ROUND THREE: THE V–2s

The subsonic V–1 could be shot down by interceptors and antiaircraft guns, but there was no defense against a ballistic missile in flight. The best defense seemed to be air attacks against every aspect of its production, transportation, and launching. Accurate intelligence on the V–2 had been difficult to acquire. The British were unaware that V–2s could be launched from mobile platforms and had insisted on pounding the seven large sites in France in the mistaken belief that they were launching silos. During July and August 1944, RAF bombers dropped 12,000-pound bombs, called “Tallboys,” in an effort to destroy those large sites. Later investigation revealed little about their true purpose; some sites apparently were used as liquid-oxygen manufacturing centers, others as storage bunkers for a variety of weapons and as command and control centers for the Wehrmacht units firing V–1s and V–2s. If the Germans had ever intended to use those sites as missile silos, such plans had been abandoned shortly after the CROSSBOW campaign began in December 1943.

On August 25, 1944, the Joint CROSSBOW Target Priorities Committee prepared a plan to acquire aerial reconnaissance of suspected V–2 launching points and forward and rearward storage depots, and then to bomb them, along with liquid-oxygen plants. Other missions would destroy rail bridges and V-weapons production plants in Germany and Austria. Previously the RAF Bomber Command and Eighth Air Force had expended most of their CROSSBOW energy against modified sites, some storage depots, a few airfields, and a handful of strategic targets such as liquid-oxygen plants. When the V–1 bombardment faltered on September 1, however, Allied war leaders began to wonder if the V–2 would ever be deployed and placed on hold the “Plan for Attack on the German Rocket Organization When Rocket Attacks Commence.”

After the surprise V–2 attack on London on September 8, the Allies decided not to divert further bomber resources from POINTBLANK. First, they reasoned, the V–2 of 1944 was not nearly the threat that the British had anticipated in 1943. A physical examination of the first few V–2s to strike London revealed that their warheads were no greater than the explosive payload that a V–1 could deliver—less than one ton of high explosive. True, its unexpected arrival made the V–2 an effective terror weapon. Intelligence estimates, however, suggested that the Germans had produced far fewer V–2s than V–1s, so the British judged the V–2s to be less a threat in September than the V–1s had been in June.

Second, the V-weapons were no longer being launched purely as retaliation against London, but were now sent against Paris as well. That expanded the purpose of the enemy campaign from undermining British morale to destroying Allied morale. Again, the British reasoned, this weakened the V-threat. How could French morale be lowered by terror bombing when most of the country had just been liberated after four years of brutal occupation? V-weapon attacks against the French would fail, as would later ones against the Belgians.

In a single massive raid on September 17, 1944, RAF Bomber Command flew about 700 sorties over Holland and dropped more than 3,800 tons of bombs against airfields suspected of basing the He–111s that air launched V–1s against London. Except for a few Eighth Air Force raids in September and December, the airfields’ bombardment marked the final use of heavy bombers against V-targets. In September and thereafter, the Allies flew less than 1,000 heavy bomber sorties and dropped about 48,000 tons of bombs on airfields and suspected V–2 production plants. By now they had learned that V–2s were being launched from mobile platforms, which were difficult targets for bombers to locate and destroy.

Much to the delight of USAAF commanders like Spaatz and Doolittle, the British finally acquiesced to U.S. insistence on using minimum altitude fighter-bomber attacks against the small, well-hidden modified sites and V–2 launch platforms remaining in Holland and Germany. Aircraft from the Ninth Air Force and RAF Second Tactical Air Force strafed or bombed those targets relentlessly in more than 10,000 sorties, dropping about 2,000 tons of ordnance by war’s end.

In October 1944, Allied leaders realized that the focus of the V-threat had shifted to the continent, specifically against Antwerp, a critical resupply port for Allied armies on the German border. On October 9, Eisenhower asked the Air Ministry to transfer intelligence operations on CROSSBOW activities to SHAEF, a move accomplished by October 24. By mid-December, SHAEF had created a continental CROSSBOW organization responsible for gathering intelligence and using it to strike at any V-targets not captured by Allied troops. Destructive, yet ineffective, German attacks failed to stop the Allied advance.

The Continental CROSSBOW organization received one last shock during the winter of 1944–1945. The German army unexpectedly counterattacked the Allies in what came to be known as the Battle of the Bulge. New Nazi weapons appeared in the skies over Germany, including turbojet and rocket-powered fighters, turbojet bombers, and other novel technologies. There were rumors that the enemy was about to unleash a V–3 long-range intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit cities on the Atlantic seaboard of the United States. It seemed possible; captured German technicians suggested that there once had been plans to use the large sites as silos for that type of missile. By February 1945, however, Allied leaders decided that such weapons, even if developed, could not be used before the collapse of Germany, which took place in late April and early May 1945.