The major reason for this is because they couldn't build small H bombs. We could. So we build relatively small IRBMs and ICBMS. They could not, so they had to build huge ones. Even then they couldn't build a big motor, so they clustered many smaller ones. Essentially copied from captured V-2s.
“The major reason for this is because they couldn’t build small H bombs.”
Don’t think that big or small matters very much as long as you have a way to get thenm there, right ?
... and I’ve allways thought that clustering proven designs was a pretty good idea on their part.
For a screwed up economy and political system they gave us a good run for the money.