The A4 / V2 rocket in detail: Bringing a V2 rocket gyro back to life
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- Опубликовано: 31 май 2013
- The German WWII A4 or V2 rocket was the world's first space vehicle and it would become the blueprint for every other liquid fueled rocket. This video follows our project to restore parts of the V2's guidance system, including an original 'Vertikant' gyro. The parts we've acquired look OK but we don't know how they have survived or why they were originally abandoned - perhaps they are all manufacturing or field rejects and won't work? The components are 70 years old and have endured uncertain storage conditions through the decades. Without a reliable wiring system we can't even test them. Will they work after all this time in storage?
Presented by Robert J Dalby FRAS
With special thanks to:
Martin Bowman and Don Carr
Kearsley Airways Ltd
Romeera House
Stansted Airport
Essex, UK
Also thanks to:
Deutsches Museum
Munich, Germany
For more information on the technology and history of the A4-V2 missile visit our website at: www.v2rockethistory.com.
Produced by DB Video Services for Astronomy and Nature TV 
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Made me smile when the engineers started to disassemble parts.
Motie engineers. Clearly he was interested.
Amazing ! Built to last for a few minutes and still working 70 yrs later
I watched and understood more of my father's work. Started at Sperry Gyroscope in the 60s and worked worldwide as a military contractor hydraulics and electronics engineer. He wrote those white short sleeve shirts and a tie. And of course the requisite engineer horn rim glasses and pocket protector. Thanks for putting me in the middle of a part of his life his family wasn't privy to since his work was classified at the time. Miss you dad.
German scientists who went to US and worked for NASA became hero or well known to the world. On the other side German scientist like Helmut Gröttrup who went to Russia as a rocket scientist who was a genius was forgotten or did not got any recognition. He later came back to Germany and invented the chip card which we today use in our smart cards.
I've always been fascinated with Mr. Wernher von Braun and his work during WWII on the V2 rocket. Now I can finally get to see it in so much detail!!! Thank you!!!
You’d have liked to be in the car with me in late 2019 I worked for a patient transport company and transported a guy to a wedding who was partly responsible for the minute man missile. The guy was absolutely gutted about his life and what he had created. Can you imagine being responsible for the weapon that will one day wipe out humanity? (Or a variant of it)
Love the Kearsley engineers--they really strutted their stuff with this. Interesting that they had a connector plug that fit perfectly.
looks like a tuchel t2700er series conector to me
@@weltfremd Yes, you are correct, it is indeed a Tuchel Amphenol T 27000 connector with 23 pins. This was also the connector for studio equipement of Eckmiller, Telefunken, Maihak and Co.
@@patrichausammann Not really. These Connectors are made by the Harting Company in the thirties and still available today. The model type at the Gyro is the Staf 20 series.
Look:
www.google.com/search?q=harting+staf20&client=firefox-b-d&sxsrf=ALeKk01l9rA8Jd2pfwXWiGrSy0xHoDtHWA:1617448358085&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiavc3W-OHvAhVsg_0HHWVADJwQ_AUoA3oECAEQBQ&biw=1280&bih=658
I used them on my PA System for balanced Audio pathes. The really expensiv but high reliable. The Number of contacts are alway even , the smallest are the 6 -way maximum 20 way 40 ways wit 2 Units in one shell.
Harting, the company: www.harting.com/DE/de
Yea it's because alot of this early aviation stuff was copied from the germans!
And in aviation if somthing just works, it's often never changed for decades.
"Interesting"? I'm sure it goes a whole lot deeper than that...
That was brilliant. I smiled all through the section where the instrument tech was looking at the old gear, and could almost hear HIS gears turning as he went about absorbing the system functionality. It looks like he was not excited, but his eyes gave it away. What a great experience to tell - 'yeah, today I had to figure out the wiring on an old V2 gyro system... a bit of old kit, but no problem.'
I am quickly becoming addicted to this series. The detail and breadth of knowledge is staggering.
These V2 rocket in detail videos are damn cool, under appreciated for sure.
Indeed - pretty cool if you sent them off and not so cool if you had been on the receiving end! But from a purely technical point, yes, amazing
Interesting demonstration- thank you for this series. I attended the US Army Ordnance Guided Missile School at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, AL in 1961. There was a fellow there that collected V2 parts. He regularly combed through the salvage yard and found various parts now and then. His collection was extensive since the V2 had been studied there much earlier and afterwards the parts were simply scrapped. The "crashed aircraft" scrap parts were sold for 20 cents per pound. I studied the Corporal Type IIB ground guidance system at OGMS and was retained as an instructor for that class until the Berlin Wall went up- then it was suddenly a move to Germany. Interesting, since our Corporal was a direct descendant of the V2.
