The remainder of that story is statistics.
During the interval from June 12, 1944 and August 30, 1944 the Germans launched eight thousand seventy flying bombs, all aimed at London. (There was a second battery of launching racks, aimed at Bristol, but it was still incomplete when it fell into Allied hands.) Over two thousand of them, one out of every four, fell into the Channel, strayed from their course, or crashed near the takeoff ramps—the Germans offered French civilians as much as one thousand francs a day if they would help them launch flying bombs. Fighter interception destroyed twenty-four per cent of the bombs in flight, A.A. guns and rockets accounted for seventeen percent, balloon barrages for five per cent so that only two thousand bombs, or about twenty-nine per cent, actually fell on London.
They killed 5,864 persons, injured 17,197 badly and 23,174 slightly, destroyed 24,491 houses, rendered another 52,293 uninhabitable and damaged over 950,000. The results were impressive as far as figures go, their influence on the course of the war was nil.
V-1 had two main weaknesses. One was inherent in the design, the other is inherent in the type of weapon. The weakness in design was the jet motor. It was of a type which could not work at rest but needed a speed of at least 150 m.p.h. which necessitated the launching ramp and takeoff help. Most of the twenty-five percent which did not cross the Channel did not do so for reasons of faulty takeoff. Also, the takeoff ramps were fine bombing targets if they could be found.
A different type of engine, whether jet or conventional, would cure most of these troubles. If an engine which can work when at rest were used, there would be hardly any crashes near the takeoff point, there might be no need for takeoff ramps but just for runways.
The weakness inherent in the type, which would remain, is interceptibility. It is a good guess that interceptor planes which are expected to come back and which carry a valuable pilot, will always be faster than the flying bombs of the same period. And as the performance of the flying bomb improves, the performance of A.A. gunnery will improve too.
The Flying Bomb Section of Peenemiinde did not create an irresistible weapon. But it did create a novel weapon which is destined to remain standard equipment of all armies and probably of all navies too. It will always be more or less an area weapon, but there is need for area weapons too in warfare.
Leaving the work of the V-2 section of Peenemunde to the last, the result of still another probable section of those laboratories has to be mentioned.
When the robots streaked across the Channel there were occasional reports of a larger type, almost twice as fast as the flying bomb. But while there is no reason to doubt the words of the pilots who reported what they saw, there is reason to doubt their interpretation. Examination of wreckage failed to disclose the existence of a larger type of flying bomb, although such a larger type would have been possible, of course.
What the pilots probably saw were samples of still another German invention, presumably also from Peenemiinde, the rocket propelled fighter plane Messerschmitt 163. The Me 163 is not a jet plane, as is often stated, it is a rocket plane.
It was encountered later—on August 16, 1944—over Leipzig. Suddenly things swished past the Flying Fortresses, so fast that-the crews failed to see them clearly. The fighter pilots, flying fast Mustangs, had a better chance. The strange planes still left the Mustangs behind at a rate of 25o m.p.h. or more, but the Mustangs succeeded in intercepting them on occasion. The Germans were faster, but by the same token less maneuverable.
The pilots said later that these Germans “were ugly things, looking like bats flying around.” Their fuselage was very short and stubby, the wings were so strongly tapered as to be almost triangular. The fuselage did not project at all beyond the leading edge of the wing in front, and projected for only a few feet beyond the trailing edge in the back, leaving no room for horizontal stabilizers and elevators. They only carried vertical stabilizer and rudder, and the rocket motor was located directly beneath the rudder.
The Me 163 is said to have fuel for eight minutes of powered flight only, but can stay in the air for about half an hour, performing as a very fast glider in the meantime. The armament consists of a total of six single-shot rocket tubes in the wings, augmented by one automatic cannon in the nose.
