V-WEAPONS

Nothing advances weapons technology more than a war in progress, especially when a nation’s leaders act out of desperation because they know they cannot win by attrition or by conventional means. In 1917, both the Allies and Germany, enmeshed in trench warfare on the Western Front, looked hopefully toward the introduction of new weapons and techniques to break the military deadlock and win the war. These innovations —tanks, infiltration tactics, and strategic bombing—all eventually became staples of warfare.

The same thing happened in World War II. In 1937–1939, and again in 1942 when Hitler realized that the Axis would lose a two-front war of attrition, he directed German engineers and scientists to produce an array of versuchmuster (experimental) weapons in the hope that one or more of them might reverse the course of the war. Two of the most threatening Vweapons to come off the drawing board into actual production were the pilotless aircraft bomb (V–1) and the liquid-propellant rocket (V–2). Although it was deployed later, the V–2 was the first to receive significant research and development funding. The V-designation came from the German word Vergeltungswaffe or “vengeance.”

Solid-propellant barrage-and-bombardment rockets had entered European military arsenals in the nineteenth century, but the introduction of rifling and developments in metallurgy after 1840 improved the accuracy and range of artillery and forestalled further work on solid-propellant rockets. By the start of the twentieth century, however, new technology made it possible to produce and store liquid oxygen and prompted research in liquid-propellant rockets.

The military potential of such rockets did not escape the German army, which was proscribed from developing conventional armaments after World War I. In 1929, Col. Karl Emil Becker of the Reichswehr’s Heeres Waffenampt (Army weapons board) at the Ballistiche und Munitionsabteilung (ballistic and munitions department) directed a study of the military uses for rocket weapons. In 1930, he assigned staff officer Capt. Walter Dornberger to begin plans for two projects with vastly different objectives: solid-propellant rockets with a range of 5 to 5.6 miles, and liquid-propellant rockets that could carry a payload heavier than any existing artillery shell and fire further than any existing long rifle. Dornberger studied what private rocket enthusiasts were doing, and, in 1931, took notice of a young engineer, Wernher von Braun. Dornberger offered the eager von Braun employment at the Army’s Versuchsstelle (experimental station) at Kummersdorf-West, about seventeen miles south of Berlin.

From 1933 to 1937, the German rocket research program grew slowly but steadily. Under the careful management of Dornberger and von Braun, the liquid-propellant engine program proceeded by Aggregat (weapons series). In the “A” series, each new engine was larger than the preceding one, each step built on the experience gained before it. The A–4 rocket became what is now known as the V–2. Eventually plans called for rocket engines and staged rocket vehicles with sufficient range to hit New York City. Supported by Dornberger’s superiors on the general staff, the V–2 program had military specifications on size, weight, and range by 1936 (see “The V–2 Rocket” on page 4), together with a timetable for development, testing, and production. Dornberger marshaled the personnel and funding needed to support von Braun’s design team. To maintain secrecy, operations moved out of the Berlin suburbs in 1937, when the Wehrmacht Ordnance Division and the Luftwaffe began joint construction of the world’s first “rocket city”—an experimental research and development station at Peenemünde, Germany, on the Baltic coast.

After 1937, the pace of the Wehrmacht’s V–2 program quickened or slowed according to Hitler’s sense of desperation, which varied with the fortunes of war. The program received high priority in the years when Germany appeared likely to be trapped again in a two-front war of attrition. However, the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 and the rapid success of blitzkrieg against Poland, Norway, the Low Countries, and France brought a reversal, as it appeared that Germany would gain victory before a rocket engine could be developed. Even the country’s failure in the Battle of Britain in 1940 did not help Dornberger’s rocket development effort, and funding continued to decrease until late 1941 when the Nazi invasion of Russia stalled before Moscow and the United States entered the war.

With a shrewd sense of timing, Dornberger laid before Hitler plans and operational requirements for firing as many as 5,000 V–2s per year against the United Kingdom from the French coast. Plans called for an initial bombardment of London in 1943. Once again facing the specter of a war of attrition, Hitler restored top priority to the V-weapons programs in April 1942. He issued orders for full production and approved plans to manufacture rocket components in other parts of Germany and to construct rocket assembly and storage silos on the French coast. By October 1942, the V–2 development had achieved a range of 120 miles, sufficient to hit London from firing sites in the Pas de Calais.

At the same time that Hitler pushed the Wehrmacht’s V–2 program, he also supported the Luftwaffe’s development of another V-weapon, which the Allies designated the V–1. Although the Luftwaffe was committed to high-technology research and development projects on new kinds of aircraft, such as jet fighters and bombers and rocket fighters, it decided in 1942 to revive an old, “low-tech” concept: the pilotless aircraft bomb. Propelled by an air-breathing turbojet engine, the V–1 was the ancestor of the remarkable robotic devices known today as “cruise missiles”.

The concept of pilotless aircraft bombs first arose in World War I. In 1917, American engineers envisioned a simple and homely device, cheap to produce, theoretically easy to deliver by air or from the ground beyond the reach of enemy interdiction, with greater range than an artillery shell. They called it the “bug.” For a simple mission, such as flying in a straight line at the same altitude for a predetermined distance and then dropping on its target, an aircraft did not need a pilot. It needed only an engine, wings, stabilizers, and a fuel tank. The propeller rotated a fixed number of times and then shut off; the weapon yielded to momentum and gravity. Because missions were one-way, most of the craft could be devoted to being, rather than bearing, a payload or, in other words, a bomb. But the bug concept had several serious defects: a pilotless aircraft had little target accuracy, could not evade antiaircraft fire or enemy fighter patrols, and could be brought down by something as simple as a balloon or a net.

If Allied success in 1919 left no reason to continue developing the bug beyond the conceptual stage, the Germans’ desperation in World War II changed that. Within two years, 1942 to 1944, the Luftwaffe pushed the technology from drawing board to finished weapon system. Designed with a range of about 150 miles, a V–1 could hit a large target such as London if launched from France and pointed in the correct direction.

The Nazis had great hopes for the V–1 aircraft and V–2 missiles. They were intended to postpone an Allied invasion of continental Europe by destroying supply depots, debarkation ports, and troop concentrations in southern England. Failing that, three purposes remained: (1) to disrupt an invasion at the beachhead where troops and supplies would be concentrated; (2) to pose enough of a counterthreat from France to divert Allied bomber resources from the offensive against Nazi industry in Germany and central Europe; and (3) to demoralize the British civilian population by terror bombing and thereby weaken Britain’s prime minister, Winston Churchill.

Time was a critical factor and Germany could not afford delay. The Vweapons had to be operational and available in quantity to foil an Allied invasion by the summer of 1944. But bureaucratic and technical delays occurred. The first problem was that Hitler did not give V–1 and V–2 production the highest support until April 1942. Second, the designers of the V-weapons competed not only against each other for scarce resources, but also against German engineers and designers who wanted to produce new kinds of tanks, submarines, and aircraft. Third, all advocates of new technologies had to contend with those who favored conventional warfare. Each service—Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, and Waffen SS— struggled for a share of Germany’s resources, and within the various ministries of the Nazi government there was persistent factional infighting to command funding. Finally, Hitler interfered with the various research efforts on intuitive whim. Dornberger’s V–2 funding priority ground to a halt for two months in March 1943 because Hitler dreamed that the rocket would never reach England. It took two months of careful maneuvering to get Hitler to reverse his decision and restore top priority to the V–2. Hitler later admitted his mistake, but valuable time was lost. Although he gave an order in May 1943 to triple the scale of V–1 site construction in France and laid plans to fire over one hundred V–2 rockets (about one hundred tons of high explosives) daily against London, the first firing date for both programs had to be pushed back six months to January 15, 1944.

Following the bureaucratic delays were technical problems and slowdowns resulting from occasional shortages of components and materials. The Allied strategic bombing of German industry and transportation systems was taking its toll. The V–1s, ready in limited quantities by April 1944, came too late to disrupt the buildup of troops and supplies in England. Anticipating the D-Day invasion of June 1944, Hitler held back the V–1s he had available in France for a massed retaliation strike against London. Meanwhile, the technical complexity of the V–2s caused unexpected malfunctions, and they were not ready for firing until September 1944, months after the Allies went ashore in France.