The V-2 Rocket (A 4) - How Effective was it? 

I do, too.

Ritter von Trost Who knew a German could have a sense of humor?

He might have been adopted...

He's Austrian, actually...

We do but this one is Austrian so it's another sad matter entirely

This whole thing was just glorious! xD

SovietWomble Mostly to Cyanide

hey, nice for dropping by and confirming the reports of my signal intelligence unit, seems Franz who tipped me off earned a promotion and Hans, who said nope, well, he will have some fun in the penal company. Thx for the update, I will tag it under friendly fire. ;) Cheers love your vids!

Yes mostly to your own side and your Dignity.

+Military History Visualized Likewise, same to you! I was actually one of your subscribers prior to this point. Your coverage of Operation Barbarossa I found particularly enjoyable. I am also now one of your Patrons. All the best with your video editing.

I hate Tuesdays.

Imagine Mondays.

My great grandmother, who raised her five kids (including my grandmother on my mother's side, who was the youngest child) in London during the entirety of the blitz, told a similar story to this. How everyone in the area would stop briefly upon hearing the engine noise of the doodlebug and would only seek shelter if they heard the engine noise stop. She didn't have an opinion on the V2 per say, she knew about them but as you say they had less of a terror element attached to them as there wasn't any ways of knowing that they were on their way. I miss both the women mentioned in this story, both have been gone for around twenty years and my great grandmother was very close to our family during my childhood, and would stay with us on multiple occasions during the year but with Xmas as a certainty. My immediate family (ie my siblings) have effectively disowned me and I miss those years of unbridled familial love as all I have now is loneliness, isolation and hatred towards me. Anyone who reads this and still has access to the older generations of their respective families, please take my word and treasure them as they do not last long.

add a whistle to it

If you able to hear it, you're lucky you're not the target

von Braun had a book (which later was made into a film) that went by the title "I aim for the stars". Some people liked to add a second part to that statement: "... but sometimes, I happen to hit London"

+Afnan Zahran Back in the 70's I went camping in the countryside to the south of London. In the corner of one field there was a jinormous crater and we were told that it was caused by a V2 dropping short. In a wood just a mile or two from the North Downs was the remains of a V1 - just a bit of the tail pipe actiually.

From Tom Lehrer's song in the 1960s: "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.

why is it that we must live in the tower of babble with all these people who simply cannot clearly speak

no, it took him far longer to do that without me.

Balsa Kovacevic Yeah, I would ask 'why the hate', but it's Womble we're talking about xD

WTF is a Womble?

Zigzag010 That still doesn't tell me much....

or the friendly fire artillery^^

he's a youtuber who plays video games, sometimes badly, but his videos are pretty funny if you're into that kind of thing.

booo. religion. jesus. muhammad. boooooo. try not to shit your pants

They did have a small problem with people employed on the project finding other uses for that ethanol...

Nerd

@@feetkeneddy9380 given the video you watched while writing this comment I would advice to maybe revise the idea of calling Somebody nerd XD

@@feetkeneddy9380 knowledge is power, you call him nerd, just shows how stupid you are.

Tis true!

SovietWomble Cool. Now you have to work on getting other channels like the Great War to give you a shout-out.

yeah, my SIGINT units tipped me off, but I needed confirmation.

I think I've seen the guys from The Great War giving you a shoutout. I've seen them in your comment sections and I've seen you in theirs.

Baited him out like a suicidal "URAH" charge. Good thinking

Víctor René Valdivia Soto I'm a simple person.

Wunderkraut!

It krauts wunders

My father was ARP in London, on the receiving end of V1 & V2. He lived in the East End, by the docks, a main target. Ask him about having to cut out a person, who was still alive after a Doddle Bomb hit the building and collapsed a building on them.

Peter King I hate the doddle bombs!

Peter King this might come as a surprise to you, but bombs are designed to inflict damage

No the allies lost actually because its no big deal to win with 100 times the land resources etc. There is general no soldierly honor or glory in that.

