On the morning of 8 September 1944, Germany introduced a new secret weapon to its already
deadly WW2.
It came out of nowhere and caused a massive explosion in Paris.
There was nothing to compare it to.
The weapon was part of Germany's Wunderwaffe, its miracle weapons program, created in a
last-ditch effort to shift the war's balance in the Third Reich's favor.
The V2 rocket, nicknamed the Retribution Weapon 2, was the world's first long-range guided
ballistic missile.
No defensive systems of the time could do anything to counter the weapon, and V2s rarely
failed to reach their targets.
They were extremely fast, powerful, and precise.
The Allied forces, desperate to find an effective way to counter the V2's sheer effectiveness,
realized that there was only one way to avoid further destruction.
The solution was destroying the secret German military bases where they were assembled.
Operation Crossbow's objective was simple.
Find the enemy bases where the V2s were located and blow them to smithereens.
But things weren't going to be that easy.
The Allies soon realized that there were not two, or four, or 10 research facilities, but
more than 50 scattered all over Europe.
A race against time was undertaken to destroy them all before the bombs could disrupt American
supply lines in France.
Everything seemed lost to the Allies until an innovative method created by the British
Intelligence seemed to offer hope.
Cutting-edge 3D photography would reveal where the V2 launch sites were hidden...
Vengeance Weapons
World War II began in 1939 when The Third Reich and the Soviet Union attacked Poland
and divided the country into two blocks.
One became part of Germany and the other of the USSR.
After months of tension, Belgium, France, and the British Empire declared war on Germany
for other countries' occupation in Northern Europe.
After the astonishing and effective Blitzkrieg campaigns, Germany took over most of Europe
except for neutral and allied nations.
Everything went well for the German Heer until 1943.
After the initial success of Operation Barbarossa, the Soviets, supported by the Americans and
the British, began to counter-attack.
Simultaneously, American and British bombers slowly but steadily increased their bombing
raids over German cities like Hamburg, Lubeck, and Dresden.
These bombing raids did not distinguish between military and civilian targets, which caused
severe and permanent damages to historic buildings, alongside tragic civilian casualties.
Every structure, military and non-military alike, was crushed in Operation Gomorrah,
appropriately referencing the Old Testament Biblical city destroyed by fire and brimstone.
Al Murray', in his new show 'Why does everyone hate the English?'
cited a Royal Air Force at Bomber Command that once said (QUOTE):
'The Government, for excellent reasons, has preferred the world to think that we still
held some scruples and attacked only what the humanitarians are pleased to call Military
Targets.
I can assure you, gentlemen, that we tolerate no scruples.'
The Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, angry at the destruction that Allied bombers were causing to German
cities, demanded to make the Allies pay for what they had done.
With a desire for payback, Hitler immediately ordered the production of a secret wonder
weapon that had been in development since the beginning of the conflict.
It was the Vergeltungswaffen, or Retribution Weapon 2, the V2- rocket.
As its name said, the weapon would avenge the civilian casualties and damage done to
German cities by Allied bombing raids.
V-2 rockets were an evolution of the V1, an early cruise missile.
However, the V2 was larger, faster, and more potent than its predecessor.
The rocket was 14 meters feet tall and equipped with a 907 kg amatol warhead at the tip.
Its size gave it a range of 320 km with a maximum speed of 5760 km/h.
This rocket was fast, really fast.
Its speed and range made it practically impossible to intercept.
Allied attempts at jamming the V-2's guidance system was useless because the warhead did
not use radio guidance.
Instead, the V2 rocket was guided by gyroscopes and an analog computer that continually monitored
its course to adjust it accordingly.
The V2 was intended to be launched from complexes similar to modern missile silos.
But Allied bombing raids and the infantry advances on the ground forced the military
to rely on mobile launch platforms that were moved continuously to avoid being targeted
by enemy aircraft.
More than 5,500 V-2 rockets were built between 1943 and 1945, with almost 100 launched every
day since the first hit Paris in November 1944.
The rockets wreak havoc on Allied cities.
Between 5,000 to 9,000 military and civilian personnel lost their lives, and 30,000 injured
were injured by the damage caused by the V2s.
Operation Crossbow
During the first months of 1943, Allied bombing raids were quickly escalating in Germany.
By May, members of the High Command had already envisioned the possibilities of launching
an amphibious assault on the Northern and Southern coasts of France to begin the liberation
of Europe.
During these days, while conducting air surveillance of enemy activity, Allied recon aircraft identified
the construction of various German facilities in Northern France.
