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Wasserfall
Wasserfall Wasserfall
Basic data
Function	Surface to air missile
Manufacturer	Flak- Versuchskommando Nord, EMW Peenemuende
Unit cost	7,000–10,000 Reichsmark
First flight	March 1943
Entered service
General characteristics
Engine	liquid-fueled rocket motor
Launch mass	3,700 kg
Length	7.85 m
Diameter	2.51 m
Speed	770 m/s
Range	25 km
Warhead	235 kg
Guidance	MCLOS (Manual Command to Line Of Sight); operator used a radio command link to steer the missile along the optical line of sight from launch point to target. Fuzes=Proximity
Launch platform	Fixed.

The Wasserfall Ferngelenkte Flakrakete (English: Waterfall Remote-Controlled A-A Rocket, also known as Aggregat 5)^[1] was a World War II guided surface-to-air missile developed at Peenemünde, Germany. One of the German Wunderwaffen, the Wasserfall design was used as a basis for both the American Hermes-A1 missile and a Soviet research programme under the codename R-101 after World War II.

Technical characteristics

Wasserfall was essentially an anti-aircraft development of the V2 rocket, sharing the same general layout and shaping. Since the missile had to fly only to the altitudes of the attacking bombers, it could be much smaller than the V2, about 1/4 the size. The Wasserfall design also included an additional set of fins located at the middle of the fuselage to provide extra maneuvering capability.

Unlike the V2, Wasserfall was designed to stand ready for periods of up to a month and fire on command, therefore the volatile liquid oxygen used in the V2 was inappropriate. A new engine design, developed by Dr. Walter Thiel, was based on Visol (vinyl isobutyl ether) and SV-Stoff, or Salbei, (90% nitric acid, 10% sulfuric acid). This hypergolic mixture was forced into the combustion chamber by pressurizing the fuel tanks with nitrogen gas released from another tank. Wasserfall was to be launched from rocket bases (code-named Vesuvius) that could tolerate leaked hypergolic fuels in the event of a launch problem.^[2]

Guidance was to be a simple radio control MCLOS system for use against daytime targets, but night-time use was considerably more complex because neither the target nor the missile would be easily visible. For this role a new system known as Rheinland was under development. Rheinland used a transponder in the missile for locating it in flight (as read by a radio direction finder (RDF) on the ground) and a radar unit for tracking the target. A simple mechanical computer guided the missile into the tracking radar beam as soon as possible after launch, using the transponder and RDF to locate it, at which point the operator could see both "blips" on a single display, and guide the missile onto the target as during the day. Steering during the launch phase was accomplished by four graphite rudders placed in the muzzle of the combustion chamber, and (once high airspeeds had been attained) by the four air rudders mounted on the rocket tail.

A second development was underway that used only a single cross-shaped radar beam that was rotated while pointing at the target. Like the Rheinland system the missile was first directed into the beam via the transponder, and from there would keep itself centered in the beam by means of a negative feedback system that listened to the radar signal; if it were off course it would hear pulses instead of a steady signal, and automatically place itself back in the middle of the beam. However the supersonic speed of the Wasserfall (up to Mach 2) meant that the accuracy of the system would have to be very high in order to get the missile close to its target, and it was generally accepted that some sort of infrared-homing terminal guidance system would have to be added.

The original design had called for a 100 kg warhead, but because of accuracy concerns it was replaced with a much larger one (306 kg) based on a liquid explosive. The idea was to create a large blast area effect amidst the enemy bomber stream, which would conceivably bring down several airplanes for each missile deployed. For daytime use the operator would detonate the warhead by remote control, while night-time use was to be by some sort of proximity fuze.

Development history

As a purely defensive system, Wasserfall scored minimal psychological appeal with Adolf Hitler, especially because Hermann Göring had assured him that the Luftwaffe would always be able to keep the Third Reich airspace secure. Therefore the project enjoyed little support in its earlier stages. From 1943 onwards, when the Allied strategic bombing offensive had already started, most of the resources Wasserfall would have needed to become operational went to the offensive-minded V2 rocket project instead.

