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Old 10-18-2020, 12:10 AM   #1
Tessen
 
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Default V1 and V2 launch procedures?

One for you WW2 rocket experts....

My knowledge on the launch details is seriously lacking , what I've go is:

A V2 rocket is hoisted onto a long ramp , the exhaust ignites and it rolls down the railed ramp on a cart then flies off.

A V1 is transported on a flatbed trailer into the middle of a forest. The flatbed tilts up until the V1 is in the vertical position then the rocket ignites and takes off.

What vehicles are used and the jobs of the personnel involved?

Does anybody know more of the step by step launching procedure please?
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Old 10-18-2020, 02:55 AM   #2
Rupert
 
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Default Re: V1 and V2 launch procedures?

It's the other way round - the V1 was rail launched, the V2 launched straight up off a platform.

The V1 had to be carefully prepared before launch, including beating it with mallets to beat it's magnetic field into the right shape so the guidance system would work correctly. This was done in a long shed, with the launch rail extending from one end towards the target.

The V2 had a better guidance system, but still needed a lot of pre-launch prep, including filling its fuel tanks, and the launch sites had to be carefully surveyed so the guidance could be set correctly.

Wikipedia has a decent overview of the V1 launch facilities.
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Old 10-18-2020, 06:02 AM   #3
johndallman
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Default Re: V1 and V2 launch procedures?

The V-2 launch procedure was fairly complex, and took about 90 minutes after reaching the launch site. The rocket was transported by rail without fuel or warhead. The warheads went by truck. On reaching the launch area, it was unloaded from its railcar and had its warhead fitted. It would then be craned onto the Meillerwagen erector, which would be driven to the actual launch site, in a convoy of about 30 vehicles.

Having reached the launch site, the mobile launch platform would be put on the ground and levelled, and then the rocket would be tilted upright and put on the platform. Then it would be fuelled with alcohol, liquid oxygen, hydrogen peroxide and sodium permanganate. The guidance system would started up, aligned, and set for the desired range, and everything would be checked. Then it would be fired.

A V-2 battery was a battalion-sized unit, with three launching platoons. There's more detail here.
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Old 10-20-2020, 04:41 PM   #4
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Default Re: V1 and V2 launch procedures?

Part of the fun of the V2 was that it couldn't be transported fuelled - partly because the fuel was absolutely vile stuff, and partly because it couldn't bear its own weight when full unless it was upright.

What would have been interesting would have been to see the V1 rigged, Regulus style, onto a U-boat. Presumably something derived from those Japanese style aircraft carrying boats. I seem to recall an Alt-history where one of these, with an atomic warhead, was being fired into some US East Coast naval base (maybe Norfolk or Newport ... ?) and I think even in real life there was a panic about it towards the end of the war. In this case the "V" stood for vernichtungs (annihilation) and not Vergeltungs (reprisal) - which was a cool switch.
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Old 10-20-2020, 09:07 PM   #5
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Default Re: V1 and V2 launch procedures?

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Colonel View Post
Part of the fun of the V2 was that it couldn't be transported fuelled - partly because the fuel was absolutely vile stuff, and partly because it couldn't bear its own weight when full unless it was upright.

What would have been interesting would have been to see the V1 rigged, Regulus style, onto a U-boat. Presumably something derived from those Japanese style aircraft carrying boats. I seem to recall an Alt-history where one of these, with an atomic warhead, was being fired into some US East Coast naval base (maybe Norfolk or Newport ... ?) and I think even in real life there was a panic about it towards the end of the war. In this case the "V" stood for vernichtungs (annihilation) and not Vergeltungs (reprisal) - which was a cool switch.
Not the main fuel so much. That was 75% ethyl alcohol and 25% water distilled from potatoes and probably doesn't count as "vile" till the morning after you drink it. The liquid oxygen is something to be careful with but more of an indirect threat.

The hydrogen peroxide and sodium permanganatwe John lists were I belive used to spin the turbopump for the fuel. So they'd only be present in small quantities though they formed a hypergolic mixture and would require a high degree of caution.