Most of the research into the V2 is poorly done and argued and don't take into account the plans for the missile and low production cost of the missile as mass production grew. -von Braun had promised an accuracy of 1 mil (1 part in 1000 so about 300m absolute at 300km range) but the V2 was rushed into production and had the interim LEV-3 guidance system which only gave 4.5km accuracy at 300km. The SG-66 was meant to achieve about 500m accuracy at 350km range. It was test flow a couple of times. Whereas the LEV-3 used only two gyroscopes and a single accelerometer to control missile speed the SG-66 had 3 gyros on a stable platform with additional acclerometers to control cross range drift. There was also the 'vollzirkel system' which had a penzil beam riding system to control the direction of the missile, doppler for speed and a radar transponder for speed. it operated only during the 70 seconds of boost and was expected to fulfill von Brauns 1 mil accuracy promise. -Production costs of a complete V2 missile were to drop to 4000 hours. That means that 40 workers could produce about 4 missile/month while 10,000 could produce about 1000/month. This is not a lot of costs for delivering 1000 tons of explosives to within 500m of target. Bombers need fighter escorts, 7 crew members and about the same number or maintenance crew plus a huge manufactruring costs (about 30,000 hours.bomber)

:D

The Beitrag is quite interesting, but the Aussprache ist mir zu deutsch. So I couldn't listen longer than eine Minute of this video... +Military History Visualized Obwohl ich 'Denglish' verabscheue und es ungern benutze, aber so hört es sich vergleichsweise an. Du redest zwar Englisch, aber deine Aussprache ist typisch deutsch. Ich würde dir gerne weiter zuhören, aber es geht nicht :( Schade, weil deine Grammatik besser ist als meine. :)

@hallejohn Typical German reaction. In my experience, it's always the Germans complaining about the German accent. Most others enjoy the flair ;)

@@hallejohn Kann halt nicht jeder Akzentarm/-frei englisch reden. Is nicht einfach. Ich persönlich hab auch fast 15 Jahre englisch reden müssen um es halbwegs akzentfrei hinzukriegen und selbst jetzt werde ich noch gelegentlich von englischen Muttersprachlern gefragt, ob ich Deutsch bin. Sieh's ihm also nach.

Probably, i mean you are looking at 1943 and even earlier to start with. And those planes would be replacing older planes, you don't necessarily need new pilots. I mean with that production power you could have replaced all German front line aircraft with Jets (even allowing for jets using more resources).

MacHamish The problem in the Luftwaffe never was a lack of planes, but the lack of fuel and pilots. In my opinion the V2 wasn 't a waste off resources

The problem I see is the fuel for the 24000 planes. Since the V2 didn´t need oil(at least directly) it didn´t divert any of the very important fuel. Which was one of the biggest bottlenecks for everything with a combustion engine

It wasn't a waste from our post-war point of view and advances it gave us. From someone who's got a war to win - it was a huge waste. The fuel production facility used very much electricity (coal) to produce and the whole project was very expensive in terms of strategic resources as well. For instance, the heat-resistant alloys that jet engines needed. For the price of the project, that was ongoing before the war (even before Hitler . Heer needed an long range artillery/bomber that could circumvent the 1919 agreement), indeed a lot of other things, with greater impact, could have been done. If nothing else, fuel production. Just imagine how much more effective would have the Luftwaffe been had the money and coal spent on V-2 been used for new synthetic fuel plants. Instead, they got an expensive short range single use bomber with limited punch and terrible accuracy who's only two good points were no pilot required and invulnerability. It was a waste no matter how you look at it, from a perspective of a military commander. Sure, it brought about the space age and after many years, more advanced rockets. But we are not talking about those - we are talking about 1943-1944 and a military who's resources have been cut in order to field a new, expensive, untested weapon with limited use. It is the same story as was with Hitler - in the late war Allies gave up on the idea of killing the man because decisions he was making made it easier for Allies. This gigantic waste of resources and industry included. To make it simple - in 1944 Germans needed defensive fighters, not inaccurate strategic bombers. So a weapon of an already limited use was even more useless. It is like if you were fighting a bunch of bees and I give you an assault rifle. Sure, a powerful weapon, and if you hit one, you are going to kill it for sure (if you hit - and that is a big if) but it would have been much better if, for the same money, I bought you a suit and some bug spray. But in 1943-1944, for such an enormous amount of resources to be spent in a thing such as V-2, it was not only a waste, it was a very idiotic decision. Killed more construction workers than the enemy, enough is said I believe.

particularly because this was in 43-44 when Germany was still very much capable of fighting. by the time these weapons were functional the war was basically lost

Not wrong

Have some respect.

too soon?

