Re: A9/A10 & Antipodal Bomber article



Dale wrote:

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 19:27:41 -0600, Pat Flannery <flanner@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



Coincidentally, I just finished building a 1/72 scale model of the manned A9/A10 a few days back.



Have any pictures of it? How big is that in 1/72?

On its launch pad it stands 15 & 1/4" high.
Building one of these is pretty easy.
First get your hands on a Special Hobbies A-9 or A4b:
http://www.fantastic-plastic.com/EMW%20A-9%20PILOTED%20ROCKET%20PAGE.htm
http://www.fantastic-plastic.com/EMW%20A-4B%20PILOTED%20ROCKET%20PAGE.htm
Depending what you want riding up top.
Then get a DML 1/35th scale V-2: http://www.fantastic-plastic.com/V-2%20DRAGON%20PAGE.htm.
By happy coincidence the 1/35 scale scale V-2 is almost exactly the right size to turn into a A10 by shortening it up.
The fintips of the A9 or A4b will just reach the exterior of the rockets body.
The 1/35 scale V-2's body is molded in seven parts the two lower halves with the fins, the two-part cylindrical midsection; the two part ogival nose section, and a nosecap. Discard the nosecap, split the two ogival nose sections each down their length at their centers. you now have four petals to surround the upper stage. Sand around 1/16th" or a tad more off the edges of each of these, and you'll create the channels for the upper stage's fins to sit in when it's in place. Now take the cylindrical mid section and cut a ring off it's base around 1/2 to 5/8 long. This will get the rocket's length right when this small ring is glued to the two part lower section.
On mine I used the swept wing A4b extended with the extra fuel tank for the ramjet fuel and having the lower fin replaced by the ramjet, as I wanted to show it as a predecessor to the WvB Ferry Rocket and Shuttle, and so gave the pilot a ability to land in something not quite as daunting as the A9 flying surfboard. This meant that it can't separate from the stage the way the A-9 can by simply sliding out but is going to have at least two of the petals either open or be jettisoned. Considering that the A10 was designed for reuse this could be a bit wasteful, but I'm somewhat surprised that the Germans didn't consider having the petals open to promote air drag prior to parachute release.
After figuring out the size of the hole needed at the top for the A4b to slide in, three of the four petals were cut at their top ends and glued around the cylindrical body ring with the gaps for the fins between the parts carefully made even ( this is a piece of cake; all you have to do is line up the rivet lines on the two parts) which was then attached to the stock tail assembly after a bulkhead and conical blast deflector had been installed in it. The fourth panel was left off to show the interior arrangement of the vehicle's stages.
If you were going to use the A4b or A9 and were sure the paint would get rubbed off, you could just slide the two stages together and remove the top one for display when you wished.
Unfortunately my camera broke a while back so I don't have any pictures of it, but I may have some of my 1/35 scale manned A4b with the ramjet made out of two of the DML V-2 kits.
That thing's cockpit is a tad on the cramped side, and I'd suspect it would get a bit warm at full speed, but it's interesting because this could have been one of the main inspirations for the X-15, which also ended up with that ramjet hanging off the lower tail end; If iI still have any Jpegs of it, I'll send you one or two.
I sent them to Ron Miller a few years back, and he s going to put them in the CD-ROM edition of "The Dream Machines".



I was wondering how the pilot got home. Apparently, after dropping his one ton
bomb, he flew back using turbojets. Not nearly as romantic as Japan's Ohka.



Well... I kind of hate to tell you this, but the plan for the A9/A10 was that the pilot _wasn't_ coming home; the pilot was the guidance system for final targeting, and just like the Ohka or piloted V-1s the Nazi's also built (but never used AFAIK), the pilot's job was to aim the missile at something worthwhile, like The Empire State Building, White House, or major Synagogue, and fly straight into it.
That's why the running board wings on the A9 weren't a problem in the manned version...you weren't going to be landing.
I imagine the Germans told the pilot he should bail out prior to impact (they did this with the V-1s) but how would you like to be floating out of the sky next to the burning ruins of the White House? A crowd will gather, and they are bound to react badly to your presence and actions.
Some claim there never was a plan to do this manned version, but extrapolate the V-2's terrible accuracy to transatlantic ranges and you'd be lucky to hit New York State, much less city. Somebody in Rhode Island will be sitting around listening to the World Series, when this big dart-like thing comes out of the sky and blows one of his cows into Connecticut.
In the case of the Antipodal Bomber, it would fly over the U.S and ditch in the Pacific, where a German or Japanese sub would pick up the pilot. Theoretically it could fly completely around the Earth, but that was with basically no bombload.

Found this at-
http://worldatwar.net/chandelle/v1/v1n1/ww2space.htm

"The most ambitious and, perhaps, delusional of the Nazi space schemes was a 1945
project for an orbital space station armed with a death ray, a huge space mirror.
In 1929, Herman Oberth had proposed a potentially practical space station that
served as the basis for the later project. But the 1945 station was to be one giant
mirror fabricated entirely from metallic sodium. Over-sized V2 rockets were to
carry the thing to its 1500-mile orbit in prefabricated sections. Here, Nazi
spacemen would assemble it , using electricity provided by a system of solar-fired
boilers and steam-driven dynamos. Breathable oxygen would come from pumpkins grown
under flourescent [sic] light. When they were finished, the crew would steer the
station over target nations, focus the sun's rays, and burn cities and boil
reservoirs"



That was going to be the dread A9/A10/A11/A12 scheme which used the A9 as the cargo-carrying orbital third stage; that's what turned into WvB's Collier's Ferry Rocket: http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/a9a11a12.htm

Pat

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