ot---------------- fabricating the V_2

Unser Anführer hat eine gute Wahl getroffen, als er die v 2 entwickelte. Es erlaubte uns, unserem Feind Schaden und Angst in einer Weise zuzufügen, die wir nie für möglich gehalten hätten ... ein Volk ein Reich ein führer!!!!

plastikdreams said:

Unser Anführer hat eine gute Wahl getroffen, als er die v 2 entwickelte. Es erlaubte uns, unserem Feind Schaden und Angst in einer Weise zuzufügen, die wir nie für möglich gehalten hätten ... ein Volk ein Reich ein führer!!!!

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Umm - WTF? Why this response?

Milland said:

Umm - WTF? Why this response?

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It's a joke

plastikdreams said:

It's a joke

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Ask the Brits (9,000 dead in the attacks), or the 12,000 or so dead from forced labor in the making of the weapons if that's in good taste. I don't think it is.

V-2 rocket - Wikipedia

JHOLLAND1 said:

YouTube

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That Ap channel has some good footage,

Dan Beaumont space museum channel has a lot of early rocketry footage also. YouTube

Most of what is shown in the AP video Peenemunde 1940 seems to be construction of the A5 which was a pre-cursor to the V2/ A4. It's much smaller in diameter and length. A couple of A4/V2 components shown almost as a "sneak peek" in early development / infancy.

I think first successful flight of the A4/ V2 was in 1942. but the A4 was ordered in 1939. Parts of the A3 built into the A5 were used to iron out many issues including aerodynamic instability.

So in the video shows critical testing of , with and in the supersonic wind tunnel with scale models to derive the shape and profile for the A4/ V2. (rare and interesting footage showing that.).

From a machining point of view about 5 minutes in I always think of the 1940's style large face plate work on lathe where you have super asymmetric giant parts mounted and spinning in perfect balance for precision cuts and bores (at crazy angles) that would almost be considered 5 axis mill turn like cuts today... almost anything can be done on a lathe if you put your mind to it (it's a good reminder of that) .

So many novel techniques for their time being shown there, like low pressure "pull" on the skin of the airframe simulating super sonic speeds being tested + filed smooth rivets etc.

Lot of interesting techniques in their infancy almost too numerous to mention. Sheet metal work is very impressive.

Milland said:

Ask the Brits (9,000 dead in the attacks), or the 12,000 or so dead from forced labor in the making of the weapons if that's in good taste. I don't think it is.

V-2 rocket - Wikipedia

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Actually I'm quite aware of what happened during ww2 and the losses by all sides. Maybe ask the 500k+ jap citizens that we firebombed into Oblivion or the 120k civilians on Okinawa that we blew into Oblivion. Or maybe ask just one of the 70+ million that died because of some fanatic that could give a good speech.

Be less uptight and understand that a joke is a joke.

The twin carbon arc welding/brazing that was going on at 5:31 and 6:14 was very interesting. I could not tell whether it was a brazing or welding(like GTAW, except two electrodes). Any comments?

Cameraman's comment about the lathe work was spot on. I had to slow youtube down to get a real understanding of what I was seeing.

plastikdreams said:

Be less uptight and understand that a joke is a joke.

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No thanks. And next time you have Chinese, perhaps you'll order a Nanjing Massacre? Or a Korean Comfort Slave? Those are drinks, aren't they?

It's a joke, right?

wheels17 said:

The twin carbon arc welding/brazing that was going on at 5:31 and 6:14 was very interesting. I could not tell whether it was a brazing or welding(like GTAW, except two electrodes). Any comments?

Cameraman's comment about the lathe work was spot on. I had to slow youtube down to get a real understanding of what I was seeing.

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I suspect atomic hydrogen welding.

Seems like a lot of work to just blow the damn thing up in the end.

Milland said:

No thanks. And next time you have Chinese, perhaps you'll order a Nanjing Massacre? Or a Korean Comfort Slave? Those are drinks, aren't they?

It's a joke, right?

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Yeah it's a joke...relax grandpa

plastikdreams said:

Yeah it's a joke...relax grandpa

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At some point, you may realize in your elder years how young and stupid you used to be. I hope for your sake that comes sooner rather than later (or never).

Setting the politics aside, from a purely technical viewpoint, this film is quite interesting and revealing as to the depth of Germany's technological development. 1940 was early in the V-2 program, before the manufacturing was taken underground and put into high production.

The film opens with what seem endless numbers of engineering draftsmen, and moves to one engineer plotting some kind of curve. Another engineer sits at a desk with a large mechanical calculator. This was in the era before any sort of handy pocket sized scientific calculators. Imagine the reams of calculations some of those people had to sweat through, probably working them longhand and "shortcutting" by using logarithms. Been there, done that when I was an undergraduate engineering student.

The film moves to what is likely a supersonic wind tunnel. In one frame, an engineer is in a darkened room looking at a round screen that is illuminated. A silhouette of the scale model rocket appears on this screen. The sequence does not linger there, but I would bet that they were checking the formation of the shock waves around the nose of the scale rocket. Quite advanced engineering for the time.

The sheet metal work is impressive, but I would think that it was still in the prototype or R & D stages. For the kind of V-2 production which rained destruction and death on England, slave labor was used to build the V-2's on a production basis. I would imagine at that point, V-2 production was using presses with dies to stamp out a lot of the sheet metal parts being hand-made in this film.

