r/todayilearned • u/IHadThatUsername • Oct 05 '24

TIL that because the V2 rocket was fueled by drinking alcohol, during its development technicians would often drink the fuel, causing significant delays

https://www.popsci.com/blog-network/vintage-space/how-many-martinis-can-you-fit-inside-v-2-missile/
11.5k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

147 comments sorted by

2.9k

u/IHadThatUsername Oct 05 '24

They even had to put in place many measures to avoid it, which were mostly unsuccessful

The first solution was to simply add an unhealthy pink dye to the mixture, but it didn’t work. Within a week Peenemünde’s rocket scientists had figure out that filtering the dyed ethyl alcohol through an ordinary potato removed the dye and left them with schnapps.

A second solution came from Karl Heimburg, one of the engineers working at Peenemünde: add a “purgative” to the alcohol. The effects of this should have been anticipated. Launch tests were delayed by technicians taking frequent trips to the bathroom, and so many men called in sick some launches didn’t look like they would happen at all. A V-2 missile

Methyl alcohol was finally cut into the fuel mixture, and again brought foreseeable results. One man lost his sight and another lost his life.

1.4k

u/Potatoswatter Oct 05 '24

Did they forget to announce the last two adulterations?

889

u/Bruce-7891 Oct 05 '24

It was probably meant as a punishment. Look at the people we are talking about here.

645

u/series_hybrid Oct 05 '24 edited Oct 06 '24

Good news and bad news, General. Just as you ordered, by adulteration of the ethyl alcohol fuel with methanol, the criminal has died.

So what is the bad news?

We REALLY needed that particular scientist. 

72

u/smoothtrip Oct 06 '24

He was #1 scientist!

21

u/Pleasenotanymore Oct 06 '24

Steady hands

15

u/Highpersonic Oct 06 '24

Steady Hans

2

u/CheckYourStats Oct 06 '24

That’s why they hired him he is expert.

57

u/CosineDanger Oct 06 '24

You joke, but the Nazis really weren't helped by the number of scientists they killed.

They were not completely without common sense. They decided not to kill Werner Heisenberg despite really really wanting to because he wasn't racist enough, but was willing to work on the German atomic bomb project so he was too useful to die. They wanted to send the only person to build a Turing-complete computer in Nazi Germany to the camps for having Asperger's but decided that some aspies should be kept.

They were very nearly without common sense though. They purged a quarter of their physicists in 1933 and didn't stop.

A few of the physicists they tried to kill were basically too smart to catch. Nobel prizes don't directly translate into ability to evade Nazis, unless you're Niels Bohr, then you're too smart to catch.

9

u/MyGoodOldFriend Oct 06 '24

It wasn’t called Asperger’s at the time, that term came in 1944 in (shockers) Germany. Ir was a bit of a post hoc rationalization of not killing smart useful autistic people.

3

u/FUZxxl Oct 06 '24

They wanted to send the only person to build a Turing-complete computer in Nazi Germany to the camps for having Asperger's but decided that some aspies should be kept.

Who was that?

1

u/Havana69 Oct 06 '24

Should be Konrad Zuse

5

u/FUZxxl Oct 06 '24

Zuse was never persecuted. What is true is that the state was too stupid to realise what an invention the computer was and gave him zero funding, so he worked on almost a shoestring budget while the Americans poured tons of resources into their computer research.

23

u/Rapithree Oct 06 '24

In Nazi Germany rocket surgeon Number one. Steady eigen vectors. One day, von Braun need new Rocket. I do design. But mistake! Fuel is Schnaps! Von Braun very mad! I fake death, come to America. No English, no food, no money. Darryl give me job. Now I have house, American car and new woman. Darryl save life.

My big secret. I drank fuel on purpose. I good scientist. The best!

23

u/scraglor Oct 06 '24

I guess the Nazis probably aren’t high on the list of ethical governments

29

u/Hendlton Oct 06 '24

The same way the American government did it during the prohibition. It was so successful that Americans are still deathly afraid of making their own alcohol, even though the knowledge of how to safely make alcohol has been common knowledge since prehistory.