The design can be traced back in a straight line to experiments made in Germany as early as 1928—they were then seven-foot models with a Sander powder rocket—but it also reflects “page 280 in my book, if the Herr Oberst will be good enough to look.” The Me 163 embodies most of Oberth’s idea of what a rocket airplane should be like—as modified by an experienced aerodynamicist.
The fuel for the propulsion rocket has been described as giving off “chemical fumes” by American pilots. This sounds strange, because the exhaust of an oxygen-gasoline rocket motor would smell like any exhaust, and the smell of alcohol of an oxygen-alcohol rocket motor is hard to mistake.
Is the rocket motor of the Me 163 the place where Sander’s “liquid powder” was finally utilized? Not a single word was ever written about it after that first publication—and that was in a provincial newspaper. Did the Reichswehr step in then and there and put its hand over the new invention, hiding it from sight?
Winston Churchill, reporting to the House of Commons on July 6, 1944, referred to Peenemunde as “the main experiment station both of the flying bomb and the long-range rocket.” In the same speech he stated that “at first our information led us to believe that a rocket weapon would be used”—but then V-1 came.
The mystery of V-2 deepened.
It was an enormous puzzle.
There were the stories that Oberth was responsible for the founding of Peenemiinde. There were the stories of gigantic rockets, but full of technological nonsense. There was V-1, decidedly not something Oberth would build, besides the fact that “Heinz Bunse,” Georges Claude and at least four other people were alternately given credit for the invention.
V-1 lived up to some of the early reports as far as range, weight of bomb and the possibility of launching it from airplanes were concerned. But V-1 was not a rocket. Was all the rocket talk a mistake?
When Churchill spoke of “flying bombs and long-range rockets” it became clear that there was such a thing. But what did “long range” mean? Twenty miles is long range for a rocket, even ten miles would be long range.
Besides what good would a long-range rocket do as far as the Germans were concerned. Another area weapon? Another means of haphazard bombardment?
Like Arthur Clarke of the British Interplanetary Society I found myself torn between two wishes. As far as the war was concerned, or rather the needless suffering of the people who might fall victims, the better hope was to discount all the German propaganda stories as propaganda. But as far as the future of rocket research was concerned, a twenty-ton rocket with a range of a hundred miles or better, would be a definite trump card. One would be able to point at that weapon and to say: “See, it can be done! But you didn’t believe it!”
Yes, it can be done.
V-2, looking and performing precisely as rocket theory had always stated it would, is a reality.
Churchill, again reporting to the House of Commons on November 10, 1944, stated: “For the last few weeks the enemy has been using his new weapon, the long-range rocket, and a number have landed at widely scattered points in this country.”
Information about the rocket itself was forthcoming quickly. Allied airmen saw one takeoff, describing it as a streamlined projectile about forty feet long and fifteen feet around, shooting a thirty-foot flame out of its tail and followed by a long trail of vapor, described as looking “like a Bronx cheer in smoke.”
V-2 carries a warhead holding twenty-two hundred pounds of high-explosive, possibly the same warhead as V-1. Its maximum range with that warhead is around three hundred miles, the peak of the long trajectory is between sixty and seventy miles above the ground. The fuel, reports say, is either gasoline or alcoh
ol and liquid oxygen.
Everything about it spells out OBERTH in capital letters.
That it is not an effective war weapon goes almost without saying. A weapon which lands “at widely scattered points” is only a terror weapon but nothing which can decide a war. And if, as Churchill suggested, the range is increased by cutting down the weight of the warhead, the scattering is going to increase too. Besides the warhead is even less effective than it is when carried by a V-1. V-2, crashing down from its stratospheric altitude of seventy miles, buries itself deeply before the warhead has a chance to explode. It has more penetration by far where it hits, but the lateral blast effects are considerably smaller.
If you calculate the mass-ratio requirements for such a trajectory and for liquid fuels which may be expected to produce an exhaust velocity of about sixty-five hundred feet per second, you arrive at about 6.5:1. The warhead weighs one ton, the rocket itself cannot very well weigh less than a ton, so that the “weight of arrival” is two tons. Multiplied by the mass-ratio required we find a takeoff weight of thirteen tons. This checks well with Allied estimates and German announcements, which both ascribe to V-2 a minimum takeoff weight of twelve and a maximum of fifteen tons.
