German V-1 Rocket German V-1 Rocket The V-1 was an unmanned, un-guided, flying bomb. Although primitive by today's standards, it was the first of what we now call a "cruise missile." It was designed by the Fiesler company and designated the FZG-76. The Germans called it "Vergeltungswaffe" or "retaliation weapon." Since it was the first such weapon, it was designated the V-1. The V-1 was a liquid fuelled, pulse-jet drone aircraft that could carry a 2,000 lb warhead. There was no navigation system, so it was simply pointed in the direction of it's target. Simple gyrocompasses kept it level and range was controlled by the fuel supply. It's typical target was a city in southern England. The first V1 flew in 1942 at Peenemunde on the southern Baltic coast. A series of fixed launching sites were constructed in France, Holland, Denmark and Germany to allow the Germans to shower V-1s on any part of southern England. However, German planning did not take into account a strong bomber and fighter-bomber offensive against the V1 launch sites.

This forced the Germans into creating mobile launch sites and launching some from Heinkel 111 bombers. The first offensive launch was on June 12, 1943. Once the Germans got their stride they launched an average of 190 V1 rockets a day. The British quickly became expert at spotting and shooting them down and only some 25% of the V1s hit their target. They English established defensive zones, first were the fighters (Mosquitoes, Spitfires and Typhoons) over the English channel, then came a thick zone of heavy AA guns equipped with the first radar proximity fuses, then a zone of light AA guns and rocket projectors and finally barrage balloons. Once the Allies captured the launching sites the target of choice switched to Antwerp, the main Allied port. It received a pounding by 11,988 V1s and most of the 1,766 V-2 missiles launched. Fortunately, for the Allies they overran the launch sites that could have deluged the Normandy beachhead with these high explosive bombs, interfering greatly with the supply and logistics of an army in Europe.

German V-1 Rocket Wernher Von Braun and The History of the V-2 Rocket By Mary Bellis Updated August 06, 2016. Rockets and missiles can serve as weapons systems that deliver explosive warheads to targets by means of rocket propulsion. "Rocket" is a general term that describes any jet-propelled missile which is thrust forward from the rearward ejection of matter like hot gases. Rocketry was originally developed in China when firework displays and gunpowder were invented. Hyder Ali, prince of Mysore, India, developed the first war rockets in the 18th century, using metal cylinders to hold the combustion powder needed for propulsion. The First A-4 Rocket Then, eventually, came the A-4 rocket. Later called the V-2, the A-4 was a single-stage rocket developed by the Germans and fueled by alcohol and liquid oxygen. It stood 46.1 feet high and had a thrust of 56,000 pounds. The A-4 had a payload capacity of 2,200 pounds and could reach a velocity of 3,500 miles per hour.

The first A-4 was launched from Peenemunde, Germany on October 3, 1942. It reached an altitude of 60 miles, breaking the sound barrier. It was the world's first launch of a ballistic missile and the first rocket ever to go into the fringes of space. The Rocket’s Beginnings Rocket clubs were springing up all over Germany in the early 1930s. A young engineer named Wernher von Braun joined one of them, the Verein fur Raumschiffarht or Rocket Society. The German military was searching for a weapon at the time that would not violate the Versailles Treaty of World War I but would defend its country. Artillery captain Walter Dornberger was assigned to investigate the feasibility of using rockets. Dornberger visited the Rocket Society. Impressed with the club’s enthusiasm, he offered its members the equivalent of $400 to build a rocket. Von Braun worked on the project through the spring and summer of 1932 only to have the rocket fail when it was tested by the military. But Dornberger was impressed with von Braun and hired him to lead the military's rocket artillery unit.

Von Braun's natural talents as a leader shined, as well as his ability to assimilate great quantities of data while keeping the big picture in mind. By 1934, von Braun and Dornberger had a team of 80 engineers in place, building rockets in Kummersdorf, about 60 miles south of Berlin. A New Facility With the successful launch of two rockets, Max and Moritz, in 1934, von Braun's proposal to work on a jet-assisted take-off device for heavy bombers and all-rocket fighters was granted. But Kummersdorf was too small for the task. A new facility had to be built. Peenemunde, located on the Baltic coast, was chosen as the new site. Peenemunde was large enough to launch and monitor rockets over ranges up to about 200 miles with optical and electric observing instruments along the trajectory. Its location posed no risk of harming people or property. The A-4 Becomes the A-2 By now, Hitler had taken over Germany and Herman Goering ruled the Luftwaffe. Dornberger held a public test of the A-2 and it was successful.

Funding continued to flow in to von Braun's team, and they went on to develop the A-3 and, finally, the A-4. Hitler decided to use the A-4 as a "vengeance weapon" in 1943, and the group found themselves developing the A-4 to rain explosives on London. Fourteen months after Hitler ordered it into production, on September 7, 1944, the first combat A-4 -- now called the V-2 -- was launched toward Western Europe. 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 Team's Fate The SS and the Gestapo ultimately arrested von Braun for crimes against the state because he persisted in talking about building rockets that would orbit the earth and perhaps even 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 there would be no V-2 without him and Hitler would have them all shot. When he arrived back at Peenemunde, von Braun immediately assembled his planning staff.

He 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 fund a rocket program. That left the Americans. Von Braun stole a train with forged papers and ultimately led 500 people through war-torn Germany to surrender to the Americans. The SS was 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. The Americans immediately went to Peenemunde and Nordhausen and captured all the remaining V-2s and V-2 parts. They destroyed both places with explosives. The Americans brought over 300 train cars loaded with spare V-2 parts to the U.S. Many of von Braun's production team were captured by the Russians. The V1 - History Learning Site History Learning Site historylearningsite.co.uk . The History Learning Site , 21 Apr 2015. 16 Aug 2016.

The V1 was one of Hitler ’s secret weapons that he had told his generals that Nazi Germany possessed which would turn the way World War Two was going in 1944. The V1 was first launched against Britain in June 1944, just one week after D-Day. The V1 is difficult to classify as a weapon as it was not a true rocket in that it did not leave the atmosphere, but it was also clearly not a plane. Perhaps it could best be described as a winged but pilot-less fuel propelled flying bomb. The V1 was so-called because Hitler saw it as a reprisal weapon – a Vergeltungswaffen. Intelligence had already concluded that the Germans had developed something radical as early as late 1943 when spy reports and reconnaissance photos showed the existence of launch ramps that were clearly directed at London. Winston Churchill was sent the following memo regarding the issue: “The Chief-of-Staff feel that you should be made aware of reports of German experiments with long-range rockets.