Your U-Boat scenario absolutely isn't going anywhere. even if the Germans had gotten clsoe to a bomb (and they didn't) the Hiroshima bomb weighed in at 9700 lbs and the Nagasaki one at 10,300. There are reasons they had to be dropped from B-29s. The warhead capacity of the V-1 is usually quoted at just 1 ton.

A launching mechanism for a V-1 even with a hypothetical rocket booster wouldn't be very much like the Japanese seaplane hangars. You're well into 1950s technology for both the warhead and the missile firing sub.
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Old 10-20-2020, 09:13 PM   #6
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Default Re: V1 and V2 launch procedures?

Why did they get water from potatoes?
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Old 10-21-2020, 06:24 AM   #7
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Default Re: V1 and V2 launch procedures?

Quote:
Originally Posted by doctorevilbrain View Post
Why did they get water from potatoes?
The alcohol came from fermenting and distilling potatoes. I don't know whether they only distilled to 75% or whether they added the water later.
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Old 10-21-2020, 07:05 AM   #8
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Default Re: V1 and V2 launch procedures?

The Colonel might be thinking of the Me 163 propellant, C-Stoff (methanol-hydrazine) and T-Stoff (80-85% hydrogen peroxide). Hydrazine's pretty nasty, and the two are a self-igniting combination ("hypergolic"), which is why the Komet has its reputation for catching fire or exploding on hard landings if it had remaining fuel.

They also used T-Stoff (without the C-Stoff) to fuel the steam catapults used to launch V-1s. (They threw in a little Z-Stoff -- a mix of permanganates -- as a catalyst to help the H2O2 react with itself.)

Or it might just be confusion over the German label "B-Stoff", which at one point apparently referred to straight hydrazine, but later on meant the 75% ethanol used in the V-2. Code names: still obscuring the question 80 years later.
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Old 10-21-2020, 07:24 AM   #9
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Default Re: V1 and V2 launch procedures?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Not the main fuel so much. That was 75% ethyl alcohol and 25% water distilled from potatoes and probably doesn't count as "vile" till the morning after you drink it. The liquid oxygen is something to be careful with but more of an indirect threat.

The hydrogen peroxide and sodium permanganatwe John lists were I belive used to spin the turbopump for the fuel. So they'd only be present in small quantities though they formed a hypergolic mixture and would require a high degree of caution.

Your U-Boat scenario absolutely isn't going anywhere. even if the Germans had gotten clsoe to a bomb (and they didn't) the Hiroshima bomb weighed in at 9700 lbs and the Nagasaki one at 10,300. There are reasons they had to be dropped from B-29s. The warhead capacity of the V-1 is usually quoted at just 1 ton.

A launching mechanism for a V-1 even with a hypothetical rocket booster wouldn't be very much like the Japanese seaplane hangars. You're well into 1950s technology for both the warhead and the missile firing sub.
Thought the V2 ate hydrazine … as for the alt-history, well, that's alt history for you. Although apparently the panic was real enough - Operation Teardrop was apparently the name for the US response to the supposed U-boat launched V-weapon threat.
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Old 10-21-2020, 10:50 AM   #10
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Default Re: V1 and V2 launch procedures?

The German Army made training films for both launch processes, easily findable on 'tube.

V2 had several specialised tankers, control vehicles and transporters to set the missile up for launch, but the launchpad itself was quite simple and small, requiring only a few square metres of concrete, and easily moved to another site.

V1 launchers were large installations (ski-sites), with buildings for storage, assembly, compass setting, fuelling and launch control; with large fixed, then modular and semi-movable launch ramps.
The V1 was also launched form aircraft (several hundred), and might later have been launched from U-Boats.
The USArmy and USNavy both developed mobile launchers for their post-war versions, the Loon and the JB-1 IIRC.

Both V-weapons had large concrete launch installations planned, which were mostly bombed when almost complete.
A liquid oxygen plant almost as large, and several V-weapon storage sites were variously built, damaged by bombing and usually abandoned.

R.V. Jones' book 'Most Secret War' covers all this in quite good detail, including how he tricked the Germans into shortening their V1 aiming range, so that most fell in fields in the county of Kent rather than on London, a move that some political types felt was immoral, bizarrely. ;-)
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