific notes: The 1946 White Sands artwork for a V-2 derived 3-stage
satellite launcher sure looks like Peenemunde design, at least at first.
The third stage is clearly a V-2, the second clearly an A-10, and the
first sure seems to be a related design. Hopwever... note that *all*
*three* stages have their full-sized fins. That's nutty.

And on the A-12: in post war publications, von Braun described the A-12
as being three stage, not four, with the third stage being a winged A-10
carrying Shuttle-class payload.


--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam
gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address

Scott Lowther wrote:

Two of the designs there are the A-11 and A-12. I've been tryign to hunt
them down for some years myself, and have coem to this conclusion:
They're bull****.

Actually, I believe that von Braun may have thought about such space
launchers during the war years, but probably never put anythign on
paper.


That's pretty much the the same conclusion I came to- if anything, they
were just some mathematical exercises, not real plans.

But after the war, while being interrorgated by the US Army,
suddenly he had these concepts for very impressive vehicles... job
insurance. I've been in tought with a few of the remaining Peenemunde
rocketeers over the years, and they have all claimed that the A-11 was
not soemthign that was worked on in Germany.

Specific notes: The 1946 White Sands artwork for a V-2 derived 3-stage
satellite launcher sure looks like Peenemunde design, at least at first.
The third stage is clearly a V-2, the second clearly an A-10, and the
first sure seems to be a related design. Hopwever... note that *all*
*three* stages have their full-sized fins. That's nutty.


Yeah, but it made a great Hawk Model Company rocket ship; first they
marketed it as a "Atlas", then a "Saturn" rocket. I particularly liked
the door at the base of the first stage for the crew to board it. (?)


And on the A-12: in post war publications, von Braun described the A-12
as being three stage, not four, with the third stage being a winged A-10
carrying Shuttle-class payload.


That's also what I've read.

Pat

Scott Lowther wrote in message ...
Pat Flannery wrote:

If this was posted before, forgive me, but I just spotted it. Mark Wade
has put up a new section devoted to Wernher von Braun's rocket designs
of the 1950's, such as appeared in the Colliers articles and Disney
programs; and will appear any-year-now in David Sander's "Man Conquers
Space" movie: http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/vonbraun.htm

Two of the designs there are the A-11 and A-12. I've been tryign to hunt
them down for some years myself, and have coem to this conclusion:
They're bull****.

Yes as far as the A-12 is concerned, von Braun must have invented this
after the war.
But no on the A11.
Dieter Hoelsken, documents this in V- Missiles of the Third Reich*,
monogram Aviation Publications, 1994. There is a document at the
Bundesarchiv (Military) dated 1943!, that describes the A11, in fact a
theoretical model for a A9/A10/A11 was calculated. See the note of
page 256 of Hoelsken's book, and footnote 52.
By the by , Hoelsken publishes a drawing of the piloted A9 on page 264
of V- Missiles of the Third Reich, but gives no historical
documentation.


( *V-WAFFEN. Entwicklung und Einsatz im II. Weltkrieg, Dieter Hölsken
)

Al Jackson wrote:

But no on the A11.
Dieter Hoelsken, documents this in V- Missiles of the Third Reich*,
monogram Aviation Publications, 1994. There is a document at the
Bundesarchiv (Military) dated 1943!, that describes the A11, in fact a
theoretical model for a A9/A10/A11 was calculated. See the note of
page 256 of Hoelsken's book, and footnote 52.

In the Monogram Books edition, it's on page 265 and footnote #52.

By the by , Hoelsken publishes a drawing of the piloted A9 on page 264
of V- Missiles of the Third Reich, but gives no historical
documentation.

It's the only known wartime drawing of the manned A-9 variant; it was
supposed to be used as a reconnaissance machine. It's also shown in
G.Harry Stine's "ICBM" book.
The cutaway drawings of the manned A-9/A-10 on the site you supplied
link to are from "Secret Wonder Weapons of the Third Reich" by J.
Miranda and P. Mercado of Spain; they sure look impressive, don't they?
The cutaway drawings of the Nazi flying saucers in the hideously
overpriced "German Circular Planes "(Dossier # 10) by the same team also
look impressive:
http://www.geocities.com/unicraftmod...d3/frad3dr.jpg ...as
does the drawing of the Windkanone firing at the wrong end in their also
way-too-expensive "Strange Phenomena in the German Sky" (Dossier #11);
the art is great- but one must be very wary of the content. The "Archiv"
drawing of the manned A-9 reminds me in its style of a drawing that was
published of the speculated Soviet variant of the Antipodal Bomber, and
I suspect comes from the same source; if that is the case, it dates from
the early 1950's.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote in message ...
Al Jackson wrote:

