After the successful test in 1934 of what they called an A-2 rocket, the members of the new German rocket team, put together by General Walter Dornberger and led by Wernher von Braun, moved to a secret site near the village of Peenemunde in the far northeastern corner of Germany where they could test large-scale ballistic missiles.
As war with Britain and France became inevitable, General Dornberger wanted a rocket that could deliver two thousand pounds of explosives to a target 160 miles away. It had to be slender enough to be transported by road or rail, weigh no more than twelve tonsÑeight of which would be its liquid oxygen and alcohol fuel -- and be able to develop twenty-five tons of thrust, nearly twenty times more than the latest A-3 rocket.
After six years of battling monstrous technological problems, the A-4 was tested on October 3, 1942. It covered a distance of 118 miles in five minutes and broke the sound barrier (the first missile ever to do so) to reach an altitude of sixty milesÑthe edge of space. Dornberger knew he had something, and he pressed the minister of armaments to arrange a meeting with the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler.
On July 7, 1943, Dornberger and von Braun presented their work to Hitler. Going into the meeting, both von Braun and Dornberger were concerned that Hitler might expect too much of the A-4. Their worst fears were realized. The F┼╕hrer, notably unimpressed with rockets since 1939, watched impassively as Dornberger rolled the presentation film and von Braun gave his lecture on the A-4. Suddenly something clicked in Hitler's mind. "What I want," he said, "is annihilation -- annihilating effect!" Despite attempts by von Braun and Dornberger to downplay their rocket, Hitler perceived the A-4 as the magic wand with which he would destroy his enemies. He renamed the device the Vergeltungswaffe ("Vengeance Weapon") or V-2.
In a last desperate effort to reverse the course of the war, the first V-2s thundered toward Western Europe on September 7, 1944. The results of the rockets actually left the Allies relieved. The V-2 turned out to be more of a psychological terror than an apocalyptic weapon. Eighteen hundred V-2s landed on Antwerp, and another nine hundred struck London, killing a total of 2,700 civilians -- an average of one death per bomb. By some estimates, more slave laborers died producing the bombs at Peenemunde. Taken in the larger, strategic context of the war, the V-2s were a failure.
They did, however, dramatically demonstrate the powerful technology that von Braun's rocket team had created. The V-2s represented a remarkable piece of engineering, a good fifteen years ahead of American ballistic rocketry. And they hinted at the potential for destruction that future rockets would achieve.
