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1940s

1940s

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Events and trends

The 1940s were seen as a transition period between the radical 1930s and the conservative 1950s, which also leads the period to be divided in two halves: The first half of the decade was dominated by World War II, the widest and most destructive armed conflict in history. So consequential was this event and its brutal aftermath that it laid the foundation for other major world events and trends for decades to follow. The second half period marked the beginning of the East-West conflict and the Cold War, together with major social upheaval caused by the destruction of the war, the large number of refugees, and soldiers returning home and demanding government recognition for their sacrifice.

Technology

- First nuclear bomb that dramatically altered international relationships
- First cruise missile, the V1 flying bomb and the first ballistic missile, the V-2 rocket
- First transistor
- Colossus, the world's first totally electronic computer. See History of computing hardware
- First supersonic flight by Chuck Yeager on October 14, 1947
- ENIAC invented

Science

- Quantum electrodynamics developed by Feynman, Dyson, Schwinger, and Tomonaga
- Mathematics: cybernetics, game theory, cryptology
- TRIZ

War, peace and politics

- World War II ends in 1945
- The shoah (Holocaust)
- United Nations established in 1945
- Beginning of the Cold War
- Independence for some former colonies
- 1948 Arab-Israeli War
- The Irish Free State becomes a republic in 1948
- NATO founded in 1949
- The Chinese Civil War ends in victory for the Communists
- Informbiro period in Yugoslavia begins
- Indian independence and Independence of Pakistan
- US Air Force civilian auxiliary the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) formed

Economics

- The Marshall Plan is implemented by the United States, giving billions of dollars in aid to reconstruct the war-devastated economies of Europe
- International Monetary Fund
- World Bank

Culture, religion

- Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life
- The NBA begins to play, in 1947
- Rhythm and blues emerges
- Rock and roll emerges

Others

- Alcohol exclusion laws first passed in US.

People

World War II

, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons such as the atom bomb. From top going counterclockwise: Allied landing on D-Day 1944, the Nuremberg Rally 1936, the Nagasaki atom bomb 1945, the Soviet flag over the Reichstag in Berlin 1945 and the Gate of Auschwitz.]] World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a mid-20th Century conflict that engulfed much of the globe and is accepted as the largest and deadliest continuous war in human history. It was the first time that a number of newly developed technologies, including nuclear weapons, were used against either military or civilian targets. World War II resulted in the direct or indirect death of anywhere from 50 to 60 million or more people, over 3% of the world population at that time. It is estimated to have cost more money and resources than all other wars combined: about 1 trillion US dollars in 1945 (adjusted for inflation; roughly 10.5 trillion in 2005), not including subsequent reconstruction [http://www.historychannel.com/worldwartwo/?page=triumph5]. The outcomes of the war, including new technology and changes to the world's geopolitical, cultural and economic arrangement, were unprecedented. The conflict began by most Western accounts on September 1 1939 with the German invasion of Poland (the Pacific war is taken to have started on July 7 1937 with the Japanese attack on China) and lasted until mid-1945, involving many of the world's countries. Virtually all countries that participated in World War I were involved in World War II. Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939 and Canada followed on September 10, 1939. The United States entered the conflict in December of 1941 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Summary

Attributed in varying degrees to the Treaty of Versailles, the Great Depression, and the rise in nationalism, racism, fascism, National socialism, Japanese imperialism, and militarism, the causes of the war are a matter of debate. The war was fought between the Axis Powers and the Allies. The Axis initially consisted of an alliance between Germany and Italy, which later expanded to include Japan and Eastern European countries such as Romania and Bulgaria. Some of the nations that Germany conquered sent military forces, particularly to the Eastern front. Among the expeditionary forces that joined Germany were forces from Vichy France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain (though Spain was itself a neutral country) and armies of Russians and Ukrainians under the command of the general Andrey Vlasov. The Allies were initially the United Kingdom, including the Commonwealth, France and Poland, later joined by the USSR, the United States of America and China. Fighting occurred across the Atlantic Ocean, in Western and Eastern Europe, in the Mediterranean Sea, Africa, the Middle East, in the Pacific and South East Asia, and it continued in China. In Europe, the war ended with the surrender of Germany on 8 May 1945 (V-E and Victory Days), but continued in Asia until Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945 (V-J Day). At least 50 million people died as a result of the war. This figure includes acts of genocide such as the Holocaust and General Ishii Shiro's Unit 731 experiments in Pingfan, incredibly bloody battles in Europe and the Pacific Ocean, and massive bombings of cities, including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan and the firebombing of Dresden (and even worse but less known) of Pforzheim in Germany. Few areas of the world were unaffected; the war involved the "home front" and bombing of civilians to a new degree. Atomic weapons, jet aircraft, rockets and radar, the blitzkrieg, or "lightning war", the massive use of tanks, submarines, torpedo bombers and destroyer/tanker formations, are only a few of many wartime inventions and new tactics that changed the face of the conflict. Post–World War II Europe was partitioned into Western and Soviet spheres of influence, the former undergoing economic reconstruction under the Marshall Plan and the latter becoming satellite states of the Soviet Union. This partition was, however, informal; rather than coming to terms about the spheres of influence, the relationship between the victors steadily deteriorated, and the military lines of demarcation finally became the de facto country boundaries. Western Europe largely aligned as NATO, and Eastern Europe largely as the Warsaw pact countries, alliances which were fundamental to the ensuing Cold War. In Asia, the United States' military occupation of Japan led to Japan's democratisation. China's civil war continued through and after the war, resulting eventually in the establishment of the People's Republic of China. The war sparked a wave of independence for colonies of European powers, who were exhausted from fighting the war. There was a fundamental shift in power from Western Europe to the new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, though there were few actual boundary changes. __TOC__

Causes

People's Republic of China]] Main articles: Causes of World War II, Events preceding World War II in Europe, Events preceding World War II in Asia The causes of World War II are naturally a debated subject, but a common view, particularly among the allies in the early post-war years, ties them to the expansionism of Germany and Japan: Germany had lost wealth, power and status following the First World War and the expansion was to make Germany great again.
- In Germany there was a strong desire to escape the bonds of the World War I Treaty of Versailles, and eventually, Hitler and the Nazis assumed control of the country. They led Germany through a chain of events: rearmament, reoccupation of the Rhineland, a merger with Austria (Anschluss), incorporation of Czechoslovakia and finally the invasion of Poland.
- In Asia, Japan's efforts to become a world power and the rise of militarist leadership (in the 1930s the government in Japan was undermined as militarists rose to power and de facto gained totalitarian control) led to conflicts with first China and later the United States. Japan also sought to secure additional natural resources, such as oil and iron ore, due in part to the lack of natural resources on Japan's own home islands.

