# Supersonic Nazi Vengeance: V2 Rocket (Part 1)

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 2 Feb 2024, 36 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/bfa4a9f7-8bf5-4679-9d41-b10800f86038/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

At the height of World War Two, British intelligence began receiving reports that the enemy was developing a rocket weapon. The idea seemed fantastical — resources in Nazi Germany were scarce and a rocket-building program defied economic logic. But one intelligence chief took the reports of a rocket weapon seriously and he managed to convince Winston Churchill to heed the threat too. The British Prime Minister gave the order to bomb Germany’s rocket factory to rubble, and 600 bomber planes embarked on a full-scale attempt to obliterate it. From the air, the damage appeared devastating. The British thought they had succeeded in crushing the rocket-building program. But they were wrong. For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com. Do you have a question for Tim? Send it to tales@pushkin.fm and we'll do our best to answer it in an upcoming Q&A episode. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin. If you are a loyal Pushkin Plus subscriber, thank
[0:25] Speaker 1: you so much. We're really grateful for your support for
[0:28] Speaker 1: the show, which helps us give you the storytelling, the acting,
[0:32] Speaker 1: the research and the sound design we strive for on
[0:36] Speaker 1: cautionary tales. And we hope you're gripped by the two
[0:39] Speaker 1: part story of the Tenerief Air disaster we recently released
[0:43] Speaker 1: on the Pushkin Plus feed. Now, if you are not
[0:48] Speaker 1: a Pushkin Plus subscriber, not to worry. We know it's
[0:51] Speaker 1: not for everyone, and we still love you, and as
[0:55] Speaker 1: a token of that affection, we're releasing our epic trilogy
[1:00] Speaker 1: about the V two Rocket, previously only available on Pushkin Plus.
[1:05] Speaker 1: I first started working on this story back in the
[1:08] Speaker 1: spring of twenty twenty two. It was a real labor
[1:12] Speaker 1: of love, initially sparked by curiosity about a strange statistic
[1:16] Speaker 1: my producer Ryan Dealey had told me, and then just
[1:19] Speaker 1: going deeper and deeper, and eventually darker and darker too.
[1:24] Speaker 1: There is tragedy, there is moral complexity, brilliance, courage, pure evil,
[1:31] Speaker 1: and of course there's rocket ships and the dream of
[1:35] Speaker 1: traveling into space. Enjoy. By late November nineteen forty four,
[1:49] Speaker 1: there was no doubt that the Allies were winning the
[1:52] Speaker 1: Second World War, and London was far from the front line. Still,
[1:57] Speaker 1: Londoners had to make sacrifices. To pick a trivial example,
[2:02] Speaker 1: it was awfully difficult to get hold of a new saucepan.
[2:06] Speaker 1: So when a young woman called Betty heard rumors that
[2:10] Speaker 1: a branch of Woolworth's in Southeast London had a new
[2:13] Speaker 1: consignment of kitchen ware, she didn't hesitate.
[2:17] Speaker 2: I was a very young bride of a couple of years,
[2:19] Speaker 2: with my first baby of about two months, so I
[2:22] Speaker 2: promptly thanked my informer, dressed my baby daughter in her
[2:25] Speaker 2: outdoor clothing, put on my coat and hat, and set
[2:28] Speaker 2: off for a hopeful purchase.
[2:30] Speaker 1: Betty had to travel across the city to reach the store.
[2:33] Speaker 1: It was Saturday, the twenty ninth of November, and she
[2:36] Speaker 1: arrived in Southeast London just before half past twelve.
[2:40] Speaker 2: The road was very steep at this point, and I
[2:43] Speaker 2: walked up the road on the right hand side with
[2:45] Speaker 2: my bag in the right hand and my baby on
[2:47] Speaker 2: the left arm. At that point there came a sudden,
[2:50] Speaker 2: airless quiet which seemed to stop one's breath. Then an
[2:55] Speaker 2: almighty sound so tremendous that it seemed to blot out
[2:58] Speaker 2: my mind completely.
[3:02] Speaker 1: She was knocked senseless and sideways.
[3:04] Speaker 2: When I came to seconds later, I found myself over
[3:07] Speaker 2: the road into the wall. After a second or two,
[3:10] Speaker 2: I was released and slid to the ground.
[3:13] Speaker 1: She had no idea what had happened. She looked at
[3:17] Speaker 1: her baby.
[3:18] Speaker 2: Her bonnet was twisted grotesquely and hung around her neck.
[3:22] Speaker 2: Her hair was blown back tightly, as if she had none.
[3:26] Speaker 2: She was staring at space, not comprehending.
[3:29] Speaker 1: Betty's clothes were a mess, buttons and ribbons everywhere, but
[3:34] Speaker 1: she wasn't hurt, and neither was her daughter. A horse
[3:38] Speaker 1: and cart careened down the street, the driver's legs waving
[3:41] Speaker 1: in the air.