The fact that five reports have been received since the end of 1942 indicates a foundation of fact even if details are inaccurate…no time should be lost in establishing the facts and in devising counter-measures….suggest you should appoint one man..…Mr. Duncan Sandys to direct investigations. It is not considered desirable to inform the public at this stage, when the evidence is so intangible." General Ismay. Churchill took on board the memo and appointed Sandys to lead investigations. Sandys soon provided Churchill with reports that Germany had been carrying experiments with heavy rockets, jet-propelled planes and airborne rocket torpedoes at Peenemünde on the German Baltic coast. More establishments had been identified in northern France. In June 1943, Sandys informed Churchill that intelligence was finding out more about large rockets that flying bombs. He advised Churchill to order Bomber Command to attack the base at Peenemünde as soon as possible. Such was the fear at government level regarding these findings, that the Home Office once again went through the motions of organising the evacuation of children and pregnant women. More Morrison shelters, last seen in the Blitz , were also moved to London.

Information about Hitler ’s secret weapons came from a number of sources. An eagle-eyed WAAF Flight -Officer, Constance Babington-Smith, spotted on a reconnaissance photo a tiny aircraft on a ramp and a set of rails at Peenemünde. It seemed to be pointlessly aimed out to sea. In France an agent called Michel Hollard investigated a large concrete construction being built by the Germans near Rouen. He actually got a job there himself and saw a ramp being built that was in the general direction of London. Hollard cycled around other parts of northern France and found similar structures being built. He even got plans for one of the sites at Bois Carré. On August 17th 1943, Bomber Command launched a raid on Peenemünde which destroyed many of the assembly shops and laboratories there and killed a number of high ranking scientists – including Chamier-Glisezenski, the chief scientist. Nearly 600 bombers took part in this raid – with 41 shot down. Ironically, the success of the raid forced the Germans to move their work to the Harz Mountains where work was carried on inside the mountain itself which made an attack by bombers impossible.

Test flights took place in Poland. At the end of December 1943, Air Marshall Bottomley, Deputy Chief of the Air Staff, reported that 69 ‘ski’ ramps had been identified in northern Europe. Those in the Pays-de-Calais and Somme-Seine were targeted at London while those in the Cherbourg area were seemingly targeted at Bristol. Between January 1944 and June 12th 1944, over 2000 tons of bombs had been dropped on the identified sites – either by high flying bombers or by modified Spitfires and Hurricanes carrying 500lb bombs. In fact, these raids proved of little value as the Germans were quick to rebuild the sites but also to carefully camouflage them. Any damage done was quickly repaired. The Germans created a special unit to handle the flying bombs – the 155th Flakregiment commanded by Colonel Wachtel. The V1 – officially for the Germans the FZG-76 – was also known as the ‘doodle bug’, ‘buzz-bomb’ and ‘cherry stone’. It was 25 feet long and had a wing span of 16 feet.

Loaded with fuel, it weighed 2 tons and it had a warhead of 2,000 lbs of explosives. The most common way of launching the V1 was by ramp. It could also be launched by a modified Heinkel III. Originally, the V1 had a maximum range of 150 miles but this was improved to 250 miles to allow for it to be launched from Holland. About 10,500 were launched at Britain from June 1944 on, 8,800 by ramp and the rest by plane. The first one was first on June 13th 1944. At about 04.15 on the morning of June 13th, a member of the Royal Observer Corps (ROC) in Kent saw what he described as a bright yellow glow in the dark, coming from the engine at the back of the V1. The ROC had already been told to look out for such things and the ROC lookout immediately informed his superiors with the code-word “diver”. The engine of this V1 cut out over Kent and it fell 20 miles to the east of the Tower of London on the village of Swanscombe.

Very shortly, others fell on Cuckfield, West Sussex, Bethnal Green, London and Sevenoaks in Kent. The only deaths were six people killed in Bethnal Green. On June 13th, ten V1’s were fired at London but only four got through. Four crashed on take-off (confirming what Wachtel had feared, that they were not fully ready for use) and two crashed into the English Channel. If all of the sites in northern France had been fully operational, then nearly 300 V1’s may well have fallen on south-east England. Wachtel was given strict instructions by his commanding officer, Lieutenant-General Erich Heinemann, to get all the sites working as soon as was possible. Though the V1’s had no impact on the success or otherwise of D-Day, they did present a serious threat to London and south-east England. The defence of London rested with fighter planes, anti-aircraft fire around the coast and the use of barrage balloons. Any destruction or interception of the V1’s had to be done outside of London as any that were destroyed over London itself, may well have exploded on contact with the ground – thus doing what the V1 was intended to do regardless.

One major success that the British had was finding out the height at which the V1 flew – between 2000 and 3000 feet. The top speed of the V1 was also worked out – between 340 mph to 400 mph when it approached its target. The man put in charge of defending London – Air Marshall Roderic Hill – had a number of fighter planes at his disposal which were faster than the V1’s and could fly above the weapon before descending to attack it. The Spitfire XIV, the Mustang III, the Tempest V and the Mosquito could all do this – but they had a relatively small amount of time to do their work in. On June 15th, 244 V1’s were launched from 55 sites. 73 hit Greater London and 71 hit areas outside of London. 100 V1’s failed to get across the Channel. It was the start of a major offensive. On June 17th, Hitler flew to northern France to congratulate Wachtel and he ordered that all the ‘cherry stones’ (Hitler’s nickname for the V1) should be targeted at London and nowhere else.

On June 18th, one V1 hit the Guard’s Chapel at Wellington barracks and killed 121 people and wounded 68 others. London was about to experience another terror. By the end of June 18th, 500 V1’s had been fired in total. Churchill asked Eisenhower to do what he could to attack the V1 bases in northern France as part of the Allied advance across the region after D-Day. 617 ‘Dambuster’ Squadron attacked sites with ‘tallboy’ bombs (12,000 lbs bombs) but by June 29th, 2,000 V1’s had been launched at London. In London, a decision was taken about the city’s defence. Anti-aircraft guns were moved to the coast. Here they would have an unrestricted field of fire. Radar experts also believed that their equipment would work better nearer the sea away from buildings. Nearly 800 anti-aircraft guns were moved to the coast and 1,000 barrage balloons were erected. Fighter pilots also learned new tricks to destroy V1’s such as flying alongside the weapon and tipping over one of its wings, thus knocking it off course.

