Michael Neufeld - The Rocket and the Reich

Meanwhile, the Peenemünde engineers, in consultation with Hermann’s aerodynamicists, had struggled to find solutions to the serious guidance and control challenges of the final A-4b design. There were doubts as to the stability of the missile in all flight regimes, the best wing and air vane designs remained unclear, and there were questions about creating an accurate guide beam for a missile flying at low altitudes more 400 kilometers away. The low speed of the missile at the end of the glide also raised the possibility of its being shot down like the V-1. Someone in Ordnance suggested adding jet engines, but a much simpler answer was to add a terminal dive similar to the V-1’s, at the cost of cutting off range at 450 kilometers instead of 500. 26

When the evacuation of Peenemünde was ordered only days after the second launch, the program effectively came to an end. No further A-4bs were ever built or launched, nor did any postwar nation pursue the idea further. Although the vision of a winged V-2 did play an influential role among space artists and advocates in the 1950s, the idea was a dead end militarily. The extension in range was not worth the extra technical complexity, nor did it make sense to trade away the great advantage over the defense provided by a ballistic missile’s high-speed reentry. Even if we put those questions aside, however, von Braun’s engineers had too little time and too few resources to make the A-4b work. Desperation had marred the program, compromising many aspects of the original A-9 idea. But since the A-4b program was as much political as anything else, perhaps it did not matter.

Emergency improvisations had less of an impact on the A-4, because its relative technical maturity put limits on how much further improvement could be extracted in a short period of time. Throughout the summer, fall, and winter, a number of long-term projects continued, with the ultimate objective of producing a simplified and more accurate A-4 “Series C.” Near the end of the war the propulsion engineers finally were able to make a workable injector plate for the 25-ton motor. Steinhoff’s guidance and control division, in collaboration with university and corporate researchers, pursued a great number of projects, including better accelerometers, improvement of radio guidance systems, and the production and testing of Kreiselgeräte’s three-gyro stabilized platforms, the Sg 66 and Sg 70, which were ultimately scheduled to replace the simple but less accurate “Vertikant system.” That equipment was tested at both Peenemünde and Heidekraut (Heather), a new launch area southwest of Danzig (Gdansk), which was set up because the Red Army’s approach had forced the abandonment of Heidelager in late July 1944. In addition, there were continuing efforts to solve the airbursts and other problems, often on the same missiles. 27

Although a rational program of long-term improvements did predominate in late-war A-4 work, Kammler’s demands for instant results nonetheless made themselves felt. Various methods to extend the missile’s range were studied through test launches, ground experiments, and calculations, but most changes either delivered only marginal gains of a few kilometers or entailed development of new components that would take time. Kammler also revived the idea of the railroad-borne rocket battery. Launches were carried out at Peenemünde in late November and early December with road-mobile vehicles mounted on flatcars. Why he was interested in that idea is a mystery, as trains were inherently less flexible and more vulnerable to Allied air attack in any case. The energies of von Braun’s engineers and Dornberger’s soldiers would have been better spent solving technical problems for the rocket batteries and dealing with endless changes in A-4 production caused by materials shortages, the loss of parts suppliers, and so forth. 28

Electromechanical Industries’ other principal ongoing project, Wasserfall, enjoyed relative freedom from emergency intervention, in part because it was outside Kammler’s jurisdiction until February 1945. But desperation and wishful thinking had marred the program from the outset, with the result that the anti-aircraft missile was too technically immature to permit a quick fix of it problems. Although the Flak Experimental Center had overcome its slow start and had begun to fire about half a dozen missiles a month in the fall, most of those tests failed in ways that showed how deeply troubled the program was. Even when missiles completed powered flight, they had an alarming tendency to blow up immediately after engine shutdown, because the self-igniting propellants were thrown forward through pressure-relief valves at cutoff, where they mixed and burned. 29

Wasserfall’s propulsion and tankage system displayed a number of other serious design problems. The injector plate was inefficient, and the bursting membranes in the lines failed to function as planned, causing explosions at ignition. When the engine did operate in flight, thrust was poor, and shutdown came after about thirty seconds (instead of forty-five) because maneuvering threw the propellants around, uncovering the tank drains. The result was that the engine ingested nitrogen pressurization gas along with the oxidizer and fuel, leading to substandard performance and early cutoffs. Obviously, the range and effectiveness of Wasserfall would be severely curtailed if that problem could not be fixed. The original solution of Roth’s group did not work. According to the Luftwaffe officer appointed to oversee the Wasserfall schedule in November, the project leadership had been far too slow to react to the problem. A contest was eventually held to gather suggestions. It was won by Werner Dahm, but his idea apparently did not definitively solve the gas-ingestion problem either, so the situation was little improved at the end of January 1945. 30

The guidance problems remained equally perplexing. Just as in the case of the A-4b, acquiring adequately powerful vane servomotors remained a severe difficulty. In other areas of Wasserfall guidance and control, most of the serious difficulties of early 1944 had not been overcome either. The situation in homing devices remained extraordinarily confused because of the proliferation of competing projects, while the final form of Wasserfalle gyro systems remained unclear. To make matters worse, Siemens’s aircraft instruments company was late on all its contracts in the second half of 1944, in part because of air raids. There were only one or two bright spots: The joy-stick, which was merely a modification of an existing system, proved itself in launch testing; a proximity fuse had been chosen, and its design was approaching completion. In the long run, Wasserfall was still a promising project, but its deployment as an effective weapon was still at least a couple of years away—years the Third Reich obviously did not have. 31

In light of its dismal outlook, the project came under little further pressure for quick results. Instead, its political support threatened to collapse altogether. Speer and Saur continued to refuse to order Wasserfall into quantity production, causing the directors of Linke-Hoffmann to slow production even of test missiles. Nor did Hermann Göring’s first visit to Peenemünde go well. Accompanied by Speer, he arrived on October 30, 1944, resplendent in bright red riding boots, opossum-hair overcoat, off-white uniform, and jewel-encrusted finger rings. According to Dornberger, the obese Göring popped pills every few minutes and behaved erratically. Afterward the Reich Marshal and the Armaments Minister decided to reduce Wasserfall to a mere long-term development project. Emphasis was to be placed on Schmetterling, which was most advanced, as well as on Enzian (Gentian), a newer project for a mostly wooden, unmanned, scaled-down version of the Me 163 rocket fighter. It is a sign of Göring’s irrelevance that the decision never took effect. It was eventually overruled by the rump Technical Office of the Air Ministry, probably on the basis of a bizarre order by Hitler for accelerated anti-aircraft development in view of the enemy’s fear of the “hell of German flak fire.” Wasserfall would thus continue to limp along until Peenemünde was evacuated. 32