Hitler's Rockets: The Story of the V-2s

by Norman Longmate

  On 4 June 1943 the first report reached London from a foreign worker, in fact a scientist from Luxembourg, whom the Germans had conscripted to work for them inside Peenemunde. This was, though no one could have known it at the time, the first detailed and accurate piece of intelligence to arrive, for it referred to a rocket 10 metres long with a range of 150-250 kilometres, and included a sketch showing the location of Test Stand VII. It also – a vital clue – referred to ‘bottles containing gas’ being used to provide fuel. Lord Cherwell had probably not seen this latest message when, on 11 June 1943, he wrote a further memo to the Prime Minister casting doubt on the reality of the threat from the rocket, which he still assumed to be a 70 ton monster burning solid fuel:

  There seems little doubt that the Germans have been working on long-range rockets, but what evidence there is also indicates that there have been serious difficulties. This is scarcely surprising. To construct jets which would stand for some 10 seconds the passage at about 1½ miles a second of the hot gases produced by burning 20 tons of cordite might well keep an engineering team busy for years. . . . To handle 70-ton projectiles and shift them from the railway to the launching rails, to insulate this gear from the terrific blast, etc., is no mean technical problem. If the projector is to be inconspicuous all this must be underground. . . . I cannot conceive that the Germans would carry out such elaborate installations in the neighbourhood of Calais without being observed and having their work nipped in the bud.

  Cherwell, however, who hated being shown to be wrong, was careful to hedge his bets.

  Jones, who you may remember is in charge of scientific Air Intelligence, has been following these questions closely, and I do not think there is any great risk of our being caught napping.

  And, having argued that there was no danger from the rocket, Cherwell, somewhat illogically, endorsed Duncan Sandys’s proposal for counter-measures against it:

  Though I do not think for a moment that they are connected with rockets, I favour bombing, before they are completed, the new emplacements now being built in the Calais region. If it is worth the enemy’s while to take all the trouble of putting them up, it would seem well worth our while – or rather the Americans’ – to knock them down before their protective concrete roofs are finished.

  The Air Ministry, obsessed with its area-bombing campaign against Germany, favoured delay, but Churchill was now under pressure from other quarters. On 16 June the Minister of Aircraft Production, Sir Stafford Cripps, a former member of the War Cabinet and the least alarmist of men, wrote to the Prime Minister pleading for early action:

  The prospect of these bombs with some 7—10 tons of high explosive falling at intervals in populated areas with no apparent possibility of dealing with them is not at all a pleasant one and the casualties may be very heavy indeed. . . . I feel that the matter is potentially so serious that the whole question should be considered, particularly the counter-measures that may be possible, whether by bombing, paratroops, commandos, sabotage or any other way. May I suggest that you should initiate a small high-level committee to deal with this matter throughly?

  Churchill’s reply was reassuring. He was, he assured Cripps next day, ‘thoroughly alive to the danger’, even though ‘Lord Cherwell is extremely sceptical of the practical application’, and Cripps was ‘welcome to talk to Duncan Sandys on the subject’ pending a full-scale meeting at which it would be thrashed out. Meanwhile Dr Jones was, as Cherwell had promised, keeping an eye on the story as it unfolded, and on Friday, 18 June 1943 was studying the results of photographic sortie N/853, flown six days before, when he glimpsed through his stereoscope an object the experts at Medmenham had apparently missed:

  Suddenly I spotted on a railway truck something that could be a whitish cylinder about 35 feet long and 5 or so feet in diameter with a bluntish nose and fins at the other end. I experienced the kind of pulse of elation that you get when after hours of casting you realize that a salmon has taken your line. . . . To [Charles] Frank I said in as level a voice as I could ‘Charles, come and look at this!’ He immediately agreed that I had found the rocket. . . . I went across to the Cabinet Offices and saw Lindemann before he left for the weekend at Oxford. . . . Very generously, I thought, Lindemann said that I should send a note to Sandys telling him that there was a rocket visible on the photograph, to give him a chance to react before I told anyone else.

  This courteous gesture produced no response except an undated, supplementary report from Medmenham to the effect that ‘the object’ shown in the N/853 photograph ‘is 35 feet long and appears to have a blunt point’ resembling ‘a cylinder tapered at one end and provided with three radial fins at the other’; no mention was made that it was Dr Jones who had first drawn attention to it. But on Wednesday, 23 June, a Mosquito of 540 Squadron brought back from sortie N/860 the best set of pictures so far, examined soon afterwards, with growing excitement, by WAAF Section Officer Babington Smith:

  Two rockets – actual rockets – had been photographed, lying horizontally on road vehicles within the confines of the elliptical earthwork. . . . Above the rockets towered a structure resembling a massive observation tower and the steep encircling slope of the earthwork might have been some sinister Germanic stadium.

