1:72 SCALE A9 LONG-RANGE ROCKET MISSILE FROM SPECIAL HOBBY

SMN reports
Here’s a look at the A9 piloted missile we brought back from the La Coupole rocket base in northern France. The A9 was one of many ‘Luftwaffe 1946’ secret projects that never saw military action before World War II ended, in this case luckily for the Allied towns and cities that could have been in the target zones.

 

Vengeance weapon
Developed from Wernher von Braun’s V-2 ‘Vengeance’ weapon (technical name A4) the A9 was the winged upper stage of a two-stage rocket, the A10 first-stage boosting it to high speed and altitude. Blueprints of the time showed that the wings would have given the A9 range enough to hit targets as far away as Scotland, more than doubling the standard V-2’s reach of some 320 km (200 miles). It wasn’t good news for the pilot however, who was expected to bale out and parachute to safety moments before impact - a fairly unlikely scenario.

Later A9/A10 designs had bigger wings, and were planned for attacks on US targets such as New York and Washington. You can see how this might have worked in the video, and also the pages from ‘Popular Science’ magazine, shown above.

Special Hobby A9 kit
Back to the Special Hobby kit, which comes neatly boxed, with art that should be useful as a painting guide. The 52 parts are presented on three runners, with a vacuum-formed cockpit canopy, which needs trimming out before cementing in place. There is an attempt at cockpit detail - seat, stick, floor, bulkheads - but no pilot figure is supplied. The long, vane-like wings are supplied separately, though there are no fitting stubs, so assembly will have to be careful.

The A9 itself has just 19 components - the other 33 are for the stand, which is something of a fiddly job, recommended for the patient model maker, equipped with fine tweezers. The smaller parts need some cleaning up before assembly, but there’s nothing major to worry about.

Summation
An interesting kit, though it’s hardly a new release, and can be quite difficult to obtain - you’ll probably have to search around for one, but for Luftwaffe 1946 fans, it’ll be worth the hunt.
  
Visit La Coupole here.

There are further A9/A10 project details here.

For a look at a nicely assembled A9, visit our friends at Fantastic Plastic here.

NAZI V-WEAPONS AT LA COUPOLE ROCKET BASE, NORTHERN FRANCE

SMN reports
If you’re in reach of Northern France sometime this year, then a trip to the site of a World War II Nazi rocket base ought to be on your list of must-go visits.

La Coupole (‘the cupola’) was a planned launching site for the fearsome V-2 rocket, the aim to launch them towards Britain at a rate of up to four an hour. Parts for the rockets were to be assembled in secret workshops all over the Reich, final assembly and launch preparation by slave workers in the long, dank tunnels of La Coupole’s underground complex.

Secret rocket base in a quarry
A massive project, La Coupole had a metres-thick concrete dome built in and over an old quarry, but luckily for the Allies it did not stay a secret for long enough to go into serious action - and timely bombing raids managed to crack the dome and finish the place off as a threat.

For the SMN crew, the place made a fascinating daytrip from the UK, with many interesting machines to look at - from twisted propellers to rocket motors, and even a piloted V-1 flying bomb.

Wernher von Braun
The V-2 is also there of course, and it’s backed up by a display of post-war space progress - for Wernher von Braun, the genius behind the V-2,was also the man who masterminded the Apollo program which safely landed a dozen men on the Moon, from 1969 to 1972.

After the tour, it’s model-maker time, and La Coupole’s visitor store has lots to interest, including one of our day’s purchases, a neat 1:72 scale A9 rocket, made by Special Hobby from the Czech Republic. We’ll be showing you details of this ‘Luftwaffe 1946’ kit in the next SMN report.

The pictures show, top to bottom:
1  The thick concrete dome.
2  Entrance to the tunnel network.
3  Piloted V-1 'Buzz Bomb' prototype.
4  Tail and steering vanes of a V-2 rocket.

Visit La Coupole here.

Dome picture courtesy Eric Desrentes at Panoramio here.

And here are some interesting models to inspect.
V-2 Wehrmacht1/48 Snap, V-2 RocketV-1 Luftwaffe