Participants

iron ore and Joseph Stalin, during the Yalta Conference in 1945]] Main article: Participants in World War II The belligerents of the Second World War are usually considered to belong to either of the two blocs: the Axis and the Allies. A number of smaller countries participated in the war, though often under occupation or as proxies of one of the large powers. The Axis Powers consisted primarily of Germany, Italy, and Japan, which split the Earth into three spheres of influence under the Tripartite Pact of 1940, and vowed to defend one another against aggression. This replaced the German-Japanese Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936 that Italy had joined in 1937. Spain's fascist government led by Francisco Franco was a great asset in trade to the Axis powers during the war. A number of smaller countries were counted among the Axis powers. Among these were Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovenia, and arguably Finland. Among the Allied powers, the so-called Big Three were the United Kingdom (from September 3 1939), the Soviet Union (from June 1941) and the United States (from December 1941). China had been at war with Japan since 1937. 1937 On August 23, 1939, just before the war broke out, the USSR and Germany signed the non-aggression Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which, among other things, divided Eastern Europe into regions of influence. But Germany violated the pact when it invaded the USSR in 1941. Similarly, the US had the (much older) unilateral Monroe Doctrine, which stated that Europe should not interfere in the Americas and in turn the U.S. would not interfere in European affairs (including wars). But the U.S. entered the war after first Japan and then Germany declared war on it and launched direct attacks on its navy, shipping and other interests. Many other countries, including Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Thailand and Yugoslavia are also considered important Allies, although some of these were conquered and occupied by Axis forces or even officially joined the Axis as a result of coercion. Countries that attempted to remain neutral in the conflict were often viewed with suspicion by the participants, and often pressured to make contributions to the most influential power in their neighbourhood. Sovereignty was often difficult to maintain as many countries that did not directly participate in the conflict nevertheless held vested interests in seeing a particular side prevail. For example, neutral Switzerland was generally considered to be "Allied-friendly", while neutral Spain was considered "Axis-friendly", despite the fact that neither country openly proclaimed any alliances. Such situations allowed neutral countries to become hotbeds of espionage. It is important to note as well, that Sweden's participation in the war was negligable due to specific relations with the German state at the time.

A debated starting date

On which date World War II started is a debated subject; historians do not all agree on which event signified the start of the war. The most common date used is 1 September 1939, marking the German invasion of Poland which resulted in the British and French declarations of war two days later. Other candidates include the Japanese invasion of China on 7 July 1937 (the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War) or the entry of Hitler's armies to Prague in March 1939. Some historians argue that the Italian occupation of Ethiopia (The Second Italo-Abyssinian War) which lasted seven months in 1935-1936 was the actual start of World War II. There are some historians that argue the war started on the start of the Manchurian Incident on 18 September 1931.

Chronology 1937-45

Main articles: European Theatre of World War II, Mediterranean Theatre of World War II, Pacific War, End of World War II in Europe

1937: Second Sino-Japanese War

On 7 July 1937, Japan, after occupying northeastern China as Manchuria in 1931, launched another attack against China near Beijing (see Marco Polo Bridge Incident). Rather than retreating swiftly as in engagements with the Japanese before, the Chinese government declared war on Japan, marking the official start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, which would soon become part of the World War. In December 1937, the capital, Nanking (now Nanjing), fell and the Chinese government moved its seat to Chongqing for the rest of the war. Surprised by the unanticipated level of resistance from China, the Japanese forces committed brutal atrocities against civilians and POWs when Nanking was occupied (see Nanjing Massacre), killing up to 200,000 civilians within a month. In Europe, the peace was uneasy, with Germany annexing Austria and Czechoslovakia, and taking apparent aim at Poland.

1939: War breaks out in Europe

Poland]] Main articles: Polish September Campaign, Phony War War broke out in Poland on 1 September 1939, with the German invasion of Poland. France and the United Kingdom honoured their defensive alliance of March 1939 by declaring war two days later on 3 September. Australia and New Zealand declared war the same day, although through the quirk of the international date line, New Zealand then Australia were the first to declare war on Germany. Canada followed a week later, on 10 September. Only partly mobilised and with troops inadequately equipped with largely outdated weapons (which included large numbers of horse-mounted cavalry), and without the anticipated support of French or British forces, Poland unsurprisingly fared poorly against the Wehrmacht's superior numbers and "blitzkrieg" tactics. In accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Red Army invaded Poland from the east on 17 September. Hours later, the Polish government escaped to Romania. The last Polish Army unit was defeated on 6 October. As Poland fell, the British and French were either caught unaware of German intentions or had not allowed themselves to believe that Germany would invade Poland. Germany paused to regroup during a period that would be termed "the Phony War", or the "Sitzkrieg", which lasted until May 1940. Polish forces continued to fight the Axis powers after their country fell. A prominent example was the assistance of Polish pilots during the Battle of Britain. The Soviet Union, due to its treaty relationship with Nazi Germany, did not fight the fascists: Stalin was happy to have those he felt were his natural and true enemies—the capitalist West and Nazi Germany—fight each other. Indeed, the Soviets had their partisans in the U.S., working alongside Nazi sympathisers, advocate that the U.S. remain neutral in the war, a position that the majority of Americans, reluctant to join in what they saw as "someone else's war," welcomed. Battle of Britain There were isolated engagements during the "Phony War" or "Sitzkrieg" period, including the sinking of HMS Royal Oak in the anchorage at Scapa Flow and Luftwaffe bombings of the naval bases at Rosyth and Scapa Flow. The Kriegsmarine pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee was sunk in South America after the battle of the River Plate. The Tripartite Pact was signed between Germany, Italy, and Japan on 27 September, 1940, formalising their alignment as the "Axis Powers". The Soviet Union invaded Finland on 30 November 1939, beginning the Winter War, which lasted until March 1940 with Finland ceding territory to the Soviet Union.

1940: The war spreads

Winter War Main Articles: Norwegian Campaign, Battle of France, Battle of Britain, North African Campaign, Balkans Campaign Europe: Germany invaded Denmark and Norway on 9 April 1940, in Operation Weserübung, ostensibly to counter the threat of an Allied invasion from the region. Heavy fighting ensued on land and at sea in Norway. British, French and Polish forces landed to support the Norwegians at Namsos, Åndalsnes and Narvik, with most success at the latter. By late June, all Allied forces had been evacuated, and the Norwegian Army surrendered. France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were invaded on 10 May, ending the Phony War and beginning the Battle of France. The Allies had hoped to establish a static continuous front and were ill-prepared for the German Blitzkrieg tactics. In the first phase of the invasion, Operation Yellow, the Wehrmacht's Panzergruppe von Kleist bypassed the Maginot Line and split the Allies in two by driving to the English Channel. Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands fell quickly against the attack of Army Group B, and the British Expeditionary Force, trapped in the north, was evacuated at Dunkirk in Operation Dynamo. German forces then invaded France itself, in Operation Red, advancing behind the Maginot Line and near the coast. While some units from the French army were still fighting, a number of top politicians and military leaders decided that it would be better to surrender given the situation; France signed an armistice with Germany on June 22 1940, leading to the establishment of the Vichy France puppet government in the unoccupied part of France. In June 1940 the Soviet Union occupied Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and annexed Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina from Romania. Not having secured a rapid peace with the United Kingdom, Germany began preparations to invade with the Battle of Britain. Fighter aircraft fought overhead for months as the Luftwaffe and Royal Air Force fought for control of Britain's skies. The Luftwaffe initially targeted RAF Fighter Command but turned to terror bombing London. The Luftwaffe was not successful, and Operation Sealion, the proposed invasion of the British Isles, was abandoned. Similar efforts were made, though at sea, in the Battle of the Atlantic. In a long-running campaign, German U-Boats attempted to deprive the British Isles of necessary Lend Lease cargo from the United States. The U-Boats reduced shipments considerably; however, the United Kingdom refused to seek peace, with Prime Minister Winston Churchill stating that "We shall never surrender". President Roosevelt announced a shift in the American stance from neutrality to "non-belligerency". The Mediterranean: Italy invaded Greece on 28 October 1940, from bases in Albania. Although outnumbered, Greek forces successfully repelled the Italian attacks and launched a full-scale counter-attack deep into Albania. By mid-December they had liberated one-fourth of Albania. The North African Campaign began in 1940; Italian forces in Libya attacked British forces in Egypt. The aim was to make Egypt an Italian possession, especially the vital Suez Canal. British, Indian and Australian forces counter-attacked (see Operation Compass), but this offensive stopped in 1941 when much of the Commonwealth forces were transferred to Greece to defend it from German attack. However, German forces (known later as the Afrika Korps) under General Erwin Rommel landed in Libya and renewed the assault on Egypt. Italian troops invaded and captured British Somaliland in August 1940. On the other hand, the Italian declaration of war challenged the British supremacy of this sea, a supremacy hinged on Gibraltar, Malta and Alexandria. While Gibraltar was never under direct attack, Alexandria and to a deadlier degree Malta were hit repetitively by Axis attacks, the thrusts towards the Suez Canal for the former, and the 1940/42 Blitz for the latter, which made the island of Malta the most heavily bombed place on earth. Asia: In 1940, Japan occupied French Indochina (Vietnam) upon agreement with the Vichy Government, despite local Free French, and joined Axis powers Germany and Italy. These actions intensified Japan's conflict with the United States and the United Kingdom, which reacted with an oil boycott.

