Well folks..... It's been an interesting series of comments.

The other day I was watching a program on the history channel.

It started off talking about Germanys rocket program and how at the end
of the war a very secret and well protected facility was discovered
where the Germans were working on the V-10. The big rocket that was
supposedly going to make it to New York.

In the process this program also talked about how a female photo
interpretor had discovered the rocket testing facility at
Peenemundie (SP) and how Churchill had ordered one of the largest
bombing raids ever to destroy this facility.

This destruction took over a year to rebuild and by then D-day had
occured and the allies where in Europe.

And the rest as they say is histoy.

Then the program started to discuss Dr. Goddard... the father of
American rocketry and how he toiled for years with no government help
on a budget of under two hundred thousands dollars that came from
friends and interested people who helped finance him.

He had approached the government numerous times but they saw no useful
military applications so they kept turning him away.

It was only when the Americans got involved in the war that they turned
to him for help and one of his contributions was the JATO rocket which
was used on the PBY to help get it airborne while fully loaded.

As a total irony it was discovered after the war the Germany had
received copies of all of Goddard's patents including technical
drawings etc, directly from the US patent office for the princely
sum of ten cents per patent and as a result they new exactly what the
Americans were up to as far as rocket experimentation was concerned
during the thirties right up to and possibly into WWII.

I thought some in the group might be interested in this piece of history
so there you go.