[AR] Re: Video of HTPB/Al/perchlorate solids
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 26 Mar 2016 14:21:19 -0400 (EDT)
On Sat, 26 Mar 2016, John Schilling wrote:
Actually, most production A4s were pure inertial too...
Good catch; I was too focused on the final design there. Maybe change
that to "...and the Scud has an inertial guidance system that can
actually hit targets smaller than a county" :-)
Well, yes, the A4's inertial system wasn't very good. :-) Of course, it
was the first of its kind, so it can be excused a certain lack of polish!
Nor did it help that British counterintelligence was systematically
interfering with German attempts to correct aiming biases...
(For those not up on this bit of history: the German spy network in
Britain was completely controlled by British counterintelligence. And one
of the things it did was the only really effective countermeasure against
the V-2: misleading the Germans' attempts to correct their aim. V-2
impact times could not be hidden, nor could impact sites, because there
were "neutral" embassies in London that could and sometimes did report
details to the Germans. But knowing that there were KABOOMs at 2315 and
2322 last night, and seeing newly-ruined buildings at two places in the
city, doesn't tell you which KABOOM went with which building. The spy
reports systematically lied about this, with the result that the V-2
impact pattern gradually drifted away from the center of the city, until
many missiles were missing the city entirely. Occasionally the pattern
snapped back onto the city, which meant that launch operations had moved
to a new area to avoid advancing Allied armies, and the process of
"correcting" the missileers' aim had to be repeated.)
Henry
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