The V2-Rocket was being developed at the same time period as the V1-Rocket. The V2 was successfully fired, for the first time, at Peenemunde on October 3rd, 1942. The British Scientific Intelligence received the news about the completion of the V2-Rocket by a Danish chemical engineer. The engineer overheard two German soldiers talking about a rocket weapon. The Royal Air Force then bombed Peenemunde on August 17th, 1944. Although there attacks delayed the mass production of the V2, the RAF lost 42 aircrafts out of the 600 aircrafts that participated in the attack.
After the attacks by the Royal Air Force, the Germans decided to move the production of the V2 to underground facilities in the Harz Mountains. The German forces test fired the V2 several times and Polish troops were able to recover some pieces of the weapon which were then given to an RAE (Royal Aircraft Establishment) base in Farnborough, England for analysis on July 25th, 1944. With the parts given to them by the Polish, the scientists in the Farnborough base were able to determine its total weight, the warhead weight and its range. Even with these statistics they decided not to take any countermeasure, except bomb the launch sites, then attack the launch sites with ground troops.
The first operational V2-Rocket was fired on September 6, 1944 at Paris, France.
Two days later, the first of more than 1000 was fired towards London,
England. The missiles launched were on a ballistic arc route.
The rocked reached a maximum speed of approximately 1 mile per second and
a maximum height of approximately 60 miles.
Due to the fact that it travelled faster than the speed of sound, there
was no warning of its approach to the target.
At the end of the war approximately 4000 V2-Rockets had been fired at
Allied bases. Between the months of
February and March 1945, two weeks before the end of the war, an average of 60
missiles were being launched a week.