1941: The war becomes global

Main articles: Eastern Front, Continuation War, Attack on Pearl Harbor Europe: Attack on Pearl Harbor Yugoslavia's government succumbed to the pressure of Italy and Germany and signed the Tripartite Treaty on 25 March 1941. This was followed by anti-Axis demonstrations in the country and a coup which overthrew the government and replaced it with a pro-Allied one on 27 March 1941. Hitler's forces then invaded Greece and Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941. Hitler reluctantly sent forces to assist Mussolini's forces in their attempt to capture Greece, principally to prevent a British build-up on Germany's strategic southern flank. With these new troops the Axis succeeded in driving the Greek forces back. British troops were diverted from North Africa to assist with the defence but failed to prevent Greece's capture. On 20 May 1941, the Battle of Crete began when elite German paratroopers and glider-borne mountain troops and some 1300 aeroplanes launched a massive airborne invasion of the Greek island of Crete. Crete was defended by an group of about 43,000 Greek, New Zealand, Australian and British troops, not all of them fully equipped. The Germans attacked the island simultaneously on the three airfields. Their invasion on two of the airfields failed, but they successfully captured one, which allowed them to reinforce their position by landing reinforcements. After a week it was decided that so many German troops had been flown in that there was no way to defeat them, and about 17,000 Commonwealth soldiers were evacuated. However, over 10,000 Greek and 500 Commonwealth troops remained at large and caused problems for the German occupiers. The Germans may have suffered well over 15,000 casualties. So heavy were the losses that Hiler decided never to launch an airborne invasion again. General Kurt Student would later say, "Crete was the grave of the German parachutists". The Allies, on the other hand, came to the conclusion that every major invasion should be supported by paratroopers. Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the largest invasion in history, commenced on 22 June 1941. The "Great Patriotic War" (Russian: Великая Отечественная Война, Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna) had begun with surprise attacks by German panzer armies, which encircled and destroyed much of the Soviet's western military, capturing or killing hundreds of thousands of men. Soviet forces came to fight a war of scorched earth, withdrawing into the steppe of Russia to acquire time and stretch the German army. Industries were dismantled and withdrawn to the Ural mountains for reassembly. German armies pursued a three-pronged advance against Leningrad (modern-day St Petersburg), Moscow, and the Caucasus. Having pushed to occupy Moscow before winter, German forces were delayed into the Soviet Winter. Soviet counter-attacks defeated them within sight of Moscow's spires, and a rout was only narrowly avoided. Some historians identify this as the "turning point" in the Allies' war against Germany; others identify the capitulation of the German Sixth Army outside Stalingrad (modern-day Volgograd) in 1943. The Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union began with Soviet air attacks shortly after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, on 25 June, and ended with an armistice in 1944. The Soviet Union was joined in the war by the United Kingdom but not by the United States. The Mediterranean again: In June 1941, Allied forces invaded Syria and Lebanon, capturing Damascus on 17 June (see Syria-Lebanon campaign). Meanwhile, Rommel's forces advanced rapidly eastward, laying siege to the vital seaport of Tobruk. Australian and other Allied troops in the city resisted all until relieved, but a renewed Axis offensive captured the city and drove the Eighth Army back to a line at El Alamein. Asia: The Sino-Japanese War El Alamein Main article: Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) A war had begun in Asia years before World War II started in Europe. Japan had invaded China in 1931. By 1937, war had broken out as the Japanese sought control of China. Roosevelt signed an unpublished (secret) executive order in May 1940 allowing U.S. military personnel to resign from the service so that they could participate in a covert operation in China: the American Volunteer Group, also known as Chennault's Flying Tigers. Over a seven-month period, Chennault's Flying Tigers destroyed an estimated 600 Japanese aircraft, sunk numerous Japanese ships, and stalled the Japanese invasion of Burma. With the United States and other countries cutting exports to Japan, particularly fuel oil, Japan planned a strike on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, 7 December 1941, to cripple the U.S. Pacific Fleet while consolidating oil fields in Southeast Asia. It is hard to determine whether the Japanese intended to release an advance declaration of war, however, as means of coordinating secret directives with public communication, particularly during a weekend in the U.S., were limited. Despite what warning signs remained, the attack on Pearl Harbor achieved military surprise and dealt severe damage to the American Fleet's battleships, though the primary targets, aircraft carriers, remained safely at sea. The next day, Japanese forces arrived at Hong Kong, which later led to the surrender of the British colony on Christmas Day (known to locals as 'Black Christmas'), as well as launching numerous attacks on British and American outposts across the Pacific. Asia: The United States enters the war
Main article: Attack on Pearl Harbor Attack on Pearl Harbor On 7 December 1941, Japanese warplanes commanded by Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo carried out a surprise air raid on Pearl Harbor, the largest U.S. naval base in the Pacific. The Japanese forces met little resistance and devastated the harbour. This attack resulted in 8 battleships either sunk or damaged, 3 light cruisers and 3 destroyers sunk as well as damage to some auxiliaries and 343 aircraft either damaged or destroyed. However the attack failed to strike targets that could have been crippling losses to the US Pacific Fleet such as the aircraft carriers which were out at sea at the time of the attack or the base's ship fuel storage and repair facilities. The survival of these assets have led many to consider this attack a catastrophic long term strategic blunder for Japan. The following day, the United States declared war on Japan. Simultaneously to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan also attacked U.S. air bases in the Philippines. Immediately following these attacks, Japan invaded the Philippines and also the British Colonies of Hong Kong, Malaya, Borneo and Burma with the intention of seizing the oilfields of the Dutch East Indies. In a matter of months, all these territories and more fell to the Japanese onslaught. The British island fortress of Singapore was captured in what Churchill considered one of the most humiliating British defeats of all time. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Germany declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941, even though it was not obliged to do so under the Tripartite Pact of 1940. Hitler made the declaration in the hopes that Japan would support him by attacking the Soviet Union. Japan did not oblige him, and this diplomatic move proved a catastrophic blunder which gave President Franklin D. Roosevelt the pretext needed for the United States joining the fight in Europe with full commitment and with no meaningful opposition from Congress. Some historians mark this moment as another major turning point of the war with Hitler provoking a grand alliance of powerful nations, most prominently the UK, the USA and the USSR, who could wage powerful offensives on both East and West simultaneously.