14

u/Z0MBIE2 Oct 06 '24

It was so successful that Americans are still deathly afraid of making their own alcohol, even though the knowledge of how to safely make alcohol has been common knowledge since prehistory.

Aren't home grown IPA's kind of a big thing? Not super popular, but it has it's own hobby scene and everything.

16

u/fskhalsa Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24

I think they’re talking about distilled spirits. All fermentation leads to some amount of methyl alcohol in the mix, but it only gets concentrated to a dangerous level when distilling. I believe the typical home-stilling process for removing it involves removing the first and last bit that comes out of the still (the heads and the tails), as methyl alcohol has a slightly different boiling point, and will be in a much higher concentration for those bits. But the process for doing it at home is still reasonably unscientific, hence the risk of blindness & death from consuming improperly processed home-distilled spirits (moonshine)!

Not sure how the American government would be responsible for making this happen, however, as it’s just a natural byproduct of the process. Unless they were responsible for secretly promoting a bad distilling technique, or propagandizing the potential risks associated with consuming moonshine, or something… 🤔

—

Home-brewed beer and wine (and cider, which I like to make 🙂) are actually fairly easy, and pretty simple to get right. As long as you’re properly sterilizing all of your equipment before you start, and pitching the right amount of yeast (which takes over and out-performs any potentially unhealthy lifeforms), it’s pretty difficult to make something that’s dangerous to drink (aside from the normal risks associated with intentionally consuming poison to get a buzz 😆). And if you get it wrong, it’s usually fairly obvious, as it will often have visible signs of mold/bacteria growth, and/or smell and taste off!

Methyl alcohol, on the other hand, is reasonably difficult to detect by any visual or other sensory method (ignore anyone who tells you the flame will burn another color, as that’s not reliable). Unless you know exactly what you’re doing, or have access to very expensive lab equipment that can analyze the actual molecular makeup of the spirit, it’s too easy to end up with an unhealthy amount of the bad-stuff, and not worth the risk.

I actually believe that home-distilling is illegal in many if not most states. It may also be in some way related to lobbying from the liquor production industry, but generally speaking the main reasoning is the aforementioned risk of methyl alcohol poisoning, along with the even scarier risk of dangerous explosions (imagine what happens when you take a home-made metal pressure container, and heat up a highly flammable liquid so it turns into a vapor, inside of it 🙄).

2

u/Hendlton Oct 06 '24

I think they’re talking about distilled spirits.

Primarily, but I've seen plenty of YouTube videos where people are scared to taste their own wine or mead.

Distillation also isn't that complicated. The first part that comes out is the one that contains most of the methanol. The last part tastes bad, but it isn't poisonous.

2

u/grmelacz Oct 06 '24

Methanol is not a real problem when home distilling [fruit especially] as you still have the ethyl alcohol in the mix in a favorable ratio that prevents you from getting killed or made blind. The real issue is a liquid purposedly high on methyl alcohol (like an antifreeze).

If it was not the case, all of eastern Europe would be blind :)

1

u/MyGoodOldFriend Oct 06 '24

Note that methanol is only really prevalent in the head, while other, heavier alcohols are prevalent in the tail.

1

u/BeachCombers-0506 Oct 07 '24

No fuel for you!

The fuel Nazi.

30

u/barlife Oct 06 '24

It was to be announced at the party congress on Monday. You know how the premier loves surprises.

1

u/imaverysexybaby Oct 07 '24

V2 rockets were built using forced labor in dark, wet, underground bunkers. They were going to be absolutely miserable regardless, might as well be drunk too.

1

u/PopeUrbanVI Oct 08 '24

People may just not have cared. By the end things were looking a bit apocalyptic from many German's view.

129

u/VerySluttyTurtle Oct 05 '24

Damn haven't they heard you never go full Russian?

