GR translation: battery-loading crew

[Monte Davis]

More likely an electric battery. A truck supplied power to the rocket's
electrical systems during setup and testing, via cables detached just
before launch. Given the risks of corrosion and vibration along the way,
the crew would have had to check battery connections anyway before
switching over, so it made sense to install a fresh one at the last moment.

"By the time they reached their launching sites, more than half were not
fit for firing. Long storage was causing the inner workings of many rockets
to corrode. From the time the rockets left the Central Works factory at
Nordhausen, they were stockpiled in depots along the northwest German
border. There they remained, for weeks at a time. When they were finally
brought over to the launching crews many of the V2s were in poor condition.
Vital components had corroded away and electrical systems were especially
vulnerable."

http://www.v2rocket.com/start/deployment/denhaag.html


On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 11:45 PM, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com>
wrote:

> V757.17-24, P772.22-30   “Räumen,” cries Captain Blicero. Peroxide and
> permanganate tanks have been serviced. The gyros are run up. Observers
> crouch down in the slit trenches. Tools and fittings are stashed rattling
> in the back of an idling lorry. The battery-loading crew and the sergeant
> who screwed in the percussion pin climb in after, and the truck hauls away
> down the fresh brown ruts of earth, into the trees. Blicero remains for a
> few seconds at launch position, looking around to see that all is in order.
> Then he turns away and walks, with deliberate speed, to the fire-control
> car.
>
> Is the "battery" in "battery-loading crew" used in the artillery sense?
>
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