[3:43] Speaker 2: I was laughing hysterically.
[3:45] Speaker 1: She picked up her daughter, got to her feet, and
[3:48] Speaker 1: continued her journey around the corner. A man stopped her.
[3:53] Speaker 1: Where were you, weddyed love alworths for a saucepan. He
[3:58] Speaker 1: gently touched her shoulder and turned her around. Not today,
[4:03] Speaker 1: my love, go home and try tomorrow. And so Betty, perplexed,
[4:09] Speaker 1: went home with her baby, and she never had to
[4:12] Speaker 1: see the sight of the explosion. The jagged skeleton bricks
[4:17] Speaker 1: and timber that used to be the Woolworth storm, the
[4:21] Speaker 1: scraps of clothing and wedding rings that were all the
[4:24] Speaker 1: remains of the women who had been queuing up for saucepans.
[4:28] Speaker 1: Just a few minutes ahead of her. She didn't have
[4:30] Speaker 1: to gaze at the number fifty three bus that had
[4:33] Speaker 1: stopped outside the store, filled with motionless passengers, covered in dust,
[4:39] Speaker 1: apparently unharmed, but all killed instantly, All killed instantly by
[4:46] Speaker 1: a weapon that couldn't be seen and could not be stopped,
[4:50] Speaker 1: a weapon called the V two. I'm Tim Harford, and
[4:56] Speaker 1: you're listening to cautionary tales. One hundred and sixty eight
[5:24] Speaker 1: people were killed by the V two strike on Woolworth's.
[5:28] Speaker 1: Many more were seriously injured. Eleven people were simply recorded
[5:32] Speaker 1: as missing. We presumed that they were inside the Woolworths
[5:36] Speaker 1: store when the V two hit, and that they were vaporized,
[5:40] Speaker 1: leaving no trace at all, but will never know. This
[5:44] Speaker 1: is the story of the V two, the dreaded rocket
[5:47] Speaker 1: powered bomb that the Nazis began to use in the
[5:50] Speaker 1: last few months of the Second World War. It traveled
[5:53] Speaker 1: faster than the speed of sound. You couldn't hear it coming.
[5:57] Speaker 1: One moment you're queuing up to buy a saucepan. The
[6:00] Speaker 1: next moment, well, there is no next moment. I want
[6:05] Speaker 1: to explore how this terrible weapon came into existence, why
[6:09] Speaker 1: so many of the people it hurt weren't the people
[6:12] Speaker 1: you might expect, and the lessons we can learn even today.
[6:17] Speaker 1: Later we'll try to understand the weapon from the perspective
[6:19] Speaker 1: of the Germans and the Americans, but let's start with
[6:23] Speaker 1: the British and wind back a little further in time.
[6:28] Speaker 1: Britain had been at war with Nazi Germany since nineteen
[6:32] Speaker 1: thirty nine. London and many other British towns and cities
[6:36] Speaker 1: had been relentlessly bombed in late nineteen forty and early
[6:40] Speaker 1: nineteen forty one, but by nineteen forty two the focus
[6:44] Speaker 1: of the war had moved elsewhere. Round about Christmas in
[6:49] Speaker 1: nineteen forty two, a British intelligence officer named R. V.
[6:53] Speaker 1: Jones received a worrying message. Jones had risen to a
[6:57] Speaker 1: lofty position in the British Intelligence Service at the age
[7:01] Speaker 1: of just thirty one, and he didn't like what he read.
[7:05] Speaker 1: The message was from an informant in Germany. Who had
[7:08] Speaker 1: managed to overhear a conversation between two senior Nazi engineers about.
[7:14] Speaker 3: A new German weapon. Weapon is a rocket containing five
[7:18] Speaker 3: tons explosive with a maximum range of two hundred kilometers.
[7:23] Speaker 1: Two weeks later, another message.
[7:26] Speaker 3: The Germans have constructed a new factory at Penamunda where
[7:30] Speaker 3: new weapons are manufactured. The new weapon is in the
[7:33] Speaker 3: form of a rocket which has been seen fired from
[7:36] Speaker 3: the testing ground.
[7:38] Speaker 1: Other similar reports dribbled in over the following three months.
[7:43] Speaker 1: Sitting in London, R V. Jones was intrigued, but the
[7:47] Speaker 1: reports were little more than rumors, and the weapons seemed fantastical.
[7:52] Speaker 1: Jones asked for details on the movements of the German
[7:55] Speaker 1: units with the most expert radar operators. He was sure
[7:59] Speaker 1: that if a rocket was being tested at Pinamunda, which
[8:03] Speaker 1: is on the north coast of Germany between Denmark and Poland,
[8:06] Speaker 1: then those radar units would be delay lloyd to the area.
