The production cost of a V-1 was only a small fraction of that of a V-2 supersonic ballistic missile, carrying a similar-sized warhead.

Here a part of the team on the German rocket program was developing the Wasserfall missile, a variant of the V-2 rocket, the first ground-to-air missile.

Most famous of these are the V-1 flying bomb and V-2, both of which used a simple mechanical autopilot to keep the missile flying along a pre-chosen route.

The V-2 rocket (, i. e. retaliation weapon 2 ), technical name Aggregat-4 ( A4 ), was a short-range ballistic missile that was developed at the beginning of the Second World War in Germany, specifically targeted at London and later Antwerp.

Although Hitler commented on 22 September 1943, that " It is a great load off our minds that we have dispensed with the radio guiding-beam ; now no opening remains for the British to interfere technically with the missile in flight ", about 20 % of the operational V-2 launches were beam-guided.

Diagram of V-2, the first ballistic missile.

The first ballistic missile was the A-4, commonly known as the V-2 rocket, developed by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s under direction of Wernher von Braun.

In late 1945, they began arriving at Fort Bliss, Texas, where, using components brought from Germany, started upgrading the V-2 missile.

Most of them had worked on the V-2 missile development under von Braun at Peenemünde.

For the next five years, von Braun and the German scientists and engineers were primarily engaged in adapting and improving the V-2 missile for U. S. applications ; testing was conducted at nearby White Sands Proving Grounds, New Mexico.

The Stafford Air & Space Museum is home to spacecraft, an actual Titan II missile, WWII V-2 rocket, MiG 21, Saturn V F-1 engine as well as flown space suits, flight equipment, space shuttle engines, and a moon rock ; The museum is located at the Thomas P. Stafford Airport.

Another early vehicle to break the sound barrier was probably the first successful test launch of the German V-2 ballistic missile on 3 October 1942, at Peenemünde in Germany.

The first cruise missile ( V-1 ), the first ballistic missile ( V-2 ), the first ( and to date only ) operational rocket-powered combat aircraft Me 163 and the first vertical take-off manned point-defense interceptor Bachem Ba 349 were also developed by Germany.

Starting from the R-1, which was a copy of the German V-2, a free-standing missile was launched from a horizontal pad.

* V-2 rocket, an early ballistic missile used in World War II

The Swedish Navy started to experiment with missiles, based on a recovered German V-2 missile, as early as 1944.

A direct descendant of the German V-2 rocket, the missile was the foundation for the Redstone rocket family, It was developed by a team of predominantly German rocket engineers relocated to the United States after World War II as part of Operation Paperclip.

The location was among the best in the continental United States for this purpose as it allowed for launches out over the Atlantic Ocean, and it was closer to the equator than most other parts of the United States, allowing rockets to get a boost from the Earth's rotationA Bumper ( rocket ) | Bumper V-2 was the first missile launched at Cape Canaveral, on July 24, 1950.

Even Rheinbote was not used in its intended role, but instead as a smaller version of the V-2 missile in the strategic role ( for which its 40 kg warhead was essentially useless ) due to its poor accuracy.

Since the missile had to fly only to the altitudes of the attacking bombers, and needed a far smaller warhead to destroy these, it could be much smaller than the V-2, about 1 / 4 the size.

The result of the Army Ordnance effort was JPL's answer to the German V-2 missile, named Corporal, first launched in May 1947.

Rocketdyne was formed by North American Aviation after World War II to study the German V-2 missile and adapt its engine to SAE measurements and US construction details.

Unlike the V-2, however, the V-1 required stationary launch ramps which were susceptible to bombardment.

* 1946 – First successful launch of an American V-2 rocket at White Sands Proving Ground.

* 1942 – The first V-2 rocket test launch.

* 1942 – Spaceflight: The first successful launch of a V-2 / A4-rocket from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde, Germany.

V-2 launch in Peenemünde ( 1943 )

The last V-2 launch at Peenemünde happened in February 1945, and on May 5, 1945, the soldiers of the Soviet 2nd Belorussian Front under General Konstantin Rokossovsky captured the seaport of Swinemünde and all of Usedom Island.

Moreover, when the subsequent V-2 rocket blitz began with only a few minutes from launch to impact, the deception was enhanced by providing locations genuinely damaged by bombing, verifiable by aerial reconnaissance, for impacts in central London, but each time-tagged with the time of an earlier impact that had fallen 5 – 8 miles short of central London.

The first successful launch of a V-2 was on October 3, 1942 and began operation on September 6, 1944 against Paris, followed by an attack on London two days later.

Montgomery replied that he had just received a signal from London that something needed to be done to neutralise the V-2 launch sites around the Hague ( which were bombarding London ) and that the plan must therefore proceed.

* 1942-Wernher von Braun and Walter Dornberger launch the first V-2 rocket at Peenemünde in northern Germany.

* 1946 – American launch of a camera-equipped V-2 rocket provides the first image of the Earth from space

The first CCTV system was installed by Siemens AG at Test Stand VII in Peenemünde, Germany in 1942, for observing the launch of V-2 rockets.

* Operation Sandy, a test launch of a V-2 rocket in 1947 from the aircraft carrier USS Midway

During the Second World War, the area was chosen as a launch site for the V-2 rocket.

At the beginning of 1943, in addition to its continuing work on the Atlantic Wall, the organization also undertook the construction of launch platforms in northern France for the V1 flying bomb and V-2 rocket.

They were used on strategic German targets such as V-2 rocket launch sites, submarine pens, and other reinforced structures, large civil constructions such as viaducts and bridges, as well as the German battleship Tirpitz.

* The first large rocket, the V-2, travelled horizontally with its tail forward to the launch site at Peenemünde.

The first successful test launch of a V-2 was the third test launch on 3 October 1942.

In the early morning of 7 July 1943, Dr Ernst Steinhoff flew von Braun and Major-General Dornberger in his Heinkel He-111 to Hitler's Führerhauptquartier " Wolfsschanze " headquarters and the next day Hitler viewed the film of the successful V-2 test launch ( narrated by von Braun ) and the scale models of the Watten bunker and launching-troop vehicles:

A suitable site was selected at a limestone hill about north of the Hidrequent quarries, near Mimoyecques in the Pas-de-Calais region of northern France behind Cap Gris Nez, very close to the French end of the present day Channel tunnel, where V-1 and V-2 launch sites were already under construction.

It was built by the forces of Nazi Germany between 1943 and 1944 to serve as a launch base for V-2 rockets directed against London and southern England.

The facility was designed, as was its predecessor at Watten, to receive, process and launch V-2 rockets at a high rate.