Hitler's Rockets: The Story of the V-2s
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Hitler's Rockets
The Story of the V-2s
Norman Longmate
Copyright © 2009 by Norman Longmate
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Longmate, Norman, 1925 –
Hitler’s rockets : the story of the V-2s / Norman Longmate.
p. cm.
Previously published: London : Hutchinson,1985.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
9781602397057
1. World War, 1939-1945-Aerial operations, German. 2. V-2 rocket. 3. Great Britain—History—Bombardment, 1940-1945. I. Title.
D787.L653 2009
940.54’4943—dc22
2009006535
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
Hitler’s Rockets: The Story of the V-2s
This edition published in 2009 by Frontline Books,
an imprint of Pen and Sword Books Ltd, 47 Church
Street, Barnsley, S. Yorkshire, S70 2AS.
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Hitler’s Rockets by Norman Longmate
First published in 1985
by Hutchinson & Co. (London)
World copyright © Norman Longmate, 1985
This edition © Pen & Sword Books Ltd., 2009
UK edition: ISBN 978-1-84832-546-3
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP data record for this title is available from the British Library
Printed in the United States of America
To B. H. AND M. H.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Grateful acknowledgement is made for the use of copyright material, as follows: to the Public Record Office for quotations from Crown Copyright documents; to A. D. Peters Ltd for Constance Babington Smith, Evidence in Camera; to the London Borough of Croydon for W. C. Berwick Sayers, Croydon and the Second World War; to Lewis Blake for Bromley in the Front Line; to the National Geographic Magazine for Marquis W. Childs, London Wins the Battle; to British Railways Board for Norman Crump, By Rail to Victory; to Walter Dornberger for V-2, published by Hurst and Blackett Ltd, now an imprint of the Hutchinson Publishing Group Ltd; to Julian Friedmann Ltd for Jozef Garlinski, Hitler’s Last Weapons; to Macmillan Publishing Co., New York, for A. B. Hartley, Unexploded Bomb and Helen Walters, Werner von Braun, Rocket Engineer; to David and Charles Ltd for Jeremy Howard-Williams, Night Intruder; to John Farquharson Ltd for R. V. Jones, Most Secret War, published by Hamish Hamilton Ltd and Coronet Books; to Chatto and Windus Ltd for James Lees-Milne, Prophesying Peace; to the estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell and Martin Seeker and Warburg Ltd for Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell; to Harrap Ltd for Frederick Pile, Ack Ack; to Faber and Faber Ltd for William Sansom, Westminster at War; to Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd for Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich; to Chubb Fire Security Ltd for Les Staples, Somewhere in Southern England; to Purnell Publishers Ltd for George P. Thompson, Blue Pencil Admiral; to the London Borough of Waltham Forest for Ross Wyld, War over Walthamstow; to William Collins and Sons Ltd for R. Wright and C. F. Rawnsley, Night Fighter.
Owing to the lapse of time and to the ephemeral nature of many wartime publications, some copyright holders have proved untraceable. Apologies are offered for any inadvertent breach of copyright and appropriate amends will gladly be made in any future edition.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FOREWORD
1 - THE BEGINNING
2 - TOWARDS PERFECTION
3 - TAKING IT SERIOUSLY
4 - A DECISIVE WEAPON OF WAR
5 - A DISTINCTLY UNPLEASANT PROSPECT
6 - POOR PEENEMÜNDE
7 - REVENGE IS NIGH
8 - NO IMMEDIATE DANGER
9 - WE HAVE BEEN CAUGHT NAPPING
10 - THE BATTLE OF LONDON IS OVER
11 - IGNITION!
12 - INCIDENT AT STAVELEY ROAD
13 - A PLUME OF BLACK SMOKE
14 - A SPLASH IN THE MARSHES
15 - THE LIAR ON THE THAMES
16 - DISASTER IN DEPTFORD
17 - CHRISTMAS IN ISLINGTON
18 - WORSE THAN THE V-1s
19 - ORDEAL IN ESSEX
20 - THE BATTLEFIELDS OF ILFORD
21 - WINTER IN WALTHAMSTOW
22 - NOTHING LEFT OF LONDON
23 - DOWN LAMBETH WAY
24 - AT THE ARSENAL
25 - WHAT CAN’T BE CURED
26 - A ROUTINE JOB
27 - HORRIBLE AND SUDDEN DEATH
28 - DAMAGE WAS CAUSED
29 - SPRING IN STEPNEY
30 - THEY HAVE CEASED
SOURCES
CONTRIBUTORS
GENERAL INDEX
INDEX OF PLACE NAMES
FOREWORD
Hitler’s Rockets is the sequel to The Doodlebugs, published in 1981 and just reissued in paperback, of which it was originally intended to form part. The decision to treat the two subjects separately has enabled me to deal independently with the two weapons, which are in fact totally distinct, although almost all previous authors, British and American, have written about them together. Although they enjoyed a common name as ‘revenge’ or ‘wonder’ weapons – the latter being entirely justified in the case of the V-2 – and were both indiscriminate, they were the product of different research teams, working for different services, were (though the two bombardments overlapped) fired at different periods and, above all, produced very different reactions on the part of the civilians at the ‘receiving end’. More fundamental still, while the flying bomb was a development of existing technology, and was eventually beaten by conventional military means, against the rocket there was never any defence and it was a totally unexpected and, for a long time, unsuspected, innovation which pointed the way forward to a totally new type of warfare, under whose shadow we have lived ever since.
