COBI V2 Rocket on Meiller Vehicle - Executive Edition Set 3120

COBI's V2 Rocket on Meiller Vehicle Executive Edition is a 1:35 model built from 1,191 blocks: the rocket with a removable casing revealing the engine, fuel tank and warhead, the Meiller trailer that transported and raised it, a figure of General Walter Dornberger, warning-sign bricks and a white nameplate.

The first man-made object in space

A V2 on a test flight in June 1944 reached an altitude of 176 kilometres. The boundary of space is conventionally drawn at 100. It is the first object built by people to get there, and the flight path of every rocket since begins with this one.

The engine burned liquid oxygen and alcohol, was gyroscopically guided, and threw a one-tonne warhead about 320 kilometres. It arrived faster than sound, which meant there was no warning of any kind — the explosion came first and the noise of the descent afterwards. Nothing in 1944 could intercept it.

The part that is usually left out

Around 3,000 V2s were launched and they killed roughly 9,000 people.

Making them killed far more. Production was moved underground to the Mittelwerk near Nordhausen and carried out by prisoners from the Mittelbau-Dora camp, working in tunnels under conditions that killed an estimated 12,000 to 20,000 of them — more people died building this weapon than were killed by it. That is unusual enough among weapons to be worth stating plainly.

Walter Dornberger, the figure in this set, commanded the V2 programme. He was held by the British after the war, released, and spent the rest of his career in the American aerospace industry. Wernher von Braun, the chief designer, went on to lead the development of the Saturn V.

In the COBI range

Set 3121 is the standard edition: the rocket and a launch platform, 560 pieces, without the transporter, the figure and the extras.

Specifications

Pieces: 1,191 · Figures: 1 · Scale: 1:35 · Removable casing with modelled interior
Model dimensions: 40.5 × 13 cm; 48.5 × 43.5 cm with the base and the rocket raised