Miron992 the first 'nazi' popsicle, ja. But the first 'popsicles' of WW2 were the Sovyet Armies in Finnland. But the joke about 'nazi' popsicles can also be applied to the Sovyet forces: near a train station on the road to Moscow after the mud froze and attained the consistency of iron, a Panzer Recon unit noticed a large body of troops in the fading light. A German Leutnant, with freezing hands, reached into his jacket to retrieve his Leica camera - with expensive Agfakrome film - to photograph what he and his unit could hardly believe... Standing upright in thin longcoats with rifles slung over their shoulders were about 200 Sovyet troops... packed together, huddled, frozen solid. All tightly packed together , presumably, to create warmth. The German unit approached cautiously and, aware that he was losing light to take a photograph, the Leutnant walked within 100 paces of what he suddenly realised was not just frozen men but also a cavalry unit of roughly 50 horsemen atop frozen solid animals. Human beings, waiting patiently and horribly aware of the predicament they were in, waiting for a relief train that never arrived? Simply waited and huddled together to try to remain warm for as long as possible. They were facing north east. The Leutnant, moved at the sight of so many men and beautiful animals frozen like statues as if carved from ice, raised his camera to take at least several photographs as his men refused to believe that living sentient beings could die standing upright, some with frozen sticks inbetween their fingers [cigarettes] and they refused to move closer as they believed it was some kind of Russyan trick or an unknown type of soldier in this vast alien landscape. But no breathe was exhaled from their lungs in such freezing weather so the Leutnant, emotionally shocked by the horrific spectacle, took several photos and as he awkwardly clicked away with frozen fingers, the camera barely working, a tear from his eye got into the viewfinder and cracked the camera casing somehow , thus, allowing light onto the film, ruining it altogether [and it was a Leica camera.. probably one of the best handheld cameras in the world back then]. Of course, at that moment he did not notice.. no for 5 weeks afterwards did he remember the camera... A single tear for their enemy had stopped the world from seeing an image that would likely not have been believed if they had been developed. Horsemen sitting upright proudly on their frozen mounts whilst crushed amongst and around them stood men, huddled as close as they could get, who looked as if they were posing for a photograph in the fading twilight. The ice particles upon their chins shone like diamonds. The snow was barely a metre deep but the cold in the wind cut like frozen blades. Barely one quarter of the Panzer Recon unit managed to make it back to their main unit, crammed into the 2 remaining SdKfz 222s. The young Leutnant and the few men left were declared wounded from severe frostbite and returned by train where they discovered they had lost fingers, toes, ears, eyelids and genitalia to the cruel Russyan Winter. The Leutnant chose to remain anonymous and believed that the single tear that caused the camera to expose the film was an act of god... he was the only one of them who chose to get up close and look into the faces of hundreds of dead frozen men and animals that had, barely 10 days before, probably wrote letters to their mothers and fathers, and wives and children. If the image had survived then, no doubt, the nazi partei would have published it in newspapers to glorify the image of the superiority of the Wehrmacht just before the propaganda footage of several young, well-fed and healthy semi-naked German actors danced around the snow, 'acting' as if they were happy-go-lucky Wehrmacht troops, enjoying their winter holiday in the fun of winter in Russya at -30 degrees Centigrade. Yes... the German High Command was so prepared for the Russyan winter that they were now having the club-footed, womanising dwarf, Goebbels, and the 'Master of the Hunt', Herman 'Meier' Goering, touring German cities collecting fur coats and stoles "just in case there were German troops without a warm jacket... you know... just to be on the safe side". Just over a decade later a rather outspoken, audacious US high ranking General landed a large force of US Marines with Infantry and Armour on the west coast of what was the conquered region of South Korea, several hundred miles north of the confident and jubliant North Korean Communist forces surrounding the battered remains of the American and South Korean forces, desperately hanging on to what was left of South Korea along the south and south east coast. This strategic en passe caught the North Koreans completely off-guard as the Americans landed and swiftly cut off the supply lines of the North Koreans way way in the south, believing they were on the very verge of making the whole of South East Asia communist. The North Koreans desperately raced back north to reach the 39th parallel - the agreed upon Partition Line that would keep North Korea 'communist' and South Korea 'democrat'. But this wasn't enough for the determined General MacArthur and, ignoring President truman's orders to not advance further than the 39th parallel, he gave orders for the US Armoured and Mechanised forces to annihilate the North Koreans once and for all as North Koreans were crossing into Chinese sovereign territory. With just a single order the support and respect between China and the USA, when they fought together to defeat the aggressive and violent expansionist Japanese from 1941-45, was wiped clean. As freezing US mechanised forces advanced further and further north, China suiddenly heeded the call to arms from an obviously defeated North Korean force. Companies, Battallions, Regiments, Divisions and Corps of US forces ran out of fuel, food and ammunition as McArthur ordered them to keep advancing to wipe communism from the South East peninsular once and for all. When the Chinese attacked they weren't attacking a determined victorious US Army with Air Superiority... no, they were attacking frozen, starving American troops with little ground support which the Chinese simply captured or brushed aside. If not for the US Army and Strategic Air Forces, the entire US force in Korea would have been bagged up. How long would President Truman hold out against calls to drop nukes on the communist Chinese whilst thousands of American young men were killed or captured? The US Air Forces managed to pin down the Chinese during the day so that, fortunately, many young American troops made it past the 39th Parallel. How many American young men froze solid, huddled together, without food, nor fuel and so far north it was impossible to consider marching south. President Truman immediately sacked McArthur. A great General but a bloody fool. And so began America's policy of 'expansion', costing the lives of young men, turning a benign China into a potentially serious 'threat to freedom and democracy'. I fank yew. I fank yew.