Simultaneously, other secret facilities were spotted across Germany and the Scandinavian
countries.
Some Allied officers feared that the Germans were building chemical or biological weapons.
Others believed that it was a strategy to distract the Allies from the bombing raids.
Through Polish intelligence, the British Secret Intelligence Service received valuable reports
that Germany was working on a secret rocket at Peenemünde, where a facility was located.
Wishing to stop any weapon development that could favor the Germans, the War Cabinet Defence
Committee decided to take action.
During a meeting, held in June, Churchill said (QUOTE):
"Peenemünde is … beyond the range of our radio navigation beams and … we must bomb
by moonlight, although the German night fighters will be close at hand and it is too far to
send our own.
Nevertheless, we must attack it on the heaviest possible scale."
The result was Operation Hydra, launched on 17 August 1943.
This Royal Air Force Bomber Command mission's objective was to dismantle the German scientific
research center at Peenemünde.
For maximizing the accuracy and damage of the bombing raids, the British decided that
it would be best to attack during a full moon at 2,400 meters.
This was meant to diminish casualties and fulfill the secondary objectives, like destroying
the quarters where the facility's scientists and engineers lived.
During the nights of 17 and 18 August, the British 83 Squadron, a force of 500 bombers
under Captain John Searby's command, bombed the area.
They lost 215 aircrews and 40 bomber aircraft.
The Luftwaffe lost 12 night-fighters and more than 170 civilians, including scientists and
engineers, although no permanent damage was provoked to the facility itself.
To prevent more attacks on Peenemünde, the Germans painted signs of bomb damage to the
facility to fool Allied recon planes.
Scientist Siegfried Winter would write (QUOTE): "We … climbed on to the roofs … and painted
black and white lines to simulate charred beams."
The bombing was deemed a success because it forced the German military to rely on mobile
and not static launch sites for the V2 rockets.
Operation Hydra became the first of a series of bombing raids that the Allied Command would
eventually rename Operation Crossbow, intended to destroy any secret military of V2 rockets
launch facilities.
3D Recon Missions
In November 1943, British reconnaissance aircraft discovered the first of 96 sites for the V-1
and V-2 rockets.
The Allies tracked down these launch sites using photos taken with a stereoscope that
showed the enemy landscape in 3D.
The pictures allowed British photographic interpreters to measure height and other data
to identify hidden structures and launch sites across Europe.
The technique proved decisive for stopping the onslaught caused by the effective V2 rockets.
To render the 3D effect, images had to be captured in sequences that overlapped each
other by 60 percent so they could stand up when viewed through the stereoscope.
Pilots of the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit, aboard British Spitfires, took millions
of photographs to recreate highly detailed maps.
The Spitfires from this unit were unarmed, as they carried five cameras that left no
space for any type of armament.
Flying at 9,000 m, they could not afford to take any extra weight.
88-year-old Jimmy Taylor, a reconnaissance pilot and the only survivor from the unit,
told BBC (QUOTE): "We had no guns, no bullets, so I didn't kill anyone.
Physically, there's nothing left of the air fights, nothing left of the bombing - but
the photographs are still with us, and they're still useful."
From the last months of 1943 to Germany's surrender in May of 1945, British and American
bombers carried out bombing missions on most of the 96 launch sites to disrupt the launch
of the V2 rockets.
If it were not for the effectiveness of the 3D pictures, more than 9,000 lives would have
been claimed by the first ballistic missile.
Allan Williams, curator of The National Collection of Aerial Photography, in a report about the
operation, said to BBC (QUOTE): "Without this photographic intelligence, the Germans could
have launched potentially devastating attacks on Britain before D-Day that could have easily
changed the outcome of the war."
The V2s Legacy
Although the V2 rocket was an effective weapon with no real opposition since it was first
used, like many other wonder weapons, it came too late in the war to make a change in favor
of Germany.
Nevertheless, the V-2 left a lasting legacy.
Combined with nuclear weapons' introduction, it proved that the most important weapons
of the future would be ballistic missiles.
And the V2 rocket was the first of its kind.
After the war ended, the Soviets and the Allies tried to collect as much information from
the V-2 program as possible.
The earliest Soviet and American ballistic missiles of the Cold War were copies of the
V-2.
German scientists from the V-2 program, including its leader, Wernher von Braun, helped develop
other weapons for the US and the USSR at the Cold War height.
In Braun's case, he was directly involved in the US space program, helping NASA land
on the moon in 1969.