Pilots also flew in front of a V1 so that it flew in the fighter plane’s slipstream. This was enough to unbalance the V1 so that it flew off course. However, many V1’s got through. By July 5th, 2,500 people had been killed and even the Air Ministry in the Strand had been hit with 198 people being killed in that attack. By July 19th, 1,600 guns were in place around the coast. Hundreds more barrage balloons had been put up but many V1’s still got through – though more and more were being destroyed before they reached London. However, it did seem that the tide had turned in favour of the defenders of London. But London was to face an even more terrifying weapon – one that could not be seen or defended against – the V2. Republic-Ford JB-2 | Military Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia 0.25 miles (0.40 km) at 100 miles (160 km) JB-2 Loon being inspected by USAAF personnel at Wendover AAF, 1944.

JB-2 being air launched for flight test by B-17 bomber during testing of weapon at Eglin Field, 1944 In flight after air launch, 1944 Ground preparation prior to air launch, 1944 JB-2 Loon being prepared for a test launch at Holloman AFB about 1948. A Loon being fired from USS Cusk in 1951 The Republic-Ford JB-2 Loon was a United States copy of the German V-1 flying bomb . Developed in 1944, and planned to be used in the United States invasion of Japan ( Operation Downfall ), the JB-2 was never used in combat. It was the most successful of the United States Army Air Forces Jet Bomb (JB) projects (JB-1 through JB-10) during World War II . Postwar, the JB-2 played a significant role in the development of more advanced surface-to-surface tactical missile systems such as the MGM‐1 Matador and later MGM‐13 Mace .

Contents Edit The United States had known of the existence of a new German secret weapon since 22 August 1942 when a Danish Naval Officer discovered an early test version of the V-1 that had crashed on the island of Bornholm, in the Baltic Sea between Germany and Sweden. A photograph and a detailed sketch of the V-1 test unit, the Fieseler Fi 103 V83 was sent to Britain. This led to months of intelligence-gathering and intelligence-sifting which traced the weapon to Peenemünde, on Germany's Baltic Coast, the top-secret German missile test and development site. [1] As more intelligence data was obtained through aerial photography and sources inside Germany, it was decided in 1943 for the United States to develop a jet-powered bomb as well. The United States Army Air Forces gave Northrop Aircraft a contract in July 1944 to develop the JB-1 (Jet Bomb 1) turbojet-powered flying bomb under project MX-543.

Northrop designed a flying-wing aircraft with two General Electric B1 turbojets in the center section, and two 900 kg (2000 lb) general purpose bombs in enclosed "bomb containers" in the wing roots. To test the aerodynamics of the design, one JB-1 was completed as a manned unpowered glider, which was first flown in August 1944. [1] However, in July 1944, three weeks after German V-1 "Buzz Bombs" first struck England on June 12 and 13, American engineers at Wright Field , fired a working copy of the German Argus As 014 pulse-jet engine, "reverse-engineered" from crashed German V-1s that were brought to the United States from England for analysis. The reverse engineering provided the design of America's first mass-produced guided missile, the JB-2. [2] By 8 September, the first of thirteen complete JB-2s, reverse engineered from the material received at Wright Field in July was assembled at Republic Aviation . The United States JB-2 was different from the German V-1 in only the smallest of dimensions.

The wing span was only 2½ inches wider and the length was extended less than 2 feet (0.61 m). The difference gave the JB-2 60.7 square feet of wing area versus 55 for the V-1. [1] This was the first unmanned guided missile in America's arsenal. The first launch of a JB-2 took place at Eglin Army Air Field in Florida by the 1st Proving Ground Group on 12 October 1944. In addition to the Eglin group, a detachment of the Special Weapons Branch, Wright Field, Ohio, arrived at Wendover Field , Utah, in 1944 with the mission of evaluating captured & experimental systems, including the JB-2. Testing was from a launch structure just south of Wendover's technical site. The launch area is visible in aerial imagery (Script error). Parts of crashed JB-2s are occasionally found by Wendover Airport personnel. [1] In December 1944, the first JB-1 was ready for launch.

The missile was launched by a rocket-propelled sled along a 150 m (500 ft) long track, but seconds after release the JB-1 pitched up into a stall and crashed. This was caused by an incorrectly calculated elevon setting for take-off, but the JB-1 program was subsequently stopped, mainly because the performance and reliability of the GE B1 turbojet engines were far below expectations. In addition, the cost to produce the Ford copy of the Argus pulse-jet engine of the JB-2 was much less than the GE turbojets. Subsequently work proceeded on the JB-2 for final development and production. [1] [2] An initial production order was 1,000 units, with subsequent production of 1,000 per month. That figure was not anticipated to be attainable until April 1945. Republic had its production lines at capacity for producing P-47 Thunderbolts , so it sub-contracted airframe manufacturing to Willys-Overland . Ford Motor Co built the engine, designated IJ-15-1, which was a copy of the V-1's 900-lb.

thrust Argus-Schmidt pulse-jet. Guidance and flight controls were manufactured by Jack and Heintz Company of Cleveland, Ohio, and Monsanto took on the task of designing a better launching system, with Northrop supplying the launch sleds. Production delivery began in January 1945. [1] An envisioned 75,000 JB-2s were planned for production. A USAAF launching squadron was formed in anticipation for using the weapons both against Nazi Germany and Japan. However, the end of the European War in May 1945 meant a reduction of the number of JB-2s to be produced, but not the end of the program. Army commanders in Europe had dismissed it as a weapon against Nazi Germany, as the strategic bombing concept was implemented and by 1945 the number of strategic targets in Germany was becoming limited. However, the JB-2 was envisioned as a weapon to attack Japan. A 180-day massive bombardment of the Japanese Home Islands was being planned prior to the amphibious landing "by the most powerful and sustained pre-invasion bombardment of the war".

Included in the assault were the usual naval bombardment and air strikes augmented by rocket-firing aircraft and JB-2s. [1] A navalized version, designated KGW-1, was planned to be used against Japan from LSTs ( Landing Ship, Tank ) as well as escort carriers (CVEs). In addition, launches from PB4Y-2 Privateers were foreseen and techniques developed. The official U.S. Air Force Fact Sheet on the JB-2 states just before the end of the war, an aircraft carrier en route to the Pacific took on a load of JB-2s for possible use in the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands, however the name of the carrier has never been identified. In addition, according to one Eglin AFB history, an unidentified USAAF unit in the Philippines was preparing to launch JB-2s against Japan. [1] The war's end led to the cancellation of Operation Downfall and the production of JB-2s was terminated on 15 September. A total of 1,391 units were manufactured. [1] Postwar testing Edit The U.S.