Conceptual work began in 1941, and final specifications were defined on November 2, 1942. The first models were being tested in March 1943, but a major setback occurred in August 1943 when Dr. Walter Thiel was killed in the massive RAF bombing raids on Peenemünde. After the first successful firing (the third prototype) on March 8, 1944,^[3] 3 Wasserfall trial launches were completed by the end of June 1944. A launch on 8 January 1944 was a failure, with the engine "fizzling" and launching the missile to only 7 km of altitude at subsonic speeds. The following February saw a successful launch which reached a speed of 770 m/s (2,800 km/h) in vertical flight.^[4]. Thirty-five Wasserfall trial firings had been completed by the time Peenemünde was evacuated on February 17, 1945.^[5]

A V-2 rocket using Wasserfall radio guidance crashed in Sweden on June 13, 1944. The guidance equipment was a modification of the "Kehl-Strassburg" (code name Burgund)^[6] joy-stick system used to direct Henschel Hs 293 glide bomb, which had some significant successes against Allied ships in the Mediterranean.^[7]

In his memoirs Albert Speer, Nazi Germany's Minister for Armaments and War Production during the second half of the war, later expressed his conviction that putting Wasserfall on the backburner might have been a war-deciding strategic error:

"To this day, I am convinced that substantial deployment of Wasserfall from the spring of 1944 onward, together with an uncompromising use of the jet fighters as air defense interceptors, would have essentially stalled the Allied strategic bombing offensive against our industry. We would have well been able to do that -- after all, we managed to manufacture 900 V2 rockets per month at a later time when resources were already much more limited."^[8]

References

External links

• Wasserfall technical article, construction plans and test flight photos
• Collection of Wasserfall photos
• Genesis of the Surface to Air Missile (Defence Today)
• Wasserfall W-10 Drawing

Related content

Related development

Comparable aircraft

• Enzian
• Rheintochter
• Schmetterling

  Designation sequence

Related lists

• List of missiles
• List of World War II guided missiles of Germany
• List of surface-to-air missiles

  See also

•  • [ e]  Russian and former Soviet R designation sequence
R-1/R-2 | R-3 | R-4 | R-5 | R-7 | R-8 | R-9 | R-11, R-300 Elbrus | R-12 | R-13 | R-14 Dvina, R-14 Chusovaya | R-15, Tumansky R-15 | R-16 | R-21 | R-23 | R-26 | R-27, Vympel R-27 | R-29 | R-33 | R-36 | R-37 | R-39 | R-40 | R-46, GR-1 | R-60 | R-73 | R-77 | 81R | R-101 | R-103 | R-172 | R-400
Other: | TR-1 | RS-24 | RS-82 | RT-2 | RT-2PM | RT-2UTTH | RT-15 | RT-20 | RT-21 | RT-23 | RT-25 | RSM-56 | RKV-500A, RK-55 | KSR-5 | RSS-40 | UR-100 | UR-100 | UR-100N

•  • [ e] Lists relating to aviation
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surface-to-air missile (SAM) or ground-to-air missile (GAM) is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft. It is a type of anti-aircraft system.

Land-based SAMs can be deployed from fixed installations or mobile launchers.
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warhead is the bullet-shaped silver canister in the middle-left of the photograph.]]

Typically, a warhead is the explosive material and detonator that is delivered by a missile, rocket, or torpedo.
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MCLOS (short for Manual Command to Line of Sight) is a first-generation method for guiding guided missiles.

With an MCLOS missile, the operator must track the missile and the target simultaneously and guide the missile to the target.
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English}}} 
Writing system: Latin (English variant) 
Official status
Official language of: 53 countries
Regulated by: no official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1: en
ISO 639-2: eng
ISO 639-3: eng  
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Allied powers:
 Soviet Union
 United States
 United Kingdom
 China
 France
...et al. Axis powers:
 Germany
 Japan
 Italy
...et al.
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surface-to-air missile (SAM) or ground-to-air missile (GAM) is a missile designed to be launched from the ground to destroy aircraft. It is a type of anti-aircraft system.

Land-based SAMs can be deployed from fixed installations or mobile launchers.
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Peenemünde (IPA: [peːnəˈmʏndə]) is a village in the northeast of the German (Western) part of the Usedom island.
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Anthem
"Das Lied der Deutschen" (third stanza)
also called "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit"
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Wunderwaffen is German for "wonder weapons", and was a term assigned during World War II by the Nazi propaganda ministry to a few revolutionary "superweapons". Most of these weapons reached the combat theatre too late, and in too insignificant numbers (if at all) to have a military
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Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (abbreviated USSR, Russian: (help info ) ; tr.
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Allied powers:
 Soviet Union
 United States
 United Kingdom
 China
 France
...et al. Axis powers:
 Germany
 Japan
 Italy
...et al.
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Anti-aircraft can refer to:

• Anti-aircraft warfare, any method of engaging military aircraft in combat from the ground.
• Anti-Aircraft (arcade game), a 1975 video game by Atari Inc..

