World War II was fought
with upgraded and greatly improved versions of weapons that had been on the
battlefields during World War I. Submarines, torpedoes, aircraft, bombs, tanks,
artillery – they had all been in action in 1918. There was, however, one
entirely new weapon that saw extensive service in 1944 and 1945: the unmanned
missile.
There had been missiles of a sort for centuries before World War II
broke out. The Chinese and later Indians had been using gunpowder-fuelled
rockets to launch explosive charges for centuries. The development of such
weapons reached its most sophisticated form in the early 19th
century when British engineer William Congreve produced a number of rockets
designed to supplant conventional artillery. Congreve’s rockets had a range of
up to two miles and could deliver an explosive charge of 24lbs that sprayed an
area with shrapnel when it went off. However, all these weapons werefor use at
the tactical level and were erratically inaccurate.
The idea of a long-range missile to be used against strategic
targets was often discussed, but practical problems with finding a suitable
propellant meant that such rockets were never produced.
It therefore came as a very nasty surprise to the British population
when missiles carrying warheads of close to a ton of high explosive began
falling from the skies. The weapon was officially the Vergeltungswaffe
(vengeance-weapon) 1, but was more widely known as the V1. It was also dubbed
the doodlebug or buzzbomb from its characteristic noise.
The British government, however, had known for some time that a
number of top-secret weapons were under construction. The information had come
from spies and from intercepted radio signals. Although they had little idea of
what the weapons were, they knew that they were being developed at a top-secret
base on the Baltic island of Peenemunde.
On 17 August 1943 a bomber raid had been sent to Peenmunde in an
effort to halt the work. The aircrew were not told about the secret weapons,
but were told that the target was so important that if it were not destroyed
the bombers would be sent back every subsequent night until it was destroyed,
no matter what the cost. The raid did do extensive damage to the development
and construction site. The Germans, however, responded by moving the main
factories producing the weapons to other sites. It was later estimated that the
raid had delayed the start of the V1 attacks by about three months.
from "Historical Atlas of Weaponry" by Rupert Matthews
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