[8:11] Speaker 1: Sure enough, that's where they were. He commissioned high level
[8:15] Speaker 1: aerial photographs of Painnamunda, and after exhaustive study, found what
[8:21] Speaker 1: looked like it might be a rocket about thirty five
[8:24] Speaker 1: feet long. These clues convinced R. V. Jones that the
[8:28] Speaker 1: reports of a rocket weapon had to be taken seriously,
[8:33] Speaker 1: but he was making a lonely argument. Most of the
[8:37] Speaker 1: rest of the British establishment was skeptical. In June nineteen
[8:44] Speaker 1: forty three, R. V. Jones was summoned to a meeting
[8:48] Speaker 1: of Prime Minister Winston Churchill's war Cabinet along with several
[8:52] Speaker 1: other experts. Churchill wanted to resolve once and for all
[8:57] Speaker 1: the argument about the existence or non existence of a
[9:00] Speaker 1: secret German rocket program. On one side, there was R. V. Jones,
[9:06] Speaker 1: convinced that the rocket existed based on the clues from
[9:09] Speaker 1: the telegrams and the aerial photographs and the movements of
[9:13] Speaker 1: German radar teams. On the other the skeptics, led by
[9:18] Speaker 1: Churchill's senior advisor, Frederick Linderman. The debate was spirited. Frederick
[9:24] Speaker 1: Linderman pointed out that Britain had rocket scientists too, and
[9:29] Speaker 1: those scientists believed that the rocket shaped object in the
[9:32] Speaker 1: aerial photograph wasn't big enough to deliver anything like the
[9:36] Speaker 1: range being rumored. The Germans would have had to have
[9:39] Speaker 1: delivered a technological miracle to make a rocket that small
[9:43] Speaker 1: fly that far, and that was surely out of the question.
[9:48] Speaker 1: Even if the rocket did exist and could fly, linderman continued,
[9:52] Speaker 1: it wouldn't be able to hit targets with any accuracy.
[9:56] Speaker 1: And even if the Germans could build some kind of
[9:59] Speaker 1: bomb on a rocket ship, why on earth would they
[10:02] Speaker 1: do that. Lindermann reminded the group that Germany had to
[10:06] Speaker 1: marshal its scarce resources carefully. It desperately needed material for
[10:11] Speaker 1: tanks and planes. It seemed quite absurd that they would
[10:15] Speaker 1: waste time and money on a costly and impractical program
[10:19] Speaker 1: to put bombs on rockets. Pouring vast amounts of resources
[10:24] Speaker 1: into making rocket bombs made no strategic sense. It defied
[10:27] Speaker 1: all economic logic. Linderman was hugely influential. He was also
[10:33] Speaker 1: the person who'd originally recommended R. V. Jones to Churchill,
[10:38] Speaker 1: but now he vigorously disagreed with his young protege. He
[10:42] Speaker 1: thought that Jones must have been mistaken when examining the
[10:45] Speaker 1: aerial photographs, that Jones had seen a plywood decoy, not
[10:49] Speaker 1: a real rocket. Linderman had heard different rumors, he told
[10:54] Speaker 1: Churchill and the others. He had heard that the Germans
[10:57] Speaker 1: were working on some kind of pilotless plane instead. That
[11:02] Speaker 1: sounded more believable, although it still didn't make much sense.
[11:06] Speaker 1: The most sensible thing that the Germans could folks, was
[11:10] Speaker 1: making more of their proven weapons of war fighter planes,
[11:14] Speaker 1: bombers and tanks. The idea of a vast secret program
[11:19] Speaker 1: to develop a rocket bomb that surely couldn't work. The
[11:23] Speaker 1: whole thing was clearly a hoax, said Linderman. But young R. V.
[11:28] Speaker 1: Jones was well able to defend his view that the
[11:31] Speaker 1: rocket was real. His aerial photographs proved that Painna Munder
[11:36] Speaker 1: was a huge site full of complex equipment and facilities.
[11:40] Speaker 1: Whatever was happening there was plainly important. If the Germans
[11:45] Speaker 1: were attempting to pull off a hoax, it was a
[11:48] Speaker 1: hoax calculated to prompt an attack on Painamunda. What would
[11:52] Speaker 1: they gain from that? Churchill was delighted with a young
[11:56] Speaker 1: man standing up for himself. He teased Linderman, hear that
[12:01] Speaker 1: that's a weighty point against you. Remember it was you
[12:05] Speaker 1: who introduced him to me. After a vigorous argument, R. V.
[12:09] Speaker 1: Jones convinced the Prime Minister that the Germans had no
[12:13] Speaker 1: reason to create a self destructive hoax. The rocket must
[12:18] Speaker 1: be real. The meeting concluded with Churchill's order bomb paya
[12:24] Speaker 1: munda inter rubble. Cautionary tales will return after the break.
