The French Missile Veronique

V is a French rocket developed by the Direction des Etudes et Fabrications dArmement of the Ministry of National Defense in the Laboratoirede Recherches Balistiques et Aerodynamiques, at Vernon (Eure), 80 km from Paris. This missile originates from the German V-2, but offers several unusual features, for example, the four delta-shaped fins. Its length is 24 ft; its diam 1.8 ft; its weight at launching, 1 ton; it may carry a payload of 60 kg distributed into a volume of 100 liters. At the end of the propulsion period, the weight is only 350 kg. The propellants used, the weight of which is 700 kg, were fuming nitric acid and Diesel oil, fired by a hypergolic igniter consisting of furfuryl alcohol. Recently, excellent results have been obtained by using turpentine. The propellants are contained in two tanks, made of steel plate and placed with the acid tank in front of the fuel tank. The filling of the tanks is done under a pressure of about 50 kg/cm. To do so, hot gases are injected into the tanks. These gases come from chemically neutral liquids and are free from water vapor to avoid the annoyances of condensations. Therefore, a small combustion chamber has been added; it is made of steel, and cooled by circulation between double walls of a third liquid which is injected into the combustion gases at the outlet of the chamber. The injector, which atomizes and mixes the propellants, has one plane wall facing the firing place and upon which are distributed small conic craters; on this wall abut two nozzles, one for each of the propellants. The guidance at launching is obtained in the following way: A wooden cross is fastened to the four fins of the missile with the aid of explosive bolts. A cable is fixed at the tip of each arm of the cross. A second cross, of the same size, attached to the launching platform, bears a guide-pulley at the tip of each arm, and the four cables wind around a single drum with vertical axis. The tensions of the cables being calculated so that they balance the disturbing forces, this device brings about a vertical launching of the missile. When the stabilization is sufficient, the fixing bolts explode and the rocket follows its flight without its cross. If it be desired that the missile trajectory make an angle with the vertical, the drum must be properly profiled. The telemetering system was devised to transmit 20 measurements coming from potentiometric pickups. The carrier frequency is 152 Mc/s; the information signals appear as uniformly spaced impulses, the intervals being 950 /x sec, the duration between 100 and 750 /xsec, with a 4 msec interruption. This blanking allows the necessary time for synchronization at the receiver, and consequently the extraction of information by a counting device.