Narred Darr Triggered much?

I've been saying the same thing for years... the purpose of the v2 was to carry a nuke... all these rockets fired were tests to refine it, luckily the war ended before they had refined their nukes as well

You weren't clearly paying attention at 1:33

*Palpatine voice*: Do it

I mean I doubt you'd be getting the FWs and especially the Stukas through to allied targets by the late war, while as stated the V-2 was unstoppable once fired.

Im sure he is German

@@qzg7857 Sherlock Holmes is on the case

@Großösterreichisches Reich nope. You're dogs of Switzerland

Großösterreichisches Reich High tier Germans who never contributed in anything when they teamed up with Germany.

@@qzg7857actually he is Austrian

The poor military capability of the missile was a temporary thing. Most military analysts get this wrong. The mssile has been rushed into production and the deisgn frozen. The LEV-3 guidance system had poor accuracy (4.5km at maximum range according to German tests) and was and interim system while the SG-66 was developed. The SG-66 promised better than 500m accuracy. It was test flow several times. The vollzirkel system promised evern greater accuracy of 300m. It used a penzil, beam, doppler and a radar transponder. Production costs were expected to drop to below 4000 hours by the 16000th missile. In that sense rushing it into production made sense as it accelerated mass production. The B-29 also did not perform, at first.

"The Wizard War" is one of the more important books in my library. I've read it a dozen times if I've read it once. There is so much solid information in this book that it's hard to quantify. Jones was a pure genius and a classical scientist, and by sheer talent managed to have an influence, (and sometimes total influence), over nearly every significant technological breakthrough made by the Brits during the war. And he had a great sense of humor. Nice to see another fan of "The Wizard War."

Allies' propaganda.

Joseph Stalin those gulag Republiks backfiring, ay?

Joseph Stalin they still can't get it off the ground

There was a great plan to use rocket spams on the battlefield, but someone Stalin

To build new taepodong..?

The already stole the Scud and now they have a copy that looks like the Abraham's but it's China that is the sponsor.