58

u/chewingtheham Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 11 '24

The tupolev tu-22 supersonic bomber used essentially Soviet era vodka as coolant for its air conditioning. Naturally its crews used it as currency and drank it as well splitting it up with the ground crews. When the leadership was concerned and considering adultering it to stop this they were able to convince them it would cause possibly toxic gas to occur (a lie), so they dropped it. Paper skies on YouTube does a great video on it.

11

u/bk7f2 Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24

There is an urban legend that some big boss complained about this problem to Stalin and offered to order scientists to replace vodka by something other. Stalin told that this weapon is too important to be bothered by alcoholism, so he will replace vodka even by cognac if necessary.

Edit: corrected spelling and grammar.

12

u/MaitreVassenberg Oct 06 '24

Even more was the Mig-25R known for this advantage. Was called the "letayushchiy gastronom" (Flying grocery store) in Soviet Air Force. Which made the "nachal'nik sluzhby goryuche-smazochnykh materialov" (Head of fuel and lubricants service) a very important man at airbases housing this type of aircraft. The resulting drink made out of unused cooling fluid was named "Massandra", which was said to be the abbreviation of "Mikojan Artem, slavnyy syn armyanskogo naroda, darit radost' aviatoram" (Mikoyan Artem, a glorious son of the Armenian people, brings joy to aviators).

35

u/Kettle_Whistle_ Oct 05 '24

Nyet, Komrade, they did not.

23

u/plebeiantelevision Oct 06 '24

That is genuinely hilarious. “Don’t drink this you will go blind and die” “ok i’ll only have a sip”

11

u/The_4th_Survivor Oct 06 '24

Just last weekend we visited the underground lost place of „Rotbutt“ in thuringia. They used to store 80,000 tons of methanol. Just for one V2 engine test, you need 4 tons of it. I go frequently there to check for changes. The soviets tried to collapse the thing with explosives, but huge parts are still accessible, if you know where to go.

1

u/x69pr Oct 06 '24

I go frequently there to check for changes.

That sounds interesting, do you do urban exploration there? Can you share any interesting facts or stories about this place?

4

u/The_4th_Survivor Oct 06 '24

It is the only place I regularly visited in the last 6 years or so. The site is beautiful and haunting at the same time.

Underground the changes are minor. Waste built-up from unresponsible urbexers and two deteriorating walls. Major changes above ground though. The disrepair of the lost village above the mines is accelerating. Some of the mine shafts lead directly into the basements of the different buildings. I do not use these as entries or exits anymore.

Layers A-D are somewhat easy to get into. F has a claustrophobic and wet entrance besides the main off-limits entry. G and H are fully submerged.

A few years ago drone activity and security measures rose. Rumors were they used diving roboters to check for trinkets. Something something amber room.

Today it is quite around the site. Beside the occasional accident of careless explorers.

Some maps and pics

1

u/x69pr Oct 06 '24

Very interesting, thank you.

15

u/passwordstolen Oct 05 '24

Mmm, makes me want some vodka..

25

u/So_be Oct 06 '24

Who could have predicted that a country that dedicates an entire month to beer would be so dependent on alcohol? The world may never know

38

u/passengerpigeon20 Oct 06 '24

That’s in Munich; in Northern Germany where Peenemunde is they have more of a taste for hard liquor.

2

u/TurnipWorldly9437 Oct 06 '24

Knowing stories from my family living in the area, living in Peenemünde isn't made much worse by gong blind or death.

The museum they turned the site into is interesting, though. There's one INSIDE an old u-boot, too, though you'd never get me in that.

7

u/SalSevenSix Oct 06 '24

They still do this today because of heavy taxes on alcohol. So even E100 fuel isn't pure ethanol. It has some gasoline in it to prevent human consumption.

1

u/ConstantSpeech6038 Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24

I buy cheap ethanol for technical purposes. To avoid heavy taxation of this product, there is small amount of vomit-inducing compound added. I have heard stories about people who can hold it down anyway. Just thinking about it makes me sick.

