First space flight

I posted this on my Swarf site earlier in the year.
There were a few details I couldn't quite pin down, as this event marked a beginning and an end.
By launching the first object into space, it was the beginning of the space race. However the launch also meant the increase in professionalism, the move from the Army to the Air Force , later to NASA and the move from the West Coast to the East Coast, from California to Florida. Perhaps if it had stayed in California, the cinematic mise en scene of the drama of this image would have remained and led to a more rapid entry into space.
Firstly I have entered the entry I made earlier in the year, when I could not quite work out some details.

Sunday, April 02, 2006
First space flight
The most memorable launching at White Sands, however, came on February 24, 1949, when a V-2 boosted a WAC Corporal rocket developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory 244 miles into space and to a speed of 5,510 miles per hour, the greatest altitude and velocity yet attained by a man-made object.

Unfortunately this does not seem to be that launch, rather it seems to be the first at Cape Canaveral, that followed the White Sands success.

I have since found at the White Sands site this photo, such agreat photograph with the following caption
Bumper missile just after launch at White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico.


more information I found
Bumper 5, fired on February 24, 1949, was the first Bumper to be fired with a fully tanked second stage which allowed 45 seconds burning time. This flight was successful in every phase. Thirty seconds after take-off the V-2 had attained a speed of 3,600 miles per hour and the V-2 and the WAC Corporal separated. The WAC, with its power added to that of the V-2, attained a speed of 5,150 miles per hour and an altitude of approximately 250 miles. This was the greatest velocity and the highest altitude ever reached by a man-made object. The nose cone was instrumented to measure temperatures at extreme altitudes. In addition, the WAC carried telemetry which transmitted to ground stations technical data pertaining to conditions encountered during flight. This was the first time radio equipment had ever operated at such extreme altitudes. Although the missile had been tracked by radar for most of its flight, more than a year passed before the smashed body section was located.
White Sands Fact Sheet

Secondly I use the new Google News Archive released today to give the Time magazine version of March 7 1949

Two Stages to Space

Posted Monday, Mar. 7, 1949
Rocket enthusiasts have dreamed for years of "multistage" rockets with detachable sections that drop off, one by one, after their fuel is exhausted. Dr. Robert H. Goddard, U.S. father of rocketing, patented such a missile, but never succeeded in building one. During World War II, the Germans toyed with the idea. One of their antiaircraft rockets, the unsuccessful Rheintochter (Rhinemaiden), was pushed into the air by a booster that dropped off after rising a mile and a quarter. But no one shot a multi-stage rocket to really high altitudes.

Last week, U.S. Army Ordnance did. A two-stage rocket, fired from White Sands Proving Ground, N. Mex., shot up 250 miles, more than twice the best height (114 miles) reached by the V2, and well outside the earth's gaseous atmosphere.

The Army's record-breaker was made out of a German V2, with its warhead replaced by the small, U.S.-developed "WAC Corporal" rocket. When the combination reached a certain height (the Army did not say how high), the WAC Corporal was fired by electronic control. It zipped out of the V-2's nose added its own speed to that of the V2, and reached 5,000 m.p.h. The empty V-2 fell 20 miles from the firing place; the WAC Corporal was tracked by instruments, apparently fell about 80 miles north of White Sands. Four days later, it had not yet been found.

Army Ordnance can claim that it was the first to send a man-made object outside the earth's atmosphere. At 250 miles up, there is still some air. But it does not behave as a normal gas. Its scattered molecules act more like satellites of the earth, moving on orbits in the earth's gravitational field. Some are shooting up, others curving back. Some may be moving around the earth like infinitesimal moons. A few may escape from the earth entirely. For brief minutes, the WAC Corporal joined this throng of molecular wanderers.

Besides being eager to set this record, U.S. rocketeers may have had a more practical motive. The services are trying to get Congress to authorize a 3,000-mile guided-missile range (TIME, Feb. 28). They say that the White Sands range (150 miles long) is already much too small. This week's feat proved it. If the two-stage rocket had been fired at the proper angle for maximum range, instead of nearly straight up, the WAC Corporal would probably have landed something like 500 miles from the firing point.
From the Mar. 7, 1949 issue of TIME magazine