Operation Backfire
Francis Spufford: Britain’s space programme, 28 October 1999
“... Wernher von Braun used an alcohol-liquid oxygen combination. His engine was a huge hardened bell crowned with multiple fuel injectors, and a rising unsymmetrical coil of steel rigatoni: the pipes for the separate fuel and oxidant pumping systems plaited together to fit inside the ‘clever shape’ of the V2 body. It is ugly in more ways than one, when ... ”