[12:46] Speaker 1: Here's what the British didn't know as Churchill listened to
[12:50] Speaker 1: the Experts debate in nineteen forty three. They didn't know
[12:54] Speaker 1: that a senior member of the German Army had been
[12:57] Speaker 1: obsessed with the idea of a rocket bomb for a
[13:01] Speaker 1: quarter of a century. His name was Captain Dr Valter Doornberger,
[13:07] Speaker 1: later to be Major jen Rule Dr Valter Dornberger. In
[13:12] Speaker 1: the First World War, drn Berger had been an officer
[13:15] Speaker 1: with the Paris Gun, a huge piece of German artillery.
[13:20] Speaker 1: The Paris Gun could fire two hundred and thirty pound
[13:24] Speaker 1: shells a range of eighty miles. They took three minutes
[13:28] Speaker 1: to sail through the air in a vast parabolic arc
[13:32] Speaker 1: until eventually arriving at their destination, which was, of course Paris.
[13:40] Speaker 1: That was a glorious memory for an artillery officer, shelling
[13:43] Speaker 1: the enemy from eighty miles away, the joy of waging
[13:47] Speaker 1: war from well out of range. But the First World
[13:51] Speaker 1: War ended in German defeat and humiliation. Among other things,
[13:56] Speaker 1: the Treaty of Versailles banned the German Army from using
[14:00] Speaker 1: artillery like the Paris Gun. The treaty didn't ban rockets,
[14:05] Speaker 1: though why would it. Rocket Ships were the stuff of hobbyists,
[14:09] Speaker 1: day dreams, and science fiction. In the nineteen twenties, Germans
[14:14] Speaker 1: were positively giddy about rocket ship stories. They flocked to
[14:18] Speaker 1: the movie theaters to see a new film by Fritz
[14:21] Speaker 1: Lang and Theovon Harbu, the husband and wife creators of Metropolis.
[14:27] Speaker 1: The film was called frau Immonde The Woman in the Moon. Meanwhile,
[14:33] Speaker 1: pioneers such as Hermann Obett and Max Vallier were beginning
[14:37] Speaker 1: to experiment with small scale rocket engines and publishing books
[14:41] Speaker 1: about the far off promise of space travel. To Captain Drnberger,
[14:46] Speaker 1: these rockets meant more than stories about space. They presented
[14:51] Speaker 1: an opportunity. If the German Army couldn't build long range
[14:56] Speaker 1: artillery anymore, why not try to put a bomb on
[14:59] Speaker 1: a rocket With hindsight, the attraction of rockets as a
[15:04] Speaker 1: military technology is obvious. Today we call them ballistic missiles.
[15:09] Speaker 1: They fly high and far and fast. Even with twenty
[15:13] Speaker 1: first century technology, it's hard to intercept them, and you
[15:17] Speaker 1: get very little warning that they're coming. With nineteen thirties technology,
[15:22] Speaker 1: defence would be hopeless. A rocket could fly at several
[15:25] Speaker 1: times the speed of sound, almost a mile per second.
[15:29] Speaker 1: You wouldn't see it, you wouldn't hear it, and you
[15:32] Speaker 1: certainly couldn't stop it. But the question was could they
[15:35] Speaker 1: build it? Rockets were complex, temperamental, dangerous things. Rocket pioneer
[15:42] Speaker 1: Herman Obet lost an eye in nineteen twenty nine, and
[15:46] Speaker 1: he was merely trying to produce special effects for the
[15:49] Speaker 1: Frau Immonde movie his little model rocket exploded. Max Valier,
[15:55] Speaker 1: realizing that space was still beyond his grasp, was building
[15:59] Speaker 1: and driving rocket powered cars, reaching a record breaking speed
[16:03] Speaker 1: of one hundred and fifty five miles per hour. But
[16:07] Speaker 1: he was killed in nineteen thirty when one of the
[16:10] Speaker 1: rocket engines blew up on the test bench, sending shrapnel
[16:14] Speaker 1: through his chest. If you can lose an eye making
[16:18] Speaker 1: a model rocket for a movie, or die in your
[16:21] Speaker 1: own workshop, what were the risks of building reliable missile
[16:25] Speaker 1: weapons at scale and volume so great that they could
[16:29] Speaker 1: replace artillery. Nevertheless, in nineteen thirty two, Valter Dornberger secured
[16:36] Speaker 1: some funding from his military superiors, recruited his first rocket scientists,
[16:42] Speaker 1: and began the long quest to build the deadly rocket
[16:45] Speaker 1: weapon that would eventually be called the V two. The
[16:50] Speaker 1: top British scientists in nineteen forty three thought that rocket
[16:54] Speaker 1: weapons were a pipe dream. But here's something else they
[16:58] Speaker 1: didn't know. For more than a decade, the German government
[17:02] Speaker 1: had been throwing money at Valter Dornberger's team of scientists
[17:06] Speaker 1: to try to crack the rocket problem. The British would
[17:10] Speaker 1: not have been surprised to learn that Dornberger's team had
[17:13] Speaker 1: produced failed launch after failed launch, year after year. They
[17:19] Speaker 1: would have been astonished to learn that despite all the failures,
[17:23] Speaker 1: the Nazis were still giving Dornberger more and more resources
[17:28] Speaker 1: to keep on trying. The young British intelligence officer R. V.
