alternative to a gun, even presuming that very large, long-range guns were useful or economic weapons themselves.
So would the weapon envisaged by Dornberger, Riedel and Von Braun, and paid for so copiously by the German army and people, have been worth the expense? Formidable though its capabilities would have been, there seems to be no real evidence that the rocketeers had planned definite tactics for the rocket, or had envisaged its precise role in a future battle, although Dornberger and Becker were both artillerymen. Were they themselves as carried away as General Von Fritsch had been by the ear splitting thunder of the rocket motor that they forgot its purpose? In Dornberger’s book there is much made of the superiority of the V2 over both the bomber and conventional artillery, much of the scientific advances and much of space travel, but there is no thoroughly worked out tactical plan for the rocket, such as would be expected from the German army. There is no definite scheme by which the rocket was to be integrated into the existing weaponry. Dornberger, in defence of the rocket, states that ‘the dispersal of the V2 in relation to its range was always less than that of bombs and big guns’.22 But a shell that misses its target is useless, no matter how marvellous the technology that despatched it over so many miles; and to multiply the shots to make up for the inaccuracy of a projectile, whatever the reason for its inaccuracy or the distance it has travelled in order to miss the target, is vastly expensive. Without air power, which meant that you could place an aeroplane safely above the target to observe your fall of shot, and to correct your aim, it was scarcely practicable at all. It was only useful if it was an adjunct to air power, rather than an alternative.
A British analysis of the V2 which resulted from interrogations of the German rocketeers just after the war, concluded that the V2 specification ‘was conceived not for the carrying out of any deeply laid strategic plan for the bombardment of England or any other country, or indeed with any clearly defined application in view. It was merely conceived as a “super gun”, which would impress those in the highest places …’23 Dornberger, when in 1952 he came to write in order to ‘end the confusion and correct mistaken ideas’, perhaps felt a need to explain the apparent folly to his countrymen (the book appeared in German two years before the English edition). But if it also made him appear a high-minded spaceflight enthusiast, then that was also to the good. In 1945, however, the rope was waiting for those whose service to the Fuehrer was suspected of being too morally indiscriminate, and to be certain to survive, the captured artillery Major General had to relate his tale with some caution.
Perhaps it is fair to say that it was not folly to develop the rocket, or at least the science of liquid fuel rocketry, in 1936, since it gave a vague promise of becoming a useful weapon. There was also a fear that others, particularly the Americans, might also be developing rockets for war. And no one expected, in 1936, that war would only be 3 years away, that France would fall, and that the rocket would thereby become capable of reaching London.
In 1936 the army and Luftwaffe met to agree the layout of the vast new research centre at Peenemunde on the German Baltic coast. The army occupied the western half, the Luftwaffe the eastern. It cost 11 million marks in 1936, with a further 6 million in 1937. Becker’s annual operating budget was 3.5 million marks. These figures represented a large amount for what was, after all, speculative research; but the total German military expenditure in 1935/6,2.772 thousand million reichsmarks, rose to 5.821 the next year.24 The rocketeers owed much of their success in achieving these resources to the ‘entirely new, fantastic, unbureaucratic, fast moving, decisive’ character of the Luftwaffe administration.25
Perhaps the greatest irony of the rocket was in its secrecy; rumour and dread might have been of some effect as a deterrent in 1938 or 1939; as it was, when news of the rocket began to leak out in 1943 it provoked serious alarm, as will be seen in a later chapter. Hitler is quoted as saying, when he had observed a film of a successful launch, that “if we had had these rockets in 1939 we should never have had this war.”26 But by 1943 it was too late; Britain was too committed to the war, had powerful allies, and the future seemed too bright for the rocket to have anything but a nuisance effect.
The thrust of the rocket was designed to be 55,000lbs (25 tons). Its eventual range was around 200 miles, reaching a height of 60 miles on its journey. It would weigh 2.87 tons empty, and contain a launch weight of 4.9 tons of liquid oxygen and 3.8 tons of alcohol. It was maintained in position during ascent by gyroscopes, and was controlled during the initial firing only, following a ballistic path thereafter. Power was cut off after a predetermined time by a gyro functioning as an integrating accelerometer, although some 10% of missiles were produced with the originally planned radio controlled cutoff system, which the Germans believed would be subject to allied electronic interference. These devices operated servomotors which controlled tabs on each of the rocket’s four large fins, together with four graphite tabs in the jet nozzle.27 The missile was not ‘radio controlled’ in the sense that it followed a guide beam for its whole journey, although some 20% were guided for the first few moments of flight in this way28. It was launched from a small concrete platform by mobile teams, although vast bunkers to store, protect and launch the missile and its fuel were also built (chiefly at Hitler’s insistence).
Another idea for long-range bombardment, which has a surprisingly long history, was that of the pilot-less aeroplane. Victor de Karavodine patented a pulse jet engine, that is, an engine which works by a rapid series of gas explosions inside a combustion chamber, in Paris in 1907. In the same year Rene Lorin proposed the use of a pilot-less aircraft, stabilised by gyros and with an altitude control using the pressure of the atmosphere, for long-range bombardment. His proposed machine was to be powered by either ram jet or a pulse jet. By 1909 Georges Marconnet had designed an improved pulse-jet.29
In Germany Fritz Gosslau, who had designed radio controlled target drones in the Great War, gained a degree in aeronautical engineering, and in 1926 began work in the aero engine department at Siemens, transferring to the Argus Engine Company in 1936. Here he designed a radio controlled target drone, the Argus AS292, of which the Luftwaffe promptly ordered a hundred.
In 1939 Dr Ernst Steinhoff, of the Luftwaffe Research Centre at Peenemunde, called for a pilot-less aircraft for use against enemy targets, and Argus took up the challenge. However, their design, powered by a piston engine, had a speed of only 280 miles per hour, which would have made it hopelessly vulnerable to fighter attack. The flying bomb would wait for war, for a perfected pulse jet engine, and the need to arrest the declining political fortunes of the Luftwaffe, before its full development. The reversal of the Versailles treaty, the occupation of the Rhineland, the absorbtion of Austria, the destruction of Czechoslovakia by treaty and then by seizure, a cold pact with the Soviet Union and the renewal of tension on the frontiers of Poland were all to hasten those fateful events.
In the meantime science in the Third Reich, although well funded, lost some of its best brains. Between 1901 and 1932, German Jews won more Nobel prizes for science than the whole of the United States, gaining a quarter of all those awarded to Germans.30 This collection of intellect in so small a circle – some two million souls – seems as notable, and as inexplicable, as the intellectual greatness of Periclean Athens, itself set in the glories of Greece, as the Jews were set amid the formidable talents of their German Christian compatriots. Perhaps the acquisition of two languages in the formative years assists in abstract thought, at which they excelled. They excelled in the theatre, in literature, in music. They excelled in business and finance. Although Germans first – some 12,000 died in the war – they were part of an international community of Jewry; but in a similar manner, scientists and scholars were themselves part of an international