Army Air Force continued development of the JB-2 as Project MX-544, with two versions — one with preset internal guidance and another with radar control. Several launch platforms were developed, including permanent and portable ramps, and mobile launching from beneath the wings of Boeing B-17G or Boeing B-29 bombers, much as the Heinkel He 111 H-22 had actually done late in the war for the Luftwaffe. Testing continued from 1944 to 1947 at Eglin to improve launch and guidance. The U.S. Navy's version, the KGW-1, later redesignated LTV-N-2, was developed to be carried on the aft deck of submarines in watertight containers. The first submarine to employ them was the SS-348 Cusk which successfully launched its first Loon on February 12, 1947, off Point Mugu , California. After the United States Air Force became a fully independent arm of the National Military Establishment 18 September 1947, research continued with the development of unmanned aircraft and pilotless bombers, including the already available JB-2.

The USAF Air Materiel Command reactivated the JB-2 as Project EO-727-12 on 23 April 1948, at Holloman AFB , New Mexico, the former Alamogordo Army Air Field. The JB-2 was used for development of missile guidance control and seeker systems, testing of telemetering and optical tracking facilities, and as a target for new surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles (ironically fulfilling the former V1's covername, Flakzielgerät — anti-aircraft target device). The JB-2 project used the North American Aviation NATIV (North American Test Instrument Vehicle) Blockhouse and two launch ramps at Holloman: a Script error, two-rail ramp on a 3° earth-filled slope, and a Script error trailer ramp. The 40-foot trailer ramp was the first step toward a system which would eventually be adapted for the forthcoming Martin MGM-1 Matador , first operational surface-to-surface cruise missile built by the United States.

The program at Holloman was terminated on 10 January 1949 after successful development of a radio guidance and control system that could control and even skid-land a JB-2 under the control of an airborne or ground transmitter. [1] The 1st Experimental Guided Missiles Group used JB-2s in a series of tests in the late 1940s at Eglin Air Force Base , Florida. In the spring of 1949, the 3200th Proof Test Group tested launching JB-2s from the under the wings of B-36 Peacemaker bombers at Eglin AFB. [2] About a year later, JB-2s were tested as aerial targets for experimental infrared gunsights at Eglin. [3] In the summer of 1992, military crews uncovered the well-preserved wreckage of a JB-2 at a site on an Air Force-owned section of Santa Rosa Island. Most crash sites on the barrier island were little more than flaky rust, but after the find, officials were planning further searches.

[4] JB-2 survivors Santa Rosa Island Range Complex , Florida National Register of Historic Places JB-2 Launch Sites 8OK246 contains the remains of a 400' concrete launch ramp as well as an intact observation bunker and a JB-2 wreck south of the ramp. Although the ramp itself is missing, its concrete pillars stand against the passage of time. (Script error) 8OK248 is the remains of a JB-2 mobile launch site, containing two concrete pads and an observation bunker, all virtually unscathed Script error A third JB-2 launch site (Not on NRHP) is at (Script error) Wagner Field , Florida (Formerly: Eglin Air Force Auxiliary Field #1) A complete metal launching rail, used by the 1st Experimental Guided Missiles Group for testing the weapon until 1948 when it was abandoned. (Script error) Coffeen Nature Preserve, a Sierra Club property east of Destin, Florida Private ownership, JB-2 launching sites can be viewed by arrangement. References German V-1 Rocket V-1 Rocket The V-1 was an unmanned, un-guided, flying bomb.

Although primitive by today's standards, it was the first of what we now call a "cruise missile." It was designed by the Fiesler Company and designated the Fi-103. Due to the odd sound of the V-1's engine, the British public dubbed the new weapon the "buzz bomb" and "doodlebug". The Germans called it "Vergeltungswaffe" or "retaliation weapon." Since it was the first such weapon, it was designated the V-1. The V-1 was a liquid fuelled, pulse-jet drone aircraft that could carry a 2,000 lb warhead. There was no navigation system, so it was simply pointed in the direction of its target. Simple gyrocompasses kept it level and range was controlled by the fuel supply. Its typical target was a city in southern England. The first V-1 flew in 1942 at Peenemunde on the southern Baltic coast. A series of fixed launching sites were constructed in France, Holland, Denmark and Germany to allow the Germans to shower V-1s on any part of southern England.

However, German planning did not take into account a strong bomber and fighter-bomber offensive against the V-1 launch sites. This forced the Germans into creating mobile launch sites and launching some from Heinkel He-111 bombers. The first offensive launch was on June 12, 1943. Once the Germans got their stride they launched an average of 190 V-1 rockets a day. The British quickly became expert at spotting and shooting them down and only some 25% of the V-1s hit their target. The English established defensive zones. First were the fighters (Mosquitoes, Spitfires and Typhoons) over the English Channel, then came a thick zone of heavy AA guns equipped with the first radar proximity fuses, then a zone of light AA guns and rocket projectors and finally barrage balloons. Once the Allies captured the launching sites the target of choice switched to Antwerp, Belgium, the main Allied port. Fortunately for the Allies, they overran the launch sites that could have deluged the Normandy beachhead with these high explosive bombs, interfering greatly with the Allied army�s supply and logistics. Almost 30,000 V-1s were built.

By March 1944, they were produced in 350 hours at a cost of just 4% of a V-2 which delivered a comparable payload. Approximately 10,000 were fired at England. 2,419 reached London, killing about 6,184 people and injuring 17,981. The greatest density of hits were received by Croydon, on the southeast fringe of London. Antwerp, Belgium was hit by 2,448 V-1s from October 1944 to March 1945. Facts and General Characteristics of the V-1 Rocket: Length: 27' 3" @ gehlen.greyfalcon.us Germans at last learn truth about von Braun's 'space research' base By Tony Paterson in Peenemünde, The Telegraph The Nazi missile base from where the first V1 "doodlebugs" and V2 rockets were launched is being turned into a museum. For the first time, ordinary Germans will be confronted with the evils behind the "wonder weapons" that Adolf Hitler used to attack Britain in the closing stages of the Second World War.

