blessmycottonsocks
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In the years following World War II, an audacious British plan would have used Nazi rockets to put a man in space.
In the summer of 1945, with the war in Europe over, Allied forces rushed to unravel the secrets of Nazi V2 rockets. These terror weapons, built by slave labourers, did little to affect the outcome of the war – but they had the potential to change the world.
“There was an unseemly scramble to get hold of V2 missile technology,” says John Becklake, former head of engineering at London’s Science Museum. “The Americans, the Russians, the French and us.”
The leader of Hitler’s Vengeance weapon program, Wernher von Braun, surrendered to American forces in May 1945 and was quietly spirited away to the United States. In the same month the Russians captured Von Braun’s research and test facilities at Peenemunde on the Baltic coast. The French, meanwhile, gathered some 40 German rocket scientists and engineers and the British assembled rockets for a series of test flights.
Known as Operation Backfire, the British program involved firing V2 rockets from the Netherlands to the edge of space before they splashed down in the North Sea. The experiment proved successful, with the missiles reportedly descending within three miles of their targets – more accurately than the Germans managed during the war.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/201...t-could-have-put-a-briton-in-space?ocid=twfut
This has been my bed-time reading for the last few days and it's been quite illuminating.
Whilst everyone knows about the flamboyant Wernher von Braun, what is less well known is that the Soviets either bribed or otherwise coerced almost 200 top Nazi scientists to work for them at the end of WW2 - including the brilliant Helmut Gröttrup. Rather more of a boffin and more studious than the playboy-like von Braun, Gröttrup's research and development initially put the Soviets well ahead in the space race, with the first artificial satellite, first animal in space (R.I.P. poor Laika) and of course Yuri Gagarin. The Soviets were sensitive about admitting to so much help from ex-Nazis and so they publicly claimed that the role Gröttrup and some 200 other German scientists played was negligible. The reality of this forgotten history though is that Gröttrup and co's work helped give the Soviets the edge, when von Braun was too busy enjoying the high life and his almost film star status.