The Problem of German Rocket Configurations in WWII

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hippo2004

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From the A4 through the A9/A10, German rocket projects in the Second World War generally seem to exhibit a bulged center, tapered ends configuration, with the effect becoming even more pronounced in the A9/A10. Rather than adopting the later, cleaner cylindrical fuselage, these designs retained a fuller mid-body and more strongly converging fore and aft sections. Wouldn’t this have increased drag and reduced usable internal volume? Why did German wartime designers not shift toward a slimmer cylindrical layout?
 
I have no concrete answer for your question but especially for the A4 they were testing the configuration during hundreds of wind tunnel hours to guarantee a stabil flight during the whole speed range. It seems that the chosen configuration worked.
 
Why would it increase the drag? If they have the same radius, an aerodynamicaly optimized ogive like body design will be more aerodynamically efficient than a flat cylinder body. Cyclinder body is not optimum for drag reduction, it is used due to its ease of design and manufacturing and larger internal volume as you have said. If a cyclinder was more aerodynamically efficient then we would use nose cyclinders in front of rockets and not ogival nose cones.
 
Perhaps the Germans were expressing their well-known trait of 'Over-Engineering', yet again, yet again ??
 
Basil said:
Not sure where the myth comes from. Especially during the later periods of the war most german items were engineered and produced in a very efficient way.
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And that remains the case to this day. After all, this small country is the fourth-largest exporter. That wouldn’t be the case if everything were unnecessarily complicated and expensive.
 
You have misunderstood my point. I agree with the design logic of an ogival nose cone; what I am discussing is the rocket body itself. If a load-bearing propellant tank structure had been adopted, the maximum diameter could have been reduced directly, and the internal volume could have been used more efficiently. By comparison, the ogival body design of the A9/A10 increased both diameter and drag.
MarineEngineer said:
Why would it increase the drag? If they have the same radius, an aerodynamicaly optimized ogive like body design will be more aerodynamically efficient than a flat cylinder body. Cyclinder body is not optimum for drag reduction, it is used due to its ease of design and manufacturing and larger internal volume as you have said. If a cyclinder was more aerodynamically efficient then we would use nose cyclinders in front of rockets and not ogival nose cones.
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On a different but related note, the Germans failed to develop and produce any solid rocket fuels beyond diglycol, a nitrocellulose-based propellant that had been around since before WW 1. This put a severe limit on what they could design and produce in a solid-fuel rocket. Worse, when used in multiple boosters, it made for a very difficult to solve issue of asymmetric thrust that could drive a rocket using those into an out-of-control gyration that ended with the rocket's failure.
 
hippo2004 said:
You have misunderstood my point. I agree with the design logic of an ogival nose cone; what I am discussing is the rocket body itself. If a load-bearing propellant tank structure had been adopted, the maximum diameter could have been reduced directly, and the internal volume could have been used more efficiently. By comparison, the ogival body design of the A9/A10 increased both diameter and drag.
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Ok thanks for opening that up. The Germans already had a really hard time making V-2 rockets work reliably while using a separate structural load-bearing body and mildly pressurised propellant tanks. I seriously doubt they could make a fuel tank that was both a load-bearing structure for the rocket and a mildly pressurised tank that could work reliably for the A9/A10. By the later stages of the war German metallurgy was really struggling because they couldn't access metals they needed. Perhaps they made these design compromises to keep the system manufacturable?
 
MarineEngineer said:
Ok thanks for opening that up. The Germans already had a really hard time making V-2 rockets work reliably while using a separate structural load-bearing body and mildly pressurised propellant tanks. I seriously doubt they could make a fuel tank that was both a load-bearing structure for the rocket and a mildly pressurised tank that could work reliably for the A9/A10. By the later stages of the war German metallurgy was really struggling because they couldn't access metals they needed. Perhaps they made these design compromises to keep the system manufacturable?
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They probably could have. The Wasserfall SAM was a smaller version of the A-4 in terms of the body of the rocket itself. On it, the tanks formed the integral skin of the missile to give more room for fuel. I don't see, in particular, why the A-4 couldn't have had that done as well. Another thing the Germans failed to do was use a detachable warhead on the A-4. That would have allowed the whole missile to be built to lower load tolerances since it wouldn't have to survive reentry. A lighter missile means better range for the same fuel and thrust along with saving "strategic" materials in its construction.

I suspect, but don't know for sure, that the leading reason those things didn't happen was that the war situation was deteriorating so rapidly that the engineers and such on the A-4 program simply didn't have the time and resources to put into making those changes and even if they had, testing wasn't possible, and the factories weren't going to be able to implement them any time soon.
 
This and it was a new technology with no experiences. The first generation of Western and Eastern missiles did not have detachable warheads either. It was a long learning process.
 
xena said:
This and it was a new technology with no experiences. The first generation of Western and Eastern missiles did not have detachable warheads either. It was a long learning process.
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Not true. The first US ballistic missile--completely designed and built with US technology--was MX 776 HIROC in late 1945 - early 46. It was specified in the original planning that it have a detachable warhead. It was recognized that this would allow for a lighter missile giving more payload and range for any given amount of thrust.
 

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