1942: Deadlock

Franklin D. Roosevelt] Main articles: Battle of Stalingrad, Operation Torch Europe: In 1942, an aborted German offensive was launched towards the Caucasus to secure oil fields, and German armies reached Stalingrad. The siege of Stalingrad continued for many months, with vicious urban warfare leading to high casualties on both sides. At night, the Soviet forces were resupplied from the east bank of the Volga, and the Wehrmacht forces were eventually ground down; especially after Hitler diverted the armour of the Sixth Army to the Caucasus. In November a Soviet offensive encircled Sixth Army. By early February 1943, it was clear that the Sixth Army would have to surrender. Hitler promoted General Friedrich Paulus, who was in charge of the German forces, to Field Marshal in the vain hope it would deter him from surrendering. It did not, and he surrendered completely on 2 February. The results were the destruction of the city, millions of casualties, and the collapse of Germany's Sixth Army as a viable fighting force. Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels responded with his Sportpalast speech to the German people. Some historians cite this as the European war's "turning point". The Mediterranean: Sportpalast speech Sportpalast speech (432nd Squadron) damaged by flak somewhere over Algeria during the North African Campaign in 1942.]] The First Battle of El Alamein took place between 1 July and 27 July 1942. German forces had advanced to the last defensible point before Alexandria and the Suez Canal. However, they had outrun their supplies, and a Commonwealth defence stopped their thrusts. The Second Battle of El Alamein occurred between October 23 and November 3, 1942, after Bernard Montgomery had replaced Claude Auchinleck as commander of the Commonwealth forces, now known as the Eighth Army. Erwin Rommel, German commander of the Afrika Corps, known as the "Desert Fox", was absent for this battle because he was recovering from jaundice back in Europe. Commonwealth forces took the offensive, and although they lost more tanks than the Germans began the battle with, Montgomery was ultimately triumphant. The western Allies had the advantage of being close to their supplies during the battle. In addition, Rommel was getting little or no help by this time from the struggling Luftwaffe, which was now more tasked with defending Western European air space, and fighting the Soviet Union, than providing Rommel with support in North Africa. After the German defeat at El Alamein, Rommel made a successful strategic withdrawal to Tunisia. During the Arcadia Conference from December 1941 to January 1942, the Allied leaders concluded that it was essential to keep Russia in the war. This consideration led to the overall strategy "Germany First"; i.e. giving priority of knocking out Germany before Japan. This decision resulted in a long debate as to where and when to open a Second Front against Germany. The American Chiefs of Staff favoured a cross-channel (France) amphibious operation in the summer. The British opposed this because of insufficient landing craft and logistical problems. It was also thought that American forces were in a process of expansion, organisation and exercise, not capable yet of fighting an experienced German army. Only if Russia collapsed would they approve a main landing in France. Churchill put forward the idea of a small invasion in Norway or landings in French North Africa. The plan for landings in Africa was approved in July 1942. Operation Torch was headed by General Dwight Eisenhower. The aim of Torch was to gain control of Morocco and Algiers through simultaneous landings at Casablanca, Oran and Algiers, followed a few days later with a landing at Bône, the gateway to Tunisia. The operation was launched on 8 November 1942. The first wave was almost entirely American troops, because it was thought that the French would react more favourably to Americans than British. It was hoped that the local forces of Vichy France would put up no resistance and submit to the authority of Free French General Henri Giraud. In fact, resistance was stronger than expected but still sporadic. In Algiers, 400 members of the French resistance captured much of the city, though it was retaken before Allied forces could arrive. The Vichy commander, Admiral Darlan, negotiated an end to hostilities, against orders from the Vichy government. He was allowed to retain local control by the Allies, to the annoyance of Free French leaders. Hitler invaded and occupied Vichy France in response. Rommel's Afrika Corps was not being supplied adequately because of the loss of transport shipments caused by Allied—mostly British—navies and air forces in the Mediterranean. This lack of supplies and air support destroyed any chance of a large German offensive in Africa. Ultimately, German and Italian forces were caught in the pincers of a twin advance from Algeria and Libya. The withdrawing Germans continued to put up stiff defence, and Rommel defeated the American forces decisively at the Battle of Kasserine Pass before finishing his strategic withdrawal back to the meagre German supply chain. Inevitably, advancing from both the east and west, the Allies finally defeated the German Afrika Corps on May 13 1943. Some 250,000 Axis soldiers were taken prisoner. Asia: 1943]] In May 1942, a naval attack on Port Moresby, New Guinea, was thwarted by Allied navies in the Battle of the Coral Sea. Had the capture of Port Moresby succeeded, the Japanese Navy would have been within striking range of Australia. This was both the first successful opposition to Japanese plans and the first naval battle fought only between aircraft carriers. The two sides suffered roughly equal losses. A month later the invasion of Midway Island was prevented by decoding secret Japanese messages, and hence alerted U.S. naval leaders that Midway was the Japanese target. American pilots sunk four Japanese carriers, which the Japanese industry could not replace swiftly. The loss of many planes and skilled pilots (many of them took part in Pearl Harbor) was also difficult to redress. The Americans lost one carrier and fewer planes. It was a complete victory for the Americans, and the Japanese Navy was now on the defensive. However, in July an overland attack on Port Moresby was led along the rugged Kokoda Track. This was met with Australian militia, many of them very young and undertrained, fighting a stubborn rearguard action until the arrival of Australian regulars returning from action in North Africa, Greece and the Middle East. But amazingly, the outnumbered and untrained Australian 39th battalion defeated the 5,000-strong Japanese army. This was one of the most significant victories in Australian military history. Even prior to the American entry to the war, the Allied leaders had agreed that priority should be given to the defeat of Nazi Germany. Nonetheless, U.S. forces began to attack captured territories, beginning with Guadalcanal Island, against a bitter and determined Japanese defence. On 7 August 1942, the United States assaulted the island. In late August and early September, while battle raged on Guadalcanal, an amphibious Japanese attack on the eastern tip of New Guinea was met by Australian forces at Milne Bay, and the Japanese land forces suffered their first conclusive defeat. On Guadalcanal, the Japanese resistance failed in February 1943. A substantial element of the Asian campaign was played out, starting in 1942, in the Aleutian Islands. For detailed information, see World War II: Aleutian Islands.

1943: The war turns

World War II: Aleutian Islands Main articles: Battle of Kursk, Italian Campaign Europe: Russia: After the victory at Stalingrad, the Red Army launched a series of eight offensives during the winter, many concentrated along the Don basin near Stalingrad, which resulted in initial gains until German forces were able to take advantage of the weakened condition of the Red Army and regain the territory it lost. In July, the Wehrmacht launched a much-delayed offensive against the Soviet Union at Kursk. Their intentions were known by the Soviets, and the Battle of Kursk ended in a Soviet counteroffensive that threw the German Army back. Italy is invaded: Newly captured North Africa was used as a springboard for the invasion of Sicily on 10 July 1943. On 25 July Mussolini was fired from office by the King of Italy, allowing a new government to take power. Having captured Sicily, the Allies invaded mainland Italy on 3 September 1943. Italy surrendered on 8 September, but German forces continued to fight. Allied forces advanced north but were stalled for the winter at the Gustav Line, until they broke through in the Battle of Monte Cassino. Rome was captured on 5 June 1944. Mid-1943 brought the fifth and final German Sutjeska offensive against the Yugoslav Partisans before the invasion and subsequent capitulation of Italy, the other major occupying force in Yugoslavia. Partisans, Louisville (CA-28), Portland (CA-33) and Columbia (CL-56) into Lingayen Gulf, Philippines, January 1945.]] Asia: (1943–45) Australian and U.S. forces then undertook the prolonged campaign to retake the occupied parts of the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, experiencing some of the toughest resistance of the war. The rest of the Solomon Islands were retaken in 1943, New Britain and New Ireland in 1944. As the Philippines were being retaken in late 1944, the Battle of Leyte Gulf raged, arguably the largest naval battle in history. The last major offensive in the south-west Pacific Area was the Borneo campaign of mid-1945, which was aimed at further isolating the remaining Japanese forces in South East Asia and securing the release of Allied POWs. Allied submarines and aircraft also attacked Japanese merchant shipping, depriving Japan's industry of the raw materials it had gone to war to obtain. The effectiveness of this stranglehold increased as U.S. Marines captured islands closer to the Japanese mainland. The Nationalist Kuomintang Army, under Chiang Kai-shek, and the Communist Chinese Army, under Mao Zedong, both opposed the Japanese occupation of China but never truly allied against the Japanese. Conflict between Nationalist and Communist forces emerged long before the war; it continued after and, to an extent, even during the war, though more implicitly. The Japanese had captured most of Burma, severing the Burma Road by which the Western Allies had been supplying the Chinese Nationalists. This forced the Allies to create a large sustained airlift, known as "flying the Hump". U.S. led and trained Chinese divisions, a British division and a few thousand U.S. ground troops cleared the Japanese forces from northern Burma so that the Ledo Road could be built to replace the Burma Road. Further south the main Japanese army in the theatre were fought to a standstill on the Burma-India frontier by the British Fourteenth Army (the "Forgotten Army"), which then counter-attacked, and having recaptured all of Burma was planning attacks towards Malaya when the war ended.