  Already Dr Jones had prepared a rough sketch of the rocket’s likely appearance which would have been instantly recognizable to anyone at Peenemünde, with its long, slim body, estimated at 35—38 feet long by 5—7 feet wide, its pointed nose and its dominant 10-feet-by-10-feet fins. Its weight he put at ‘perhaps 20 to 40 tons’, only to alter it after being invited to meet Duncan Sandys, who told him ‘that our experts said that it must be at least 80 tons’, a figure confirmed, when Jones demurred at it, by one of them by telephone. The latter insisted that any lesser weight was impossible in view of the ‘fuel/ carcase weight ratio, since the carcase’ had ‘to be of steel thick enough to stand the pressure of the cordite or other propellant burning in the jet’, and, reluctantly and against his own better judgement, Dr Jones amended the already-cut stencil of his report to a probable weight of ‘perhaps 40 to 80 tons’.

  On 27 June 1943 the Chiefs of Staff circulated a massive paper – it ran to seventeen pages – entitled ‘German Long-Range Rocket: Evidence Received from All Sources’, which recounted in detail the results of the seven reconnaissance flights undertaken since 15 May, attaching a selection of photographs. Influenced no doubt by the same experts who had persuaded Dr Jones to change his report, the author warned that ‘the total weight of the projectiles is between 60 and 100 tons, the probable HE content being 2 to 8 tons’. The estimated flight time was put at ‘3 seconds for a range of 130 miles and 2 seconds for 90 miles’, a grotesque error; even a layman might have realized that ‘minutes’ would have been more likely. The paper concluded unequivocally that ‘Long-Range Rocket development is taking place at Peenemünde’ and that ‘manufacture or assembly on a moderate scale will shortly be proceeding in the factory area and workshops’.

  Duncan Sandys’s Third Interim Report the following day, which revealed that in addition to Peenemünde itself nine other suspect areas were now under surveillance, confirmed that ‘The German long-range rocket has undoubtedly reached an advanced stage of development’ and that it could probably ‘be put into operational use at a very early date’ if the Germans were willing ‘to accept a considerable loss in accuracy and effectiveness’. This was only too likely, warned Sandys:

  Reports . . . indicated that Hitler sees in the long-range rocket a means of retaliating against England for the bombing of the Ruhr and that he is pressing for it to be brought into action as quickly as possible, without awaiting the completion of development.

  A detailed analysis of the likely means of launching the rocket followed, based on the ‘projector’ theory; thirty projectors, it was estimated, were under construction of which fifteen had been completed. Far more alarming, however, were the forecasts of the casualties each explosion might cause, based on ‘the Hendon inc
ident’ of February 1941, when a 2500 kg bomb, the largest so far used against Britain, had killed 75 people and injured 445, also destroying 196 homes, making 170 uninhabitable and inflicting lesser damage on 400 more. It was this section of Sandys’s report, headed ‘Effect of Rocket Attack upon London’, which was to be the basis of most subsequent planning, for it set out in frightening detail what the Ministry of Home Security experts thought each rocket ‘containing 10 tons of high explosive’ might achieve:

  They estimate that a single rocket of this size would cause damage to property over an area of 650 acres. Complete or partial demolition might be expected over an area of a radius of 850 feet and serious damage from blast over an area of a radius of 1700 feet.

  The Ministry’s estimate of casualties which might be caused by each rocket is as follows:

  Killed 600

  Seriously injured 1,200

  Slightly injured 2,400

  4,200

  One such rocket falling in the London area every hour for 24 hours might result in 10,000 killed and 20,000 seriously injured.

  The grim prospect facing London was spelt out in even more depressing detail in an ‘annexe’ to Duncan Sandys’s report, prepared by ‘Sir Findlater Stewart’s Committee’, one of those powerful bodies whose very existence was unknown to the general public. Findlater Stewart himself had barely been heard of outside Whitehall but within it he was a highly influential figure, chief adviser on civilian matters to the Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, and chairman of the Home Defence Executive, which coordinated all the departments involved in the civilian side of the war. An archetypal Establishment man – flat in Cheyne Walk, club, the Athenaeum, in Pall Mall – a civil servant for forty years, now aged sixty-four, he had, improbably, become regarded by Herbert Morrison (whose opinion carried great, if not decisive, weight) as his right-hand man. The advice tendered by the Civil Defence department of the Ministry of Home Security, to which Sir Findlater now lent his vast authority, made frightening reading.

  It was, these experts thought, reasonable to anticipate ‘one rocket per hour daily for four weeks’ and an error of up to four miles in accuracy, so that ‘taking the aiming point as TOWER BRIDGE the projectile might be expected to land within a circle bounded by CANNING TOWN on the east, DULWICH on the south, KENSINGTON GARDENS on the west and STOKE NEWINGTON on the north’. How would the Civil Defence services be able to cope with such a scale of attack? The best guide to what might happen was provided by the now famous Hendon incident two years before:

  At Hendon 22 Heavy Rescue Parties, 10 Stretcher Parties, 29 ambulances and 24 motor cars were continuously deployed for 70 hours. . . . On the Hendon analogy some 250 ambulances would be required. . . . A serious traffic problem arises if we envisage the deployment of some 250 vehicles at the incident.