1

u/PLZ_STOP_PMING_TITS Oct 06 '24

"Denatured Alcohol" is ethanol with a little methanol mixed in so you can't drink it so it's not taxed like drinking alcohol.

1

u/natgibounet Oct 06 '24

My bio chem knowledge are a bit on the loose side but isn't methyl alcool the one that turns into formaldehyde when processed by the liver?

1

u/detective_yeti Oct 06 '24

Should of just had a guy pee in it

432

u/Questionsaboutsanity Oct 05 '24

you mean the germans could have had working rockets (sooner) if not for being high functioning alcoholics?

248

u/Kettle_Whistle_ Oct 05 '24

Much of Human history would’ve far better —but a lot less fun— without drunkenness.

209

u/Glass1Man Oct 05 '24

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Irish_inventions_and_discoveries

14th century: whiskey

17th century: drinking chocolate

So they invent whisky and then just got hammered for three centuries

103

u/Uncle_Rabbit Oct 06 '24

I read something about how the mass production of distilled spirits really fucked things up for quite awhile (and arguably still...well not really an argument, haha).

For most of human history we had very low alcohol beverages. I'm guessing wine was probably the higher end of things and that wasn't as high of a percentage as today as we have better yeast strains.

Then all the sudden you have 40% and upwards available. Must have been wild back in the day!

33

u/Dirt_McGirt_ODB Oct 06 '24

Basically like alcohol crack hitting the streets. When the English invented gin it was a nightmare. The streets were filled to the gills with drunks.

24

u/IZiOstra Oct 06 '24

In a gin tour i was told that is was because people were not used to drink hard alcohol so they were drinking it by the pint like they did for beer and it was much stronger circa 50-60°

3

u/mirrorsaw Oct 06 '24

I feel like a pint of 50-60 ABV, drunk at 'normal' pace would kill some people?

26

u/volantredx Oct 06 '24

Well and the British showed up.

10

u/mata_dan Oct 06 '24

Then banned coffee shops because people discussed things like science and politics.

Then massively promoted pubs...

7

u/starktor Oct 06 '24

Don’t forget Irish road bowling, seems like it pairs nicely with some whiskey

19

u/moral_agent_ Oct 06 '24

Irish road bowling sounds like slang for drunk driving lol

5

u/vampire_kitten Oct 06 '24

Chocolate requires cocoa from the new world, couldn't invent that in the 14th century.

9

u/ArcadianBlueRogue Oct 06 '24

I mean, booze gave people something to drink not full of all the fun stuff in water sources we kill or filter out now

14

u/Maglor_Nolatari Oct 06 '24

People knew back then how to look for water sources that were safe to drink. Cities spent immense amounts on just keeping a steady healthy water supply even. It's not cause they like to write about the fun drinks in most literature that the boring drink (water) wasn't being used. There are several manuscripts that detail both how to find and identify drinkable water, and how the cities were keeping that water supply healthy.

6

u/BrakeNoodle Oct 06 '24

Look up how to make booze, need clean water

1

u/5coolest Oct 06 '24

Even if your water source isn’t clean, boiling water is part of the process of making it, so anything living in the water is killed

0

u/Lauris024 Oct 06 '24

But did you yourself look up how booze is made before trying to correct others? He's not wrong, booze arguibly could have been a healthier drink in middle ages than unfiltered/unboiled water (purely based on common sense/logical thinking). Pathogens can't survive the process of brewing (boiling part especially). Did you also know the compound extracted from hops is antibacterial? Did you also know that commonly chlorinated water is used? Have you ever heard of brewery marketing how clean water they use?

1

u/BrakeNoodle Oct 06 '24

If you can make booze, you can make clean water and don’t need to be drunk all the time. 

0

u/Lauris024 Oct 06 '24

Did you miss the part where I said middle ages, when dying from bad water was somewhat common? I also purely brainstormed science, doesn't mean people should literally be chugging booze all the time. Mate, come on..

