Vergeltungswaffe
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Vergeltungswaffe (German for "retaliation weapon", "reprisal weapon" or "vengeance weapon") was a term assigned during World War II by the Nazis to a number of revolutionary superweapons, the V-1 flying bomb, the V-2 rocket and the V-3 cannon.
As early as a June 28, 1940 meeting of Army Ordnance chief Leebe and Walther von Brauchitsch, a terror bombing rationale had been advanced for the A-4 rocket.[1] However, on June 24, 1944 Joseph Goebbels' official Propagandaministerium announcement of the Vergeltungswaffe 1 implied there would be more such weapons.[2][3] After the first operational launch in September 1944, the V-2 rocket was promptly dubbed Vergeltungswaffe 2 in official circles,[4] although no one knows exactly who gave it this name.[5] The rocket manual distributed to batteries in late August 1944 refers to the rocket as the A-4.[6]
The letter V was also used for Versuchsmuster (experimental)[7] (see also List of V-2 test launches).
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[edit] V1
The V1 was the first guided missile used in war and the forerunner of today's cruise missile. The V-1 was developed at Peenemünde by the German Luftwaffe during the Second World War. Between June 1944 and 29 March 1945, around 8,000 V1s were fired at targets in southeastern England (mostly London) and Belgium (mostly Antwerp). V-1s were launched from "ski-jump" launch sites along the French (Pas-de-Calais) and Dutch coasts until the sites were overrun by Allied forces. Mobile launchers were also used.
The V-1 was designed by Robert Lussar of the Fieseler company and Fritz Gosslau from the Argus engine works, with a fuselage constructed mainly of welded sheet steel and wings built similarly or of plywood. The simple Pulse jet engine pulsed 50 times per second, and the characteristic buzzing sound gave rise to the colloquial names "buzz bomb" or "doodlebug" (after an Australian insect).
[edit] V2
The V-2 Rocket (German: Vergeltungswaffe 2) was the first ballistic missile and first man-made object launched into space, the progenitor of all modern rockets. Over 3,000 V-2s were launched by the German Wehrmacht against Allied targets in World War II.
The V2 was designed by Wernher von Braun and Walter Riedel as part of the Aggregate series of rockets. The three key technologies for the V2 were liquid-fuel rocket engines, supersonic aerodynamics, and guidance and control.
[edit] V3
The V-3 cannon was not a single cannon but an underground complex of 25 guns, designed to lob shells at London from its site at Mimoyecques, France. The "London gun" consisted of five shafts each containing five 500-foot-long barrels, side by side.
Before it became operational, the complex at Mimoyecques was attacked by the Royal Air Force on 6 July 1944, with Tallboy bombs. One Tallboy ripped a corner off the 20-foot-thick concrete roof and completely blocked one of the gun shafts. A near miss collapsed another shaft and made a third shaft unfit to use. After this event the Germans stopped working on the complex.[8]
[edit] V-Weapons effect
Intended to turn the war back in Germany's favour, the accuracy and hence the military effectiveness of the V weapons was low. They did, however, have an important psychological effect both in Germany and in the countries attacked with them.
[edit] Economics of the V-Weapons
Historians have suggested that the huge resources diverted from conventional forces to the V weapon programs at Hitler's insistence contributed to the defeat of Nazi Germany; e.g. the 11,000 tons of (low grade) petrol needed for 20,000 V-1s could have been used in German tanks immobilised by lack of fuel. The V-2 project was limited by Germany’s maximum ethanol (ethyl alcohol) production of 30,000 tons per annum, although some methanol was added to eke it out. Germany was also so short of explosives that they were being diluted with rock salt. Professor Willi Messerschmitt told Hitler in June 1943 that unless 80,000 to 100,000 V-weapons per month could be achieved, the entire program should be scrapped, as even 50% of that would be ineffective.[9]
One estimate is that the V-2 project cost two billion marks, and this amount was comparable (at 4.2 marks to the dollar) to the proportion of the Allied economies spent on the Manhattan Project, though the actual expenditure on the atom bomb was more than four times as much because of the much larger Allied economic base. Holsken however cited an American estimate that the total cost for the V-1 & V-2 (mainly for the V-2) was 3 billion dollars (or 7.5 billion reichmarks at the 1940 rate of 2.49 marks to the dollar).[1][9][10]
[edit] Military Effectiveness
Hitler believed that the V-weapons would turn the tide of the war by devastating London and forcing Britain's withdrawal from the war. However, the countermeasures that the V-1 had to face (anti-aircraft guns on the south coast of England and RAF fighters) proved effective.
The V-2 was unstoppable with the technology of the time, and was used to target London, the Netherlands and Paris. But to be effective, the V-2 had either to be much bigger, much more numerous or much more accurate - perhaps all three.[9]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b Neufeld, Michael J (1995). The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era. New York: The Free Press, p137,237.
- ^ Johnson (1981/1982). V-1, V-2: Hitler’s Vengeance on London. Stein and Day, p20,68.
- ^ Huzel, Dieter K (1960). Peenemünde to Canaveral. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall, p80.
- ^ Irving, David (1964). The Mare's Nest. William Kimber and Co, p288.
- ^ Klee, Ernst; Merk, Otto (1963, English translation 1965). The Birth of the Missile:The Secrets of Peenemünde. Hamburg: Gerhard Stalling Verlag, p47.
- ^ McGovern, J (1964). Crossbow and Overcast. New York: W. Morrow, p80.
- ^ Hinsley, F. H. British Intelligence in the Second World War (1993, HMSO London; Abridged one-volume edition) ISBN 0 11 630956 3
- ^ V-3
- ^ a b c Irons, Roy (2003). Hitler's Terror Weapons: The Price of Vengeance. Harpersport, p166-169. ISBN 0007112637.
- ^ Holsken, Dieter V Missiles of the Third Reich (1994, Monogram Aviation Publications Sturbridge) page 248
