19 Facts About V-2 rocket

The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant V-2 rocket engine, was developed during the Second World War in Nazi Germany as a "vengeance weapon" and assigned to attack Allied cities as retaliation for the Allied bombings against German cities.

The V-2 rocket became the first artificial object to travel into space by crossing the Karman line with the vertical launch of MW 18014 on 20 June 1944.

At the time, Adolf Hitler was not particularly impressed by the V-2 rocket; he opined that it was merely an artillery shell with a longer range and much higher cost.

Dr Thiel's development of the 25 ton V-2 rocket motor relied on pump feeding, rather than on the earlier pressure feeding.

V-2 rocket was guided by four external rudders on the tail fins, and four internal graphite vanes in the jet stream at the exit of the motor.

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The V-2 rocket was launched from a pre-surveyed location, so the distance and azimuth to the target were known.

The Operation Pinguin V-2 offensive began on 8 September 1944, when launched a single rocket guided by a radio beam directed at Paris.

Possibly, from the potential sighting of the American fighter by the missile's launch crew, the V-2 rocket was quickly lowered from a near launch-ready 85° elevation to 30°.

One of these was the last V-2 rocket to kill a British civilian and the final civilian casualty of the war on British soil: Ivy Millichamp, aged 34, killed in her home in Kynaston Road, Orpington in Kent.

Early on, it was believed that the V-2 employed some form of radio guidance, a belief that persisted in spite of several rockets being examined without discovering anything like a radio receiver.

Only effective defences against the V-2 rocket campaign were to destroy the launch infrastructure—expensive in terms of bomber resources and casualties—or to cause the Germans to aim at the wrong place through disinformation.

From our point of view, the V-2 rocket program was almost as good as if Hitler had adopted a policy of unilateral disarmament.

V-2 rocket consumed a third of Germany's fuel alcohol production and major portions of other critical technologies: to distil the fuel alcohol for one V-2 rocket launch required 30 tonnes of potatoes at a time when food was becoming scarce.

Psychological effect of the V-2 rocket was considerable, as the V-2 rocket, traveling faster than the speed of sound, gave no warning before impact .

The V-2 rocket had no effect on the outcome of the war, but it led to the ICBMs of the Cold War, which in turn were used for space exploration.

The V-2 rocket laid the foundation for the liquid fuel missiles and space launchers used later.

The Backfire report, published in January 1946, contains extensive technical documentation of the V-2 rocket, including all support procedures, tailored vehicles and fuel composition.

PGM-11 Redstone rocket is a direct descendant of the V-2.

Details of Soviet achievements were unknown to the German team and completely underestimated by Western intelligence until, in November 1957, the Sputnik 1 satellite was successfully launched to orbit by the Sputnik V-2 rocket based on R-7, the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile.