V-2 Rocket

V-2 Rocket, first rocket-powered guided missile to be used in warfare, launched by Nazi Germany during World War II (1939-1945). The V-2, along with the jet-engine-powered V-1, was developed to attack Allied cities in Europe in reprisal for the Allied bombing offensive against Germany. The letter V stands for Vergeltungswaffe (German for “reprisal weapon”).

The V-2 was a large, rocket-powered missile designed by the German engineer Wernher von Braun. Its rocket motor burned a mixture of alcohol and liquid oxygen and could produce 25,000 kg (55,000 lb) of thrust. The V-2 was launched vertically from a platform or a tower. It could reach an altitude of over 80 km (50 mi), giving it the distinction of being the first human-made object to penetrate outer space. At the apex of its flight, the engine cut out, leaving the missile to follow a ballistic trajectory to its target. It had a maximum range of about 320 km (about 200 m) and carried a 730-kg (1600-lb) warhead.

The V-2 bombarded Allied targets between September 1944 and March 1945. It had less overall impact than the cheaper and more numerous V-1. Nonetheless, over 2,700 civilians were killed in V-2 attacks in Britain. In Germany many more thousands of people died as slave-labor prisoners forced to build V-2s in an underground factory at Mittelbau, near Nordhausen in central Germany. The concentration camp prisoners worked under appallingly cruel conditions to meet the production demands, and large numbers were starved or worked to death, or executed.

Both the Soviet Union and the United States tried to capture V-2 rockets and German rocket engineers at the end of the war. The American government’s Operation Paperclip brought over 100 V-2 rockets back to the United States, along with Wernher von Braun and part of his team of engineers.

The U.S. Army launched dozens of captured German V-2s at the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico between 1946 and 1951. These experiments marked the beginning of the American space program. The V-2 design became the prototype for large space and missile rockets built in the United States and the Soviet Union.

See also: Rocket: Liquid-Propellant Rockets; Guided Missiles: Surface-to-Surface Missiles; German use in World War II, see Air Warfare: World War II; postwar use, see Space Exploration: Rocket Propulsion.