1944: The beginning of the end

British Fourteenth Army, 6 June 1944]] Main articles: Battle of Normandy, Operation Bagration, Operation Market Garden, Battle of the Bulge On "D-Day" (6 June 1944) the western Allies invaded German-held Normandy in a pre-dawn amphibious assault spearheaded by American (82nd and 101st), British (6th) and Canadian paratroops, opening the "second front" against Germany. The allies suffered large casualties during the beach assault. German artillery batteries pounded the beaches. But the airborne divisions took out the guns from the rear, enabling the seaborne troops to break inland. Hedgerows aided the defending German units, and for months the Allies measured progress in hundreds of yards and bloody rifle fights. An Allied breakout was effected at St.-Lô, and the most powerful German force in France, the Seventh Army, was almost completely destroyed in the Falaise pocket while counter-attacking. Allied forces stationed in Italy invaded the French Riviera on 15 August and linked up with forces from Normandy. The clandestine French Resistance in Paris rose against the Germans on 19 August, and a French division under General Jacques Leclerc, pressing forward from Normandy, received the surrender of the German forces there and liberated the city on August 25. By early 1944, the Red Army had reached the border of Poland and lifted the Siege of Leningrad. Shortly after Allied landings at Normandy, on 9 June, the Soviet Union began an offensive on the Karelian Isthmus that after three months would force Nazi Germany's co-belligerent Finland to an armistice. Operation Bagration, a Soviet offensive involving 2.5 million men and 6,000 tanks, was launched on 22 June, destroying the German Army Group Centre and taking 350,000 prisoners. Finland's defence had been dependent on active, or in periods passive, support from the German Wehrmacht that also provided defence for the chiefly uninhabited northern half of Finland. After the Wehrmacht retreated from the southern shores of the Gulf of Finland, Finland's defence was untenable. The Allies' armistice conditions included further territori

V1 Flying Bomb

The Fieseler Fi 103/FZG-76 (Vergeltungswaffe-1, V-1), known as the Flying bomb, Buzz bomb or Doodlebug, was the first modern guided missile used in wartime and the first cruise missile. The name Vergeltungswaffe, meaning "reprisal weapon", was coined by German propaganda minister Goebbels to signify reprisals against the Allies for the bombing of the Fatherland. FZG is an abbreviation of Flakzielgerät ("anti-aircraft aiming device"), a misleading name. The V-1 was often called the Buzz bomb because of the characteristic buzzing sound of its engine. As the V-1 entered its terminal dive the engine would cut out, and people along the bomb's flight path would listen intently for the silence that heralded the V-1's impact. The V-1 was developed by the German Luftwaffe during the Second World War and was used operationally between June 1944 and March 1945. It was used to attack targets in southeastern England and Belgium, chiefly the cities of London and Antwerp. V-1s were launched from "ski-jump" launch sites along the French (Pas-de-Calais) and Dutch coasts until the sites were overrun by Allied forces. A small number were air launched from German aircraft over the North Sea. The V-1 was later complemented by the more sophisticated V-2 rocket. The last V-1 attack struck British soil on March 29, 1945, two days after the final V-2 attack.

Description

The V-1 was designed jointly by Robert Lusser of the Fieseler company and Fritz Gosslau from the Argus engine works as the Fi 103. It was powered by an Argus pulse jet engine providing 2.9 kN (660 lbf) of thrust for a top speed of 630 km/h (390 mph) and a range of around 250 km (150 miles), which was later increased to 400 km (250 miles). It was 7.9 meters (26 feet) long and 5.3 meters (17 feet) in span and weighed 2180 kilograms (4,800 pounds). It flew at an altitude of 100 to 1000 meters (300 to 3,000 feet). It carried an 850-kilogram (1,870-pound) warhead. The missile was a relatively simple device with a fuselage constructed mainly of sheet metal, and could be assembled in around fifty man-hours. The guidance system was very crude in construction but sophisticated in conception (and had a few flaws in execution). Once clear of the launching pad, an autopilot was engaged. It regulated height and speed together, using a weighted pendulum system to get fore and aft feedback linking these and the device's attitude to control its pitch (damped by a gyromagnetic compass, which it also stabilized). There was a more sophisticated interaction between yaw, roll, and other sensors: a gyromagnetic compass (set by swinging in a hangar before launch) gave feedback to control each of pitch and roll, but it was angled away from the horizontal so that controlling these degrees of freedom interacted (the gyroscope stayed trued up by feedback from the magnetic field, and from the fore and aft pendulum mentioned before). This interaction meant that rudder control was sufficient without any separate banking mechanism. On reaching the target, the desired altitude was reset to be negative; this should have led to a power dive, but the steep descent caused the fuel to run away from the pipes and so the power cut out. As there was a belly fuse as well as a nose fuse, there was still usually an explosion, although not always with the device buried deep enough to increase the effect of the blast.

Operation and effectiveness

The first test flight of the wonder weapon V-1 was in late 1941 or early 1942 at Peenemünde. Early guidance and stabilization problems were finally resolved by a daring test flight by Hanna Reitsch, in a V-1 modified for manned operation. The data she brought back after fighting the unwieldy V-1 down to a successful landing enabled the engineers to devise the stabilization system described above. The idea of a piloted V-1 as a suicide weapon sprang from this mission. See also Selbstopfer Selbstopfer The first offensive launch was from June 12 to June 13, 1944. The Allies had previously organized a heavy series of air attacks on the launch sites (beginning in December 1943) and now also attacked the V-1s in flight (see Countermeasures below). Because of a combination of defensive measures, mechanical unreliability, and guidance errors, only a quarter successfully hit their targets. Once the Allies had captured or destroyed the sites that were the principal launch points of V-1s aimed at England, the Germans switched to missile launches aimed at strategic points in the Low Countries, primarily the port of Antwerp. Although most V-1s were launched from static sites on land, the Luftwaffe did, from July 1944 to January 1945, launch a number of V-1s from Heinkel He 111 aircraft flying over the North Sea. This would also have been the launch method for the proposed piloted version of the weapon, and is how the very earliest experimental versions of the V-1 were tested. Late in the war, several piloted V-1s were built; known as Reichenbergs, they were never used in combat. It was also hoped to use the Arado Ar 234 jet bomber to deploy V-1s, either by towing them aloft, or by launching them from a "piggy back" position atop the aircraft. Neither Ar 234 concept was employed before the end of the war. Almost 30,000 V-1s were manufactured. Approximately 10,000 were fired at England up to March 29, 1945. Of these, about 7,000 were "hits" in the sense that they landed somewhere in England. A little more than half of those (3,876) landed in the Greater London area. An almost equal number were downed by the combination of fighters and barrage balloons. When the V-1 raids began, the only effective direct defence was interception by a handful of very-high-performance fighter aircraft, especially the Hawker Tempest. The British were able to redirect V-1s aimed at London to less populated areas east of the city by sending false impact reports via the German espionage network in Britain, which was actually controlled by the British. See Double Cross System. In the London area, roughly 5,500 persons died as a result of V-1 attacks, with some 16,000 more persons injured.