Until now, the Germans have sought to portray the base at Peenemünde - which employed 12,000 people during the war years - as merely the missile research centre run by Wernher von Braun, who later worked on the American space programme. The site has remained a largely deserted wasteland since German reunification in 1990 when the East German army withdrew from the area. Attempts to develop Peenemünde have been fraught with controversy. A German government-backed project to turn the site into an American-style "space park" failed in the early 1990s because of lack of investment. The scheme was also criticised for almost completely ignoring the fact that the site was used to create the most controversial weapons of the war. "Wernher von Braun's post-war involvement in the American space programme provided an excuse to glorify Peenemünde as the place where the technology for the Moon landings was developed," Dr Johannes Erichesen, the German historian behind the new £4.6 million museum project said.

"The fact that the Nazis used the place to build missiles to win the war was regarded as an unfortunate aberration." After more than a decade of argument, German regional and central government has begun an investment programme that aims to turn Peenemünde into a museum dedicated to revealing the truth behind Hitler's most ambitious weapons development project. "We are trying to destroy the myths that have obscured the facts surrounding Peenemünde," said Peter Profe, one of the curators at the new museum. "Previous attempts to develop the site have been about as sensitive as proposing to open a supermarket on the site of a former concentration camp." Visitors to the completed sections of the exhibition - it will be two-thirds finished by next month - are already left in no doubt about the importance of Peenemünde for the Nazi regime. The first section of the exhibition is devoted to the inaugural flight of the V2 rocket on October 3, 1942, the first time in history that a missile entered outer space. Original film of the take-off is offset by the voice of the Nazi propaganda minister, Josef Göbbels, glorifying the new "wonder weapon" specifically designed to terrorise Britain.

Wall-sized photographs of the destruction caused in London by the V2 and the earlier V1 flying bomb are coupled with private snapshots of German technicians, officers and their wives enjoying the almost holiday-like atmosphere of the Peenemünde base. Such images contrast sharply with the horrific conditions experienced by more than 20,000 foreign slave and concentration camp labourers who perished through starvation and maltreatment while constructing the V1 rocket at "Dora", the underground Nazi armaments factory in Thuringia, central Germany. A Polish slave-labour survivor of the Dora factory recalls how Wernher von Braun visited the works and seemed "completely unperturbed" by the piles of corpses. Further evidence exposes the role played by Heinrich Lübke, the former West German federal president, as one of the organisers of Nazi slave labour at Peenemünde and at Dora. For decades, allegations by Communist East Germany that Lübke was a "war criminal" were dismissed by West Germany as propaganda. The Peenemünde museum is still working on plans for a further exhibit to explain the background to the RAF's raid on the site in August 1943.

Codenamed "Hydra", it was one of the largest single bombing sorties ever carried out by Britain and led to production of the V2 being evacuated to Thuringia. Organisers of the exhibition have gone to great lengths to underline the ultimate military failure of the V2. More than 3,000 of the rockets were aimed at London, Antwerp and Brussels during the closing stages of the war. Although they killed 2,774 people in Britain their use failed to alter the course of the war as Hitler had hoped. The V1 flying bomb claimed more than 8,000 lives, but its effect was also of minor military significance. Development of both weapons, however, ultimately accelerated Nazi Germany's defeat. They devoured millions of marks which most historians conclude would have been better spent on improving the German army's tank capability on the Russian Front. Extermination, Work, and Community in the Dora-Mittelbau Concentration Camp System Major changes took place in the camps between 1943 and 1945.

The heavy reliance of the armaments industry on slave labor, the growth in the number of exterior sub-camps and work gangs, and the great expansion of the sheer number of prisoners made this a dynamic period in the concentration camp system's history, one much different than earlier periods at places such as Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Flossenburg. It was partially the war situation itself, and partially the designs of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to subsume war production under the aegis of his organization, that led to the creation of Dora. By the middle of 1943, Germany's crumbling hegemony over Europe was forcing a reassessment of the military potential of more conventional weapons as well as armaments production in general. To make matters worse for the Nazi regime, Germany also faced a severe shortage of labor to staff factories in the armaments industry. German authorities increasingly turned to forced and slave labor to make up for the shortfall.

Forced labor had been in use at Peenemünde since 1940, but after the bombing of the ultra-secret rocket research facility at Peenemünde on the Baltic coast, Himmler convinced Hitler to move rocket production underground and, in order to maintain the strictest secrecy considerations possible, use concentration camp prisoners to produce the weapon. Before rocket production could be transferred underground, suitable facilities had to be created. The site chosen by the SS and civilian engineers was a secret oil depot in a mine in the Harz Mountains near the town of Nordhausen in central Germany. To prepare the site for mass rocket production, the tunnels needed to be expanded and production machinery installed. This was accomplished by SS and civilian authorities at an enormous cost in human life. From September 1943 through March 1944, prisoners transferred by the SS from Buchenwald to Dora worked under the most brutal conditions. Production planners, who gave absolute priority to factory installation, had little regard for their safety or well-being. They slept in the tunnel galleries, and hygienic conditions were catastrophic.

During the winter of 1943-44, inbound trains from Buchenwald delivered more and more prisoners to replace those who died in the tunnels or were too weak to work and sent to be gassed at Majdanek. Suitable barracks for the prisoners were not erected until May 1944. The camp dynamic at Buchenwald was initially responsible for relations between prisoners at Dora. Political prisoners at Buchenwald, the so-called "Reds," were in charge of most of the important prisoner functionary positions and were able to have many German criminal prisoners, the "Greens," sent to Dora, where they in turn were put in charge of many important functions. Eventually, the Reds managed to seize control of the important positions at Dora and relegated the Greens to the key positions in satellite camps such as Ellrich and Harzungen, thereby making even worse the terrible disparity between conditions at Dora and the sub-camps. Sellier shows that the greens, reduced to subordinate positions at Buchenwald and Dora, had the opportunity to vent their frustration and did not hesitate to take it.

Moreover, their deep-seated xenophobia was played out on the other nationalities within the camps as they murderously beat average prisoners in the various work Kommandos. The harder the Kommando, the stronger the national antagonisms". Through their physical abuse and twisted supervision of the work, they were responsible for working many prisoners to death. This deadly arrangement of the prisoners' living and working conditions exacerbated rivalries between nationalities in the Dora camp system. For Sellier, the Soviet prisoners, usually Russians and Ukrainians, were the most rapacious of the various ethnic groups, stealing from, beating, and cheating their fellow prisoners. Poles formed a proletariat deprived of any national political or cultural framework. They did not have a good reputation; in fact, they were often detested by Western prisoners, particularly the French. Czechs, many of whom had German language ability and a certain level of organizational prowess, held many important positions, both in the camp and in the factory, and were respected by other inmates somewhat more than the Polish and Soviet prisoners. French prisoners were often given privileged positions in the camp hierarchy. Some were even able to reconstitute resistance groups and engage, with varying levels of success, in sabotage in the factory.