V-z proves that it is possible to build liquid fuel rockets of almost any size. There are stories of experimental models which had a takeoff weight of fifty tons. These might be just stories, but they also might be true. It does not matter too much one way or another because V-2, as it exists, proves that Oberth and his associates succeeded in making the one invention on which the whole future of rocket research and rocket construction rested. They must have invented a lightweight, high-capacity fuel pump. With such pumps you can, theoretically, build any size of liquid fuel rocket beyond a certain minimum size.
With such pumps you can, given a little time, even build a spaceship.
As a matter of fact, this is no longer in the future, the first spaceship has been built already, only it is not used as such. Yes, we might as well admit it, V-2 is the first spaceship.
With its eight and a half tons of liquid oxygen and about four tons of alcohol V-z lifts a “payload” of one ton—the bomb—to an altitude of seventy miles. Presumably it is fired at an angle of about fifty degrees.
Now take off the bomb and substitute an observer, wearing a light diving suit and having a nice set of instruments around him, making a total of, say, three hundred pounds. This gives you another nineteen hundred pounds of fuel. Do that and fire V-2 vertically, it is not apt to have a maximum acceleration surpassing three or four G. It will ascend beyond two hundred miles—it will just touch empty space!
It will probably be necessary to re-create V-2 after the war for this purpose. We cannot hope to take Peenemiinde or any one of the subsidiary research stations. The Nazis will see to it that everything will be utterly destroyed before we get there. And Himmler, I am sure, has lists of all those who know a good deal about this work. If they escape future Allied bombings, they will be shot by the Gestapo.
Barring miracles we will not be able to continue for peaceful purposes what the Germans started with war in mind. But the recreation of these things can be undertaken with confidence after the war, because Peenemiinde proved that it can be done.
ADAM AND NO EVE
Alfred Bester
The terrifying possibilities for error that lurk in any scientific experiment are here exploited to the fullest extent. For the man who built the first rocket ship was wrong in just one calculation—and his mistake destroyed the human race. Now that we know of such things as atomic explosion, the catastrophe that followed the first rocket Bight seems shockingly plausible. On the other hand, it is equally plausible to assume that man’s instinct will never let the race perish utterly.
* * *
Crane knew this must be the seacoast. Instinct told him; but more than instinct, the few shreds of knowledge that clung to his torn, feverish brain told him; the stars that had shown at night through the rare breaks in the clouds, and his compass that still pointed a trembling finger north. That was strangest of all, Crane thought. Though a welter of chaos, the Earth still retained its polarity.
It was no longer a coast; there was no longer any sea. Only the faint line of what had been a cliff, stretching north and south for endless miles. A line of gray ash. The same gray ash and cinders that lay behind him; the same gray ash that stretched before him. Fine silt, knee-deep, that swirled up at every motion and choked him. Cinders that scudded in dense mighty clouds when the mad winds blew. Cinders that were churned to viscous mud when the frequent rains fell.
The sky was jet overhead. The black clouds rode high and were pierced with shafts of sunlight that marched swiftly over the Earth. Where the light struck a cinder storm, it was filled with gusts of dancing, gleaming particles. Where it played through rain it brought the arches of rainbows into being. Rain fell; cinder storms blew; light thrust down—together, alternately and continually in a jigsaw of black and white violence. So it had been for months. So it was over every mile of the broad Earth.
Crane passed the edge of the ashen cliffs and began crawling down the even slope that had once been the ocean bed. He had been traveling so long that all sense of pain had left him. He braced elbows and dragged his body forward. Then he brought his right knee under him and reached forward with elbows again. Elbows, knee, elbows, knee— He had forgotten what it was to walk.
