Word: v2
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Built on the general plan of the German V2, the Viking has one great difference. The V-2 is steered by graphite vanes set in the rocket blast, but the Viking's preset gyro instruments steer it by moving the whole rocket motor, playing the gas blast from side to side like water from a hose. After the fuel is gone, and the rocket is moving in the last of the atmosphere, small jets of nitrogen shot out of a pressure sphere keep it flying true. The proving of this new system, potentially superior to that of the V2...
...famous German V2, designed in 1939, still holds the altitude record for single-stage rockets: 114 miles.* This week the U.S. Navy showed pictures of the Viking, designed to top the V2. The Viking is slimmer and lighter (10,000 Ibs.) than the V-2 (see cut). In the picture, the complicated structure to the left of the rising rocket is a "gantry": a staging from which technicians can reach all parts of the rocket as it stands on its launching platform. When the rocket is ready for launching, the gantry is moved away...
...stage rocket, a small "WAC Corporal" launched from the nose of a V2, reached 250 miles in March...
Last week, U.S. Army Ordnance did. A two-stage rocket, fired from White Sands Proving Ground, N. Mex., shot up 250 miles, more than twice the best height (114 miles) reached by the V2, and well outside the earth's gaseous atmosphere...
...Army's record-breaker was made out of a German V2, with its warhead replaced by the small, U.S.-developed "WAC Corporal" rocket. When the combination reached a certain height (the Army did not say how high), the WAC Corporal was fired by electronic control. It zipped out of the V-2's nose added its own speed to that of the V2, and reached 5,000 m.p.h. The empty V-2 fell 20 miles from the firing place; the WAC Corporal was tracked by instruments, apparently fell about 80 miles north of White Sands. Four days later...