Lothar Sieber appears to have become the first person to take off in a rocket vertically from the ground. This happened about 16 years before Yuri Gagarin's pioneering flight, during World War II, as part of the tests of the new German weapon Bachem Ba 349 Natter ("grass snake", "Viper" or "Uzh").
The Ba 349 Natter was essentially a manned surface-to-air missile. After vertical take-off, the Viper performed most of the flight to the battlefield on autopilot. The main role of the practically ill-trained pilot was to direct the plane to the target (enemy bomber) and fire the missiles. Then the pilot and the fuselage containing the rocket engine landed on separate parachutes, and the main part (nose) was disposable.
By 1943, the superiority of the Luftwaffe in the air had come to naught, and Germany needed new measures to preserve the heavenly space "for itself." And at the beginning of 1944, the assignment was given to develop a simple defense interceptor. A number of designs were proposed, including the Heinkel P.1077 Julia, in which the pilot lay to reduce the parameters of the aircraft and, accordingly, the drag.
But Himmler's personal intervention tilted the preponderance towards Erich Bachem's development (whose first proposal, BP.20 Natter, was also initially rejected). But Bachem contacted Werner von Braun himself on the design of his "Viper". But, after the intervention "from above" and serious improvements, the project was accepted for work and testing began.
In order to reduce the cost of construction, almost the entire body was made of wood. Only the engine, boosters and weapons were metal. The engine was used by Walter HWK 509A, and Schmidding 109-33 accelerators were used for vertical takeoff. After launch, ten seconds later, all four boosters were producing fuel and discarded.
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Launcher.
The Viper was armed with unguided rockets. Twenty-four 73mm Henschel Hs 217 Föhn or thirty-three 55mm R4M were used in various models. The settings were different: the "honeycomb" pipes for the 73-mm "Storms" were hexagonal, and under the R4M they were four-sided. Since the main targets of the Ba 349 Natter were bombers, hitting the target, after launching such a package of missiles at close range, was practically guaranteed.
Construction of Natter's first experimental prototype, Versuchsmuster 1, was completed on October 4, 1944. Subsequently, V1 was called Baumuster1 (BM1), and then the prototype indexes were changed to the letter "M". A successful unmanned vertical takeoff from the experimental launch tower occurred on December 22, 1944.
Launch pad Ba 349 Natter.
A total of thirty-six aircraft were made. The only manned flight of the Bachem Ba 349 Natter "M23" took place on 1 March 1945 and ended with the death of test pilot Lothar Sieber.