Life, he thought dazedly, is wonderful. It adapts itself to anything. If it must crawl, it crawls. Callus forms on the elbows and knees. The neck and shoulders toughen. The nostrils learn to snort away the ashes before they inhale. The bad leg swells and festers. It numbs, and presently it will rot and fall off.
“I beg pardon,” Crane said, “I didn’t quite get that—”
He peered up at the tall figure before him and tried to understand the words. It was Hallmyer. He wore his stained lab jacket and his gray hair was awry. Hallmyer stood delicately on top of the ashes and Crane wondered why he could see the scudding cinder clouds through his body.
“How do you like your world, Stephen?” Hallmyer asked. Crane shook his head miserably.
“Not very pretty, eh?” said Hallmyer. “Look around you. Dust, that’s all; dust and ashes. Crawl, Stephen, crawl. You’ll find nothing but dust and ashes—”
Hallmyer produced a goblet of water from nowhere. It was clear and cold. Crane could see the fine mist of dew on its surface and his mouth was suddenly coated with dry grit.
“Hallmyer!” he cried. He tried to get to his feet and reach for the water, but the jolt of pain in his right leg warned him. He crouched back.
Hallmyer sipped and then spat in his face. The water felt warm.
“Keep crawling,” said Hallmyer bitterly. “Crawl round and round the face of the Earth. You’ll find nothing but dust and ashes—” He emptied the goblet on the ground before Crane. “Keep crawling. How many miles? Figure it out for yourself. Pi-R-Square. The radius is eight thousand or so—”
He was gone, jacket and goblet. Crane realized that rain was falling again. He pressed his face into the warm sodden cinder mud, opened his mouth and tried to suck the moisture. He groaned and presently began crawling.
There was an instinct that drove him on. He had to get somewhere. It was associated, he knew, with the sea—with the edge of the sea. At the shore of the sea something waited for him. Something that would help him understand all this. He had to get to the sea—that is, if there was a sea any more.
The thundering rain beat his back like heavy planks. Crane paused and yanked the knapsack around to his side where he probed in it with one hand. It contained exactly three things. A pistol, a bar of chocolate and a can of peaches. All that was left of two months’ supplies. The chocolate was pulpy and spoiled. Crane knew he had best eat it before all value rotted away. But in another day he would lack the strength to open the can. He pulled it out and attacked it with the opener
. By the time he had pierced and pried away a flap of tin, the rain had passed.
As he munched the fruit and sipped the juice, he watched the wall of rain marching before him down the slope of the ocean bed. Torrents of water were gushing through the mud. Small channels had already been cut—channels that would be new rivers some day. A day he would never see. A day that no living thing would ever see. As he flipped the empty can aside, Crane thought: The last living thing on Earth eats its last meal. Metabolism plays its last act.
Wind would follow the rain. In the endless weeks that he had been crawling, he had learned that. Wind would come in a few minutes and flog him with its clouds of cinders and ashes. He crawled forward, bleary eyes searching the flat gray miles for cover.
Evelyn tapped his shoulder.
Crane knew it was she before he turned his head. She stood alongside, fresh and gay in her bright dress, but her lovely face was puckered with alarm.
“Stephen,” she cried, “you’ve got to hurry!”
He could only admire the way her smooth honey hair waved to her shoulders.
“Oh, darling!” she said, “you’ve been hurt!” Her quick gentle hands touched his legs and back. Crane nodded.
“Got it landing,” he said. “I wasn’t used to a parachute. I always thought you came down gently—like plumping onto a bed. But the gray earth came up at me like a fist—And Umber was fighting around in my arms. I couldn’t let him drop, could I?”
“Of course not, dear—” Evelyn said.
“So I just held on to him and tried to get my legs under me,” Crane said. “And then something smashed my legs and side—”
He paused, wondering how much she knew of what really had happened. He didn’t want to frighten her.
Adventures in Time and Space Page 48