As an engineer occasionally working with 60s technology, and a liking for space tech, I really like this.
I've been reading about the V2 for years, but seeing the technology close up on this and other videos has been fascinating. It just shows how advanced the German scientists were and what an advantage it was to be able read Enigma traffic and understand the dire threat that the V2 was for the allies.
They said that about my tank but ,,,,
80 Years and it's still running! with moving parts!
Take that iPhone!!!
Unbelievable this gear is now made 80 years ago, and still locks very modern!
Even stuff made in the 80th looks more vintage than that!
Outstanding that the parts fired right up and worked. It is true "they don't build 'em like they used to."
the Gyro in your phone you meant?
The owners did restore them, collectors love them!
Will we restore the iPhones too in 2142?
Really useful video. My V2 has been sitting in my driveway for years registered as unlaunchable. My neighbor keeps saying you will never get that old sucker running. Thanks to this video series, I will be sending my satellite suborbital in no time.
Thoroughly enjoyed this episode. I was an Instrument Electrical Tech in the Canadian Forces for 27 years. Inverters & gyros were very much part of the trade so this triggered many fine memories for me. The high speed whine of these components is forever etched in my soul! Not to mention the deafening roar of high performance jet engines..... Surprised to see the company name Anschütz on the drawing! I'm familiar with a company of the same name that has a history of manufacturing firearms and they are also still in business today. Very prominent & well known for the quality of their .22 calibre rifles in the biathlon world! I wonder if they are the same??
Ditto Mike
Years ago I was also an Instrument Tech. I remember running the Gyros on the precession tables performing operations checks before sign-off.
I can still hear that whine, both electric and vacuum.
Frankly, above all else, I'm most impressed by the fact that they were able to source the appropriate connectors for their cable!
..DIN Standard, alway available
I saw quite similar connectors on aliexpress, no kidding, both on some cnc equipment and as spare parts.
The connector on the umformer looks quite modern
I’ve never ever thought the “Centronics/Amphenol” style sockets used in LPT printers and office telephone systems had that sort of provenance!
Aren't they straight out of a Centronics printer? I used to work on them in the 70's and 80's.
WOW--Now I have a better understanding of why and how I have been driving a 1981 Porsche 928 for the last 33 years! German genius.
14:07 "I think this really has exceeded our expectations"
typical for German engineering :D
Na, there's a difference between exceeding expectations and over engineering lol
Aluminium is not influenced by magnetic fields unless it suddenly changes. As you handled the Inverter case, pressing the sides and casing that the sound emitted changed. I suspect the rapidly changing 500Hz magnetic field was causing the case to move and this is was the cause of a lot of the noise heard. Removing the case would reduce the noise for demo purposes, keeping it to understand the noise the launch engineers would have had to endure in setting and checking things over. Excellent video, thanks for producing it.
Those inverters we're also referred to as dyna motors they were used to make high voltage for tube type transmitters before vibrator tube circuits were invented
Vibrators are limited on Power, Dynamotors were used from abt 100W upwards. Vibrators are more older . The princip is the wagnersche Hammer. (Doorbell).
Vibrators were limited to lower power classes, and kind of sucked in terms of reliability and generated noise. Bigger rigs still used umformers. And I actually own several battery powered valve radios with early transistor step-up converters for plate voltage.
Remarkable job at reassembling the pieces of this history ,,,in short the heart of any autopilot guidance up to todays !!!
Not really actually. Modern gyroscopes work on principles that have absolutely nothing in common with those old spinning mass gyros. They are of course still called "gyroscope" (the term just means "rotation meter", calling a spinning top a "gyroscope" is actually a misuse of the term), that doesn't mean they work the same. In particular, basically all modern gyroscopes no longer contain any moving parts at all (or almost no moving parts, ring laser gyros need a small motor that puts the laser cavity into vibrations in order to alleviate problems with measuring very slow rotations). It's like comparing an old analog multimeter with a modern digital multimeter, they measure the same quantity, but work completely differently.
This is an outstanding video!
Thank you for your hard work researching & presenting this!
