  the wasserfall ferngelenkte flarakete (waterfall remote-controlled a-a rocket), was a world war ii guided surface-to-air missile developed at peenemÃ¼nde, germany. in spite of considerable development, wasserfall never became operational. == technical characteristics == thumb|300px|"wasserfall" rocket displayed at national museum of the u.s. air force wasserfall was essentially an anti-aircraft development of the v-2 rocket, sharing the same general layout and shaping. since the missile had to fly only to the altitudes of the attacking bombers, and needed a far smaller warhead to destroy these, it could be much smaller than the v-2, about 1/4 the size. the wasserfall design also included an additional set of fins located at the middle of the fuselage to provide extra maneuvering capability. unlike the v-2, wasserfall was designed to stand ready for periods of up to a month and fire on command, therefore the volatile liquid oxygen used in the v-2 was inappropriate. a new engine design, developed by dr. walter thiel, was based on visol (vinyl isobutyl ether) and sv-stoff, or 'red fuming nitric acid' (rfna), (94% nitric acid, 6% dinitrogen tetroxide). this hypergolic mixture was forced into the combustion chamber by pressurizing the fuel tanks with nitrogen gas released from another tank. wasserfall was to be launched from rocket bases (code-named vesuvius) that could tolerate leaked hypergolic fuels in the event of a launch problem. guidance was to be a simple radio control manual command to line of sight (mclos) system for use against daytime targets, but night-time use was considerably more complex because neither the target nor the missile would be easily visible. for this role a new syste
Surface-to-air_missiles_of_Germany World_War_II_guided_missiles_of_Germany