SPACEPHOTOS

A rare photo showing artillery Colonel Georgiy Tyulin (left) and Sergey Korolev, the father of the Soviet space program, in Germany in 1946 during the A-4 missile recovery operations. Tyulin would rise swiftly in later years, becoming one of the most important managers of the Soviet space program in the 1960s. During World War II one of the most feared weapons was the German A-4, also known as the V-2, ballistic missile. After the end of the war the Allies tried to gather as much information about the A-4 as possible. The United States not only recovered many A-4 rockets and documentation, but the rocket engineers as well. The Soviets also tried to find anything they could about the A-4, although they did not have as much luck as the Americans. With what little they found, about enough to rebuild 12 A-4s, the Soviets were able to develop their own version of the A-4, known as the R-1. The first successful flight of the R-1 occurred on October 10, 1948.