V - weapons V - weapons , known in the original German as Vergeltungswaffen ( German : " retaliatory weapons " , " reprisal weapons " ) , were a particular set of long range artillery weapons designed for strategic bombing during World War II , particularly terror bombing and / or aerial bombing of cities . They comprised the V - 1 flying bomb , the V - 2 rocket and the V - 3 cannon . All of these weapons were intended for use in a military campaign against Britain , though only the V - 1 and V - 2 were so used in a campaign conducted 1944 - 5 . After the invasion of Europe by the Allies , these weapons were also employed against targets on the mainland of Europe . They were part of the range of the so - called Wunderwaffe n ( or literally ' wonderweapons ' ) of Nazi Germany . Development . As early as 28 June 1940 , a terror bombing rationale had been advanced for the A4 ( V - 2 rocket ) being developed at a meeting between Army Ordnance Chief Emil Leeb and Commander - in - Chief of the Wehrmacht , Walther von Brauchitsch . Following the relative failure of the Baedeker Raids on Britain in 1942 , development of both flying bomb and rocket accelerated , with Britain designated as the target . On September 29 , 1943 , Albert Speer publicly promised retribution against the mass bombing of German cities by a ' secret weapon . ' Then the official 24 June 1944 Reich Propaganda Ministry announcement of the " Vergeltungswaffe 1 " guided missile implied there would be another such weapon . After the first operational A - 4 launch in September 1944 , the rocket was renamed the V - 2 . ( although no one knows exactly who gave it this name ) . However , the V - 2 operations manual distributed to firing batteries continued to use the A - 4 name for the rocket . V - weapons offensive on Britain 1944 – 45 . The V - 1 . Beginning in October 1943 , launch sites for the V - 1 were constructed in Northern France , along the coast from Calais to Le Havre . Aerial bombing attacks on these sites by the Allied airforce were only partially successful and by June 1944 they were ready for action . Prompted by the Normandy Landings of June 6 , in the early morning of June 13 , 1944 , the first V - 1 flying bomb attack was carried out on London . Ten missiles were launched of which four reached England . The first of these landed near Swanscombe , causing no casualties . At Bethnal Green , however , a bridge was destroyed and six people killed and nine injured . After the 15th the attacks became sustained at a rate of about 100 a day . With the first attack the British put their pre - planned Operation Diver ( after their codename " Diver " used for the V - 1 ) into action The buzzing sound of the V - 1 ' s pulse jet engine was likened by some to " a motor cycle in bad running order " . As it reached its target and dived , the sound of the propulsion unit spluttering and cutting out , followed by an eerie hush before impact , was quite terrifying , though the silence was also a warning to seek shelter ( later V - 1s were corrected to have the originally - intended power dive ) . At least one business in London advertised how quickly a patron could access a nearby shelter . Despite this , the cloudy and rainy conditions of June and July aided the effectiveness of the weapon and casualties were high . By late August a million and a half people had left London and the rate of work production was affected . By the late summer and autumn , however , increasingly effective countermeasures against the V - 1 were taken and people started returning to London . A total of 9 , 251 V - 1s were fired at targets in Britain , with the vast majority aimed at London ; 2 , 515 reached the city , killing 6 , 184 civilians and injuring 17 , 981 . Croydon to the south , on the flight path of the V1s suffered severely taking 142 hits . The V - 2 . V - 2 rocket launching sites were set up by the Germans around The Hague in the Netherlands on 6 September 1944 . The first was launched from here against London on 8 September 1944 and took an estimated 5 minutes to fly the 200 miles from the Hague to London where it landed at 6 . 43pm on 8 September on Chiswick causing thirteen casualties . As the V2 explosions came without warning , the government initially attempted to conceal their cause by blaming them on defective gas mains . However , the public was not fooled and soon began sardonically referring to the V - 2 ' s as " Flying gas pipes " . By October the offensive became sustained . A particularly devastating strike was on 25 November 1944 when a V - 2 exploded at the Woolworth ' s store in New Cross Road ( marked by a plaque on the site now occupied by an Iceland supermarket ) killing 168 people and seriously injuring 121 . Intercepting the supersonic V - 2 missiles in flight proved virtually impossible and other counter measures , such as bombing the launch sites , were fairly ineffectual . Sustained bombardment continued until March 1945 . The very last missiles arrived on 27 March 1945 , with one of them killing 134 people and injuring 49 when it hit a block of flats in Stepney . 1 , 115 V - 2s were fired at the United Kingdom . The vast majority of them were aimed at London , though about 40 targeted ( and missed ) Norwich . They killed an estimated 2 , 754 people in London with another 6 , 523 injured . A further 2 , 917 service personnel were killed as a result of the V weapon campaign . Since the V - 2 could not be heard ( and was rarely seen ) as it approached the target , its psychological effect " " suffered in comparison to the V - 1 . " " The V - weapon offensive ended in March 1945 , with the last V - 2 landing in Kent on March 27 and the last V - 1 two days later . In terms of casualties their effects had been less than their inventors hoped or their victims feared , though the damage to property was extensive , with 20 , 000 houses a day being damaged at the height of the campaign , causing a massive housing crisis in south - east England in late 1944 and early 1945 . The existential horror of the V - 2 attack on London is the theme of Thomas Pynchon ' s novel Gravity ' s Rainbow The V - 3 . The V - 3 cannon , also designed to fire on London , was never used for this purpose due to Allied attacks on the launch facilities , specially the fortress of Mimoyecques , and the offensive in northern Europe in 1944 overrunning the launch sites . Consequently its use was diverted , in the winter of 1944 , to bombard Antwerp and Luxembourg , with minimal results .