Rocket Engine, Combustion Chamber, V-2

With a thrust of 25 metric tons (56,600 lb.), the V-2 rocket engine was the first large liquid-fuel rocket engine in the world, and greatly influenced rocket development in the USA, the USSR, France and Britain after World War II. The combustion chamber was the heart of the engine, as it was here that the propellants--liquid oxygen and water alcohol--came together and burned at a pressure of 15.45 atmospheres (227 lb./sq.in.), entering the chamber via 18 injectors on the top. The German Army rocket program developed the V-2 engine between 1937 and 1941, and it was successfully put into mass production in spite of its excessive complexity. Concentration-camp prisoners at the Mittelwerk facility installed nearly 6000 engines in the V-2s produced there.

The U.S. Army Air Forces transferred this artifact to the Smithsonian shortly after World War II.