Intelligence

Double Cross System The codename Flak Ziel Gerät 76 was somewhat successful in disguising the true nature of this device, and it was some time before references to FZG 76 were tied to the V83 pilotless aircraft (an experimental V-1) which had crashed on Bornholm in the Baltic, and to reports from agents of a flying bomb capable of being used against London. Initially British experts were skeptical of the V-1 because they had considered only solid fuel rockets as a means of propulsion, which put the stated range of 130 miles (209 km) out of question. However when other types of engine were considered they relented, and by the time German scientists had achieved the needed accuracy for the deployment of the V-1 as a weapon British intelligence had a very accurate characterisation of it. A deception concerning the V-1 was played on the Germans using double agents. MI5 arranged for these agents to provide Germany with damage reports for the June 1944 V-1 attacks which implied that on average the bombs were travelling too far, while not contradicting the evidence presumed to be available to German planners from photographic reconnaissance of London. In fact the bombs had been seeded with radio-transmitting samples to confirm their range, but the results from these samples were ignored in favour of the false eyewitness accounts, and many lives may have been saved by the resulting tendency of future V-1 bombs to fall short of built up areas.

Countermeasures

The British defence against the V-1 was codenamed Operation Diver. Anti-aircraft guns were redeployed in several movements: first in mid-June 1944 from positions on the North Downs to the south coast of England; then a cordon closing the Thames Estuary to attacks from the east. In September 1944 a new linear defence line was formed on the coast of East Anglia, and finally in December there was a further layout along the Lincolnshire-Yorkshire coast. The deployments were prompted by the ever-changing approach tracks of the missiles which were in turn influenced by the Allies' advance through Europe. Anti-aircraft gunners found that such small, fast-moving targets were difficult to hit. At first, it took, on average, 2500 shells to bring down a single V-1. The average altitude of the V-1, between 2,000 and 3,000 feet (610 and 915 m), was in a narrow band between the optimum engagement heights for light and heavy anti-aircraft weapons. These low heights defeated the rate of traverse of the standard British QF 3.7 inch mobile gun, and static gun installations with faster traverses had to be built at great cost. Barrage balloons were also deployed against the missiles, but the leading edges of the V-1's wings were equipped with balloon cable cutters and fewer than 300 V-1s are known to have been destroyed by hitting cable. Fighter defences had also been mobilized as part of Operation Diver. Most fighter aircraft were too slow to catch a V-1 unless they had a useful height advantage. Even when intercepted, the V-1 was difficult to bring down. Machine gun bullets had little effect on the sheet steel structure, and 20 mm cannon shells had a shorter range, which meant that detonating the warhead could destroy the intercepting fighter as well. QF 3.7 inch When the attacks began in mid-June of 1944 there were fewer than 30 Tempests in 150 Wing to defend against them. Few other aircraft had the low-altitude performance to be effective. Initial attempts to intercept V-1s were often unsuccessful but interdiction techniques were rapidly developed. These included the hair-raising but effective method of using the airflow over an interceptor's wing to raise one wing of the Doodlebug, by sliding the interceptor's wingtip under the V-1's wing and bringing it to within six inches (15 cm) of the lower surface. Done properly, the airflow would tip the V-1's wing up, overriding the buzz bomb's gyros and sending it into an out of control dive. At least three V-1s were destroyed this way. The Tempest wing was built up to over 100 aircraft by September; Griffon-engined Spitfire XIVs and Mustangs were polished and tuned to make them almost fast enough, and during the short summer nights the Tempests shared defensive duty with Mosquitoes. Specially modified P-47 Thunderbolts (P-47Ms) with half their fuel tanks, half their 0.5 in (12.7 mm) machine guns, all external fittings and all their armour plate removed were also pressed into service against the V-1 menace. There was no need for radar — at night the V-1's engine could be seen from 16 km (10 miles) or more away. In daylight, V-1 chases were chaotic and often unsuccessful until a special defence zone between London and the coast was declared in which only the fastest fighters were permitted. Between June and mid-August 1944, the handful of Tempests shot down 638 flying bombs. One Tempest pilot, Joseph Berry, downed fifty-nine V-1s, and Wing Commander Roland Beamont destroyed 31. Next most successful was the Mosquito (428), Spitfire XIV (303), and Mustang, (232). All other types combined added 158. The still-experimental jet-powered Gloster Meteor, which was rushed half-ready into service to fight the V-1s, had ample speed but suffered from a readily-jammed cannon and accounted for only 13. By mid-August 1944, the threat was all but overcome—not by aircraft, but by the sudden arrival of two enormously effective electronic aids for anti-aircraft guns, both developed in the USA by the MIT Rad Lab: radar-based automatic gunlaying, and above all, the proximity fuze. Both of these had been requested by AA Command and arrived in numbers, starting in June 1944, just as the guns reached their free-firing positions on the coast. Seventeen per cent of all flying bombs entering the coastal 'gun belt' were destroyed by guns in the first week on the coast. This kill rate rose week on week to reach 60 per cent by 23 August and 74 per cent in the last week of the month, when on one extraordinary day 82 per cent of all targets available to the guns fell. The kill rate increased from one V-1 for every 2500 shells fired to one for every hundred.

Japanese versions

In 1944, an Argus pulse jet engine was shipped to Japan by German submarine. The Aeronautical Institute of Tokyo Imperial University and the Kawanishi Aircraft Company conducted a joint study of the feasibility of mounting a similar engine on a piloted plane. The resulting design was based on the Fieseler Fi-103 "Reichenberg" (Fi103R ) manned V-1, and was named the Baika ("ume blossom"). The Kawanishi Baika never left the design stage but technical drawings and notes suggest that two versions were under consideration: an air-launch version with the engine mounted under the fuselage, and a ground-launch version that could take off without a ramp.

After the war

After the war, the armed forces of both the United States and the Soviet Union experimented with the V-1 in an assortment of scenarios. Just as the V-2 was launched from White Sands Missile Range, the Wallops Island launch site was established to test V-1s by launching them eastward into the Atlantic ocean. The most successful development was a U.S. Navy experiment to mount V-1s on submarines. This was called the KGW-1 Loon, which was an adaptation of the U.S. Army's JB-2 Loon.

References

- King, Benjamin; Kutta, Timothy (1998). IMPACT. The History of Germany's V-Weapons in World War II. Rockville Center, New York: Sarpedon Publishers. ISBN 1-885119-51-8.

