From early September, von Braun and Roth therefore ordered shortcuts in the A-9 program to accelerate the launch date. The revival of the subscale A-7 (an A-5 with wings) was abandoned, as were any extensive improvements over the A-4. For the first test models, the swept wing favored in pre-1943 wind tunnel experiments would merely be grafted on to an A-4 fuselage. The biggest unsolved problem was creating air vanes and vane servomotors powerful enough to deal with the increased demands on the control system. As was true with Wasserfall, the enlarged air vanes were the only system available for stabilization and maneuvering after engine burnout. But in the case of the A-9, even launch was a problem, because wind forces on the large wings made roll control difficult. Notwithstanding that difficulty, on October 10 von Braun proposed the construction of a “Bastard” version of the A-4b, as the missile was now called, using an A-4 tail with slightly enlarged air vanes. According to his rationale, that would be a way to investigate problems of the launch and transition through the sound barrier. No attempt would be made to have the vehicle glide upon reentry.23
Werner Dahm, an aerodynamicist who worked under Ludwig Roth, interprets those actions politically. Von Braun’s aim, he says, was to “keep the [Peenemünde] group together” and to signal to the authorities that “there is something coming.” Von Braun was also responding to pressure from above to produce an increase in missile range as soon as possible in view of the war situation. The best way to demonstrate progress to Kammler and others was to launch quickly, even if that violated a more rational development process. No attempt would be made to glide because, as Dahm notes, that would only demonstrate that the “Bastard” A-4b could not sustain stable flight during its descent.24
When it came time to launch the improvised vehicles, which were among the last assembled by the Peenemünde shops, the results were not surprising. On December 27, 1944, the first “Bastard” A-4b crashed within seconds as a result of a roll that began at launch. The control system on the missile was simply too marginal to deal with winds or suboptimum performance by guidance equipment. After some emergency improvements, Peenemünde fired the second “Bastard” in late January. It came through the launch phase in good shape, but a wing broke off during reentry. Since gliding was not included in the test, that failure was unimportant, but it too demonstrated how far Peenemünde had to go before it could produce a workable glider missile, let alone one that was militarily useful.25
Meanwhile, the Peenemünde engineers, in consultation with Hermann’s aerodynamicists, had struggled to find solutions to the serious guidance and control challenges of the final A-4b design. There were doubts as to the stability of the missile in all flight regimes, the best wing and air vane designs remained unclear, and there were questions about creating an accurate guide beam for a missile flying at low altitudes more 400 kilometers away. The low speed of the missile at the end of the glide also raised the possibility of its being shot down like the V-1. Someone in Ordnance suggested adding jet engines, but a much simpler answer was to add a terminal dive similar to the V-1’s, at the cost of cutting off range at 450 kilometers instead of 500.26
When the evacuation of Peenemünde was ordered only days after the second launch, the program effectively came to an end. No further A-4bs were ever built or launched, nor did any postwar nation pursue the idea further. Although the vision of a winged V-2 did play an influential role among space artists and advocates in the 1950s, the idea was a dead end militarily. The extension in range was not worth the extra technical complexity, nor did it make sense to trade away the great advantage over the defense provided by a ballistic missile’s high-speed reentry. Even if we put those questions aside, however, von Braun’s engineers had too little time and too few resources to make the A-4b work. Desperation had marred the program, compromising many aspects of the original A-9 idea. But since the A-4b program was as much political as anything else, perhaps it did not matter.
Emergency improvisations had less of an impact on the A-4, because its relative technical maturity put limits on how much further improvement could be extracted in a short period of time. Throughout the summer, fall, and winter, a number of long-term projects continued, with the ultimate objective of producing a simplified and more accurate A-4 “Series C.” Near the end of the war the propulsion engineers finally were able to make a workable injector plate for the 25-ton motor. Steinhoff’s guidance and control division, in collaboration with university and corporate researchers, pursued a great number of projects, including better accelerometers, improvement of radio guidance systems, and the production and testing of Kreiselgeräte’s three-gyro stabilized platforms, the Sg 66 and Sg 70, which were ultimately scheduled to replace the simple but less accurate “Vertikant system.” That equipment was tested at both Peenemünde and Heidekraut (Heather), a new launch area southwest of Danzig (Gdansk), which was set up because the Red Army’s approach had forced the abandonment of Heidelager in late July 1944. In addition, there were continuing efforts to solve the airbursts and other problems, often on the same missiles.27
Although a rational program of long-term improvements did predominate in late-war A-4 work, Kammler’s demands for instant results nonetheless made themselves felt. Various methods to extend the missile’s range were studied through test launches, ground experiments, and calculations, but most changes either delivered only marginal gains of a few kilometers or entailed development of new components that would take time. Kammler also revived the idea of the railroad-borne rocket battery. Launches were carried out at Peenemünde in late November and early December with road-mobile vehicles mounted on flatcars. Why he was interested in that idea is a mystery, as trains were inherently less flexible and more vulnerable to Allied air attack in any case. The energies of von Braun’s engineers and Dornberger’s soldiers would have been better spent solving technical problems for the rocket batteries and dealing with endless changes in A-4 production caused by materials shortages, the loss of parts suppliers, and so forth.28
Electromechanical Industries’ other principal ongoing project, Wasserfall, enjoyed relative freedom from emergency intervention, in part because it was outside Kammler’s jurisdiction until February 1945. But desperation and wishful thinking had marred the program from the outset, with the result that the anti-aircraft missile was too technically immature to permit a quick fix of it problems. Although the Flak Experimental Center had overcome its slow start and had begun to fire about half a dozen missiles a month in the fall, most of those tests failed in ways that showed how deeply troubled the program was. Even when missiles completed powered flight, they had an alarming tendency to blow up immediately after engine shutdown, because the self-igniting propellants were thrown forward through pressure-relief valves at cutoff, where they mixed and burned.29