0

u/BrakeNoodle Oct 06 '24

If you can make booze, you can make clean water. If you are worried about bad water, and are able to make clean water, why go through all the hassle of making booze when all you really care about is the water content. 

1

u/[deleted] Oct 10 '24

Because they didn't know that treating the water would make it safer, they knew turning it into booze made it safer.

0

u/Lauris024 Oct 07 '24 edited Oct 07 '24

Ehh, you're really unable to follow the conversation and is full of yourself, aren't you? The original rhetoric I was arguing was whether the beer was a better alternative to water from middle ages and you constantly on purpose miss the part where I'm saying this isn't really for real and I'm brainstorming science and discussing this for fun, yet you assume I genuinely think everyone should drink beer and you start arguing something else. You're boring, goodbye.

0

u/Hendlton Oct 06 '24

Not necessarily. If you're making alcohol from fruit, all the water comes from the fruit itself.

27

u/JohnHazardWandering Oct 05 '24

Alcohol - the cause and solution for all life's problems. 

1

u/lakewood2020 Oct 06 '24

Moderately functioning

667

u/LordByronsCup Oct 05 '24

TIL the V2 rocket is one of Bender's ancestors.

197

u/ScrewAttackThis Oct 05 '24

Bite my shiny metal warhead

34

u/Troetenwanderung Oct 05 '24

r/unexpectedfuturama

33

u/r6CD4MJBrqHc7P9b Oct 06 '24

That was the opposite of unexpected. It's like anti-unexpected

9

u/DMTrucker95 Oct 06 '24

"What a completely unexpected reference, and by that I mean COMPLETELY EXPECTED!"

3

u/Proud_Tie Oct 06 '24

you mean a failed surprise? /s

13

u/MysteryMeat36 Oct 05 '24

Thanks man, I spit up a bite of food reading that 😂

6

u/LordByronsCup Oct 05 '24

Ooh, yum! What was it? /s

Happy digestion! 🤖

465

u/Bryguy3k Oct 05 '24

Also the MIG-25 used ethanol for cooling avionics and engines - it wasn’t a sealed system rather it was consumed in flight which means that airfields where they were based had to have massive amounts of it and Soviets had a lot of trouble keeping enough around.

212

u/HoneyButterPtarmigan Oct 05 '24

Never heard of pilots being referred to as avionics.

5

u/bill1024 Oct 06 '24

Just the cool ones.

35

u/r6CD4MJBrqHc7P9b Oct 06 '24

Well you gotta give the soviets one thing: The Mig-25 is fucking cool

12

u/LonnieJaw748 Oct 06 '24

Your comment lead me to read the Wikipedia for it. You weren’t kidding. What a badass plane.

21

u/passengerpigeon20 Oct 06 '24

The Americans made an even cooler plane because they saw the inflated stats that the Soviets claimed, got scared, and designed a fighter that could actually match the MiG-25’s exaggerations.

9

u/fizzlefist Oct 06 '24

“Not my fault I built something to beat what you said you had!”

4

u/jrhooo Oct 06 '24

their promise

our delivery : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp62hR6J0MM

3

u/LonnieJaw748 Oct 06 '24

Alright, that flying for 10 miles with one wing and landing like it still had two was insanely impressive. And I ain’t no commie or nothing, but the MiG-25 can go faster and fly higher than the F-15. But I’m pretty sure it would still get smoked by the Eagle before it even knew it was there.

29

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '24

[deleted]

20

u/Bryguy3k Oct 06 '24

Yeah I’ve heard that one before as well - makes sense that was the story they would tell the average ground crew

18

u/Macktheattack Oct 06 '24

The TU-22 used ethanol for air conditioning

11

u/fizzlefist Oct 06 '24

Paper Skies did an awesome video on the TU-22 and dove into that very topic.

https://youtu.be/bKoHMXggEHU?si=WOY_92K_k6rsjAlN

4

u/Upset-Basil4459 Oct 06 '24

Consumed in flight you say 🍸

140

u/JohnHazardWandering Oct 05 '24

In the 1960s when my dad was in college, they had to remove the coke machine from the chemistry lab building because too many people would check out ethanol and make themselves a drink while they were doing their lab work.

