Aggregat

The Aggregat series (German for "Aggregate") was a set of ballistic missile designs developed in 1933–1945 by a research program of Nazi Germany's Armed Forces (Wehrmacht). Its greatest success was the A4, more commonly known as the V-2. The A1 was the first rocket design in the Aggregat series. It was designed in 1933 by Wernher von Braun in a German armed forces research program at Kummersdorf headed by Walter Dornberger. The A1 was the grandfather of most modern rockets. The rocket was long, in diameter, and had a takeoff weight of . The engine, designed by Arthur Rudolph, used a pressure-fed rocket propellant system burning ethanol and liquid oxygen, and produced 2.9 kN (660 lbf) of thrust for 16 seconds. The LOX tank was located within the fuel tank and insulated with a fiberglass material. The rocket was stabilized by a 3 axes gyroscope system in the nose, supplied by Kreiselgeräte G.m.b.H. The rocket could not be rotated for stability as with a ballistic shell, as centrifugal force would force the liquid fuel to rise up along the walls of their tanks, which made feeding propellants to the combustion chamber difficult. Although the engine had been successfully test fired, the first flight attempt blew up on the launching pad on 21 December 1933, half a second after ignition. The cause was a buildup up of propellants before ignition of its engine. Since the design was thought to be unstable, no further attempts were made, and efforts moved to the A2 design. The A-1 was too nose-heavy, and to compensate, the gyroscope system was moved to the middle of the A-2, between the oxygen and ethanol tanks. Static tests and assembly were completed by 1 October 1934. Two A2s were built for a full-out test, and were named after a Wilhelm Busch cartoon, Max and Moritz. On 19 and 20 December 1934, they were launched in front of senior Army officers on Borkum island in the North Sea. They reached altitudes of and . The A-2s had the same dimensions as the A-1, and the same engine, but separate propellant tanks.