On May 13, 1946, a decree of the Council of Ministers on the development of missile weapons in the Soviet Union saw the light, according to this decree, design bureaus and research institutes for rocketry were created in the country, and the state test site "Kapustin Yar" was created to this day. To deploy the work, it was instructed to use the experience in creating German jet weapons as a groundwork, the tasks were set to restore technical documentation and samples of a long-range guided missile V-2, as well as anti-aircraft guided missiles "Wasserfall", "Reintochter", "Schmetterling". On October 1, 1947, the Kapustin Yar test site was completely ready for the first test launches of ballistic missiles assembled in the USSR.
On October 18, 1947, at 10:47 am (Moscow time), the first ballistic missile was launched in the USSR, assembled on the basis of components and assemblies of the German A-4 rocket. It ended successfully, the rocket was able to rise to an altitude of 86 km., And reached the earth's surface in 247 km. from the launch site. This launch marked the beginning of a series of flight tests of the A-4 rocket. In October-November of the same year, 11 launches were carried out, 5 of which were recognized as completely successful. With an estimated flight range of 250 km, the missiles reached a range of 260-275 km. with lateral deviation up to 5 km. Experts from Germany were involved in testing the first A-4 missiles assembled in the USSR, albeit in a limited number. The reason for the emergency starts were failures of control systems, engines, leaks in fuel lines, as well as unsuccessful design solutions.
It is worth noting that the A-4 rocket became a training rocket for the first practicing rocket scientists, and its launches in the fall of 1947 were a good school for future work on the creation of a missile shield for our country. The result of these tests was the development in the early 1950s of the first generation of missile systems (R-1, R-2). It was the German rocket V-2 (A-4) that became the first man-made object in history to perform a suborbital space flight in the first half of 1944. Soviet and American space programs began with the launch of captured and modified V-2 rockets. Even the first Chinese ballistic missiles, the Dongfeng-1, also began with the Soviet R-2 missiles, developed from the German Wernher von Braun missile.
German roots
In the 20-30s of the last century, several states carried out experimental work and scientific research in the field of creating and designing rocket technologies. But thanks to experiments in the field of liquid-propellant rocket engines (LPRE), as well as control systems, Germany turned out to be the leader in the development of ballistic missile technologies, in which the Nazis came to power. The work of the German designer Werner von Braun allowed Germany to create and master the full technical production cycle, which was necessary for the release of the A-4 ballistic missile, which became widely known as the V-2 (FAU-2).
Work on the development of this rocket was completed by June 1942, Germany conducted missile tests at a closed missile range in Peenemünde. Large-scale production of ballistic missiles was carried out at the enterprises of the Mittelwerk underground plant, which was built in gypsum mines near the German city of Nordhausen. Foreign workers, concentration camp prisoners and prisoners of war worked at these enterprises, their activities were controlled by SS and Gestapo officers.
The single-stage ballistic missile A-4 consisted of 4 compartments. Its nose was a warhead weighing about 1 ton, which was made of 6 mm thick mild steel and filled with an explosive - amatol. The instrument compartment was located under the warhead, in which, together with the equipment, several steel cylinders filled with compressed nitrogen were located. They were mainly used to increase the pressure in the fuel tank. Under the instrumentation was the fuel compartment - the heaviest and most voluminous part of the rocket. In the case of full refueling, it accounted for ¾ of the total weight of the A-4 rocket. The V-2 rocket used liquid propellants: liquefied oxygen (oxidizer) and ethyl alcohol (fuel). A tank with alcohol was placed at the top, from which a pipeline went through the center of the oxygen tank, which supplied fuel to the combustion chamber. The space between the outer skin of the rocket and the fuel tanks, as well as the cavities between the tanks themselves, were filled with fiberglass. The filling of the A-4 rocket with liquid oxygen was carried out immediately before launch, since the loss of oxygen due to evaporation was up to 2 kg. per minute.
The total length of the rocket was 14.3 meters, the maximum body diameter was 1.65 meters, the launch weight of the rocket was 12.7 tons. Each rocket was assembled from over 30 thousand parts. The practical firing range of these missiles was 250 km. The total flight time to the target was up to 5 minutes, while in some sections of the flight the rocket developed a speed of up to 1500 m / s.
The Germans first used their ballistic missiles to strike London and Paris in September 1944. The shelling prompted the USA, USSR and Great Britain to search for materials that would allow them to recreate such weapons and determine all of their performance characteristics. Before the surrender of Nazi Germany, the German engineer Wernher von Braun, together with his team of specialists, surrendered to the American troops, and the plant where the V-2 missiles were produced was in the Allied occupation zone. At the same time, after 2 months, the Allies gave this territory under the control of Soviet troops in exchange for West Berlin. However, by this time, all the most valuable from factories, research and test centers have already been removed, including several dozen ready-made missiles. Almost all of the documentation and test equipment was already in the United States by that time.
Realizing the importance of German missile development, a special group "Shot" was created in Moscow, headed by the famous designer of missile technology Sergei Korolev. The group was sent to Germany to gather information and build at least a few V-2 missiles for testing. The group arrived at the missile assembly plant on August 1, 1945, when the plant in the vicinity of Nordhausen and all its equipment was already seriously damaged. Therefore, the special group had to deploy an active search for people who worked on the creation of these missiles. The search was carried out throughout the territory of the Soviet zone of occupation.
The Korolev group still managed to find a sufficient number of different materials in order to successfully reproduce the design of the German ballistic missile. On the territory of the Soviet zone of occupation of Germany, several enterprises were organized to restore missiles, control system equipment, engines, drawings. They were created together with the German rocket specialists who remained here.
As we wrote earlier, in May 1946, the leadership of the USSR adopted a decree on the development of rocketry in the country. According to this decree, the Nordhausen Institute was created in Germany on the controlled territory, in which, under the leadership of Sergei Korolev, a complete project of the A-4 long-range missile (RDD) was to be implemented, as well as proposals for the development of missiles with a longer flight range were prepared and special trains were drawn up for flight tests of missiles in the period before the preparation of the stationary range. The same decree stipulated the creation of the GCP - the State Central Test Site as part of the USSR Ministry of Defense, which was intended to conduct flight tests of A-4 missiles and other future Soviet long-range missiles.
The assembly of the A-4 missiles of the first series was carried out from components captured as trophies - the so-called "N" products. Their assembly was carried out on German territory with the involvement of the forces and means of the NII-88 and the Nordhausen Institute, the work was supervised by Korolev himself. In parallel with this, in the Moscow region in Podlipki at the NII-88 pilot plant, the assembly of T-series missiles from units and assemblies prepared in Germany was under way. By the end of 1946, all the tasks that faced the Soviet specialists in East Germany were completed, they all returned home. Together with them, a number of German specialists went to the USSR along with their families. The Nordhausen Institute completely ceased to exist in March 1947.
On June 3, 1947, a new decree of the USSR Council of Ministers was issued, which determined the location of the GCP, a deserted area of the terrain near the village of Kapustin Yar in the Astrakhan region was chosen for the missile test site. Already in August, military builders began to arrive at the training ground, who began to build technical positions, launch complexes and measuring points with radio engineering systems. By October 1947, the test site was completely ready for testing. On October 14, the first batch of A-4 missiles arrived here, some of which were assembled in Podlipki, and some in Germany.