Just catching up now with this thread of videos. A wonderful coming together of electrics, physics and durability. And 80 year-old kit still working...incredible.
"this really is the kind of place I could spend a lot of time in" OH YES.
That really shows the quality of the things that German engineers build back then. Imagine this stuff is nearly 80 years old and still starts up as the first day.
That is unbelievable build quality of back then high tech machines.
Magnificent job of reconstructing and explaining this technology. Great video!
It is amazing how much precision machining goes into something that would fly over and mindlessly blow up in a farmer's field somewhere.
Mindless haha tell that to the pilots of Vietnam that were chased by "mindless" improved copies of this weapon and brought down
All that wasted effort helped divert resources from the front and end the war sooner. Works for me.
The V2 terrorized London, so their inertial guidance was quite accurate and did a lot of destruction in Britain. I remember once in August 1970 at NASA HQ, as Werner von Braun and Neil Armstrong emerged out of a meeting , I was in the elevator next to Armstrong as he was examining a micrograph?. I was in awe.
Incredible analysis. I cannot thank you enough for the knowledge you have provided me. I am an electromecanical engineer, and even when I have seen pieces of the technology this puts it all together. FANTASTIC!!!
Awesome work on re-constructing and preserving this milestone of technical equipment! I was so amazed, that those over 70 years old devices are still "in working condition"; though they are slightly damaged. I'm quite sure, that not many of today's pieces of technology could stand this test of time! Keep up your excellent work, you have my very best wishes!
These connectors look very similar to "Harting" connectors, which ire still very common for industrial equipment (at least in the plant I used to work). Really cool to see that the old gyro is still working fine :)
Hi there. You're right, the Harting multi-pole plug and socket range are still in use. In fact, if you take a look at a video we have in the pipeline (50% of the footage is already in the can) dealing with the MIGA (Mechanical or Mueller Integrating Gyroscopic Accelerometer) you'll see a new set in active use! We made our own version of the MIGA, like you do, and we used a Harting plug and socket to make the power and relay connections. The original LIST plugs and sockets are getting hard/expensive to come by - at least in usable condition, although you can good get ex-Soviet copies still easy enough. KR RJD A&NTV
@@RocketPlanet Hi, thanks for the answer, and for the video, of course. I always enjoy the sound of a gyroscope spinning down :)
I say that the government should bring them back. They should also bring back the Horten 229. The new generation of people need to see them.
It's really incredible that this inertial guidance system is still in working condition after 80 years of existence! This is an analog version of operation as compared to what is used today. Which is digital but still produces the same results. Just with much higher resolution and accuracy. Very very neat stuff take good care of it and don't let any one handle it that doesn't know exactly what it is. You should set it up in a mockup of the control surfaces showing how theservo's are controlled by the tilt of the gyros. That would be very helpful to show how it would work in the rocket.
I'm quite nervous about the lubrication of the bearings running for a long time. These components were after all not made to run and last for longer than the duration of a flight? Won't repeated demonstrations finally kill the bearings? As usual, wonderful episode - and what a great bunch of guys Kearsley Airways!
Incredibly interesting stuff. Thank you for the video. I am really glad it functioned like it should, more or less. Those pieces must absolutely be as rare as chicken teeth. I can't help but think about the poor people who were worked to death to make this rocket fly as I watched the vid. Those thought kept sneaking back in there. The lives it took to make it fly,,and the lives it took when it did fly. Again,,thank you for the video.
Did they really worked to death or it is just propaganda?
@@jujenho Many thousands were imprisoned in concentration camps by the Nazi regime and used as slave labour in murderous conditions until they died. Go to your local library or a good bookstore and get some history books. Alternatively there are plenty of videos on RUclips, History Channel and elsewhere.
@@jujenho 100% true. The Na*i regime was a genocide machine powered by slavery. The lucky ones were exterminated through labor.
The book "Dora" describes the slave working conditions of the underground living and working conditions of the Jews who assembled the V2. It is extremely chilling. Colonel Rudolph, as seen in the first episode, was the brutal boss, who was personally responsible for the murder (by hanging) of many of the Jewish workers. He was brought into the US through Operation Paper Clip and was Von Braun's Right-hand Man on the Saturn Rocket. When his role at Peenemunde was finally publicized, he was too hot to handle and was deported back to Germany. I don't recall his fate, but his contribution was apparently critical to our Moon Mission in 1969. It is amazing what Von Braun accomplished and he credited Dr. Robert Goddard and his Rocketry experiments (at Clark U.?) as inspiring his interest in rocketry.
ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
All this stuff now fits into 5mm x 5mm chip using MEMS technology
Not sure, though, they'd put a MEMS gyroscope on a space rocket due to its fragility. Have you got any info on this?
Do you think a largish mechanical spinning gyro is __less affected__ by vibration and mult-G forces on leftoff than a microchip fabbed with MEMS technology?
the beauty of MEMS is redundancy. you can put 5 gyros on each and every axis because they are comparitively cheap. you only nead at least one to survive :P
@@quantumbubbles2106 Comparing to the mechanical gyros, MEMS are vastly more tolerant of shocks. The datasheet of a cheap MEMS gyro chip used in many toys (MPU-6050) specifies that it can withstand 10000 g shock (though only when the chip is not powered). This is similar to the acceleration of a cannon shell being fired.
@@cogoid A long time ago when the internet was just text over phone lines, I found information regarding the Canadians using a donated 16-inch naval gun to reach low-earth orbit with a 20-pound sabot-round. The idea of micro-satellites was thought impracticable because of the G-forces involved in firing the satellite from a gun. The experiments were eventually ended, but it it would seem technology has reached a point to support the hypothesis the cheese-heads reached back in the early 1950's.
Great demonstration. Thank you for taking the time to restore, film and demonstrate this on youtube.
Crazy footage. Awesome
What an awesome project and thank so much for the videos and documenting the process!!!!!!
incredible technology for its time, there is also another great video, where this components are shown steering the carbon fins of a V2 captured by the GB scientists.
This is so remarkable and awesome! Keep the awesome videos coming! Greetings from Denmark!
Another great video! Your thought process and presentation comes across very clear to me. Greeting from Apache Junction, Arizona.
Thank you very much and God bless you for your amazing videos. What a selfless act of public service you are doing.
This is a great video! I’m sorry I hadn’t found your website earlier, there is much for me to catch up on. Thank you so much for doing these!
Amazing. Simply amazing.
Bloody great stuff..that Gyro workin was excellent .
Awesome, Thanks so much
this level of technology is mind blowing this was an age of Bridgeport's and tolerances of 10 thou, then all these extremely precise components all get put out at the same time.
Hi and thanks. Yes your assumptions are correct. And your observation is correct also - the signal voltage was passed via this track. You can see the roll coil and double pick-ups on the outside edge just below the 50v wipers. There would have been a ‘Horizont’ component used with this gyro. It was half as long again with a pitch program system built-in. Often called ‘first generation,’ the Anschutz & Co gyros were actually used all through the V2 campaign - just not in big numbers. KR RJD
Brilliant! ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT!!
Really nice videos and concept. Thank you.
Another wonderful video, endlessly fascinating, keep them coming!
That’s just amazing!
Incredible to see the waffenamt on those items, really reminds you that these items are from a completely different era, made by true pioneers.
Excellent work!
Just lovin this!!! THANKS!
Thank you for content like this. Fantastic.
See I know these were used for weapons of war but you cannot deny that the engineering work that goes into these is just beautiful, as morbid as it sounds
Kearsley this is the company I work for :D
Great job!
Great job Sir! I always wondered about how they guided those missiles, your presentation gives a very good view into all the systems!
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Amazing video, thanks for sharing this knowledge
Outstanding video well done
well done
excellent video, well directed and very interesting content, a must for every amateur rocketeer! Regards from Munich....
I love watching this video. Well done sir!
Amazing!
heck of a good demonstration.
So cool!
I used to test IRIGs made by Honeywell way back in the 80s at the NAC facility in Indy. I have enjoyed this video.
Crazy isn't it? 70 yr old technology & we're having trouble recreating it. These people were so ahead of their time.
I once had a chance to talk to an old aerospace engineer. The understanding of things where entirely different. A different paradigm that made discovery possible. We live in a paradigm of linearity which prohibits discovery and merely allows the gradual refinement. We lack the knowledge and methodology of "generation analog".
I think the most fascinating thing is that guidance electrical system is build without transistors and diodes.