The V-2s, for reasons I have described in the pages that follow, presented the British government with an embarrassing and, indeed, insoluble problem, dealt with at first by simply concealing its existence. Even after the war in Europe was over, details of rocket incidents were still being suppressed – a policy which made it more difficult to present a comprehensive picture of their effects, but which has meant that very few of the details given here of the location and consequences of the thousand rockets that landed have ever appeared in print before. Because so much
of the story is unfamiliar, I have tried to include at least the number of rockets and the casualty figures for every borough in the rocket-affected area and, also for the first time, to give fuller details of all the major incidents, especially those whose seriousness was concealed. A minor but constant problem has been the changes in local government boundaries that have occurred since 1945 and the popular practice of referring to locations by the name of a district rather than of the local authority responsible for it. I have followed the Ministry of Home Security records in trying to identify every incident by the name of the borough or urban district council concerned, referring for example, to Deptford, rather than New Cross, Southgate, not Bounds Green, and Waltham Holy Cross not Waltham Abbey, though I have occasionally included the district where (as in the case of the New Cross Woolworths) it has become identified with a particular incident. Repeatedly in writing the book I have been amazed at the success of the censorship in force at the time. Although stationed in the army in central London for the whole of the V-2 period, I had no conception at all of how serious and widespread were the sufferings of other parts of the capital, or that a brief journey by bus or train could have taken me to areas where ‘incidents’ were sometimes a more than daily occurrence. For those in the provinces, out of sight or earshot of even the most distant rocket, ignorance was even more total. I hope the present book may help to give those who lived elsewhere in the country, or belong to later generations, some conception of what a small proportion of their fellow citizens had to endure for seven months in 1944 – 45.
The wartime documents from which I have quoted were often written under pressure and are rarely consistent, even internally, over matters like punctuation and abbreviations. I have tried to introduce consistency in these matters, while giving full details of the source so that the original document can readily be consulted. I have, similarly, felt justified in making comparable minor changes in the contributions from private citizens which form my other principal source.
I am grateful to Miss Idina Le Geyt for her indefatigable research in the Public Record Office, Imperial War Museum and other libraries, and to Miss Eve Cottingham who, at short notice, filled in for me from a number of local authority libraries gaps in my knowledge which became apparent when the manuscript was nearly complete. I am much in the debt of Professor R. V. Jones, who answered several questions for me and supplied exceptionally helpful documents. Lord Boothby generously allowed me to quote his characteristically forthright (and, I have no doubt, accurate) opinion of Lord Cherwell. Mr G. L. Dennington kindly supplied me with a copy of a local history which he had published under a pseudonym. Miss Barbara Bagnall of Hutchinson admirably undertook the picture research. I also met unfailing courtesy and helpfulness from all the archivists and librarians I approached for information, and they were certainly guiltless when, as sometimes happened, a local authority apparently failed to regard the events of forty years ago as ‘history’ and had not troubled to preserve even such basic documents as a list of local incidents and casualty figures. It is sad to reflect that there are places where facts of this kind may now be lost for ever.
I must particularly acknowledge the assistance of the following: Mr D. M. Laverick, Borough Librarian, London Borough of Bromley; Mr Richard Knight, Local History Library, London Borough of Camden; Mr. L. J. Reilly, Local History Library, London Borough of Greenwich; Mr David Mander, Archives Department, London Borough of Hackney; Mrs Carolyn Hammond, Local History Library, Chiswick, London Borough of Hounslow; Mr John Hart, Central Reference Library, London Borough of Redbridge; the staff of the Inquiry Desk, Central Library, London Borough of Richmond upon Thames; the staff of the Local History Collection, London Borough of Tower Hamlets; the Reference Librarian, Battersea, London Borough of Wandsworth; Mr J. A. S. Green, County Archivist, Berkshire County Record Office; Mr P. R. Gifford, Librarian, Local Studies, Colchester, Mr S. M. Jarvis, Area Team Librarian, and Mr D. Waugh, Chelmsford, Mr Denys Bishop, Area Team Librarian, Grays, Miss Sheila Sullivan, Area Team Librarian, and Miss Barbara Pratt, Loughton, all of Essex; Mr Victor Gray and Miss K. Watson of the Essex County Record Office; Mr Colin Crook, Group Librarian, Gravesend, Kent; Miss Jean Kennedy, County Archivist, Norfolk Record Office; Mr C. Wilkins-Jones, County Local Studies Librarian, Norfolk; Miss Amanda Arrowsmith, County Archivist, and Mr D. Jones, of the Suffolk County Record Office.
