The Launching Of Bumper #V

While this record has audio content from February of 1949, it appears to be from much later since it is pressed on styrene which wasn’t widely being used for record production until 1954. This record might have accompanied a model kit or was a promotional item from General Electric who had a hand in support for the launch. The audio here is of the launch of Bumper V from the White Sands Missile Range on February 24, 1949. It was a modified German V-2 ballistic missile, attained the unprecedented altitude of 244 miles, putting it well above the more-or-less arbitrary Kármán Line that defined the border of ‘space.’ The rockets were part of the captured technology acquired at the end of WWII from a collapsing Nazi Germany, with part of many V-2 rockets were crated up and shipped back to the United States and eventually wound up at White Sands, where the nation's first ballistic testing ground was established. With the rockets came a number of the German specialists who had developed them, and they helped form the nucleus of America's nascent ballistic-missile program. Among them was the biggest catch of all, Wernher von Braun.