After the period of factory installation, many workers were sent to these camps, which sprang up in the region in mid-1944 and afterwards, when construction on the camp intended for factory workers was finishing and the last inhabitants of the tunnels were being transferred out. There was simply not enough room for all of the prisoners at Dora. New camps had to be built to house the excess captives. At the same time, the civilian workers needed to be housed. A great deal of construction still remained to be done outside the tunnel after the factory was completed, and labor in the satellite camps was free and plentiful. SS captors piled their victims into them with little regard for food, sanitary conditions, or the elements. These camps supplied the labor for digging out underground galleries, civil engineering projects on the surface, and generally enabling the outfitting and servicing of the vast industrial complex that was to be set up underground. With such a vast supply of prisoner labor and more pouring in almost daily, the SS did not give any regard to the needs of the prisoners who worked in these camps and on these construction projects. Their very numbers made the prisoners expendable.

The death rate at Dora and in the underground factory, where a degree of skill and training was necessary to carry out the work, steadied and even declined from May 1944 through January 1945. Conversely, at the sub-camps, where earth-moving and materials transport required little skill, the death rate remained murderously high. The end result, it seems, was a system that did not kill on the basis of Nazi racial values, but rather used the functional criteria of professional skill as a determinant of human worth. Relations between the prisoners and civilian employees, most often skilled technical supervisors or engineers, were usually acceptable and sometimes cordial. Most of the civilians involved in setting up the factory came from Peenemünde or were sub-contracted employees of subsidiary firms. For the most part, they left the disciplining of prisoners to the Kapos and SS, and were, in fact, expressly forbidden by the SS to punish prisoners. Nevertheless, in the factory transport Kommando, where, incidentally, skilled labor was not required, civilians hit and abused prisoners. In general, however, the majority of civilians who worked with prisoners were indifferent. How did the engineers and technicians justify using concentration camp labor to mass produce rockets?

For those civilians who did intervene in the day to day life of the prisoners either in a positive or negative sense, did they do so out of humane considerations or economic and military necessity? There was the complicity of prisoner functionaries and the SS and political and national antagonisms between prisoners. The SS wardens were the central feature in the structure of abuse at Dora-Mittelbau. This was particularly true during the factory installation phase, when SS guards hunted down all those they considered layabouts from every nook, of which, at the time, there was no lack, in particular young Ukrainians. It was reign of terror" . Even after mass production began and the role of the SS in the factory itself partially gave way to civilian authority, the prisoners' dread of the ever-present SS did not abate. It is estimated that of the 60,000+ detainees employed in and around the Mittelbau complex over a 20-month period, 26,500 did not survive.

One author attributes 15,500 of these deaths to the camps or to "transports", and 11,000 to the period in April 1945 when the camps were evacuated by the SS in the face of the American advance. This evacuation was especially barbaric. The SS shot prisoners, herded them into barns and burned them alive, left them to die if they were too sick to walk, or made them part of walking or rail convoys headed to other concentration camps. Each operational V2 to come off the Mittelwerk line cost about six terrible deaths. Historians have largely ignored the important element of slave labor community in the historiography on forced and slave labor across Nazi dominated Europe. Dora-Mittelbau complex was not merely a site dedicated to building Germany's "wonder weapons." It it was a massive construction project in which the murderous dynamic of slave labor under the Nazis was fully realized. The cumulative radicalization of Hitler's Germany in the closing years of the war reached its crescendo in these projects at Dora-Mittelbau.

By February 1945, the Allied offensive in Europe was striking toward the heart of Germany On January 27, 1945, with the Russian forces closing in on Berlin, the first refugee caravans had reached the outskirts of Berlin with stories of the brutal behavior of the Red Army, and a wave of terror swept through the city. Many citizens, however, still had faith in Göbbels' promise that wonder weapons would save Germany at the last moment. By then, V-2s, developed at the experimental rocket station in Peenemünde under the leadership of 34-year-old Dr. Wernher von Braun, were causing havoc in London, Antwerp and Liege. One of the men responsible for creating these Wunderwaffen (miracle weapons), General-Major Walter Dornberger, was holding a conference in Berlin. He had just been entrusted with the job of producing a missile that would unerringly destroy and plane attempting to attack Germany.

The 10 members of "Working Staff Dornberger," after reviewing the many experiments made in this field--from nonguided anti-aircraft rockets to remote-controlled missiles for launching from ground or air--concluded that their only chance for success was to concentrate on a few projects. They agreed to retain only four guided anti-aircraft rockets. Meanwhile, in Peenemünde, at the mouth of the Oder, Dr. von Braun, the technical director of the rocket station, was holding a secret meeting with his chief assistants. Together they had developed the A-4, a rocket they regarded as the first step to space flight. But Hitler saw it as a long-range weapon, and Göbbels had renamed it the V-2, Vengeance Weapon-2. Dr. von Braun explained to his assistants that he had called the meeting because of conflicting orders received that day--both from SS officials. SS-Obergruppenführer Dr. Hans Kammler, named special commissioner of the project by Himmler, had sent a teletype directing that the rocketeers be moved to central Germany, while Himmler himself, as commander of Army Group Vistula, had dispatched a message ordering all of Dr.

von Braun's engineers to join the Vokssturm, the Peoples' Army, so that they could help defend the area from the approaching Red Army. "Germany has lost the war," Dr. von Braun continued, "but let us not forget that it was our team that first succeeded in reaching outer space. . . . We have suffered many hardships because of our faith in the great peacetime future of the rocket. Now we have an obligation. Each of the conquering powers will want our knowledge. The question we must answer is: To what country shall we entrust our heritage?" A suggestion that they stay and turn themselves over to the Russians was emphatically rejected; they finally voted unanimously to surrender to the United States Army. The first step was to obey Dr. Kammler's order and evacuate to the west. There was no time to lose; preparations for the move would take more than two weeks, and they could already hear the faint rumble of Zhukov's artillery to the south. In mid-November 1944, American and British forces had entered Germany and were approaching the Rhine River.

