Beschreibung:

Three volumes. Comprising: Ferring, W. G. A. “A Critical Review of German Long-Range Rocket Development.” Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society, July 1946, pp 483-525. 43 pp. Extensively illustrated with 33 photographs, graphs and charts. Ley, Willy. “Improving on V-2.” Astounding Science Fiction, January 1947, pp. 99-120. Complete issue. Illustrated with photographs and drawings. Original pictorial wrappers. Burchard, John E., ed. Rockets, Guns and Targets: Rockets, Target Information, Erosion Information, and Hypervelocity Guns Developed during World War II by the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1948. 482 pp. Original cloth in dust jacket. Burchard’s book – an uncommon volumes in the “Science in World War II” historical series on Vannevar Bush’s Office of Scientific Research and Development – notes that the United States did wartime development of rocket weaponry, but this was relatively small-scale rocket ordnance. Ferring’s is credited by NASA bibliographies as being the first extensive postwar analysis of the German V-2, complete with vivid photographs of the capture weapons. German émigré Willy Ley, a rocket expert, describes how the Nazi flying bombs were being tested at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Proving Ground, and suggests how the German design might be improved as launch vehicles for space travel. That Ley’s article only appeared in a Science Fiction magazine testifies to the postwar link between rocketry and spaceflight as still being a speculative dream of the future.