Guided Missiles and Rockets
Both the Allies and the Axis explored the use of guided missiles — unmanned craft controlled by radio signals from nearby aircraft — as offensive and defensive weapons, with mixed results.
In 1944, the U.S. Army Air Forces and Navy worked together to refine the use of worn-out bombers packed with explosives as a weapon against German submarine pens, oil refineries, and other targets. The results of the top secret project, known as Aphrodite, were less than spectacular, and the concept was not implemented during the war. The use of radio-controlled fighters packed with bombs or napalm was also explored in 1945, but the war ended before the project could reach the development stage.
Specialized guided missiles were also widely researched. One concept involved fitting bombs with wings or controllable fins. A variety of glide bombs were developed, and in May 1944, bombers flying out of England dropped more than 100 of these GB-1s on Cologne, Germany. However, the results were disappointing, and no more attacks were approved. Improved GB-type weapons were tested in Europe over the course of the war, though they, too, had little success.
The Army Air Forces had better luck with vertical bomb weapons. The VB-1 Azon was a 1,000-pound bomb with a radio-controlled tail that allowed for much greater accuracy. It was used successfully against German targets throughout Europe and the Mediterranean in 1944 and 1945, as well as against Japanese bridges in Burma.
German Advances
Germany conducted extensive research into guided missiles and had its greatest success with the V-1 rocket, commonly known as the buzz bomb because of its distinctive drone. The V-1 was the first guided missile to be launched in large numbers against an enemy, and it inflicted tremendous damage and huge casualties on Great Britain starting in June 1944. In fact, during an eighty-day period, a nonstop rain of V-1s damaged or destroyed nearly 1 million buildings, killed 6,184 Britons, and injured more than 17,980 others. The city of Antwerp was also targeted with V-1s.
The U.S. Army Air Forces created its own version of the V-1 rocket in August 1944, using parts from recovered V-1s as a guide. The American version was called the JB-2 and was successfully tested in October 1944. General H. H. Arnold, head of the air forces, ordered the weapon into mass production. However, the initial numbers were scaled back because the high demand was exhausting production capability. Germany and Japan both surrendered before the guided missiles were put into wide use.
Many of the V-1s launched against England were duds though, and a large number were thwarted by planes and barrage balloons. V-1 production and launch sites in Germany became primary targets of Allied bombing raids.
Allied ships were another common target of German guided missiles. The primary guided bomb was the Kramer X-1, which carried a 1,300-pound armor-piercing bomb. The Luftwaffe successfully sank the Italian battleship Roma with a single X-1 on September 9, 1943. Many other Allied warships were heavily damaged by X-1s.
The V-2 Missile
Germany led the way in rocket research during the war, with deadly results. One of its most impressive rocket missiles was the dreaded V-2, a forerunner of the contemporary intercontinental ballistic missile.
At 46 feet in height, the V-2 was an impressive missile. Fueled by a mixture of liquid oxygen and alcohol, it weighed 28,373 pounds at launch and carried a 2,145-pound explosive warhead. Variations included a winged model called a glider, a two-stage rocket that would have been able to hit the United States from Europe, and a model that could be launched from a submarine. However, none of these was developed in time to have much of an impact on the war.
The V-2 was developed by a team of German rocket scientists led by Dr. Werner von Braun. After the war, he and many of his associates were brought to the United States, where they were instrumental in establishing the U.S. ballistic missile and space programs. Other German scientists aided the Soviet Union.
The experiments that led to the development of the V-2 started in the 1930s. The first operational launches occurred on September 6, 1944, when two V-2s were fired at Paris from the Peenemünde rocket facility on the shores of the Baltic Sea. Two days later, two more V-2s were fired at England. Over the next several months, England was hit by hundreds more. More than 2,700 Britons were killed by the rockets, and more than 6,500 were injured. Antwerp and Brussels were also frequent V-2 targets.
Unlike successful efforts to down the V-1 buzz bomb, no countermeasures could be taken against the V-2 once it had been launched. Fired from hundreds of miles away, the missile reached a terminal velocity of nearly 4,000 miles per hour; a flight of 200 miles took just a few minutes from launch to impact.
