AH Challenge: US IrBMS by 1945

With a POD after 1936, your challenge is to find a way for the United States to develop IRBMs for WW2.
 

CalBear

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Easy. The USAAF actually listens to Goddard's proposals and throws some money at him.
 
Well...

In a war with lots of indiscriminate area bombing, you could pretty much pound Berlin to rubble without risking the bomber air crews.

Maybe even move some of your bomber production into rockets, and landing craft, and tanks.
 
In a war with lots of indiscriminate area bombing, you could pretty much pound Berlin to rubble without risking the bomber air crews.

Maybe even move some of your bomber production into rockets, and landing craft, and tanks.

You can do it alot faster too. I don't know what flight time from London to Berlin would be for a ballistic missile, but I know that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the flight time from Cuba to Washinton DC was something like 5 or 10 mins.
 
why a U.S. IRBMs for WW2. ?
they have range of 3,000-5,500 km (1,865-3,420 miles)

a V2 with 1942 State of Technology had range of 320 km (200 mi)

on Hardware
the only one who can build that in U.S. is Robert H. Goddard

even in 1932 his A4 rocket was far better than
Werner von Braun yet to build A-1 prototype
(A4 had already gyroscope mounted on gimbals, steering vanes in the exhaust)

in 1940 Goddard P rockets had engine with turbopumps feed and
gasoline and liquid oxygen as Fuel
while Von Braun fight with problems on his pressure-fed engine in A-2

so if the USAAF had listened to Goddard (and Kelly Johnson Jet-figther proposal)
they had much better rocket as Thrid Reich V-2
 
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why a U.S. IRBMs for WW2. ?
they have range of 3,000-5,500 km (1,865-3,420 miles)

a V2 with 1942 State of Technology had range of 320 km (200 mi)

on Hardware
the only one who can build that in U.S. is Robert H. Goddard

even in 1932 his A4 rocket was far better than
Werner von Braun jet to build A-1 prototype
(A4 had already gyroscope mounted on gimbals, steering vanes in the exhaust)

in 1940 Goddard P rockets had engine with turbopumps feed and
gasoline and liquid oxygen as Fuel
while Von Braun fight with problems on his pressure-fed engine in A-2

so if the USAAF had listened to Goddard (and Kelly Johnson Jet-figther proposal)
they had much better rocket as Thrid Reich V-2

Its under a thousand klicks from London to Berlin. that's all you need. Anymore more is a waste of resources until post-war.
 
Distans London-Berlin is around 936 km (581 mi)
fired from Suffolk is only 830 km (515 mi)

how to push a V-2 range from 200 km to 1000 km ?
we have push the engine trust from 27 to 40 tons
so rocket accelerates faster and get more speed
(at launch mass of 20 tons. vrs V-2 with 12 Tons)
 
Not a big difference is it?

With gov't support, I think Goddard can have that kind of rocket by say '43'-44. In time for the heavy campaign against Germany.

Earlier, a 80 to 160 mile range rocket might be possible in early '42. Useful for area attack on large soft targets. French cities don't make sense, but airfields...
 
With gov't support, I think Goddard can have that kind of rocket by say '43'-44. In time for the heavy campaign against Germany.

Earlier, a 80 to 160 mile range rocket might be possible in early '42. Useful for area attack on large soft targets. French cities don't make sense, but airfields...

So, basically we are talking about something along the lines of a Redstone Rocket.
 
Could guidance be any better than for the V2? Unless you're just trying to hit cities indiscriminately...
 
Maybe if Goddard got to work with the boys in the GALCIT program, the rocket program would go faster.

However, after the war, the motley crew of GALCIT would get into a lot of trouble. One would be kept from leaving the US on suspicion of spying. (He wasn't...but he did go to the PRC not long after...) Another would have his passport revoked while abroad on suspicion of being a communist. (He wound up working for UNESCO and helping found the kinetic art movement.) A third would get his security clearance revoked, be suspected of spying for Israel, engage in a magical operation that turned into a duel with L. Ron Hubbard, and finally declaring himself to be the Antichrist before getting blown up in a mysterious explosion. (Theories differ as to its cause- Accident was the official cause, though magical backfire, suicide and murder (for several resons).) After those, the guy named Apollo who wore a pith helmet with a fan it would be almost normal...

For more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GALCIT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsien_Hsue-shen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Malina
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.M.O._Smith
 

CalBear

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Could guidance be any better than for the V2? Unless you're just trying to hit cities indiscriminately...


Better than the V2? Probably, assuming the U.S. isn't getting fed bad BDA by a double agent like the Reich was.

The V2 was very inaccurate, it was so bad that it would have been inaccurate with a NUCLEAR WEAPON. That was made worse when MI 6 (was it MI 6 back then??:confused:) used a double to send mostly bad information to the Germans. If a launch missed by three miles to the North, the agent would tell them that it missed three miles to the South in hopes of directing most of the fire into cow pastures and the like. It wasn't perfect, but it made life for the V-2 crews that much more difficult.
 
Could guidance be any better than for the V2? Unless you're just trying to hit cities indiscriminately...

Certainly could, using radio-inertial guidance rather than just inertial guidance by itself. Disadvantage is that you can decrease the accuracy via jamming, but that wasn't a concern the Allies faced, but definitely one the Germans did (which is why they ended up deleting it).
 
Certainly could, using radio-inertial guidance rather than just inertial guidance by itself. Disadvantage is that you can decrease the accuracy via jamming, but that wasn't a concern the Allies faced, but definitely one the Germans did (which is why they ended up deleting it).


for jamming
Allies jam the German X-Gerät system
it was longrange guidance system for Bomber during the "Blitz"
(based on german "Ultrakurzwellen-Landefunkfeuer" by Lorenz)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_navigation#Lorenz
 
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