But no on the A11.
Dieter Hoelsken, documents this in V- Missiles of the Third Reich*,
monogram Aviation Publications, 1994. There is a document at the
Bundesarchiv (Military) dated 1943!, that describes the A11, in fact a
theoretical model for a A9/A10/A11 was calculated. See the note of
page 256 of Hoelsken's book, and footnote 52.

In the Monogram Books edition, it's on page 265 and footnote #52.

By the by , Hoelsken publishes a drawing of the piloted A9 on page 264
of V- Missiles of the Third Reich, but gives no historical
documentation.

It's the only known wartime drawing of the manned A-9 variant; it was
supposed to be used as a reconnaissance machine. It's also shown in
G.Harry Stine's "ICBM" book.

So it really is from German WWII documents?
Hoelsken, who is so carefull, does not , I think give a footnote to
document it.

By the by in the English translation of Dornbergers "V2 -- Der Schuss
ins Weltall" (Bechtle Verlag 1952) which I never owned, there was a
beautiful 'slick
paper' plate drawing of the A9/A10, looked like a an airbursh.
I guess it came from Dornbergers own collection.
Alas, the German edition was reprinted recently in paper back, I
bought a copy, but the drawing is repoduced on plain paper, ack!
The 1952 book is a 'rare-book' right now.

P.S. Sadly, Mark Wade is continuing the mythology that the A-9/A-10 ICBM
was to be manned. Bah!

--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam
gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address

Scott Lowther wrote:

P.S. Sadly, Mark Wade is continuing the mythology that the A-9/A-10 ICBM
was to be manned. Bah!



It would be interesting to know how they intended to get it within a
hundred miles of either New York City or Washington D.C. with their
then-current guidance technology, particularly given the effect of winds
on the A9's gliding descent; the only thing I could come up with is that
an agent was supposed to put some sort of homing beacon at the target
for the missile to seek out; or two U-boats were supposed to surface at
night and transmit coded and crossed radio beams, ala theground-based
system used by the German Luftwaffe against the British...the A9 would
glide down one of the beams under automatic control till it was crossed
by the other- then dive onto the target.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:

Scott Lowther wrote:

P.S. Sadly, Mark Wade is continuing the mythology that the A-9/A-10 ICBM
was to be manned. Bah!



It would be interesting to know how they intended to get it within a
hundred miles of either New York City or Washington D.C. with their
then-current guidance technology,

Sheer luck, and hard work. That was acknowledged as one of the problems
with the concept. And the fact is, Hitler (oddly) had a serious distaste
for Kamikaze weapons, right up to the end of the war, when he finally
okayed manned Fi-103 (V-1 buzzbombs). The notion that he would have
given the okay for a manned V-2 weapons system anytime prior to late 44
is laughable.

The A-9/A-10 would have simply been fired many times in hope of nailing
something interesting in Manhattan. They might have gotten away with it
had they kept France and control of the eastern Atlantic, as the launch
sites were in France and the splashdown sites for the recoverable and
reusable (!) A-10 stages was a few hundred miles offshore.

--
Scott Lowther, Engineer
Remove the obvious (capitalized) anti-spam
gibberish from the reply-to e-mail address

Scott Lowther wrote:

The notion that he would have
given the okay for a manned V-2 weapons system anytime prior to late 44
is laughable.

Of course that's just when the A9/A10 program gets restarted, so
maybe... the jet stream is going to have a deleterious affect on the
A9's range heading westward; and they still didn't have a clue about
reentry heating, although the W.W. II cutaway of the manned
rocket/ramjet driven A9 variant seems to suggest some sort of cooling of
the wing leading edge via the vehicle's propellants. The other thing
they never addressed was how to keep the A9 stable during the
exo-atmospheric part of the flight after motor burnout.



The A-9/A-10 would have simply been fired many times in hope of nailing
something interesting in Manhattan. They might have gotten away with it
had they kept France and control of the eastern Atlantic, as the launch
sites were in France


I thought they were supposed to be in Spain.

Pat