Posted on 07/09/2010 3:13:52 PM PDT by mgstarr
V-2’s falling on London were just the beginning. Had the Nazis had their way, Mach 22 bombers would have devastated America from space. The scary thing? The concept was not entirely insane. This is the story of Eugen Sänger’s Silbervogel.
V2 rocket. Germany may have lost the war but certainly not for lack of engineering genius. The sheer amount of advanced weaponry and concepts dreamed up during the Thousand-Year Reich’s 12 years in business continues to baffle the mind. 800 mm artillery pieces? Check. The world’s first jet fighter, cruise missile, and sub-orbital ballistic missile? Check, check, and check.
On the other hand, look what America did: it focused most of its efforts on a single advanced weapon, moving well beyond the concept stage. But the audacity of the German weapon concepts still fascinates, rather like their very successful 1930s Grand Prix cars. And the more feasible of them did eventually become products, as a search for Saturn V will show.
The most breathtaking concept was Eugen Sänger’s Silbervogel (“Silver Bird”). It was a design study commissioned by the Air Ministry for a problem Hermann Göring had spotted, namely that Germany’s most powerful future enemy happened to be Wind tunnel model of the Silbervogel defended by the mother of all moats: the Atlantic Ocean. The ministry launched an initiative by the name of Amerika Bomber and Germany’s crew of evil geniuses set to work.
Most of the concepts presented to the ministry were upscaled conventional bombers, but not Sänger’s bird, not that. Sänger was a member of the rocket society Verein für Raumschiffahrt—like rocket car designer Max Valier and most of the people who would later run NASA and build America’s rockets—and his eyes were set on sub-orbital space, as outlined in his 1933 book Raketenflugtechnik (“Technology of Rocket Flight”). For the Air Ministry’s project, he expanded it in 1944 with his future wife Irene Bredt under the name Über einen Raketenantrieb für Fernbomber (“A Rocket Drive for Long-Range Bombers”).
[more at link]
nice,
/johnny
bump
As long as they aim to DC, San Fran or Detroit.
Well at least when they ran NASA - they got things done.
Today, NASA is a propaganda arm for Islam.
They would had won if they had hit Detroit in those days and you can bet it would have been a target.
Lots of factories in those days churning out the tools of war.
Now, Detroit just looks like they hit it!
Is it wrong that a certain part of me read this article and wondered if it was too late to try this experiment?
BUMP!!!
lol
Get this movie at Neflix or Blockbusters or buy it at Amazon and enjoy this magificent story.
Mort Sahl suggested the subtitle "(But Sometimes I Hit London)".
Yeah, it didn't bother him a bit that slave labor was being worked to hideaus deaths from exhaustion to produce the rockets that were being used to bomb England and with luck, murder the rest of the world.
He was only interested in the science and technology.
He was above it all.
Apolitical? Or psychopathic? Where is the difference with Nazism?
Seig Heil, fool.
Arsenal of democracy. Cool video of the Willow Run bomber plant.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKlt6rNciTo
I never knew von Braun sang with the Vienna Boys Choir.
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