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Rockets and People
The infantry command believed it had a monopoly on missile weaponry, but
the Air Force also found a place at Peenemünde.The western part of Peenemünde-
Westen became the center for the flight optimization of the Fiesler Fi-103 flying
bombs with pulsejet engines. Equipped with a primitive autopilot, these winged
missiles gathered speed on launching rails and took off horizontally, continuing to
fly aided by their engine at a maximum altitude of 3,000 meters and a maximum
speed of 300 kilometers/hour. The Fi-103, which later gained fame as the V-1,
reached a range of 250 kilometers. Its warhead, which had a maximum yield of
500 kilograms of TNT, was intended to hit targets such as large cities.Their dispersion
was tens of kilometers.
After a series of failures, the first completely successful firing rig test of the A-4
rocket engine took place on 18 May 1942.The engine generated a thrust of 25–26
metric tons over a period of 60 seconds. I will remind the reader that three days
before that event, on 15 May 1942, the pilot Bakhchivandzhi flew in our first
rocket-powered aircraft, which had the most powerful Soviet liquid-propellant
rocket engine at that time—with a thrust of 1200 kgf. Our liquid-propellant rocket
engines did not exceed 1200 kgf until 1948! We could soothe our wounded pride
only with the fact that the United States’ own liquid-propellant rocket engines
hadn’t even reached that amount of thrust yet.
The successful test-firing of the A-4 was followed by rocket explosions
during the first attempts at flight optimization. Finally, on 3 October 1942, the
A-4 completed its first successful flight.With a launch mass of 13 metric tons
and an equivalent “payload” of 980 kilograms, the rocket flew 190 kilometers,
reaching an altitude of 85.5 kilometers at the apogee of its trajectory.After this
first success of the A-4 program, the first tests of the winged Fi-103, the future
V-1, were also successful.
In April 1943, the A-4 was successfully tested at a maximum range of 330 kilometers.
Having later been given the name V-2 (Vergeltungswaffe Zwei—Vengeance
Weapon Two), the A-4 rocket program and the V-1 were competing. Meanwhile, on
the Eastern Front there was no Blitzkrieg.The rout of the Germans near Stalingrad
was followed by another defeat at the Battle of Kursk.The German Air Force no
longer had overwhelming air superiority on the Eastern Front and proved incapable
of withstanding the air raids by British and American bombers against German cities.
In addition to their exceptional efforts on the A-4 project, they started work at
Peenemünde on the design of an automatically guided air defense missile, under
the codename Wasserfall.This liquid-propellant rocket was part of a radar detection
and guidance system targeting enemy aircraft. The onboard control system used
homing devices during the final flight segment.The A-4 was used to test several
control principles for the Wasserfall.
In 1943, there were more than 15,000 dedicated personnel working at Peenemünde.
New firing rigs made it possible to conduct firing tests on engines with
thrusts from 100 kilograms to 100 metric tons. Peenemünde aerodynamics specialists
prided themselves on having the largest wind tunnel in Europe, created over a
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