By March 9, 1945, American forces had succeeded in seizing the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen and had established a bridgehead on the east bank. Twelve supersonic V-2s were launched toward the bridge from Holland. They landed in a scattered pattern, with only one causing any appreciable damage when it hit a house 300 yards east of the bridge, killing three Americans. Dr. von Braun, who was recovering at Nordhausen from a serious automobile accident--his torso and left arm were still encased in a huge cast--heard a report on Easter Sunday that American tanks were only a few miles to the south. He was afraid the SS would follow the Führer's "scorched earth" policy and destroy the tons of precious V-2 documents and blueprints. Dr. von Braun instructed his personal aide, Dieter Huzel, and Bernhard Tessmann, chief designer of the Peenemünde test facilities, to hide the documents in a safe place. It took three Opel trucks to carry the 14 tons of papers. The little convoy headed north on April 3 toward the nearby Harz Mountains.

By the end of the day Tessmann and Huzel found an abandoned iron mine in the isolated village of Dornten. Thirty-six hours later, all of the documents had been hauled by a small locomotive into the heart of the mine and hand-carried into the powder magazine. On April 10, work in the underground V-2 factory at Nordhausen stopped. The rocket specialists, engineers and workers--4,500 of them--scattered to their homes, and the slave workers were returned to the nearby concentration camp. The next morning, April 11, Task Force Welborn of the 3rd Armored Division approached Nordhausen from the north as Task Force Lovelady came in from the south. Both commanders had been alerted by Intelligence to "expect something a little unusual in the Nordhausen area." They thought at first this meant the town's concentration camp, containing about 5,000 decayed bodies. But several miles northwest of Nordhausen, in the foothills of the Harz, they ran into other prisoners in dirty striped pajamas who told them there was "something fantastic" inside the mountain.

The two commanders peered into a large tunnel and saw freight cars and trucks loaded with long, slender finned missiles. With Major William Castille, the combat command's intelligence officer, they walked into the bowels of the mountain, where they found a complex factory. V-1 and V-2 parts were laid out in orderly rows, and precision machinery stood in perfect working order. When Colonel Holgar Toftoy, Chief of Ordnance Technical Intelligence in Paris, learned of the amazing find, he began organizing "Special Mission V-2." Its job was to evacuate 100 complete V-2s and ship them to White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico. Dr. Wernher von Braun and his leading V-2 scientists voluntarily surrendered to the U.S. 44th Division. Almost as important was the recovery of the 14 tons of V-2 documents hidden by Tessman and Huzel in the Dornten iron mine. Despite a slow start, Colonel Toftoy's "Special Mission V-2," led by Major James Hamill, also succeeded in its mission. One hundred complete V-2s were evacuated only hours before the Russians occupied the area.

Major Hamill had been ordered to remove the rockets "without making it obvious that we had looted the place," yet, curiously, was not told that Nordhausen would be in the Soviet zone. Consequently, it never occurred to him to destroy the remaining rockets. By April 19, 1945, the Russian high command announced that the Russian drive on Berlin had begun. By April 28, elements of the First United States Army had linked up with the Russians at Torgau. In Berlin, Hitler committed suicide on April 30 and Admiral Dönitz was placed in charge. German forces surrendered on May 7, and victory in Europe was declared. Shortly after VE Day, Magnus von Braun, brother of Professor von Braun, was sent as an emissary to contact the American authorities and inform them that a large number of the Peenemünde scientists and technicians, who had scattered to the four winds after the collapse of the Nazi regime, were living in small villages throughout the Alps. This was the beginning of "Operation Overcast" which was renamed Operation Paperclip.

The American authorities, realizing the progress that had been made by German scientists in the field of guided missiles, saw a chance to gain from their experience and start not from scratch but from the Germans left off. Approximately 150 of the best scientists and technicians were rounded up and, after preliminary interrogation and background investigations by U.S. intelligence agencies, were offered five-year contracts to come to the United States and work for the U.S. Army. In turn, we promised to provide housing for their families, who had to remain Germany until arrangements could be made to bring them to the United States. The first group of seven guided-missile scientists signed by contract under Operation Paperclip arrived at Fort Strong, New York, September 20, 1945, and from there were taken to Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland. Here, in the tightly guarded Industrial Area, in the midst of secret military developments of all kinds, but always with a GI escort, these scientists carried on the work began at Peenemünde. The research at Aberdeen was concerned with the processing of German guided-missile documents captured by U.S. military forces.

Here, these men scanned thousands of documents, all of them stamped "GEHEIM," the equivalent of "SECRET." It is impossible to estimate the amount of time and money saved by having these scientists and technicians available to assist us in segregating, cataloging, evaluating and translating more than 40 tons of documents. The purpose of the project at Aberdeen was to provide Fort Bliss, Texas, and White Sands Proving Ground, where an additional 120 German scientists and technicians were working of the development and testing of guided missiles, with documents or translations thereof. Operation Paperclip came to a fitting conclusion with the naturalization of the first group of more than 50 German scientists and technicians on November 11, 1954, in Birmingham, Alabama. German V-2 Rocket in World War II Warhead: 2,200 lbs. Amatol[/ul V-2 Rocket - Design & Development: In the early 1930s, the German military began seeking out new weapons which would not violate the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Assigned to aid in this cause, Captain Walter Dornberger, an artilleryman by trade, was ordered to investigate the feasibility of rockets.

Contacting the Verein fur Raumschiffarht (German Rocket Society), he soon came in contact with a young engineer named Wernher von Braun . Impressed with the VfR's work, Dornberger recruited von Braun to aid in developing liquid-fueled rockets for the military in August 1932. Commencing work with a team of 80 engineers at Kummersdorf, von Braun created the small A2 rocket in late 1934. While somewhat successful, the A2 relied on a primitive cooling system for its engine. Pressing on, von Braun's team moved to larger facility at Peenemunde on Baltic coast, the same facility that developed the V-1 flying bomb , and launched the first A3 three years later. Intended to be smaller prototype of the A4 war rocket, the A3's engine lacked endurance and problems quickly emerged regarding its control systems and aerodynamics. Accepting that the A3 was a failure, the A4 was postponed while the problems were dealt with using the smaller A5. The first major issue to be addressed was constructing an engine powerful enough to lift the A4.

