On October 3, 1942, a rocket took off from the Peenemünde test site that changed the history of war and space exploration. This was the A-4 - the device that would later be named the V-2. Wernher von Braun, Walter Dornberger and hundreds of engineers, technicians and military personnel participated in its development.
The rocket was the fourth test device in the series, designated as the V-4. The previous two attempts - in June and August of the same year - ended in failure. However, the third flight went according to plan. The A-4 reached a speed of about 4,824 kilometers per hour, climbed to approximately 85 kilometers and traveled about 190 kilometers.
“The A-4 was the first long-range guided ballistic missile“, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington defines it.The technical breakthrough was due to the combination of a powerful liquid-fuel engine, a gyroscopic control system and radio commands. For the first time, a missile of this size could leave the dense layers of the atmosphere on a ballistic trajectory and hit a target hundreds of kilometers away.
From test device to weapon of retaliation
Initially, the missile bore the military designation A-4. After Adolf Hitler approved its use as a weapon, it was renamed Vergeltungswaffe 2 – “weapon of retribution 2“. That's where the familiar abbreviation V-2 comes from.
Combat use began in September 1944. The rockets were directed against London, Antwerp and other cities in Western Europe. Unlike airplanes and cruise missiles, the V-2 moved at many times the speed of sound and could practically not be intercepted by the air defenses of the time.
By the beginning of 1945, the German army had launched 3,225 rockets with warheads. Their military impact remained limited compared to the enormous resources invested in the program, but the psychological effect on the civilian population was significant.
Forced labor was behind the technological breakthrough
After the British bombing of Peenemünde in August 1943, the Nazi leadership decided to move production underground. The machines and some of the specialists were transferred to the “Mittelwerk“ complex near Nordhausen, connected to the “Mittelbau-Dora“ concentration camp.
There, prisoners were forced to build tunnels and assemble the missiles under hard labor, hunger, disease, and the constant threat of punishment. According to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in the United States, the final death toll for the “Mittelbau-Dora“ system exceeded 20,000 victims. Some of the prisoners were killed or died in the tunnels themselves, and others perished during the evacuations in 1945.
This side of the V-2's history remains inseparable from its technological significance. The rocket was created as a weapon of Nazi Germany, and its production was based on the exploitation of concentration camp inmates.
The legacy after the end of the war
After the surrender of Germany, the American and Soviet Unions sought to obtain German developments, documents and specialists. Wernher von Braun and part of his team were transferred to the United States, where their work on the V-2 became the basis for subsequent rocket programs.
Later, von Braun led the team that developed the “Saturn 5“ - the rocket that took the American expeditions to the Moon. Thus, a weapon born in the conditions of World War II also became a technological predecessor of the missiles used in the space race.