[17:33] Speaker 1: Jones had been right to conclude that something important was
[17:37] Speaker 1: happening at Payinamunda, but even he couldn't have guessed how important.
[17:43] Speaker 1: Dornberger had built a vast facility, costing five hundred and
[17:47] Speaker 1: fifty million Reichsmarks the equivalent of billions of dollars today.
[17:53] Speaker 1: There were research facilities and a testing site, a large
[17:57] Speaker 1: oval embankment big enough to contain four football pitches, with
[18:01] Speaker 1: forty yard thick earthworks designed to corral missiles. They toppled
[18:06] Speaker 1: over and blasted off horizontally. There were facilities to build
[18:10] Speaker 1: ballistic missiles in large quantities once they had one that worked.
[18:15] Speaker 1: The site housed the largest industrial factory building Europe had
[18:19] Speaker 1: yet seen, and beyond that, Germany's most modern housing estate,
[18:24] Speaker 1: providing stylish accommodation for three thousand people, the families of
[18:29] Speaker 1: the scientists and engineers. There were schools, shops, sports and
[18:33] Speaker 1: leisure facilities, a beach resort, and well tended paths meandering
[18:39] Speaker 1: through the nearby forest. Since there wasn't room on the
[18:42] Speaker 1: site for everyone who would work at Pain and Mundo,
[18:45] Speaker 1: there were purpose built railway lines to bring in workers.
[18:49] Speaker 1: The docks were enlarged to allow for the flow of
[18:51] Speaker 1: raw materials and food. There was a liquid oxygen plant
[18:56] Speaker 1: and a thirty megawatt coal fired power station that's enough
[18:59] Speaker 1: to power a small city, all intended to mass produce
[19:04] Speaker 1: a technology that the British experts thought was impossible. At
[19:09] Speaker 1: least that was what Walter Dornberger had intended, but not
[19:14] Speaker 1: everyone in Nazi Germany was convinced that Dornberger would be
[19:17] Speaker 1: able to deliver on his rocket bomb ambitions. So another
[19:22] Speaker 1: part of the German War machine began to advance a
[19:25] Speaker 1: parallel plan. Like Dornberger's rockets, it promised a far greater range, payload,
[19:32] Speaker 1: and accuracy than even the largest artillery. Like the rockets,
[19:37] Speaker 1: it was intended to bring German firepower to bear far
[19:41] Speaker 1: behind enemy lines, but unlike the rockets, it was to
[19:46] Speaker 1: be cheap, simple, and ruthlessly practical. This parallel weapon became
[19:53] Speaker 1: known as the V one. The V stood for Vegeltung
[19:58] Speaker 1: or vengeance Valtera. Dornberger managed to get this rival technology
[20:03] Speaker 1: moved to Painamunda, where the cutting edge facilities would be
[20:07] Speaker 1: devoted to producing both the v V one and the
[20:10] Speaker 1: V two. Remember when Churchill's senior advisor, Frederick Linderman said
[20:15] Speaker 1: he'd heard another rumor that the Germans were working on
[20:18] Speaker 1: a pilotless plane. That rumor was right two. The pilotless
[20:23] Speaker 1: plane was the V one. The idea was straightforward. Make
[20:28] Speaker 1: a bomb in the shape of a plane, give it
[20:31] Speaker 1: a primitive jet engine so that it flies quickly pointed
[20:34] Speaker 1: in the right direction, and use a gyroscope to keep
[20:37] Speaker 1: it on course. The V one looks oddly modern, like
[20:42] Speaker 1: a contemporary predator drone or a torpedo with wings. It
[20:46] Speaker 1: became known as the buzz bomb or the doodlebug because
[20:50] Speaker 1: of the loud, vibrating sound it produced. These vibrations were
[20:54] Speaker 1: a side effect to the jet engine's cheap design, and
[20:58] Speaker 1: were so violent that the V one would sometimes shake
[21:01] Speaker 1: itself into scrap by the end of the flight. That
[21:04] Speaker 1: didn't matter. The whole point of the V one was
[21:07] Speaker 1: that it was a flying bomb designed to drop out
[21:10] Speaker 1: of the sky over London. If it was falling apart
[21:13] Speaker 1: by the time it reached its target, who cared. The
[21:16] Speaker 1: contrast between the two weapons was striking. While the V
[21:20] Speaker 1: two was fueled with a volatile mix of alcohol and
[21:24] Speaker 1: liquid oxygen, the V one ran on simple gasoline. The
[21:28] Speaker 1: V two could reach nearly three thousand, six hundred miles
[21:32] Speaker 1: per hour and climb an astonishing fifty five miles high,
[21:36] Speaker 1: which is most of the way of space. The V
[21:39] Speaker 1: one flew at just four hundred miles per hour at
[21:43] Speaker 1: a height of about half a mile. In principle, the
[21:47] Speaker 1: V two seemed like the superior weapon. It was untrackable
[21:51] Speaker 1: and unstoppable. You could fire it from mobile sites and
[21:55] Speaker 1: change them every day. The V one, in contrast, would
[21:59] Speaker 1: be trackable on radar. If the British could shoot it
[22:02] Speaker 1: down with anti aircraft guns, it would have to be
[22:04] Speaker 1: catapulted from a fixed ramp. The British could find those
[22:08] Speaker 1: ramps and destroy them. But when Frederick Linderman told Churchill
[22:12] Speaker 1: that the pilotless plane was a more logical aim for
[22:16] Speaker 1: the Germans than the rocket, he was right because the
[22:19] Speaker 1: V one was so much easier to design and build.
[22:23] Speaker 1: By nineteen forty three, Drnberger's V two rocket bomb had
[22:28] Speaker 1: been more than a decade in the making and still
[22:30] Speaker 1: wasn't working. The V one went from a vague concept
[22:35] Speaker 1: to a successful test flight in just eighteen months, and
[22:39] Speaker 1: for the price of a single V two rocket, Nazi
[22:43] Speaker 1: Germany could build and launch maybe twenty five V one's,
[22:47] Speaker 1: And since they carried a similar payload a similar distance
[22:50] Speaker 1: with similar accuracy, why wouldn't they Why Indeed, the experts
[22:59] Speaker 1: in Churchill's war room didn't yet know all these details.
[23:02] Speaker 1: Of course, all they knew were rumors of pilotless planes
[23:06] Speaker 1: and rocket bombs. For Frederick Line, the conclusion was obvious.
[23:12] Speaker 1: The rocket bomb made no sense, so it must be
[23:15] Speaker 1: a hoax. No, said R. V. Jones. It might make
[23:19] Speaker 1: no sense, but they really are doing it. In August
[23:25] Speaker 1: nineteen forty three, Britain's Royal Air Force put Churchill's order
[23:30] Speaker 1: into action. Six hundred planes took off and headed to
[23:35] Speaker 1: Paina Munda. Cautionary tales will return after the break. Late
[23:55] Speaker 1: in the evening on the seventeenth of August nineteen forty three,
[23:59] Speaker 1: the air raid sirens at Pina Munda began to sound.
[24:03] Speaker 1: Felt Drnberger was not overly concerned. British bombers often assembled
[24:09] Speaker 1: the sea near Painamunda before flying directly south to strike
[24:13] Speaker 1: at Berlin. Painamunder itself maintained a strict blackout, but General
[24:18] Speaker 1: Dornberger noticed with unease how clearly the full moon picked
[24:24] Speaker 1: out the dark houses against the silver lawns. He prepared
[24:29] Speaker 1: for bed and soon fell asleep. He was jolted awake
[24:34] Speaker 1: not long after midnight by the thunderous sound of anti
[24:37] Speaker 1: aircraft guns and then of exploding bombs. Dornberger leaped out
[24:42] Speaker 1: of bed to pull on his trousers and boots, to
[24:45] Speaker 1: discover that only his bedroom slippers were close at hand.
[24:49] Speaker 1: His house was shaking, broken glass everywhere, the heavy oak
[24:53] Speaker 1: door blown out and angled on the steps leading to
[24:57] Speaker 1: his garden. He stood for a moment snug in his
[25:00] Speaker 1: slippers as he gazed out over the smoke and the
[25:04] Speaker 1: fiery glow of six hundred British planes embarking on a
[25:08] Speaker 1: full a scale attempt to obliterate Paya Munda's rocket factories
[25:14] Speaker 1: and to wipe out its scientific staff. Dawn Berger hurried
[25:19] Speaker 1: to the bomb shelter. The British thought they had succeeded
[25:25] Speaker 1: from the air. The damage seemed so devastating that they
[25:28] Speaker 1: even called off a planned follow up strike, But they
[25:33] Speaker 1: hadn't realized how huge a complex Painnamunda was. They'd missed
[25:38] Speaker 1: many of its key facilities entirely, or damaged them only superficially,
[25:43] Speaker 1: including the launchpad, a supersonic wind tunnel, and the rocket
[25:47] Speaker 1: factory itself. They'd destroyed most of the homes of the
[25:51] Speaker 1: top engineers and their families, but like Valda Dornberger, most
[25:56] Speaker 1: of these senior people had made it safely to the
[25:58] Speaker 1: bomb shelters in time. The bombing ray did kill hundreds
[26:03] Speaker 1: of people, but those people weren't the top scientists the
[26:06] Speaker 1: British had been hoping to target. Instead, they were construction
[26:10] Speaker 1: workers from Eastern Europe, penned behind barbed wire in a
[26:15] Speaker 1: camp two miles away from the main facilities. To the
[26:19] Speaker 1: Nazi regime, these workers were disposable and replaceable. The Nazis
[26:25] Speaker 1: now recognized, though, that Painamunda was vulnerable. They moved the
[26:30] Speaker 1: manufacturing operation to a different site underground. The British thought
[26:36] Speaker 1: they'd destroyed the missile program. In fact, they'd just delayed
[26:40] Speaker 1: its progress, and by only a few months at most.
