German Missiles
V-1
On 13 June 1944,one week after the Allied landings in Normandy, Hitler unleashed a new kind of weapon on England. The result of years of research and development, the Fieseler 103, later FZG 76 and,finally,V-1 (for vengeance), was an unmanned, pulse-jet-powered flying bomb. Only 25 feet long with a wingspan of 16 feet and a 1,000-lb warhead, its maximum range was initially about 160 miles. Launched from a ramp, the missile flew along a preset trajectory to a desired distance,which was determined by an onboard windmill, then dove on the target below.
The first V-1 attack was not a total surprise to Allied leaders; British intelligence had received surreptitious reports about Germany ’s secret weapons for years. Reconnaissance photos of the secret Nazi facilities at Peenemünde confirmed the extent of the programs and prompted an Allied response. On the night of 17 August 1943, nearly six hundred RAF heavy bombers attacked Peenemünde. The attack resulted in heavy damage to the Peenamünde facilities, but the RAF lost 40 aircraft and 240 men. Allied photo intelligence then located and confirmed several suspicious launch sites in northern France, Normandy, and the Pas de Calais. These permanent ramps were bombed by Allied air units in Operation Crossbow from December 1943 until early spring 1944, when Allied leaders were convinced that the V-1 threat had been minimized.The Germans, however, had constructed prefabricated launch sites that could be moved and quickly erected for V-1 attacks.
Germany launched 10,492 V-1s against London during the next 13 months, 7,488 of which reached England and 2,420 hit London. Between June and September 1944, during which London was the main target, V-1 raids caused nearly six thousand casualties and £48 million in damages (including lost production). The “Buzz Bombs,” as they were called, could be intercepted by radar-cued fighters and targeted by antiaircraft fire as well. When the weapons reached their programmed distance and nosed over, fuel starvation caused their engines to quit. As a result,both the approach and the impending impact of the V-1s were communicated to the populace below.
V-2
Wernher von Braun (1912-1977) was one of the most important rocket developers and champions of space exploration during the period between the 1930s and the 1970s. As a youth he became enamored with the possibilities of space exploration by reading the science fiction of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, and from the science fact writings of Hermann Oberth, whose 1923 classic study, Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (By Rocket to Space), prompted young von Braun to master calculus and trigonometry so he could understand the physics of rocketry. From his teenage years, von Braun had held a keen interest in space flight, becoming involved in the German rocket society, Verein fur Raumschiffarht (VfR), as early as 1929. As a means of furthering his desire to build large and capable rockets, in 1932 he went to work for the German army to develop ballistic missiles. While engaged in this work, on 27 July 1934, von Braun received a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering.
Von Braun is well known as the leader of what has been called the "rocket team," which developed the V-2 ballistic missile for the Nazis during World War II. In the early 1930's, rocket clubs sprang up all over Germany. One of these clubs, the Verein fur Raumschifffahrt (Rocket Society), had the young engineer Wernher von Braun as a member.
During this same period of time the German military was searching for a weapon which would not violate the Versailles Treaty of World War I, and at the same time defend Germany. Artillery captain Walter Dornberger was assigned to investigate the feasibility of using rockets. Dornberger went to see the VfR and, being impressed with their enthusiasm, gave them $400 to build a rocket. Wernher von Braun worked through the spring and summer of 1932, only to have the rocket fail when tested in front of the military. However, Dornberger was impressed with von Braun and hired him to lead the military's rocket artillery unit.
By 1934 Hitler had taken over Germany and Herman Goering ruled the Luftwaffe. Dornberger held a public test of the A-2 which was greatly successful. Funding continued to flow to von Braun's team, developing the A-3 and finally the A-4.
Not everything went smoothly at Peenemünde. Early rocketry was an inexact science, with progress registered through trial and error. Von Braun recalled that “Our main objective for a long time was to make it more dangerous to be in the target area than to be with the launch crew.” Hundreds of test firings from 1938 to 1942 brought improvements in stability, propulsion, gas stream rudders used for steering, the wireless guidance communication system, and instruments to plot flight paths.
The brainchild of von Braun's rocket team operating at a secret laboratory at Peenemünde on the Baltic coast, the V-2 rocket was the immediate antecedent of those used in space exploration programs in the United States and the Soviet Union. A liquid propellant missile extending some 46 feet in length and weighing 27,000 pounds, the V-2 flew at speeds in excess of 3,500 miles per hour and delivered a 2,200 pound warhead to a target 500 miles away.
In 1943 Hitler decided to use the A-4 as a "vengeance weapon," and the group found themselves developing the A-4 to rain explosives on London. First flown in October 1942, it was employed against targets in Europe beginning in September 1944. Fourteen months after Hitler ordered it into production, the first combat A-4, now called the V-2, was launched toward western Europe on September 7, 1944. When the first V-2 hit London von Braun remarked to his colleagues, "The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet."
The oft-delayed V–2 production program staggered into low gear in the fall of 1943. Production built steadily through the early months of 1944, peaking in late 1944 and early 1945 at rates of between 650 and 850 V–2s per month. But the V–2 was a military disappointment. As many as two-thirds of the rockets exploded in mid-air before reaching targets. The campaign against England perhaps did more to rally the British people than to inflict damage. So disap-pointing was the campaign that Nazi officials regretted the decision to concentrate on the V–2 at the expense of the anti-aircraft rockets. Some historians have estimated that by the end of World War II, the Germans had fired nearly 3,000 V-2 weapons against England and other targets. By the end of the war, 1,155 had been fired against England and another 1,675 had been launched against Antwerp and other continental targets. The guidance system for these missiles was imperfect and many did not reach their targets, but those that did struck without warning.
By the beginning of 1945, it was obvious to von Braun that Germany would not achieve victory against the Allies, and he began planning for the postwar era. The SS and the Gestapo arrested von Braun for crimes against the state because he persisted in talking about building rockets which would go into orbit around the Earth and perhaps go to the Moon. His crime was indulging in frivolous dreams when he should have been concentrating on building bigger rocket bombs for the Nazi war machine. Dornberger convinced the SS and the Gestapo to release von Braun because without him there would be no V-2 and Hitler would have them all shot.
On arriving back at Peenemunde, von Braun immediately assembled his planning staff and asked them to decide how and to whom they should surrender. Most of the scientists were frightened of the Russians, they felt the French would treat them like slaves, and the British did not have enough money to afford a rocket program. That left the Americans. After stealing a train with forged papers, von Braun led 500 people through war-torn Germany to surrender to the Americans. The SS were issued orders to kill the German engineers, who hid their notes in a mine shaft and evaded their own army while searching for the Americans. Finally, the team found an American private and surrendered to him. Realizing the importance of these engineers, the Americans immediately went to Peenemunde and Nordhausen and captured all of the remaining V-2's and V-2 parts, then destroyed both places with explosives. The Americans brought over 300 train car loads of spare V-2 parts to the United States. Much of von Braun's production team was captured by the Russians.
For fifteen years after World War II, von Braun would work with the United States army in the development of ballistic missiles. As part of a military operation called Project Paperclip, he and his "rocket team" were scooped up from defeated Germany and sent to America where they were installed at Fort Bliss, Texas. There they worked on rockets for the United States army, launching them at White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico. In 1950 von Braun's team moved to the Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Alabama, where they built the Army's Jupiter ballistic missile.