This became a seven-year development process that led to the invention of new fuel nozzles, a prechamber system for mixing oxidizer and propellant, a shorter combustion chamber, and a shorter exhaust nozzle. Next designers were forced to create a guidance system for the rocket that would allow it to reach the proper velocity before shutting off the engines. The result of this research was the creation of an early inertial guidance system which would allow the A4 to hit a city-size target at a range of 200 miles. As the A4 would be traveling at supersonic speeds, the team was forced to conduct repeated tests of possible shapes for the A4. While supersonic wind tunnels were built at Peenemunde, they were not completed in time and many of the aerodynamic tests were conducted on a trial and error basis with conclusions based on informed guesswork. A final issue that was overcome was developing a radio transmission system which could relay information about the rocket's performance to controllers on the ground. Attacking the problem, the scientists at Peenemunde created one of the first telemetry systems to transmit data.

V-2 Rocket - Production: Early in World War II , Hitler was not particularly enthusiastic about the rocket program believing that the weapon was simply a more expensive artillery shell with a longer range. As the conflict progressed, Hitler warmed to the program and on December 22, 1942, authorized the A4 to be produced as a weapon. Though production was approved, thousands of changes were made to the final design before the first production missiles were completed in early 1944. Initially, production of the A4, now re-designated the V-2, was slated for Peenemunde, Friedrichshafen, and Wiener Neustadt, as well as several smaller sites. This was changed in late 1943, after Allied bombing raids against Peenemunde and other V-2 sites erroneously led the Germans to believe their production plans had been compromised. As a result, production shifted to underground facilities at Nordhausen (Mittelwerk) and Ebensee. The only plant to be fully operational by war's end, the Nordhausen factory utilized slave labor from the nearby Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps.

It is believed that around 20,000 prisoners died while working at the Nordhausen plant, a number that far exceeded the number of casualties inflicted by the weapon in combat. During the war, over 5,700 V-2s were built at various facilities. V-2 Rocket - Operational History: Originally, plans called for the V-2 to be launched from massive blockhouses located at Éperlecques and La Coupole near the English Channel. This static approach was soon scrapped in favor of mobile launchers. Traveling in convoys of thirty trucks, the V-2 team would arrive at a staging area where the warhead was installed before towing it to the launch site on a Meillerwagen. There, the missile was placed on the launch platform, armed, fueled, and the gyros set. This set up took approximately 90 minutes and the launch team could clear an area in 30 minutes after launch. This mobile system proved highly successful and up to 100 missiles a day could be launched by German V-2 forces. Also, due to their ability to stay on the move, V-2 convoys were rarely caught by Allied aircraft.

The first V-2 attacks were launched against Paris and London on September 8, 1944. Over the next eight months, a total of 3,172 V-2 were launched at Allied cities including London, Paris, Antwerp , Lille , Norwich , and Liege . Due to the missile's ballistic trajectory and extreme speed which exceeded three times the speed of sound during descent, there was no existing and effective method for intercepting them. To combat the threat, several experiments were conducted involving radio jamming (the British erroneously though the rockets were radio-controlled) and massing anti-aircraft guns. These ultimately proved fruitless. V-2 attacks against English and French targets only decreased when Allied troops were able to push back Germans forces and place these cities out of range. The last V-2-related casualties in Britain occurred on March 27, 1945. Accurately placed V-2s could cause extensive damage and over 2,500 were killed and nearly 6,000 wounded by the missile. Despite these casualties, the rocket's lack of a proximity fuse reduced losses as it frequently buried itself in the target area before detonating which limited the effectiveness of the blast.

Unrealized plans for the weapon included development of a submarine-based variant as well as construction of the rocket by the Japanese. V-2 Rocket - Postwar: Highly interested in the weapon, both American and Soviet forces scrambled to capture existing V-2 rockets and parts at the end of the war. In the conflict's final days, 126 V-2 related scientists, including von Braun and Dornberger, surrendered to American troops and assisted in further testing the missile before coming to the United States. While American V-2s were tested at the White Sands Proving Ground, Soviet V-2s were taken to Kapustin Yar. In 1947, an experiment (Operation Sandy) was conducted by the US Navy which saw the successful launch of a V-2 from the deck of USS Midway (CV-41). Working to develop more advanced rockets, von Braun's team at White Sands used variants of the V-2 up until 1952. The world's first successful large, liquid-fueled rocket, the V-2 broke new ground and was the basis for the rockets later used in the American and Soviet space programs.

Peenemunde Peenemunde Destruction to tunnel for V2 Bunker site at Saumur. On June 8th the crew carried out two attacks in France, on the railway tunnel at Samur, and at St Pol on the 25th. Later their missions would be directed at a new and frightening range of secret weapons that were to be used by Hitler in his last frantic attempts to destroy London. As far back as 1929 developments were in progress by German scientist Dr Paul Schmidt with his invention of a pulse duct jet engine...in 1935 his pulse engine was displayed to the German air ministry, his suggestion to them was to use it as a flying torpedo, but little interest was shown.

In 1942, his now named Argos pulse engine was demonstrated to Field Marshal Ehard Milch who saw great potential in the scientists ideas and how it could be used to destroy British cities, he now recruited air-craft designer Robert Lutzer who confirmed that this engine and his design could be used as a pilot-less missile, and so "Project Cherrystone" was launched and the new missile now given the code number of Fi 103.The cost of each V1 built was £125, the same price in 1944 as a volkswagen car! V1 - The first flying pilotless missile. Bomber Command had learnt through photo-reconnaissance missions and Intelligence reports that new secret weapons the V1and V2 rockets were being tested on the Baltic coast, at Peenemunde.

Fearing that these would be used against Britain Churchill ordered “Operation Crossbow” to take priority with Bomber Command, so the R.A.F ordered 597 heavy-bombers to attack the site on August 17, 1943, the site was bombed killing 735 people and many scientists, including one of the most important Dr Tiel, who was the technician behind the (A4) V2 rocket engine. Although the raid was deemed successful, it only held up production for 3 or so months. On this one mission alone, the R.A.F lost 40 bombers and 270, aircrew. The main intention of the German air ministry now was to produce a minimum of 3,500 V1s per month…when the final production amount was reached and launch sites built and ready…The Germans would launch their new terror weapon…at a rate of 1 every 12 minutes, day and night…at least 500 a day…at London!!! Due to severe difficulties in its gyroscopic guidance mechanism and the jet propulsion engine, the German High Command realised that the earliest date for an attack on Britain would be March 1944.

Question: Where, on the Baltic coast, was the German missile site where V1 rockets were designed and built?
Answer: PEENEMUNDE