21

u/yellsatmotorcars Oct 06 '24

Have certainly made drinks with the ethanol we use for flame lamps and sterilization at the end of field work in remote places.

83

u/E2TheCustodian Oct 05 '24

This is a common issue. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo_juice

20

u/JohnHazardWandering Oct 05 '24

Now I'm curious if a loaf of bread actually works as any type of a filter. 

8

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '24

This was why you never drank the pink jungle juice.

77

u/waldo--pepper Oct 05 '24 edited Oct 05 '24

The article points to this book as its sole source.

The Rocket Team.

I do not think the book is all that great a source. For example the book has a bibliography. But the book also does not contain a single footnote to support any claim within its pages.

It is a kind of pulpy throwaway book that isn't all that scholarly. So take this story of drinking the fuel and other debauchery with a grain of salt. I would not be surprised to learn that some quantities of fuel were stolen. I think it is quite the leap to suggest that this caused any significant delays to the Nazi rocket program.

Bungling, rivalries, reliance on slave labour - allied bombings. These were the reasons for delays and inefficiencies. That some Nazi's might make the claim that theft of fuel caused developmental delays absolves them of a host of other legitimate reasons for their poor performance. So it is hardly surprising that they would seek such a scapegoat. I think the story has a large quantity of face saving bull to it.

If this were "true" I would think that it would be more widespread and appear in more sources. Yet it does not seem to appear anywhere else. That undercuts the veracity of the tale in my eyes.

9

u/Hilarity-Ensued-2019 Oct 06 '24

Yeah this entire concept seems a tad far fetched. Your telling me the smartest most intelligent scientists, who almost certainly got paid enough to have their own personal alcohol problems without financial issue, decided that the free shitty alcohol involved in their work was so tempting that they fucked up their jobs over it?

Definitely not. The article essentially says “very educated, certainly wealthy people, couldn’t resist the troubles of being exposed to alcohol during their jobs.”

If it was something they couldn’t get access to normally I can understand, but nah. Click bait.

4

u/avoere Oct 06 '24

I don't think it was the scientists that (supposedly) did this. More likely the lower-level technicians. And the concept is not far-fetched at all.

5

u/avoere Oct 06 '24

Well, it happened pretty much everywhere where there was alcohol available so IMO it would have been more strange if it didn't happen here.

4

u/datumerrata Oct 06 '24

I could believe that they drank the fuel, but to drink so much that it caused delays? It doesn't take much to get drunk on 150 proof science shots. According to Wikipedia, the rocket had 121lbs of fuel. That's roughly 18.5 gallons. That's a lot of booze. Maybe if the rocket folks were stealing the fuel to sell. That doesn't seem likely when considering the logistics of distribution.

8

u/Coerger Oct 06 '24

V1 really needs to stop drinking blood from V2.

6

u/TheAmazingBildo Oct 06 '24

My grandfather was in the battle of the bulge. Anyway, He told me about guys drinking “buzz bomb juice”. He said it would get you really drunk.

4

u/chumble182 Oct 06 '24

Reminds me of US navy crews taking the ethanol used to fuel their torpedoes, mixing it with pineapple juice and drinking it as "torpedo juice"

15

u/wdwerker Oct 05 '24

Didn’t they use forced prison labor too? I wonder if they had the opportunity to indulge?

5

u/Funcron Oct 06 '24

A byproduct of the fuel mixture was Hydroxyzine, which nowadays is used as a broad-range non-SSRI anti-anxiety medication. I've personally taken it myself.

1

u/educateddrugdealer42 Oct 07 '24

Are you sure you don't mean hydrazine?

