Posted on 03/27/2005 2:38:11 PM PST by mdittmar
On this day, in a last-ditch effort to deploy their remaining V-2 missiles against the Allies, the Germans launch their long-range rockets from their only remaining launch site, in the Netherlands. Almost 200 civilians in England and Belgium were added to the V-2 casualty toll.
German scientists had been working on the development of a long-range missile since the 1930s. In October 3, 1942, victory was achieved with the successful trial launch of the V-2, a 12-ton rocket capable of carrying a one-ton warhead. The missile, fired from Peenemunde, an island off Germany's Baltic coast, traveled 118 miles in that first test.
The brainchild of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, the V-2 was unique in several ways. First, it was virtually impossible to intercept. 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. The V-2 had the potential of flying a distance of 200 miles, and the launch pads were portable, making them impossible to detect before firing.
The first launches as part of an offensive occurred on September 6, 1944, when two missiles were fired at Paris. On September 8, two more were fired at England, which would be followed by over 1,100 more during the next six months. On March 27, 1945, taking advantage of their one remaining V-2 launch site, near The Hague, the Germans fired their V-2s for the last time. At 7 a.m., London awoke to a blast-one of the bombs had landed on a block of flats at Valance Road, killing 134 people. Twenty-seven Belgian civilians were killed in Antwerp when another of the rockets landed there. And that afternoon, one more V-2 landed in Kent, England, causing the very last British civilian casualty of the war.
By the end of the war, more than 2,700 Brits had died because of the rocket attacks, as well as another 4,483 deaths in Belgium. After the war, both the United States and the Soviet Union captured samples of the rockets for reproduction. Having proved so extraordinarily deadly during the war, the V-2 became the precursor of the Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) of the postwar era.
German V-2 attacks on Britain
"The Germans have stepped up the barrage of V-2 rockets against England." (January 5, 1945)(click to listen)
On September 6, 1944, the Germans unleashed a deadly new weapon against the Allies when it fired a V-2 ballistic missile against Paris.
Developed by the brilliant German rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, the V-2 was years ahead of rockets being produced in other nations at the time. It traveled at 3,600 mph, was capable of delivering a warhead a distance of more than 200 miles, and was the first rocket to enter the fringes of space. The V stood for Vergeltung--the German word for "vengeance"--and was an expression of Nazi vindictiveness over the Allied bombardment of Germany.
Two days after a V-2 struck Paris, the first of more than 1,000 V-2s was fired against Britain. There was no defense against the V-2: It could not be intercepted, and it traveled faster than the speed of sound, thus giving little warning of its approach. With a warhead weighing more than 1,600 pounds, each V-2 rocket killed an average of five people, though in some cases as many as 100 people perished in a single attack. In addition to England, and particularly London, V-2s were launched against Belgium and Allied troops.
The V-2s took many lives but came too late to influence the outcome of the war. In the spring of 1945, von Braun and 400 members of his research team surrendered to U.S. troops. American forces quickly seized more than 300 train-car loads of spare V-2 parts, and the German scientists were taken to the United States, where they resumed their rocketry work. The Soviets also snatched up V-2 rockets and a few of von Braun's engineers.
Von Braun would later become director of NASA's George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. His work culminated in the successful development of the giant Saturn booster rockets that took 27 Americans to the moon between 1968 and 1972.
Von Braun and the other team members credited American Paul Goddard with most of the breakthroughs which they utilized. Goddard could not interest the US Army in rocketry.
Eisenhaer said that if the Germans had been ready to launch barrages of V1s and V2s in June of 1944, D-Day could not have succeeded. It was Hitler who dragged his feet in providing early funding to the rocket programs, the scientific work had been done long before.
If Hitler had funded the programs years earlier, the rockets could have been used on Russian and British infrastructure targets such as ports and railyards.
For that matter, the same can be said about jet fighters. The Nazis could have been utilizing jets and rockets in 1941, if Hiter had funded their programs earlier. Imagine the Nazis with V1s, V2s and ME-262 jet fighters in 1941!
Ping
Thank God hitler was a nut case.
Imagine if they had them in 1940!!
Yep, but then he wouldn't have been Hitler.
On this Easter Sunday,I believe Someone is watching over us.
Sort of a thank goodness he was a madman sort of thang huh....germans had a lot of great inovations and ideas. The Sturmgewehr 44, jets , rockets, interstate highways etc etc ......of course that Hitler thang and Nazi Meth pretty much put the "evil" brand on the entire country.....
Good thing he thought he was smarter than his generals.
Fascinating. The V-1, a pulse jet "cruise missile", was built in large numbers, and was dirt cheap. I had no idea Germany built that many V-2 missiles (1,100). As a tactical weapon, it was pretty poor if it killed just five people per launch.
The Germans attempted transfer of V-2s to the Japanese (via U-boats), as the end loomed in Europe, in hopes that the Japanese could blast the US fleet with a nuclear-tipped V-2. The U-boats involved made the trip, only to arrive after the Japanese no longer had control of the SE Asian port (this wasn't a port on the Japanese home islands).
Another plan which never left the drawing board was the A9/A10 proposal. The A10 would have been a powerful booster, much more powerful than the V-2, and the A9 its manned warhead. After reentry, and when the A9 was in terminal approach, the idea was for the human pilot to bail out and be recovered by U-boat.
The reason for the human pilot was the lack of sufficiently sophisticated guidance at that time.
The proposed target? New York City.
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Partly true. The German interest in rocketry began before Hitler's political ascent. The German Army, limited by the Treaty of Versailles, lacked artillery. They were looking for a way to deliver an explosive payload by alternate means so they assisted the early German "Rocket Clubs." This was done on the cheap, but it shows that there was early funding.
The Soviets also were experimenting with rockets during this period. The most practical result for both sides were the battlefield rockets that could saturate an area target like an opponents gun line.
The chief problem from a weaponization standpoint was one of guidance. Since they really couldn't hit anything even the realtively sophisticated V2 had to be aimed at large area targets. Basically it was a terror weapon.
Not useless against certain targets, such as ports during offloading in the middle of an invasion.
Goddard's work was picked-up by the USN, IIRC. The Navy was looking for ways to launch propeller aircraft over relatively short distances while carrying a full fuel/bomb load. Goddard developed a liquid fuel booster rocket similar to the JATO (Jet Assist Take Off) rockets that were common in the 50's.
Name a ship that was damaged by a V2 or a unit that was delayed on its way to the front by one.
The Nazis would have had to launch hundreds of them to have the effect of a single Allied bomber raid, and they would have landed randomly across a target area miles in diameter. Also, the Allies were never presented with a similar target. A V2 type weapon would have been useless to them. It was almost useless for the Nazis.
JATO units are nice, but they were scarcely a vital part of our national security plan. Mostly the USAF and USN were interested in getting fully loaded bombers off as quickly possible before the bombs (from ICBMs) started landing. The strain on airframes was so great that they seldom used today...
I wasn't attempting to make the point that the V2 had any military utility beyond it's potential to carry an atomic warhead. Even then, the early A-bombs would likely have been too heavy for missile delivery. Not to mention that the failure rate of early ballistic missiles would have made a hypothetical nuke launch very hazardous for the attacker.
General Eisenhauer himself said that D-Day could NOT have succeeded if the German V2 rockets had been ready to attack the English ports and the Normandy beachheads in mass.
But I guess you know more about this than General Eisenhauer.
Here are some links, if you wish to educate yourself.
http://www.constable.ca/v2.htm
http://p208.ezboard.com/ftalkinghistoryfrm8.showMessage?topicID=182.topic
http://www.leesaunders.com/html/SWeapons.htm
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/v_weapons.htm
Note the built-in JATO units just forward of the USAF insignia on the fuselage. Incidentally, this is a B-47A, so the incorporation of JATO must have been part of the basic design criteria for the B-47 Stratojet. I think that they wouldn't integrated JATO into the basic airframe if it was as much of a problem as you said it was. Probably had more to do with the relative lack of thrust that you could develop on the early turbojets.
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