Among the printed sources I owe a particular debt to David Irving’s The Mare’s Nest, which deals in detail with the scientific background to the V-2. I hope my book, which concentrates on the subsequent campaign, may to some extent complement his.
Hitler’s Rockets rounds off the series of studies of the British civilian experience between 1939 and 1945 which I began with How We Lived Then, published in 1971. This is a fitting moment, therefore, to thank the several thousand people whose recollections have made them possible and have, I believe, provided an element of first-hand experience which future generations too may find of interest and historical value. I am also grateful to the hundreds of people, many from overseas, who have written to me about already-published works. I am particularly appreciative of those who (invariably with the utmost courtesy and desire to help) have pointed out minor errors of fact which I have subsequently been able to correct.
In writing Hitler’s Rockets I have once again been made aware how uneven were the sacrifices, so far as enemy action was concerned, required from different parts of the country. I feel all the more grateful that by birth, by upbringing and subsequently by choice I belong to that vaguely defined but, during the war, constantly battered area ‘southern England’.
N.R.L.
1
THE BEGINNING
We had made a beginning.
Major-General Walter Dornberger, recalling December 1934
When in the early evening of Friday, 8 September 1944, two loud explosions echoed across London they caused no particular alarm. The population had become accustomed during five years of war to unexplained noises in the distance, even when, as on this occasion, no warning had sounded. In Whitehall, however, these sudden detonations were not misinterpreted. In many an office ministers, civil servants, government scientists and intelligence officers looked pointedly at each other, aware not merely that a new phase in the bombardment of London, but that a new era in the whole history of warfare, had begun. To the enemy armoury of manned bomber and pilotless aircraft had been added a new and even more formidable weapon, the long-range rocket.
The history of the rocket as a short-range, tactical weapon was in fact longer than that of ordinary firearms. Rockets had been employed by the Chinese in defence of a town besieged by the Mongols in AD 1232, and had been used by a rebellious Indian ruler against the British around 1780. In 1807 the British themselves had employed ‘Congreve’s Rockets’, named after the Colonel Congreve who had developed them, against Boulogne. They made their appearance in the United States during the attack on Fort McHenry, Baltimore, in 1814 and became immortalized in a famous poem later adopted, under a different name, as the United States national anthem:
And the rocket’s red glare;
The bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there.
So popular did rockets become during the nineteenth century that they seemed for a time likely to replace conventional artillery, but the development of rifled barrels and more powerful explosives had by 1900 restored the pre-eminence of the field-gun and mortar. Rockets had invariably up to now been battlefield weapons, not used for long-range bombardment, and by far the longest flight of a projectile achieved in the First World War was that of the 25 lb (11.5 kg) shell fired by the ‘Paris Gun’ which between March and July 1918 bombarded the French capital from a range of 75 miles. (To the fury of artillerymen, it was often wrongly described as ‘Big Bertha’, a conventional heavy mortar used on the western front.)
The Treaty of Versailles, by limiting the calibre of weapons with wh
ich the future German army, also severely restricted in size, could be equipped, encouraged the Army Weapons Department in Berlin to search for new types of armament which would not violate its provisions while providing the maximum fire power. Numerous articles in technical and popular magazines drew attention to the progress, usually vastly exaggerated, supposedly being made in rocket development. ‘Each individual inventor’, observed one young scientist with a special interest in ballistics, Walter Dornberger, ‘maintained a feud with everyone else who took an interest in rockets’, and to boost their claims to public money the researchers ‘were forced to resort to the inflated language of publicity propaganda’. All this was now to change, for in 1930 the Ballistic Council of the Army Weapons Department selected Dornberger to run its rocket research programme, a post for which he was ideally suited by both background and temperament.
The son of a pharmacist, Walter Dornberger had joined the artillery in August 1914, at the age of nineteen, and served throughout the war, later attending the Berlin Technical Institute before rejoining the army. In 1930 he was a thirty-five-year-old captain, intensely interested in rockets but with his feet firmly on the ground. ‘We wanted’, he wrote later, recalling his first two years of struggling with impractical visionaries, ‘to have done once for all with theory, unproven claims and boastful fantasy and to arrive at conclusions based on a sound scientific foundation.’ During his visits to the airfield in Berlin where the Amateur German Rocket Society carried out its experiments, he was, he later admitted, ‘struck ... by the energy and shrewdness with which’ one ‘tall, fair young student, with a broad, massive chin, went to work and by his astonishing theoretic knowledge’. When General Becker, in charge of the Army Weapons Office, authorized the creation of an expanded research unit, this young man, Werner von Braun, headed Dornberger’s ‘list of proposals for technical assistants’.