Starship uses stainless steel, V-2 uses ordinary steel just like most modern aircraft at the time and the V-1. The 'full circle' is a bit of a misunderstanding, it's particularly stainless steel which allows starship to remain strength in cryogenic temperatures as well as work as a heat shield. If that combination wasn't required, it would have made more sense to use a specific material for each specific function.

to quote Tom Lehrer from his song "Wernher von Braun"

WinHippopotamus Probably MORE RIGHT than you'd ever think. He TRULY DIDN'T CARE... OR WHO FUNDED HIS RESEARCH. JUST AS LONG AS HE COULD CONTINUE. BRAUN... A CLOSET NAZI; THROUGH AND THROUGH TO THE CORE.

No that ignorant Tom Leher ignorance and idiocy. von Braun did make it his department as to where they came down. In 1941 the British Government issued the "Area Bombardment Directive" to RAF Bomber Command. The Directive ordered that The residential population of German cities be bombed to 'de-house" and "demoralise" them. The official terms: "Area bombardment", "dehousing" and "demoralisation": was deliberate terror carpet bombing of civilians. Arthur "Bomber" Harris noted that in one of the first instances of bombing, that of the medieval coastal city of Lubeck, that no specific target was chosen and the geometric centre of the city was the target. The Luftwaffe did not do this. It bombed military and industrial targets, only after RAF attacks on Berlin and Munich, but caused massive collateral damage around the area. The used an extremely accurate blind bombing aid x-geraete. The V2 and V1 (reprisal weapons) were used to submit Britain to a counter terror to force Britain to the negotiation table and negotiate a mutual end to city bombardment. The initial guidance system of the V2 was interim and not very accurate and was known as the LEV-3. It had two gyros (vertikant and horizont) and one PIGA accelerometer. Accuracy in testing was 4.5 km. If a beaming riding system known as Viktoria was used the lateral dispersion was halved. It was used in in 30% of cases. If a doppler instead of accelerometer system was used for engine cut of downrange accuracy increased 10%. von Braun had wanted to hold off on the V2 until the SG-66 system and Vollzirkel system came into use. Both had an accuracy of 500m, as good as anything else in WW2. Vollzirkel used a pencil beam riding system from a 9cm radar with doppler and transponder range control. 50cm and 27cm versions had already been developed but they suffered from ground plane interference. The 9cm version did not suffer from this. SG-66 had a stable gimbaled platform with lateral accelerometer to null out cross winds. Bearings for the accelerometers and gyros were given a dither to eliminate stiction. The Winged V2 would have been even more accurate as it could be command guided on reentry. 30 meter accuracy was expected. The system was known as Wasserspiegel was based on transponders and giant freya radars on their side.

Was searching for this comment

hmm interesting point!

That’s what I thought!

Maybe the spark was the Nazi's wish for "Lebensraum ".

This. Luckily they dint developed Nuclear bomb first. Furthermore some Germans even helped Americans.

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Ph-npS29n9Q.html This 8 year old video talks about the guidance system of the V2

@@teaser6089 in short: compass for direction, angle for distance.

Did you mean U-boats? (:

JA

Submarines ???

That struggle, albeit between the navy and the air force is also the reason that there was no naval air arm in the Wehrmacht, despite one existing in the Imperial German navy.

The Army always funded the A4 because they saw it as ultra large artillery. They weren't allowed to develoip super guns due to treaty of versailes but nothing was said of ballistic missiles. The SS did try to take control of the V2 program and it led to von Brauns arrest as part of a ploy.

tisFrancesfault The contribution of Nasi scientists is greatly exaggerated, but it definitely helped.

I would need to look in my books, but the Americans failed to any thing more then make large explosions until Braun was put in charge. Which of course, culminated in the Saturn V. If for instance the Soviets got all the German scientists, everyone, the U.S.S.R would be the first to the moon and likely an unmatched world power.

+Fischer0Dude Didn't Goddard successfully launched liquid fuel rockets many years before V2? It wasn't manned, but I'm pretty sure that's more than "nothing except large explosions."

