On 19 Feb 2003, at 0:53, Randall Clague wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Feb 2003 11:42:00 -0500 (EST), Henry Spencer
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >Yep... but there's no reason why a bigger mass fraction would take much
> >longer. I don't know exactly how long it took to tank up a V-2, but it
> >wasn't lengthy.
>
> They did it in combat conditions, so it was bloody fast. A better
> parallel than end user automobile refueling might be pit crew race car
> refueling. One guy, 60 gallons, 15 seconds. And USAC mass fractions
> are pretty high, gotta be 15% to 25%.
>
According to Willy Ley, at least 1340 V-2s were fired at England
(London and Norwich) during the seven months the weapons system was
operational (8 September 1944 to 27 March 1945). A very rough estimate
of turnaround time can be made from those figures.
Most of these V-2s were fired from the outskirts of The Hague. Ley
gives a month-by-month table for those; I can post it if anyone's
interested. But it's probably enough to say that, over a ten-day period at
the beginning of the campaign, the rockets were arriving at a rate of
"rather more that two a day". Each battery had three V-2s, and logically
they would be set up and fired in quick succession. The setup probably
took place during the hours of darkness to reduce risk of being bombed.
So, I estimate turnaround time at 8-10 hours. Most of that must have
been fueling; the rest, checkout and targeting alignment. Of course, there
were no cargo operations involved.
(Source: Ley, _Rockets, Missiles, & Space Travel_, rev. ed., pp 216-
218)
Can we postulate a turnaround time of one week for our vehicle? Or is
this too conservative?
Chris
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