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On Oct. 3, 1942 the first successful V-2 rocket was deployed from an island off of Germany’s Baltic coast. The rocket travelled 118 miles and marked a new era in warfare. Two years later the Germans began an offensive when two V-2s were fired at Paris on Sept 6, 1944 followed two days later by another two V-2s fired at England. Over the course of the next six months over 1,100 V-2 Rockets were launched killing more than 2,700 British in the process. While the rocket-to-kill ratio is poor in comparison to today’s standards, at the time this was an impressive demonstration of power and had dramatic psychological effects in it’s wake.
The V-2 upon launching, the missile rises six miles vertically; it then proceeds on an arced course, cutting off its own fuel according to the range desired. The missile then tips over and falls on its target-at a speed of almost 4,000 mph. It hits with such force that the missile burrows itself into the ground several feet before exploding. It had the potential of flying a distance of 200 miles, and the launch pads were portable, making them impossible to detect before firing. Also, very different than previous missiles, the V-2 did not have the traditional buzzing or whistling sound of many rockets or bombs of the era. Rather, the V-2 travelled faster than the speed of sound and was near impossible to detect.
At the end of the war a race between the United States and the USSR to retrieve as many V-2 rockets and staff as possible began. Under Operation Paperclip three hundred trainloads of V-2s and parts were captured and shipped to the United States, as well as 126 of the principal designers, including both Wernher von Braun and Walter Dornberger. Under British supervision, there were also three V-2 rocket launches to demonstrate the launch of V-2 rockets (operation Backfire) in October 1945. For several years afterward, the United States rocketry program made use of the supply of unused V-2 rockets left from the war. Some of these were equipped with a WAC-rocket as a second stage. These rockets were called Bumper. On 24 February 1949 such a rocket reached a then-record altitude of 400 km (250 miles) and a velocity of 5150 mph at its launch from White Sands Proving Grounds. The Bumper was also the first rocket launched from Cape Canaveral. Many of these rockets were used for peaceful purposes, including upper-atmosphere research.
Von Braun, the pioneer of the V-2, was recruited by the U.S. and became the father of most U.S. rocketry including the Saturn 5 rocket used for the Apollo missions. One can only speculate and wonder the changes of the world had the outcome of WW2 been radically different.
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Damn Interesting! Always like to hear about military tech, even if it’s over 60 years old.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and it is a sad character of we humans that we seem to make our greatest advances in science during times of war.
While it is regretable that such science can be used for weapons, there is some consolation that we do learn positive peace-time applications of war-time technology.
As much as I believe we were wrong to use the atom bombs the way we did, I do not believe we were wrong to work on the science.
As a former science teacher I tell myself that radiation treatment for cancer has kept loved ones alive longer, and that inevitably someday we may need to rely on these ‘weapons'(rockets, atom bombs etc) to protect us from some asteroid or comet or meteor wiping out millions if not billions.
What ever happened to our comic book dreams of such things, space exploration and ‘pushing the envelope’?
Is that reserved even now in peace-time in some claim we have to be the only ones allowed space travel and stations for military and spy purposes?
I am waiting for that person to prove the theory we as humans can’t travel passed the speed of light.
Comon people, push the envelope, reach for it!
I kid you not, there was a time when the best scientists in the world used physics to prove that a human couldn’t survive speeds passed existing train speeds.
Remember the old Sci Fi series “Space 1999”, boy have we ever given up on these dreams or what?
The story of the V-2’s effect on Britain and Germany is far more complex than many realise. The British got wind of the rocket quite early on, since continental Europe was awash with “volunteers” working for the Germans who did not care for their employers much. Photographs were taken, drawings were made and some of them reached London. This precipitated photo recon flights and no doubt deciphers from Enigma. In London Dr. R. V. Jones reverse engineered the rocket on paper with the prediction that it would be extremely expensive and carry a ton of high explosive. As a weapon, it was far less effective than the slower V1 even though countermeasures to the V1 were possible. The V1 was expensive enough, but far cheaper than the rocket. This was well before the first launch at England.
From the earliest days of the war the British had rolled up the Abwehr network in Briain and given the radio operators a stark choice, ‘work for us or it’s the noose’. They decided to live and were kept on as radio operators for a simple reason, an operator’s style of sending Morse is their handwriting and is recognisable to those who listen regularly.
When the V1’s and V2’s began to fall, Abwehr controllers wanted the positions where they had struck, so as to adjust aiming points. So the operators fed false information, placing the actual hit points consistently away from where they were reported. This was backed up by falsified media releases. So the Germans moved their aiming points. As more salvos of V1 and V2 weapons were launched, the aiming points crept further away from the real target and more and more of the weapons fell in open countryside, making craters in fields but doing little other damage. Dr. Jones estimated that the V2 did more economic damage to Germany than to England. However the Germans used them with great effect on Dutch cities after the liberation of Holland. See “Most Secret War” by R.V. Jones, published about 1977.
The V2 and subsequent planned ‘inter-continental’ rockets were long-term planning, on the assumption there would be time and they could take to war to America itself and possibly deliver ‘monster’ weapons, if not the atom bomb, bio-chemical, gas, disease or like the British, ‘nerve agents’. Oddly Hitler wouldn’t give the order to use them against us outside the death camps while we would us the atom bomb on civilians.
We don’t hear of all the other ‘weird’ research paid for either…television guidance systems, super-explosives, radio-wave weapons even psychics. Such missiles were the war of the future, they just didn’t have enough time to perfect it, or willingness to use more deadly payloads as we were willing to do. How ironic.
But many do wonder what would have happened if all the time, money, research, resources and expertise had been used for other more immediate war technologies and weapons?
By the end of the war the Germans had new unjammable over-horizon radar, combined with new ground even weapon-based guidance systems decades ahead of its time, could have been very accurate. As mentioned, thankfully British intelligence was the better and, at least for a while, kept the Germans in doubt about how accurate they could be.
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Yea.
PS: Regardless of WWII, civilization and progress are inevitable with homo sapians (people).