Author Topic: V2 rocket site excavation  (Read 6835 times)

Offline MartinR

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Re: V2 rocket site excavation
« Reply #33 on: October 04, 2020, 03:27:52 PM »
Also out of area.  Mum lived in Coventry during the war.  She recalled going into the city after the blitz, but when she returned in the evening the pubs were open, even if just a table in a near ruin, to save their licenses.  I think it was then that they had the roof blown off.  Later in the war she left school and joined the Royal Observer Corps and recalled realising that D-day was on well before the announcement.  Not only was there a vast amount of air traffic, but they kept getting reports of parachutes caught on tail wheels and flight surfaces.  Dad was at school throughout the war and received his call-up at Easter 1945.  He was allowed to defer it for a few months to sit his A-levels (right name?) but then the atom bombs were dropped and he was spared active service.  He would otherwise have completed basic training at about the time the Japanese mainland was invaded, and given the projected casualty rates I probably would never have been born.  I came along 10  years after the war, but still remember playing in bombed-out houses that still hadn't been cleared in the early 1960s.

Offline Lyn L

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Re: V2 rocket site excavation
« Reply #32 on: October 04, 2020, 03:05:46 PM »
You've cleared it up for me anyway Martin.
I'm really quite glad I wasn't born  and have the experiences my Mum and siblings had. And my Dad came back home  too.


Offline MartinR

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Re: V2 rocket site excavation
« Reply #31 on: October 04, 2020, 02:36:07 PM »
Well if it was a V1, then you've a choice of two, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:V-1_cutaway.jpg  The two large spheres just abaft the wings held compressed air to drive the flight control system and to pressurise the fuel tank (centre of the fuselage, surrounding the main spar).  The tanks were pressurised to 900 psi (60 bar) so had to be substantial components.  The forward sphere was a lightweight wooden construction that held the compass, so is unlikely to have survived the impact and explosion.

Offline Lyn L

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Re: V2 rocket site excavation
« Reply #30 on: October 04, 2020, 02:04:59 PM »
Thanks MartinR ,
What a lovely name for it.
Mind you it could even have been a V1  flying bomb. My brother didn't remember  it was my late sister told me. Can't ask her now sadly  but there were ball shaped things in them. Could have been the spherical compressed air tanks that drove the gyro's  ? Don't I sound as if I know. Only because my son sent me a pic .
Sorry going off topic.


Offline MartinR

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Re: V2 rocket site excavation
« Reply #29 on: October 04, 2020, 01:40:06 PM »
It might have been the hydrogen peroxide tank, see https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Aggregat4-Schnitt-engl.jpg and notice the "Wasserstoffperoxdtank".

Offline Lyn L

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Re: V2 rocket site excavation
« Reply #28 on: October 04, 2020, 12:46:39 PM »
Well I don't profess to be any good at all with V2  rockets,  but only have second hand knowledge of any bombing ( born after it was all over) but strangely my eldest brother  today mentioned them being bombed out of their house  in September 1944.
 It wasn't locally though, they were living in Walthamstow, but part of a V2 innards went through the roof. They had to go and live with my Grandad then in Hampshire.
I believe it was a ball shaped thing ?
Please tell me what it could have been all you people who are in the know .  :-*

Offline stuartwaters

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Re: V2 rocket site excavation
« Reply #27 on: October 03, 2020, 04:26:59 PM »
And as if by magic, the text is now bigger, and whats more important, readable.
"I did not say the French would not come, I said they will not come by sea" - Admiral Sir John Jervis, 1st Earl St Vincent.

Offline Dave Smith

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Re: V2 rocket site excavation
« Reply #26 on: October 03, 2020, 01:20:10 PM »
Cosmo. Don't worry, I downloaded your line of small dashes ok. As you say, quite often one thread leads to another. e.g. Stuart has often already done the extra bit when he does his bit on ships for suddenly there's a whole new bit about the reason & history, just as interesting; sometimes more so. Very interesting article about fuses. Don't forget explosions, being mechanical, are not in fact as we think of them, "instantaneous", just VERY rapid burning. We're talking thousandths of a second, which is very short. eg, the V2 has gone 1m in 11/4 thousandths of a second, whereas WW1 shell travels 1m in 2 thousandths of a second from the start of the burning process. Designing such a thing- where do you start? Must be done by trial & error methinks.

Offline Local Hiker

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Re: V2 rocket site excavation
« Reply #25 on: October 03, 2020, 12:14:59 PM »
Cosmo Smallpiece, there is a "Remove formatting" button in the toolbar that might restore such small text to a readable size.

Offline Cosmo Smallpiece

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Re: V2 rocket site excavation
« Reply #24 on: October 03, 2020, 09:32:43 AM »
Link to the fuse thing below. Don't know why the link sometimes goes so tiny from this mobile phone? Sorry.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._106_fuze

Offline Cosmo Smallpiece

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Re: V2 rocket site excavation
« Reply #23 on: October 03, 2020, 09:22:00 AM »
Fuses.... I love it when a thread makes you research something new. The outcome is totally not what intuition makes me believe either...


In WW1 there was the development of the super-quick shell fuse. They wanted artillery to clear barbed wire, so they needed shells to detonate AT the wire, not bury themselves deeply below it.



WW1 - 18 pounder gun. Muzzle velocity 500 m/s
WW2 - Sherman 75mm M3 gun, velocity 600 m/s
V2 missile. Impact velocity 800 m/s


The impact velocity of the V2 is only fractionally faster than the contemporary shells.

Offline Mike Gunnill

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Re: V2 rocket site excavation
« Reply #22 on: October 01, 2020, 11:21:44 AM »
Hi Mike.  It was thanks to you passing on Stuart's email address that I was able to send him details of the problem.  I haven't had a lot to add recently, after upsetting folks on GTP I've stayed clear, and as a recent (35 year) "immigrant" I can't match John's local reminiscences.  It's nice to be able to read the threads again though.  :)


Welcome home!
Mike Gunnill

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Offline grandarog

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Re: V2 rocket site excavation
« Reply #21 on: October 01, 2020, 10:23:07 AM »
Interesting snippet from the net about the Cliffe woods incident.

Ratly Hills Wood.

Comment from 'MikeC':
A V2 landed on the very top of the hill at Ratly Hill Woods. Exact date unknown, but late in 1944. I was four years old and playing in my back yard when it landed and can clearly remember the surreal experience of seeing first the explosion, then hearing the bang, followed by the rushing noise of the rocket going "back up" into the sky.
There were no dead or injured at the time, but a serious injury many years later. A woodcutter was sawing pit props for the Kent collieries using a 36" circular saw driven from the power take off of a tractor. He cut into a log that contained an embedded shard of the rocket casing, causing the saw blade to disintegrate and almost sever his arm at the shoulder.





Offline Dave Smith

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Re: V2 rocket site excavation
« Reply #20 on: September 30, 2020, 08:15:32 PM »
grandarog. I don't think there were all that many airbursts as a %. Probably those two plus a malfunction, I don't think will we ever know for certain?

Offline MartinR

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Re: V2 rocket site excavation
« Reply #19 on: September 30, 2020, 04:20:43 PM »
Hi Mike.  It was thanks to you passing on Stuart's email address that I was able to send him details of the problem.  I haven't had a lot to add recently, after upsetting folks on GTP I've stayed clear, and as a recent (35 year) "immigrant" I can't match John's local reminiscences.  It's nice to be able to read the threads again though.  :)