External links

- [http://www.ww2guide.com/vweapon.shtml Vergeltungswaffe V-Weapons] – From Daniel Green's World War II Air Power website; contains descriptions and film sequences (AVI format)
- [http://www.stelzriede.com/ms/html/sub/marshwvw.htm The V-Weapons] – From Marshall Stelzriede's Wartime Story website; with June 1944 UK/US news reports on V-1 attacks
- [http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/LRG/v1.html Fi-103/V-1 "Buzz Bomb"] – From the Luftwaffe Resource Center website, hosted by The Warbirds Resource Group; with 42 photos Category:World War II guided missiles of Germany Category:Vergeltungswaffen ja:V1飛行爆弾

Ballistic missile

A ballistic missile is a missile that follows a prescribed course that cannot be signifigantly altered after the missile has burned its fuel (its course is governed by the laws of ballistics). In order to cover large distances, ballistic missiles are usually launched very high into the air or in space, in a sub-orbital spaceflight; for intercontinental missiles the altitude halfway is ca. 1200 km. When in space and no more thrust is provided, the missiles are in freefall. Many advanced ballistic missiles have several rocket stages and their course can be slightly adjusted from one stage to the next. They can be launched from fixed sites or mobile launchers, including vehicles (Tractor-Erector Launchers, TELs), aircraft, ships and submarines. Ballistic missiles can vary widely in range and use, and are often divided into categories based on range. The U.S. distinguishes[http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iran/missile/]:
- Short-range ballistic missile (SRBM): range less than 1000 km (an example is the Scud)
- Medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM): range between 1000 and 2500 km
- Intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM): range between 2500 and 3500 km
- Intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM): range greater than 3500 km, broken down into:
- Limited range intercontinental ballistic missile (LRICBM): range between 3500 and 8000 km
- Full range intercontinental ballistic missile (FRICBM): range between 8000 and 12,000 km Medium to short range missiles are often called tactical or theatre ballistic missiles (TBM). Long and medium range ballistic missiles are generally designed to deliver nuclear warheads because their payload is too limited for conventional explosives to be efficient. Using a missile with a considerably longer range than the distance from launch site to target can make sense: it can reach a higher altitude and come down with a higher speed, making defense more difficult. For example, a missile with a range of 3000 km fired at a target that is only 500 km away could arrive at its target after having reached an altitude of about 1200 km —roughly the height reached by ICBMs. Like them, it would arrive at a speed of typically more than 6 km/s (Mach 17). The first ballistic missile was the V-2 rocket, developed by Nazi Germany in the 1940s, which was successfully launched for the first time on October 3, 1942 and used for the first time in operation on September 8, 1944. 1944 Specific types of ballistic missiles include:
- Agni
- Air-Sol Moyenne Portée (ASMP)
- Blue Steel
- Blue Streak
- Condor
- CSS-2 missile
- Ghauri
- Hadès
- Hatf
- Jericho
- M5
- M45
- M51
- Minuteman
- Nodong-1
- Peacekeeper
- Pluton
- Polaris
- Poseidon
- Prithvi
- Scud
- Shahab-3
- Shahab-4
- Shahab-5
- Shaheen
- Skybolt Air-Launched Ballistic Missile (ALBM)
- SS-18 missile
- SS-24 missile
- SS-N-23
- Surya ICBM
- Trident
- V-2 Specific types of ballistic missile submarines include:
- Benjamin Franklin class
- Ohio class
- Resolution class
- Triomphant class
- Redoutable class
- Additional ballistic missile submarines

External links

- [http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/missile/index.html An introduction to ballistic missiles]
- http://www.missilethreat.com/missiles/

Category:Ballistic missiles Category:Ballistics Category:unmanned vehicles ms:Peluru berpandu balistik ja:弾道ミサイル

V-2 rocket

The V-2 rocket or Vergeltungswaffe 2 (Vengeance weapon 2) was an early ballistic missile used by the German Army during the later stages of World War II against mostly British and Belgian targets. Belgian of the first successful V-2 rocket. Like the original, this rocket has the Frau im Mond logotype at its base.]]

Pre-operational history

As early as 1927 members of the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR) ("Spaceflight Society") had started experimenting with liquid-fuelled rockets. Rockets using a solid propellant had been used as weapons by all sides in WWI, and as a result, the Treaty of Versailles forbade solid fuel rocket research in Germany. By 1932 the Reichswehr started taking notice of their developments for potential long-range artillery use, and a team led by General Walter Dornberger was shown a test vehicle designed and flown by Wernher von Braun. Although the rocket was of limited ability, Dornberger saw von Braun's genius and pushed for him to join the military. Von Braun did so, as eventually did most of the other members of the society. In December 1934 von Braun scored another success with the flight of the A2 (A for Aggregat) rocket, a small model powered by ethanol and liquid oxygen, with work on the design continuing in an attempt to improve reliability. Many different liquid fuels had been developed, but the German military specifically encouraged the use of ethanol as a rocket fuel because Germany had always been hampered by a shortage of crude-oil-based fuels. Throughout WWII a wide variety of military rockets were fuelled by ethanol that was primarily derived from potatoes. By 1936 the team had moved on from the A2 and started work on both the A3 and A4. The latter was a full-sized design with a range of about 175 km (110 miles), a top altitude of 80 km and a payload of about a tonne. This increase in capability had come through a complete redesign of the engine by Walter Thiel. It was clear that von Braun's designs were turning into real weapons, and Dornberger moved the team from Kummersdorf (near Berlin) to a small town, Peenemünde, on the island of Usedom on Germany's Baltic coast, in order to provide more room for testing and greater secrecy. The A3 proved to be problematic, and a redesign was started as the A5. This version was completely reliable, and by 1941 the team had fired about 70 A5 rockets. The first A4 flew in March 1942, flying about 1.6 km and crashing into the water. The second launch reached an altitude of 11 km before exploding. The third rocket, launched on October 3 1942, changed things by following its trajectory perfectly. It landed 193 km away, and became the first man-made object to enter space. Production started in 1943 on the wonder weapon Vergeltungswaffe 2 (Vengeance Weapon 2), or the V-2 as it became better known, at the insistence of Goebbels' propaganda ministry. The Allies were already aware of the weapon. At a test site at Blizna in Poland a fired missile had been recovered by Polish resistance agents from the banks of the Western Bug, and vital technical details had been given to British intelligence. The British launched a massive bombing campaign against Peenemünde which slowed testing and production considerably as well as killing many key workers.

Launch sites

Dornberger had always wanted a mobile launch platform for the missiles, but Hitler pressed for the construction of massive underground blockhouses from which to launch them. According to his plans, V-2s should have arrived from a number of factories in a continuous stream on several redundant rail lines, and launching should have been almost continual. Construction of the first such site started at Éperlecques, near St Omer in the Pas-de-Calais area in 1943. The British spotted it almost immediately and started a massive bombing campaign that eventually forced the Germans to abandon it, although the large 10-ton "Tallboy" bombs had had little impact. Another site was then started nearby in a huge quarry and called La Coupole, but it wasn't long before that too was destroyed by bombing. Eventually they gave up on the area and moved to the south near Cherbourg, but once again the site was discovered and bombed — this time while the concrete was still wet. Cherbourg The plan was changed to build large truck-towed trailers for the missiles. An entire convoy for the missile, men, equipment and fuel required about thirty trucks. The missile was delivered to a staging area on a Vidalwagen and the local crews installed the warhead. Launch teams then transferred the missile to a Meillerwagen (right) and towed it to the launch site. There it was erected onto the launch table, fuelled, armed, gyros were set and the rocket was fired. From arrival at a site to firing took about 90 minutes. The crew could leave the firing site within 30 minutes. This was very successful, and an average of 10 V-2s were launched per day, by far the most large rockets of a single type ever. After the war, estimates showed that up to 100 V-2s could be launched per day with these trailers, given sufficient supply of the rockets.[http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/rocketaday.html] The missile could be launched practically anywhere, roads running though forests being a particular favourite. The system was so mobile and small that not one Meillerwagen was ever caught in action by Allied aircraft.

Peenemünde test launches 1942–44

For the period after July 1943 only incomplete launch logs of experimental A4-launches at Peenemünde are available. Experimental launches continued in spite of air raids on August 17, 1943 and in July/August 1944 until February 21, 1945. A test rocket for the Wasserfall missile project, in effect a converted V-2 rocket, launched from Peenemünde on June 13, 1944, crashed in Sweden. A V-2 test rocket fired on 30 May 1944 crashed near the test facility at Sarnaki nad Bugiem and was recovered and secured by Polish resistance (Home Army). On the night of 25 July/26 July 1944 it was successfully transported to the UK from occupied Poland by a RAF plane (see Operation III Most).

