April 1934

From The Space Library

The second issue of The Journal of the British Interplanetary Society is published. It features an opening article by German rocket pioneer Willy Ley. Ley gave a short background on the history of rocketry in Germany starting with Hermann Ganswindt and following through to experiments in the 1930s. It is the beginning of Ley's lengthy career in English as a historian of space flight. He referenced Goddard, Tsiolkovsky, and Oberth. He then described the birth of the German rocket society (VfR) by founders Max Valier and Johannes Winkler. Other names in the article include Fritz von Opel and V.W. Sander. He also mentioned Fritz Lang's movie Frau Im Mond, based on the novel by Thea von Harbou. A rudimentary description of the early Mirak and Repulsor rocket programs is followed by comments about Reinhold Tiling's winged rocket experiments. The accident that killed Tiling and his assistants Angelika Buddenbohmer and Friedrich Kuhr is said to have been caused by the detonation of 18 kilograms of rocket fuel.