I agree with Digger Doug: what we are seeing is Atomic Hydrogen Welding. It was developed at the General Electric research labs in the 20's or early 30's and is the fore-runner of TIG. Full inspection of the parts seems to be done, including dye penetrant on formed sheet metal and radiography (X-ray) of weld seams. A full testing lab was part of the facility, and what appeared to have been a compressive test was applied to a panel of the rocket's casing. Mechanical strain gauges are shown in use. A tensile test on a sample lapped joint made by spot welding is also shown, with the failure occuring some distance from the weld. Kind of silent proof of how good they have things working.

In another sequence, a machinist is running an engine lathe, machining some aluminum or light-alloy part. On the wall behind his lathe is a box marked "Sand". This is a clue they were machining magnesium parts. If a fire gets started in magnesium chips or the work itself, it is effectively an incindieary device. No putting the fire out except by smothering it with sand.

Getting back to the political side of things: I found it interesting that the scenes in the various drafting rooms and shops were devoid of the usual nazi propaganda seen in most films of German WWII production. The only clearly visible sayings on the wall were "Rauchen Verboten"- smoking forbidden. No pictures of Hitler, no swastika flags, no propaganda sayings about working for the final victory or similar.

As the war progressed, it became apparent that Germany was not going to prevail as far as conquering the RAF and being able to invade England. It also became apparent that Germany had over-extended itself and was going to try to prevail by the use of their "Wunderwaffen" (wonder weapons). V-2 Production wound up in some underground tunnels excavated into rock, and large numbers of slave laborers were put to work on the V-2 production. I know the total number of V-2's produced was in the thousands. I also know that the slave laborers working on the V-2's were not going to put the same effort in the German craftsmen did in this film. If anything, the slave laborers tried to sabotage the V-2's. When the war ended, the USA was in a close race with the Russians to get hold of the V-2's, the engineering data, and Werner von Braun and some of the other scientists who had been the brains behind the V-2's.

What has to be taken into account is that Germany, prior to WWII and Hitler's conquests and annexations of more lands, was a country probably about the size of one or two of our States, maybe Pennsylvania and another state. They went up against the allied nations, and until the USA got into the mix, stood a good chance of being victorious. To see the kind of engineering and development that went into the V-2's is sobering. Had Hitler played his cards a bit differently, with that kind of engineering and manufacturing skill, there was a real possibility that Nazi Germany might well have been victorious. I had never seen the inner workings of a V-2 Rocket until this film. It is impressive, and even in wartime, was really on the cutting edge. I tend to think that the Allies prevailed by sheer weight of numbers- numbers of fresh troops when the USA got into the war, and numbers of war material supplied by the USA. We tooled up our allies and we supplied them with war material. Some of our designs were nowhere near as good as what the Germans had, but we simply had more of them and more men to throw into the fight. The V-2 Rocket was probably the pinnacle of nazi Germany's technical development. It formed the foundation of the USA's entry into the space program.

Milland said:

At some point, you may realize in your elder years how young and stupid you used to be. I hope for your sake that comes sooner rather than later (or never).

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Youth is wasted on the young...or so they say.

Joe Michaels said:

I tend to think that the Allies prevailed by sheer weight of numbers- numbers of fresh troops when the USA got into the war,

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I had a co-worker from England many years ago. She mentioned how they learned in school how Monty and the boys defeated Hitler.

I thought that was funny until I had the same realization about how I learned history.

If it weren't for the Russians we would all be speaking German (at least those of us allowed to live).

This lack of historical understanding irks the Russians to this day I am told.

Joe Michaels said:

Had Hitler played his cards a bit differently, with that kind of engineering and manufacturing skill, there was a real possibility that Nazi Germany might well have been victorious.

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I don't think so. It's possible they could have held Europe under a different leader. But not Hitler. At some point in the war the allies shelved any notion os assasinating Hitler. They figured the Aliies were better off with Hitler alive then dead.

None of the other Nazi hieracy other than (maybe) Speer could have conceviably taken Germany to victory in any form.

Frank R said:

This lack of historical understanding irks the Russians to this day I am told.

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This is my understanding too, but that effort was paid for in untold Russian blood, at least partly brought about by Stalin purging his military staff of it's best minds (and potential competitors).

In both Stalin's and Hitler's cases, a lot of foot-shooting done by ignoring or removal of their country's military or intelligence elite. Gosh, could you imagine if our leader dismissed or ridiculed our experienced Armed Forces and Intelligence advice??

INcoNceivABle...

Thank goodness they built it. It was a stupid waste of time and money. A single Lancaster carried between 7 and 15 times the payload of a V2 and didn't blow up every time it flew. The Germans never developed a heavy bomber like the B-17 or the Lancaster, they devoted all that effort to something they thought would scare Britain into surrendering...fat chance. Many V2s were destroyed over the channel by artillery fire...and, even when they did get through, they were notoriously inaccurate.

99Panhard said:

Thank goodness they built it. It was a stupid waste of time and money. A single Lancaster carried between 7 and 15 times the payload of a V2 and didn't blow up every time it flew. The Germans never developed a heavy bomber like the B-17 or the Lancaster, they devoted all that effort to something they thought would scare Britain into surrendering...fat chance. Many V2s were destroyed over the channel by artillery fire...and, even when they did get through, they were notoriously inaccurate.

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They were pretty much like and hope just like the v1...though 1 ton of explosives works anywhere between direct hit and pretty close. (That's meant to be funny too milland)