Photo gallery: The V-2 and Polish Intelligence

see also Home Army and V1 and V2 Image:Peenemunde August 1943.jpg|Test range at Peenemünde Image:Peenemunde August 1943 2.jpg|Failed test at Peenemünde, August 1943 Image:V-2 Leaflet testsitearea.jpg|German WWII leaflet in Polish and German warning the inhabitants of the Blizna test site area against crashed V-2 rockets Image:Traeger Roman intellAK Peenemundediscov.jpg|Roman Traeger, a scientist and member of the Polish intelligence service, who discovered the Peenemünde test site Image:V-2 Bug.jpg|V-2 rocket being recovered from the Bug river by the Home Army Image:V-2 Bug parts.jpg|Parts of the V-2 rocket recovered from the Bug river by the Home Army Image:Struszynski Marceli profPW analis v-2fuel.jpg|Professor Marceli Struszyński of the Warsaw University of Technology, who successfully analysed the composition of fuel used by the V-2 and then passed the results of his research on to the UK Image:MostIII v2 parts.jpg|Members of Operation Most III, during which parts of the captured V-2, as well as the analysis and sketches, were transferred from occupied Poland to the UK

V-2 production

V-2 mass production was conducted at the Mittelwerk tunnel system under the Kohnstein mountain, part of the Mittelbau-Dora slave labour camp complex, near Nordhausen, Germany. By late 1943 over 10,500 forced laborers were in Kohnstein and many died due to the conditions (cold and humidity, especially) and heavy labour. For example, 2,900 died between October 1943 and March 1944, but others died during transfers and other work. Put another way, fatalities averaged over 100 per day during certain periods. The majority of the slaves were Russian, Polish and French, although there were also prisoners of war, foreign workers and Germans forced to compulsory work.

Operational history

German German German The first unit to reach operational status was Batterie 444. On September 2 1944 they formed up to launch attacks on Paris, recently liberated, and eventually set up near Houffalize in Belgium. The next day the 485th moved to The Hague for operations against London. Several launch attempts over the next few days failed, but on the 8th both groups fired successfully. This was the tip of the iceberg. Over the next few months the total number of V-2s fired were 3,172, distributed over the various targets as follows:
- At Belgium : 1664
- Antwerp 1610 (≈ 50% of the total)
- Liege 27
- Hasselt 13
- Tournai 9
- Mons 3
- Diest 2
- At France : 76
- Lille 25
- Paris 22
- Tourcoing 19
- Arras 6
- Cambrai 4
- At England : 1402
- London 1358 (≈ 40% of the total)
- Norwich/Ipswich 44
- At targets in Germany : 11
- Remagen 11
- At the Netherlands : 19
- Maastricht 19 The final two exploded on 27 March 1945. In all, about seven thousand civilians were killed in London by the V-2, an average of about 2 deaths per launching. This, however, understates the potential of the V-2, since many rockets were mis-directed and exploded harmlessly. Accurately targetted missiles were often devastating, causing large numbers of deaths - about 160 in one explosion in Woolwich, south-east London and 567 deaths in a cinema in Antwerp - and significant damage in the critically important Antwerp docks.

Countermeasures

Like the V-1, the V-2 was immune to electronic countermeasures. Unlike the V-1, however, the V-2's speed and trajectory also made it invulnerable to anti-aircraft guns and fighters, as it dropped from an altitude of 100–110 km (60–70 miles) at up to four times the speed of sound. The only defences against the V-2 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. The British were able to convince the Germans to direct V-1s and V-2s aimed at London to less populated areas east of the city. This was done by sending false impact reports via the German espionage network in Britain, which was actually controlled by the British (the Double Cross System). There is a record of one V-2, fortuitously observed at launch from an American bomber, being shot down by machine-gun fire. The final solution was the Allied advance that forced the launchers back beyond range. The underground assembly plant in the Harz mountains near Nordhausen, was never bombed. On 3 March 1945 the allies attempted to destroy V-2s and launching equipment near The Hague by a large-scale bombardment, but due to navigational errors the Bezuidenhout quarter was destroyed, killing 500 civilians.

Assessment

The V-2, despite being the most advanced weapon in WWII, was militarily ineffective. Its guidance systems were too primitive to hit specific targets, and its costs were approximately equivalent to four-engined bombers, which were more accurate (though only in a relative sense— see discussion in strategic bomber), had longer ranges, carried many more warheads, and were reusable. Moreover, it had diverted resources from other, more effective programmes. Nevertheless, it had a considerable psychological effect as, unlike bombing planes or the V1 Flying Bomb, which made a characteristic buzzing sound, the V-2 travelled faster than the speed of sound, with no warning before impact and no possibility of defense. In all, about seven thousand civilians were killed in London by the V-2, an average of about 2 deaths per launching. The cost of the V-2 program was approximately $2 billion in 1944 dollars (approximate $21 billion in 2005 dollars); and 6048 were built, 3225 launched ($620,000 each in 2005 dollars).

Unfulfilled plans

A submarine towed launch platform was tested successfully, effectively making it the prototype for submarine launched ballistic missiles. The project codename was Prüfstand XII. If deployed, it would have allowed a U-boat to launch V-2 missiles against American cities, though only with considerable effort (and likely limited effect). Twelve dismantled V-2 rockets were shipped to the Japanese. These left Bordeaux in August 1944 on transport U-boats U-219 and U-195 reaching Djakarta in December 1944. A civilian V-2 expert was also a VIP passenger on the U-234 bound for Japan in May 1945 when the war ended in Europe. The fate of these V-2 rockets is unknown.

Post-war V-2 usage

At the end of the war a race between the United States and the USSR to retrieve as many V-2 rockets and staff as possible began. Three hundred trainloads of V-2s and parts were captured and shipped to the United States, added to this 126 of the principal designers, including both Wernher von Braun and Walter Dornberger were in American hands. In the midst of this, in October 1945 as Operation Backfire, the British assembled a small number of V-2 missiles and launched three of them from a site in northern Germany. However the engineers involved had already agreed to move to the US when the test firings were complete. The Backfire report remains the most extensive technical documentation of the rocket, including all support procedures, tailored vehicles and fuel composition. Operation Backfire Under Operation Paperclip the German engineers' stay in the US was legitimised. For several years afterward, the United States rocketry program made use of the supply of unused V-2 rockets left from the war. Some of these were equipped with a WAC-rocket as a second stage. These rockets were called Bumper. On 24 February 1949 such a rocket reached a then-record altitude of 400 km (250 miles) and a velocity of 8290 km/h (5150 mph) at its launch from

1940s

Events and trends

Technology

Science

War, peace and politics

Economics

Culture, religion

Others

People

World leaders

Sports figures

Entertainers

World War II

Summary

Causes

Participants

A debated starting date

Chronology 1937-45

1937: Second Sino-Japanese War

1939: War breaks out in Europe

1940: The war spreads

1941: The war becomes global

1942: Deadlock

1943: The war turns

1944: The beginning of the end

V1 Flying Bomb

Description

Operation and effectiveness

Intelligence

Countermeasures

Japanese versions

After the war

See also

References

External links

Ballistic missile

See also

External links

V-2 rocket

Pre-operational history

Launch sites

Peenemünde test launches 1942–44

Photo gallery: The V-2 and Polish Intelligence

V-2 production

Operational history

Countermeasures

Assessment

Unfulfilled plans

Post-war V-2 usage