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Function single stage ballistic missile (area bombing)
Manufacturer Mittelwerk GmbH (development by Army Research Center Peenemünde)
Unit cost 100,000 RM January 1944, 50,000 RM March 1945^[1]
Entered service 1944
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Liquid oxygen (also LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industry) is the liquid form of oxygen. It has a pale blue color and is strongly paramagnetic. Liquid oxygen has a density of 1.141 g/cm³ (1.
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Walter Thiel (March 2 1910 - August 17 1943) was a German engineer who largely designed the rocket engine that powered the V-2 missile.

Thiel was born and grew up in Breslau.
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A hypergolic propellant is either of the two rocket propellants used in a hypergolic rocket engine, which spontaneously ignite when they come into contact. The two propellants are usually termed the "fuel" and the "oxidizer".
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3, 5, 4, 2
(strongly acidic oxide)
Electronegativity 3.04 (Pauling scale)
Ionization energies
(more) 1st: 1402.3 kJmol⁻¹
2nd: 2856 kJmol⁻¹
3rd: 4578.1 kJmol⁻¹

Atomic radius 65 pm
Atomic radius (calc.
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Radio control (sometimes abbreviated R/C) is the use of radio signals to remotely control a device. The term is used frequently to refer to the control of model cars, boats, airplanes, and helicopters from a hand-held radio transmitter.
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MCLOS (short for Manual Command to Line of Sight) is a first-generation method for guiding guided missiles.

With an MCLOS missile, the operator must track the missile and the target simultaneously and guide the missile to the target.
..... Click the link for more information.

transponder (short-for Transmitter-responder and sometimes abbreviated to XPDR, XPNDR or TPDR) has the following meanings:

• An automatic device that receives, amplifies, and retransmits a signal on a different frequency (see also broadcast translator).

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A radio direction finder (RDF) is a device for finding the direction to a radio source. Due to radio's ability to travel very long distances "over the horizon", it makes a particularly good radio navigation system for ships and aircraft that might be flying at a distance
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Radar is a system that uses electromagnetic waves to identify the range, altitude, direction, or speed of both moving and fixed objects such as aircraft, ships, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain.
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Norden bombsight was a highly sophisticated optical/mechanical analog computer used by the United States Army Air Force during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War to aid the pilot of a bomber aircraft in dropping bombs accurately.
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Negative feedback feeds part of a system's output, inverted, into the system's input; generally with the result that fluctuations are attenuated. Many real-world systems have one or several points around which the system gravitates.
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supersonic. Speeds greater than 5 times the speed of sound are sometimes referred to as hypersonic. Speeds where only some parts of the air around an object (such as the ends of rotor blades) reach supersonic speeds are labelled transonic (typically somewhere between Mach 0.
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Infrared homing refers to a passive missile guidance system which uses the emission from a target of electromagnetic radiation in the infrared part of the spectrum to track it.
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A proximity fuze (also called a VT fuze, for "variable time") is a fuze that is designed to detonate an explosive automatically when the distance to target becomes smaller than a predetermined value or when the target passes through a given plane.
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Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (The Nazi party). He was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933, and became Führer (leader)^[2] in 1934, remaining in power until his suicide in 1945.
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Hermann Wilhelm Göring ( listen   (help info ) ) (also Goering in English) (January 12, 1893 – October 15, 1946) was a German politician and military leader, a leading member of the
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Function single stage ballistic missile (area bombing)
Manufacturer Mittelwerk GmbH (development by Army Research Center Peenemünde)
Unit cost 100,000 RM January 1944, 50,000 RM March 1945^[1]
Entered service 1944
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Bestwig Huangguoshu Waterfall Joystick Krimml Lichtenhain Waterfall

List of surface-to-air missiles List of World War II guided missiles of Germany MCLOS Peenemünde Schmetterling

Selfoss (waterfall) Seven Sisters Waterfall, Norway Sexten Todtnau V-3 cannon

Walter Thiel Weiland Wonder weapons Wunderwaffe More results