  But this traffic jam would be the least of the problems each rocket caused. ‘It is probable’, the committee thought, ‘that at least 12 Incident Officers will be required, or approximately one for every 6 acres [of damage].’ And even if these highly trained specialists, who took charge after every explosion and coordinated the response to it, could be mustered, the forces under their command would be inadequate, for twenty-four heavy and forty-eight light rescue parties would be needed ‘for every three acres’ while ‘the wardens service’, the backbone of the whole Civil Defence service, ‘will be quite inadequate without organized reinforcement or assistance’. The London Region could, it was believed, cope ‘with one incident every 12 hours . . . for 6 days and one every 24 hours for perhaps a fortnight . . . if the fall of bombs were reasonably dispersed over the four-mile radius’. By the end of that time all concerned ‘would be completely exhausted’ and thereafter, if the bombardment continued, the whole Civil Defence organization would be overwhelmed:

  It took three days to close the Hendon incident. Assuming each incident due to the new weapon takes five days, then at one per hour we have:

  After 1 day 24 active incidents

  After 2 days 48 active incidents

  After 3 days 72 active incidents

  After 4 days 96 active incidents

  After 5 days 120 active incidents

  The cumulative effect of one such incident every hour for four weeks would be quite beyond the resources of London Region and would, in fact, entail the virtual destruction of the Metropolis. . . . Any extensive use of this weapon might make it quite impossible to carry on the government in London.

  Moving ministers and their key officials would not be impossible ; most ministries had already made contingency plans for just such an event. The real difficulty lay with the ordinary population. Reactivating official evacuation schemes for the ‘priority classes’ – mainly expectant mothers, mothers with infants under the age of five, and schoolchildren – would be relatively easy, but, warned Sir Findlater Stewart, ‘no organized arrangements can be made for large numbers of aged, infirm, invalids, etc., or for the non-essential general population of London’, although once the rockets started to fall ‘it is anticipated that considerable numbers of persons will leave London and make arrangements to stay in the reception areas without assistance’. As for those who remained, there were places in ‘domestic shelter . . . for 5,454,000 out of the night population of 6,540,000’, but only 147,900 places in underground stations and new deep shelters proof against a direct hit, and these presented their own problem ‘in that a certain number of people will want to get into them and stay there, and they will be difficult to eject if rockets are frequent’. The whole shelter situation was in fact worse than it had been during the blitz, for only the very briefest warning of a rocket’s arrival was anticipated, or none at all. Both at work and at home, therefore, shelter needed to be near at hand, ready for ‘a quick entry and a short stay’. But even if more shelters could be provided – and the committee recommended strengthening public surface shelters and ordering another 100,000 Morrison table shelters – people who remained in London faced an uncertain and highly disagreeable future, with far greater ‘disruption of water, gas, electricity and sewer services’ than anything so far experienced, and serious ’health problems . . . if the damage was so extensive that proper repairs in a reasonable time became impracticable’. Above all, there was the danger to life and limb. As the rockets rained remorselessly down, troops patrolled the streets of the stricken capital and Civil Defence reinforcements ‘from the North and Midlands’ were assembled ‘under canvas if necessary on the outskirts of London’, its surviving citizens would be faced by a melancholy and more or less continuous procession of hearses and ambulances, for ‘the casualties in 24 hours’, it was predicted, ‘might exceed 10,000 killed and 20,000 seriously injured’ – and that was assuming the rockets ‘were reasonably dispersed over the four-mile radius’ and that the Germans did not improve their aim.

  Faced with this depressing scenario, ministers might almost have been inclined to come to terms with Hitler on the spot, but Churchill was always inclined to discount the more gloomy predictions of his colleagues, while Lord Cherwell still did not believe in the existence of the rocket at all. The meeting of the War Cabinet Defence Committee (Operations) which assembled in the underground conference room in Great George Street at 10 o‘clock on the evening of Tuesday, 29 June 1943, was therefore surprisingly cheerful. This was the most senior, and largest, body yet to consider the rocket menace, possessing executive rather than merely advisory powers, and everyone of importance was there, including Herbert Morrison with Sir Findlater Stewart, Lord Cherwell and Dr Jones, Duncan Sandys and his assistant, Colonel Kenneth Post, the Ministry of Supply’s chief rocket expert, Dr Crow, the three Chiefs of Staff, plus General Ismay, and a positive galaxy of top-ranking ministers. They were being asked essentially to settle two questions: did the rocket exist? and, if it did, what could be done to counter it, or modify its consequences? Although so much – perhaps the whole outcome of the war – hung on the answers, the Prime Minister was, however, at his most mischievous. He was highl
y amused that Cherwell’s protégé, Dr Jones, was one of the chief advocates for the reality of the rocket threat, and regularly interrupted his contribution with such jocular comments to Cherwell as ‘That’s a weighty point against you! Remember it was you who introduced him to me!’

  The meeting began with Duncan Sandys recapitulating the evidence already circulated. ‘The reports’, he conceded, ‘did not, of course, all tally, but they had sufficient common basis to lead one to the conclusion that the rocket was a fact.’ He dismissed the suggestion that ‘the whole affair was a fantasy or a hoax. . . . If it were a hoax, it was a hoax on an extremely big scale. . . . Peenemünde was a very important establishment and to choose it as the centre of a hoax which would invite the heaviest bombing seemed a very illogical proceeding’.