On Fri, 28 Feb 2003 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> ...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...
Note that throughout, the bottleneck in launch rate was not launch
preparation time, but propellant supply: first alcohol production, and
then later (after major production plants had been overrun) LOX production
limited firing rates. (Ref: "V-2", Dornberger.)
> 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...
Uh, hardly. Dornberger doesn't quote numbers for the operational units in
service, but during training (which was under his supervision) it was not
uncommon for a unit to launch a second V-2 an hour after the first. At
one point, late in development with the first operational crews in
training, he comments that fueling time was down to 12 minutes.
This was not some ponderous fixed-base operation, but mobile operational
missiles being fired from areas under regular air attack, where a battery
would roar into a forest clearing, set up, erect the missile, fuel it,
fire it, and then get the hell out of there as soon as humanly possible.
Think Gulf War Scuds (with earlier technology but sharper people and
superb organization), not Cape Canaveral test launches.
Henry Spencer
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
_______________________________________________
ERPS-list mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
