From: br105@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jeffrey A.

Del Col)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: THE ROCKET AND THE REICH
Date: 25 Jan 1995 23:23:38 GMT
Message-ID: <3g6mhq$rka@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>

I am currently reading Michael Neufeld's THE ROCKET AND THE REICH, the
book that is, IMHO, soon to be regarded as the definitive history of the
German V-2 project. Neufeld, curator of the WWII exhibits at the National
Air and Space Museum, has used many previously unavailable resources in
writing this book, and it is sure to supersede earlier efforts such as
Walter Dornberger's self-serving V-2 and the assorted memoirs,
festschriften and hagiographies by and about von Braun & Co.

Neufeld demolishes what remains of the notion that the V-2 was
developed by a group of apolitical rocket scientists whose real
purpose was to promote space travel. He makes it quite clear that
by their own testimony the chief designers of the V-2 were on the
make to the German Army from 1932 onward and that they were well
aware of the ghastly conditions under which the slave-laborers who
built the rockets worked, lived and died.

He provides clear technical explanations of the design of the rocket and

the
technical developments that made it a reality. His analysis of the cost
effectiveness of the V-2 demonstrates that the entire project was,
from a military standpoint, a colossal boondoggle that delivered
a total weight of explosives far less than that dropped by the British in
a single large air raid. The V-2 also failed as a terror weapon--the V-1
Buzz-Bomb was much more frightening--and didn't
even result in the diversion of any significant Allied effort to stop it;
they realized they couldn't, so they didn't bother--it missed the target
most of the time anyway. On the other hand the V-2 did divert
substantial German resources away from projects (aircraft production
for example) that would have contributed to the defense of the Reich.
It shortened the war, but in favor of the Allies.

---Special Note for Pynchoniacs---

Neufeld stresses the extreme secrecy of the entire German rocket

development
project from its very inception to its very end, a feature which shoots
the hell out of the knowledgable adventures of Slothrop, Borgesius, et,
al.,
but,why expect facts from fiction, right?

Any serious student of GR should read this book.