[26:46] Speaker 1: In June nineteen forty four, ten months after the bombing
[26:50] Speaker 1: of Pinamunda and just days after the D Day landings
[26:54] Speaker 1: in Normandy, the first V one bombs started to rain
[26:59] Speaker 1: down on London. The crude, vibrating gasoline powered doodlebugs had
[27:05] Speaker 1: beaten the crazily complex V two to the punch. But then,
[27:11] Speaker 1: on the eighth of September, the first V two rocket
[27:15] Speaker 1: hit London. The British experts had thought it would take
[27:19] Speaker 1: a technological miracle to make a rocket bomb that could
[27:23] Speaker 1: launch from Germany and hit targets in England. The Germans,
[27:27] Speaker 1: it seemed, had made that miracle happen, although the target
[27:32] Speaker 1: surely wasn't what they'd aimed at. The rocket landed in
[27:35] Speaker 1: the suburb of Chiswick in West London. It did kill
[27:39] Speaker 1: a soldier, but only because he happened to be in
[27:42] Speaker 1: Chiswick on leave. The other victims were a sixty three
[27:46] Speaker 1: year old woman, Ada Harrison and a three year old girl,
[27:50] Speaker 1: Rosemary Clark. The V two was an unstoppable weapon. It
[27:56] Speaker 1: was launched from mobile platforms, flew faster than sound, and
[28:00] Speaker 1: was therefore silent, although some survivors reported their ears popping
[28:04] Speaker 1: a moment before impact as the pressure wave hit. Surely,
[28:09] Speaker 1: an unstoppable weapon must win any war, perhaps if you
[28:14] Speaker 1: can aim it accurately. The V two was wildly unpredictable.
[28:20] Speaker 1: The Nazis wanted to hit the port in Antwerp, northern Belgium,
[28:24] Speaker 1: which the Allies were using to reinforce and resupply their
[28:28] Speaker 1: advance on the Western Front. They launched over sixteen hundred
[28:32] Speaker 1: V two rockets at Antwerp's docks. More than ninety percent
[28:37] Speaker 1: landed somewhere else. On the sixteenth of December nineteen forty four,
[28:43] Speaker 1: nearly six hundred moviegoers in Antwerp were killed when a
[28:47] Speaker 1: V two hit a local cinema. That strike came just
[28:51] Speaker 1: a couple of weeks after a V two hit the
[28:53] Speaker 1: Woolworths department store in southeast London. Ten days Later the
[28:58] Speaker 1: day after Christmas, London suffered another blow when a rocket
[29:02] Speaker 1: struck a pub in Islington called the Prince of Wales.
[29:06] Speaker 1: It was packed with people celebrating the U S engagement
[29:09] Speaker 1: of local girl Emily Neighbor, and the explosion was strong
[29:13] Speaker 1: enough to knock down fifteen houses. Seven children from the
[29:18] Speaker 1: house across the street died, killed by the shock of
[29:21] Speaker 1: the blast alone. They had no outward sign of injury.
[29:26] Speaker 1: In total, at least seventy three people died all This
[29:32] Speaker 1: was typical of the V two program. The missiles were
[29:35] Speaker 1: too wayward to have much military value, but every now
[29:38] Speaker 1: and then a missile would strike a crowded place and
[29:42] Speaker 1: dozens or even hundreds of people would die without ever
[29:46] Speaker 1: knowing what had hit them. Remember that the V stood
[29:50] Speaker 1: for vengeance. That's about right. The rocket bombs had been
[29:55] Speaker 1: intended to terrify Germany's enemies, but they achieved nothing but
[29:59] Speaker 1: petty revenge for Germany's mounting wartime losses. Civilians were more
[30:06] Speaker 1: unnerved than terrified. Faced with the V two, there was
[30:10] Speaker 1: nothing to do but shrug and hope, and the Allied
[30:14] Speaker 1: strategists weren't terrified either. They were baffled. They couldn't understand
[30:19] Speaker 1: why the Germans had squandered so much effort and expense
[30:23] Speaker 1: developing a missile that achieved so little. Freeman Dyson, the
[30:27] Speaker 1: great physicist, worked for British Bomber Command during the war.
[30:32] Speaker 1: He later mused, those of.
