page_title: V-2 rocket
section_title: Britain
hierarchical_section_title: V-2 rocket / Post-war use / Britain
caption_attribution_description: English: V-2 rocket on Meillerwagen at Operation Backfire near Cuxhaven in 1945 English Titles and Captions in Published Books After the warhead was attached, the missile was transferred from the Vidalwagen to the Meilerwagen ('S.I. Negative #76-2755)&#91;1&#93; The Meiller trailer brings it to the firing position and erects it&#91;2&#93;
context_page_description: The V-2, with the technical name Aggregat 4, was the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the Second World War in Germany as a "vengeance weapon", assigned to attack Allied cities as retaliation for the Allied bombings against German cities. The V-2 rocket also became the first artificial object to travel into space by crossing the Kármán line with the vertical launch of MW 18014 on 20 June 1944.
  Research into military use of long-range rockets began when the studies of graduate student Wernher von Braun attracted the attention of the German Army. A series of prototypes culminated in the A-4, which went to war as the V-2. Beginning in September 1944, over 3,000 V-2s were launched by the German Wehrmacht against Allied targets, first London and later Antwerp and Liège. According to a 2011 BBC documentary, the attacks from V-2s resulted in the deaths of an estimated 9,000 civilians and military personnel, and a further 12,000 forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners died as a result of their forced participation in the production of the weapons.
context_section_description: In October 1945, Operation Backfire assembled a small number of V-2 missiles and launched three of them from a site in northern Germany. The engineers involved had already agreed to move to the US when the test firings were complete. The Backfire report remains the most extensive technical documentation of the rocket, including all support procedures, tailored vehicles and fuel composition.
  In 1946, the British Interplanetary Society proposed an enlarged man-carrying version of the V-2, called Megaroc. It could have enabled sub-orbital spaceflight similar to, but at least a decade earlier than, the Mercury-Redstone flights of 1961.
caption: Operation Backfire V-2 rocket on Meillerwagen (SI Negative #76-2755).
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