2

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

7

u/bigpurpleharness Oct 05 '24

We have 50%, 60%, 80% and 100% (Or 100, 120, 160 and 200 proof) concentrations of ethanol at my lab. Some days it's tempting. Lol

3

u/Boozehound00 Oct 06 '24

V2 Rocket Facility in MoH:AA was such a great map.

3

u/JiveTrain Oct 06 '24

This sounds like an urban myth more than anything. One single rocket would need 4 tons of 75% ethanol, there is no way the limited amount of personnel with access to the fuel would drink a noticable amount. If it did happen,  most likely someone stole large quantities and sold it.

5

u/TigerBasic Oct 06 '24

One for you, one for me

2

u/[deleted] Oct 05 '24

[deleted]

2

u/[deleted] Oct 06 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/weightoftheworld Oct 06 '24

I don't think so. He must be mistaking Julian for Lahey

2

u/mtelepathic Oct 06 '24

Hey, just like how it was depicted in Gravity's Rainbow!

2

u/fhangrin Oct 07 '24

And to think. They could've had a V8.

3

u/CFCYYZ Oct 06 '24

Anecdotal story: Apparently after the successful launch of the first US satellite, Explorer, in 1958, Von Braun and his team celebrated at a local bar in Titusville near Canaveral. Von Braun drank too much and was cut off from further service. Enraged, he grabbed the barkeep by the lapels, pulled him close and yelled in his face, "I've burnt more alcohol in 30 seconds than you've ever sold in this lousy bar!"

3

u/Jarms48 Oct 06 '24 edited Oct 06 '24

This surprisingly happens almost anywhere an alcohol solution is used.

Apparently the Soviets in WW2 were using methanol (at least I think it was methanol), anyway, point is they were using it for antifreeze and the tank crews were drinking it. The higher ups decided to switch to traditional antifreeze and then deaths started happening so they switched back.

6

u/HowlingWolven Oct 06 '24

Methanol is the one that makes you go blind.

2

u/_A_Friendly_Caesar_ Oct 06 '24

Tu-22 air conditioning coolant moment

1

u/HappyGoLuckless Oct 06 '24

C130's used JATO for boosters and that was consumed at parties in Antarctica

1

u/Questoris Oct 06 '24

We’re going to start over from scratch. That’s what V2 is for.

1

u/Gabagoolgoomba Oct 06 '24

Like in Paul Thomas Anderson's film The Master ?

1

u/GozerDGozerian Oct 06 '24

So it was just fueled by drinking alcohol in two different senses of the phrase?

1

u/HowlingWolven Oct 06 '24

This is still a concern for ethanol fueled rockets.

Facilities that handle rocket ethanol have to have very strict accounting to skip excise.

1

u/AgileBlackberry4636 Oct 06 '24

A Soviet life hack if the fuel is alcohol+kerosene mix.

You use a straw and drink the lower part.

1

u/SLR107FR-31 Oct 06 '24

There have been credible rumors coming from China that their Nuclear ICBM rockets failed several launch preparation tests for this same reason, except instead of getting drunk they cooked Ramen with it. 

1

u/grmelacz Oct 06 '24

I was told this by my food processing teacher at a high school:

There were experiments in the communist Czechoslovakia to make the pork meat tastier. They wanted to verify an idea that a drunk pig would care less when being slaughtered. So they started to feed the pigs alcohol. The pigs were definitely more relaxed, however a new problem has arisen: the staff was getting drunk all the time not caring for the pigs.

Thay had to stop the experiment there as they could not find a replacement substance to relax the pigs without relaxing the people too.

1

u/plumzki Oct 06 '24

V2 walks into a bar and chugs a beer, "Just refueling mate" he tells the bartender.

1

u/Hyo38 Oct 06 '24

US sailors would so similar things with torpedoes.

1

u/lo_fi_ho Oct 07 '24

Sailors in American subs used to drink torpedo fuel mixed with pineapple juice