Fischer0Dude From Wiki (I know!): "Goddard successfully launched his model on March 16, 1926 ushering in an era of space flight and innovation. He and his team launched 34 rockets[3] between 1926 and 1941, achieving altitudes as high as 2.6 km (1.6 mi) and speeds as fast as 885 km/h (550 mph)". They were liquid fuelled, btw. Between the wars, rockets were envisaged as carriers of mail! All the film I've ever seen of German attempts usually pancaked not more than 50 ft from the launcher. In "The Right stuff" there is a small but hilarious section on the early US rockets not quite lifting off or exploding in flight.

Goddard died in 1945, there fore he is irrelevant to NASA, and the Space Race in general. Goddard's Rockets were out of their league compared to Von Braun's. Mind you Von Braun had Millions of Marks to spend / develop his rockets, keep in mind the V2 was the fist object to cross the boundary of space. Nothing Goddard produced could compete. The put my comment into better perspective, the U.S had a race between U.S Navy rockets and U.S army rockets (before NASA) and a modified rocket by Van Braun (Red Stone if I recall) put the first Western Satellite into orbit. If Von Braun and the rest of his team didn't surrender to the U.S.A, it would likely be the Soviets with a huge monopoly on space in the Cold War. Possibly even shutting the U.S.A out, and landing man on the Moon.

a bit too much it seems

AH Big, highly errect, phallic objects that go off at the slightest prompting? Go figure...

too autistic to win the war or not autistic enough im not quite sure we need to repeat the whole thing and vary the autism

then you should know who i am. and you should know these germans copied my designs.

Robert H. Goddard nein

That's propaganda.

Only if truth and facts are propaganda.

When a V-2 hit the ground, it produced two loud "booms." The first was the warhead exploding. There was no warning of its approach since it was moving too fast to pick up. The second "boom" was the sound of the sound barrier being broken by the rocket. English scientists became aware of the rocket as it was being developed and accurately predicted the double boom. When they head that first double boom they knew that the rocket had successfully passed the development stage and was actively being used against Allied targets.

Don't waste resources defending against something you can't defend against.

In 1941 the British Government issued the "Area Bombardment Directive" to RAF Bomber Command. The Directive ordered that The residential population of German cities be bombed to 'de-house" and "demoralise" them. The official terms: "Area bombardment", "dehousing" and "demoralisation": was deliberate terror carpet bombing of civilians. Arthur "Bomber" Harris noted that in one of the first instances of bombing, that of the medieval coastal city of Lubeck, that no specific target was chosen and the geometric centre of the city was the target. The Luftwaffe did not do this. It bombed military and industrial targets, only after RAF attacks on Berlin and Munich, but caused massive collateral damage around the area. The used an extremely accurate blind bombing aid x-geraete. The V2 and V1 (reprisal weapons) were used to submit Britain to a counter terror to force Britain to the negotiation table and negotiate a mutual end to city bombardment. That's why they were called reprisal or incorrectly vengeance weapons. The initial guidance system of the V2 was interim and not very accurate and was known as the LEV-3. It had two gyros (vertikant and horizont) and one PIGA accelerometer. Accuracy in testing was 4.5 km. If a beaming riding system known as Viktoria was used the lateral dispersion was halved. It was used in in 30% of cases. If a doppler instead of accelerometer system was used for engine cut of downrange accuracy increased 10%. von Braun had wanted to hold off on the V2 until the SG-66 system and Vollzirkel system came into use. Both had an accuracy of 500m, as good as anything else in WW2. Vollzirkel used a pencil beam riding system from a 9cm radar with doppler and transponder range control. 50cm and 27cm versions had already been developed but they suffered from ground plane interference. The 9cm version did not suffer from this. SG-66 had a stable gimbaled platform with lateral accelerometer to null out cross winds. Bearings for the accelerometers and gyros were given a dither to eliminate stiction. The Winged V2 would have been even more accurate as it could be command guided on reentry. 30 meter accuracy was expected. The system was known as Wasserspiegel was based on transponders and giant freya radars on their side.

problem is: the V-2 was imprecise, that's why they shot at cities, who can't move and are big enough so you will hit. but even when they hit, the allies lots of times made fake reports and let the germans read, making they changing targets and miss more often

churchill wanted the nazis to focus on civilians instead of military targets.. Helped the british military recover during the blitz