[30:34] Speaker 3: US who were seriously engaged in the war were very
[30:36] Speaker 3: grateful for the V two program. We knew that each
[30:39] Speaker 3: V two cost as much to produce as a high
[30:41] Speaker 3: performance fighter airplane. We knew that German forces on the
[30:45] Speaker 3: fighting fronts were in desperate need of airplanes, and that
[30:49] Speaker 3: the V two rockets were doing US no military damage.
[30:52] Speaker 3: From our point of view, the V two program was
[30:55] Speaker 3: almost as good as if Hitler had adopted a policy
[30:57] Speaker 3: of unilateral disarmament.
[31:01] Speaker 1: Germany's rocket program had started in nineteen thirty two, when
[31:05] Speaker 1: Valter Dornberger had first started to recruit rock scientists. It
[31:10] Speaker 1: ran for twelve years before the rockets achieved their first
[31:15] Speaker 1: fatal attack, the one that killed three year old Rosemary Clark,
[31:20] Speaker 1: and just seven months later it was all over, as
[31:23] Speaker 1: the last V two strike killed thirty four year old
[31:27] Speaker 1: Ivy Miller Champ of Orpington, Kent. She was the last
[31:32] Speaker 1: civilian casualty of the war on British soil. The V
[31:35] Speaker 1: two terror had lasted less than a year. Neither Rosemary
[31:40] Speaker 1: Clark nor Ivy Miller Champ would know it, but the
[31:44] Speaker 1: V two program was a disaster for Germany. It's generally
[31:48] Speaker 1: reckoned to have placed a similar burden on Germany's economy
[31:51] Speaker 1: to that placed by the atomic weapon program the Manhattan
[31:54] Speaker 1: Project on Americas. And for what. In the end, the
[32:00] Speaker 1: V twos killed about five thousand innocent people, mostly in
[32:04] Speaker 1: Antwerp and London. It was terrifying, but those are tax
[32:09] Speaker 1: had almost no military effect, and both sides demonstrated over
[32:14] Speaker 1: and over again that dropping conventional bombs from planes was
[32:18] Speaker 1: a much simpler and cheaper way to kill civilians. Add
[32:23] Speaker 1: up the total explosive power of all the V twos
[32:26] Speaker 1: ever fired, and you'd get to about the same scale
[32:30] Speaker 1: as one single large bombing raid from Britain's Royal Air Force.
[32:36] Speaker 1: As the Allies pushed back the German front line, the
[32:39] Speaker 1: V twos could no longer reach big cities. The Nazis
[32:43] Speaker 1: fired them at whatever targets remained in range, such as
[32:47] Speaker 1: the English market town of Ipswich. But Ipswich is a
[32:52] Speaker 1: small town in fertile farming country. The expensive sophisticated V twos,
[32:58] Speaker 1: each one costing as much as a fighter plane, ranged
[33:02] Speaker 1: down randomly on fields of turnips and sugar Beete forty five.
[33:10] Speaker 1: That was the legacy of the German rocket program. An
[33:14] Speaker 1: astonishing technological triumph, but a baffling strategic mistake, a vast
[33:21] Speaker 1: budget squandered. If you spend billions but end up mostly
[33:26] Speaker 1: killing housewives shopping for saucepans in Woolworth's, you're not only
[33:31] Speaker 1: committing a war crime, you're also going to lose the war.
[33:36] Speaker 1: The British intelligence chief R. V. Jones had struggled to
[33:40] Speaker 1: convince his colleagues that the Nazis were trying to build
[33:43] Speaker 1: a rocket powered bomb. He struggled because his colleagues rightly
[33:47] Speaker 1: pointed out that the idea made no sense in the
[33:51] Speaker 1: middle of a war. The Nazi regime would have been
[33:53] Speaker 1: far better served by manufacturing more of the things they
[33:57] Speaker 1: knew were effective, tanks and airplanes. All that leaves us
[34:03] Speaker 1: with a question. If it was obvious to the British
[34:07] Speaker 1: that the idea of a rocket bomb made no sense,
[34:11] Speaker 1: why wasn't it obvious to Nazi Germany? Writing decades later, R. V.
[34:18] Speaker 1: Jones mused, when we try to understand the policy behind
[34:22] Speaker 1: the rocket, we are forced to abandon rationality and instead
[34:25] Speaker 1: to enter a fantasy where romance has replaced economy.
[34:28] Speaker 3: Why then, have they made the rocket? The answer is simple,
[34:32] Speaker 3: no weapon yet produced has comparable romantic appeal.
[34:36] Speaker 1: That's part of the answer, but there's more to it
[34:39] Speaker 1: than that. Cautionary Tales will be back next time with
[34:45] Speaker 1: part two of the story, in which we'll meet the
[34:49] Speaker 1: brilliant charismatic man who Valter Dornberger recruited as his chief scientist,
[34:55] