In September 1944, Germany launched its new 'wonder weapon' for the first time – the V2.
Designed to destroy Allied morale, the so-called vengeance weapon
was an awesome technological achievement. Hitler genuinely believed it could turn the war
back in his favour. Instead, the first V2 crashed soon after liftoff - a preview of things to come.
The V2 was expensive, resource intensive and had little strategic value.
Few weapons better exemplify Germanys fixation with the 'wonder weapon', a fictional magic
bullet for a war they had already lost. Today we’ll take a closer look at the V2,
how it worked, why it was built and what impact it had on the Second World War.
The story usually goes that the German Army became interested in rockets because,
unlike artillery and tanks, rockets were not restricted by the Treaty of Versailles.
However in reality, the legality of rockets was not an important part of the equation.
In Germany after the first world war ideas around rocketry and human space travel became
highly popular. Amateur inventors conducted experiments with small rockets and staged
publicity stunts with rocket-powered cars and other vehicles. These demonstrations
of technological innovation met with great public enthusiasm.
That enthusiasm soon reached the German Army.
Some officers believed that rockets could supplement or even replace conventional
artillery and by the late 1920s amateur rocket clubs, universities, and the German Army were
experimenting heavily with rocket technology. One rising star in the field was Werner von Braun.
From an early age he developed an interest in space flight and rockets and was a member
of an amateur rocket club. Aged 18 he began university studies in engineering and in December
1932 started working on his doctoral thesis on liquid-fueled rockets and also on the German
Army's secret rocket program. The next month the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor,
the head of German government. Intelligent, charismatic, and an effective administrator,
von Braun quickly became a leading figure in the German Army's rocket program.
In 1933, von Braun began work on a series of rocket designs called the Aggregate series,
or A series. Over the following decade, von Braun and his colleagues would be provided
with an immense variety of technical challenges to solve. They needed to build an engine that was
both powerful and efficient, find the most aerodynamic shape for a twelve-ton rocket,
stabilise it in supersonic flight and guide the rocket to a target over 200 miles away.
Through their work on the aggregate series the German Army rocket program began to answer these
questions. But the development was immensely difficult. Speaking of the testing of the A1
rocket Von Braun said it took half a year to build and half a second to blow up. But in the middle of
the 1930s, with the Nazis having consolidated their grip on power, Germany embarked on a
course of military rearmament. Now money began to flow into the rocket program and a large research
facility was built at Peenemünde on the Baltic Coast. There they began to make real progress.
By 1941 von Braun and his colleagues were working on the A4 rocket,
a weapon that showed real promise. However, Hitler was initially unimpressed. For the
first two years of the war, his Army had mounted triumphant campaigns,
seeming to win easy victories. It had little need for, what he saw an expensive artillery shell.
But by the end of 1941, the balance of the war had shifted. Germany’s Army had been repulsed
from the gates of Moscow, and the United States had entered the fight on the Allied side. Now,
the rocket started to look like a useful weapon. Large scale production was ordered
in January 1943, and the programme was given top priority in July that year.
By the time the rocket was ready for action it had been dubbed the Vergeltungswaffe
Zwei – Vengeance Weapon 2 or V2. The name reminds us that, for the Nazis,
weapons weren't merely tools for fighting, but also for propaganda.
In an article published in July 1944 after the start of attacks with a V1 flying bomb
Nazi propaganda Chief Joseph Goebbels claimed that the new weapons had struck a 'paralyzing
fear' into English hearts and hinted at newer and even more impressive weapons still to come. The
V weapons were meant to crush the morale of the British people and boy up them of bomb battered
Germans. By that time Germany found itself in an increasingly hopeless strategic situation. It was
typical of Nazi irrationality that they put so much faith in these so-called 'wonder weapons'.
Development continued into 1944 and in June an A4 test rocket traveled 176 miles from the earth and
became the first man-made object to reach outer space. By September of 1944 the V2 was ready.
The Germans had initially planned to launch the rockets from fortified bunkers on the
French channel coast, however these were destroyed by Allied bombers.
Instead, the V2s were launched by mobile batteries which could operate from almost anywhere.
The first successful launches occurred on the 8th of September,
first on a newly liberated Paris and then on London.
Most of the body of the rocket is taken up with two large tanks. The top tank holds a mixture of
alcohol and water. Below that is a second tank containing liquid oxygen. These are then ignited
in the rocket engine's combustion chamber and the resulting reaction generates thrust. At the nose
of the rocket is a contact fuse to detonate the rocket's one ton explosive warhead. Behind the
warhead is a compartment containing the weapons analog guidance computer and gyroscopes. The
gyroscopes are connected by electrical relays to graphite veins mounted within the rocket's thrust,
allowing the thrust to be vectored or directed to alter the rocket's flight. When launched the motor
would burn for 60 or 70 seconds propelling the V2 to a maximum height of 80 kilometers or 50 miles.
After that the flight continued in a ballistic trajectory up to an impact of almost
2,000 miles an hour. With the rocket flying at supersonic speed, people living in a targeted
area wouldn't hear the rocket approach until after the shattering explosion.
Belgium and Britain bore the brunt of the V2 campaign. At its peak in
December the port of Antwerp was being hit by over a hundred V2 rockets a week.
The weapons were inaccurate. Some landed in the middle of nowhere, while others caused
huge devastation. The deadliest single attack killed 567 people at a cinema in Antwerp.
Civilians had varying relationships to the rocket. Some found the possibility that they
might be blown to pieces, at any moment completely intolerable. While others seemed to view the risk
as being akin to that of being hit by lightning – that there was little point worrying about it.
We've come upstairs to one of the museum's conservation labs.
In rooms like this we look after objects of all kinds,
including one that I was able to acquire only recently. One of the smallest objects
in our collection which tells an incredible story of the lived experience of the V2.
In September 1944 14-year-old Eric Horne was sitting at home in Lewisham,
South London. Suddenly a V2 rocket exploded about 50 meters away, the blast showering
Eric with wood and broken glass from the window. He had numerous minor injuries,
but wasn't seriously hurt and had been extremely lucky. 14 people were killed in the explosion.
Eric survived the war and would later emigrate to Australia. He would have a career as a policeman,
he would marry and have children. And then in 2021, age 92, Eric noticed a small spot
or lump on his cheek and with tweezers was able to remove this tiny metal fragment.
Eric sent this fragment to an archaeologist who specializes in V1 and V2 impact sites.
Looking carefully at this fragment he was able to identify it as part of the aluminum skin of an
electronic condenser. You can even see printed lettering on it, this is a font commonly used
in Germany in the mid-20th century. There was only one place this tiny metal fragment could
have come from, the V2 rocket explosion which had injured Eric 77 years earlier.
Eric donated this fragment to Imperial War Museums and it is an extraordinary
reminder that people carry with them the legacies of wartime violence.
Sometimes in their minds and sometimes in their bodies for their entire lives.
The Allies knew about the V2 long before it appeared in their skies
thanks to the work of Austrian and Polish resistance groups. However,
they had few options for countermeasures. Fighters were nowhere near fast enough and
it would require so many anti-aircraft shells to down a single rocket those
shells would become a threat to civilians on the ground. They had to come up with new solutions.
First MI5 began a deception campaign using its double cross operation. British double
agents like Eddie Chapman or ZigZag fed misinformation to the Germans
suggesting that the V2s were overshooting London. By some accounts this caused the
Germans to readjust and V2 impact sites moved East to less populated areas.
Secondly they began strikes against the German V-weapons infrastructure including the German
research facility at Peenemünde which was attacked by British bombers in August 1943. The physical
impact of this raid is still debated, but it undoubtedly changed the course of the V2 program.
The bombing of Peenemünde helped persuade the Nazi leadership to move V2 rocket production
underground where it would be safe from Allied air attack. A disused fuel depot in the Harz mountains
was selected and with gigantic effort a rocket factory known as the Mittelwerk was constructed.
The Mittelwerk factory became a scene of appalling horror.
The V2 project had become central to the Nazi regime and the SS mobilized thousands
of concentration camp prisoners to build the factory and the rockets. These prisoners face
terrible conditions in which their guards neglect was matched only by their brutality. In all some
60,000 people were deported to the concentration camps, at least twenty thousand died.
The V2 killed thousands of people in London, Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, and elsewhere. But
many more people died making these weapons. When we look at the V2 we should remember
that its technological achievement was built on the slaughter and cruelty of the Nazi regime.
The last V2s were launched in March of 1945, barely six weeks before the final defeat of
Nazi Germany. Despite Hitler’s hopes, the V weapons programme had done little
to slow the relentless Allied juggernaut. Arguably in fact, it helped the Allies.
The V2 programme was immensely expensive. It was Germany’s largest armaments project of
the war costing up to 2 billion Reichmarks. That’s comparable
with the Allied investment in the Manhattan Project developing the atomic bomb. And yet,
despite Germany’s gigantic outlay, there was never a clear strategic concept for
the rocket’s use. It isn't difficult to argue that the money could have been spent elsewhere.
As impressive as this technology still is, once the rocket burns out the V2 is just a
very expensive and inaccurate artillery shell. The entire tonnage of high explosive delivered
by the V2 over seven months 3,000 tons. Could be dropped in a single raid by British heavy bombers.
More importantly, the V2 was never likely to change the course of the war because the
V2 was a response to failure. Large-scale production was ordered in January, 1943,
the same month as the German Army's catastrophic defeat at Stalingrad. Although advanced, the V2
was immature technology, able to do little more than deliver random destruction at vast expense.
The story of the V2 did not end with the Second World War. As the Allies advanced into Germany,
each nation scrambled to pick up as much rocket technology and as
many rocket scientists as they possibly could.
They would launch modified V2s for years afterwards,
paving the way for the next generation of nuclear armed ballistic missiles
with which east and west faced off for remainder of the 20th century.
Werner von Braun eventually joined NASA and helped create the Saturn V rocket that would
send humanity to the moon – he has become one of history’s most controversial figures.
The V2 undoubtably helped build our modern world and is a clear
example of the rapid technological innovation that conflict brings.
But like so many other 'wonder weapons', the V2 was a foolhardy endeavour given Germany’s
situation. A programme which caused misery and suffering for civilian and forced labourers alike.