Every system that is designed to explode is kinda cost ineffective, tbf. I mean, let's take the modern Tomahawk Cruise Missile for example: If you think about it, it's just a VERY expensive firework. It's honestly stupid how much precious metals and rare earths we stuff into these things just to blow it all up. Just think about how many smartphones or GTX 3090s you could produce instead. It's bonkers. ^^"

The argument that the V2 was ineffective is poorly researched. The missile was only in service from September 7 1944 and had been rushed into production. The first batch of missiles took 16,000 hours to make each. After 10,000 this would drop to 6000 hours (about that of a fighter aircraft) and after 16,000 production to 4000 hours. The accuracy was poor because of the LEV-3 guidance system having only a single acclerometer and gyros with drift rates that were higher than diesiered. Accuracy should have increased to 300m to 500m with the vollzirkel microwave beam riding system and the SG-66 inertial guidance system respectively. (SG-66 was test flown a few times, vollzirkel was also being tested) Despite the high cost of the V2 it was very cheap to opperate. No airfield, no flight crew, no airfield defences etc. So within a few months V2 could have been hitting at a rate of about 350/week to an accuracy of 300m/500m. A workforce of 35,000 would be enough to produce this quantity of missiles.

They had some 200,000 people on the V2 project. I have no idea how many people were needed to build and maintain the planes, but they should be able to get plenty of people. Even having only 1000 extra planes and pilots would have caused the allies more damage than the V2 project did.

it was a complete waste in the military context of WW2. For the other stuff I agree, but this is outlined in the conclusion too.

True, should have phrased that differently. Great channel btw!

The V2 was brought into service a little too soon and entered service with a provisional and inaccurate guidance system called LEV-3. Had the improvements in accuracy, cost, range and material substitution come through the V2 would have been a cost effective weapon. 1 After the 10,000th V2 production man hours was expected to fall from 16,000 per missile to under 4000. 2 The “vollzirkel” guidance system had been testing and was expected to increase accuracy to 500m at maximum range. It used a beam riding system to control V2 missile position during its 70 second boost to ensure 500m accuracy on reentry. Even with terminal missile tumbling far more accurate than allied heavy bombers averages. 3 SG-66 gudance System with side drift accelerometers in gimbals was expected to also achieve accuracy of 500m. Several were test flown. 4 The winged A4b flew two test flights. The wings not only extended range but allowed terminal missile control to within 120 meters by virtue of long radar horizon. The guidance system was called “Wasserspiegel” used Wassermann radars laid on side and Neuling or Erstling IFF transponders for range. It could converted to midcourse guidance in case of jamming. 5 V2 costs tend to be inflated by adding development costs into production costs unlike say the even more expensive B-29 program. They are also inflated for ideological reasons. 6 Purpose of the Reprisal or revenge weapon was to provide a counter terror to negotiate an cessation to allied bombing. 7 It would have been a sucesfull weapon bar a few months of improvements. 8 My refernces are Fritz Trenkle book on german guidance systems and Frank Reuters book on thev A4/V2 and V1. (See lulu books) also the CIOS files on cvbandts website for german electronics.

221 b Well basically the Germans got Americans on the Moon because if it.

I mean if you put a nuclear weapon on it, then the project becomes much more useful. But yeah, it was a complete and utter waste of resources during WW2 with compared the the carpet bombing program

Heinz Guderian Until the Allies dropped Tallboy bombs on the Ratte...

Tss. Then we could have just used a schweren Gustav to shoot down these planes.

Heinz Guderian I expected something better from you Guderian...

Then why is your username Guderian? Guderian would have been pissed at how slow the Ratte was if it even made it to trials. Post war tank developments were all based on the Panther's design philosophy.

Probably not. But I damn sure would've wanted to see a V-2 slinging Landkreuzer rolling across a field made a reality. So badass! :D

Well, if you compare "Calculus of Probability" with "Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung", you will see that the Germans don´t waste so many letters after all.... oh, and they save the inter-word spaces!

>

The Nazis had some rockets up in space at 200km above ground.

It's the noise they make when they fly :p

There is a thing called "learning curve" or "learning by doing". If they have had these weapons in 1942 they would have had much more reliable, more powerful and more accurate rockets in 1944.