Selenium rectifiers were quite a thing back then. 7:06 you can see several bridges with modern diode symbols :)
Selenium rectifiers are diodes. The flight control computer did used tubes. I think, fellow that did the video called it a mixer. The controller was a remarkably designed analog computer. As I recall it used a small number of tubes. As an analog computer using tubes it required to be able to integrate an analog voltage over a long period of time to control the pitch angle during the flight. The engineer that designed it used synchronous AC amplifiers so that there was zero DC offset over time. This was a completely new design of his. It has to control with what we would call a PID controller, now days. This had to be tuned to the length wise rotational inertial mass of the rocket and the amount of force of the directional control. Part of the clever design was that as the rocket flew, the carbon vanes would erode, reducing the off axis thrust. This compensated for the reduced inertial mass of the rocket as it burned the fuel.
Cool guys from the aero company ❤
Oh wow. That gyro is amazing.
Danke!
Amazing
20,000 rpm he says as the gyros spin down. That seems pretty good for the 1940s! Air bearings? I doubt magnetic bearings
Have a couple Soviet gyro platforms from the 1970's at home. In these inertial platforms gyros are running at a speed of 22-24K rpm off 3x36V 400Hz. The surprise is that for the gyromotors dry ball bearings are used.
At 500Hz.. it would be rather 30, 000 rpm 28,000 with an asynchronous motor.
Damn now thats cool, especially when you switch it off, and you can hear the gyro freewheeling for minutes on end. I noticed at Keasly when you were handling the gyro while it was spinning down that as you tilted it around, the rpm's dropped quicker, possibly because some of the stored energy stored in the flywheel was now being used to try and right itself.
so cool
I can't believe that i've discovered this channel
How this worked properly using the limited tech of the time still amazes me.
One take on this - the A4 was the explosive disposal unit for a lot of refined and well engineered German high tech. A very expensive means to deliver about 1000 kilograms of amatol to a location some 250 kilometers distance.
They were a lot cheaper than using an aircraft with trained crew, an airfield which was vulnerable to attack, defensive ammunition, fuel for the return journey, repairs and maintenance to the damaged aircraft, if it returned, bombs etc. The V2 was fire and forget, and only needed enough fuel for a minute of powered flight, a warhead, and a team of people to launch them from fairly simple dedicated equipment. A rocket would be assembled at the improvised launch sites within about 30 minutes, fuelled and flown within the next hour or so, and hopefully at its target about 4 minutes later. People who experienced V2 attacks on London reported that they heard the explosion and then the whooshing sound of the rocket arriving. There was no defence against them, apart from misinformation about the landing points, or destruction of the missiles before launch.
@@RWBHere well they tried to defence the city by steel cables from balloons :)
Soo far so good
Probably made you nervous holding on to that high speed gyro start up after 70 years on the shelf!
im a mechanic with a computer science degree (didnt want to leave montana..... and a love working on junkers, so....)
idk.... 8 mins in, and im so excited
ya got 3 smart people..... who have the same/very similar skill set that i do
id LOVE to get my hands on stuff like that.....
already fixed a few record players and stereos that my grandmother had sitting around.....
even a Baldwin electric origin....... with like 60 tubes in it
love old tech.....
and gyros make a SHIT ton of noise!
their might be a few "rust pits" in the bearings from sitting for so long........ which would make it a bit more noisy
but for the short "on time" its going to see now days...... perfectly fine..... will last another 80 years
How, so many years ago did we (both sides) make tiny roller bearings that were so precise?
Brilliant work! Ah, I love these technological relics and their sound. To think they did all this electromechanically! Now we have this system entirely on a few mm^2 microchip in our mobile phones :-) It's so easy now, just a bit of soldering and some microcontroller coding to shift binary bits into registers.....
Thanks .it is really cool .it was a mystery to me how the rocket fly .
Awesome.....
people really misunderstand Von Braun's technical contributions to Rocket design, he was the salesman and Friedrich was the brains
Wow.. super fascinating. :)
Excelent video! I'm very interested in technologies from this rocket :-)
And bear in mind the whole contraption only had to last a whopping 5 minutes after launch.
GREAT JOB good educational material... thanks
That was very interesting thank u for lesson
unbelievable, just in 20 min lesson give me completely understanding Gyro vertical guider
Keep it up, nice video, thank you for sharing it :)
The Germans invented, prototyped, and produced a lot of stuff in a short time.
Imagine how the world would be if they had a couple more years.
So did we; we perfected RADAR and code breaking, to name a couple items.
War advances technology a lot and fast on all sides.
that tends to happen when you're in a war!
Very good videos, congratulations