1940s:
"Vengeance Weapon 2":
The V-2 Ballistic Missile
"[In London] … the reverberations from each [V-2] rocket explosion spread up to 20 miles so that millions … felt a personal interest in every one that landed . clearly, in the event of another world war far more deadly developments of these weapons would threaten mankind in every corner in every country."
Perhaps no other artifact so elegantly captures the social, political, and military origins of spaceflight than the V-2. It was not built as a space rocket — Nazi Germany built it as a revolutionary weapons system, the world's first ballistic missile. As such, the V-2 was a harbinger of the most frightening armaments of the Cold War — intercontinental missiles that could deliver a nuclear warhead to the other side of the world in half an hour. Yet, it had its roots in an interwar movement to spark interest in spaceflight and, after the war, became a step toward exploring space. Its lineal descendant, the Soviet R-7 ICBM, put Sputnik into orbit in 1957.
In 1929-1930, the German army began to research rocketry's military potential, work that eventually led to the V-2. At that time, longer ranges were only possible using higher-energy liquid propellants. In the German-speaking world, Hermann Oberth first laid out the theoretical basis for liquid-propellant rocketry for spaceflight in 1923. His followers set up several small rocket groups, most notably in Berlin. Out of this group came the young engineering student and space enthusiast Wernher von Braun, who was hired by the German army in December 1932.
Owing to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, the German army had increasingly more money for rearmament. Moreover, von Braun proved to be a brilliant engineering manager, one able to inspire his team with his vision of the future of rocket technology. In 1936 the army and the Luftwaffe (air force) decided to dramatically increase funding. They built a highly secret rocket center on the Baltic coast at Peenemünde, which opened in 1937. Despite many setbacks, on October 3, 1942, von Braun's group launched the first successful V-2 190 kilometers (110 miles) downrange; on the way it arced 90 kilometers (56 miles) high, the first human object to touch the edge of space.
This success, combined with Germany's rapidly deteriorating war situation, moved Adolf Hitler to order the weapon into mass production, drawing von Braun and his superiors even more deeply into the Nazi apparatus. Concentration camp workers helped assemble the missile, resulting in 10,000 to 20,000 prisoner deaths. After many delays and problems, the first V-2s were launched against London and Paris in September 1944; nearly 3,000 were fired by March 1945, causing about 5,000 deaths. As a weapons system, the V-2 proved to be a spectacular but highly inefficient way to drop a ton of high explosives — its only warhead — on enemy cities.
The real beneficiaries of Germany's investment in rocketry were the major Allied powers. The U.S., the USSR, Britain, and France all moved to grab technology and personnel because they saw the ballistic missile's military potential. The United States got Wernher von Braun and the core of the Peenemünde group, as well as parts for nearly a hundred V-2s. More than 70 were launched in the U.S., almost all in New Mexico, where they served as the first American rockets for exploring near space. The Soviets, meanwhile, began firing their own reconstructed V-2s and produced a copy, the R-1,which became the foundation for their strategic rocket forces.
The Museum's V-2 is actually a composite artifact, made from several captured rockets. Most of the fuselage comes from one the U.S. Air Force gave to the Smithsonian in 1949. Originally covered in spotted camouflage, it was repainted to resemble the October 3, 1942, vehicle before the new Museum building was opened in 1976.
After Sputnik is a testament to the unique story-telling power of the "real stuff." New, richly detailed photography of each artifact and "behind-the-scenes" essays reveal the many ways in which space became part of the fabric of our lives.
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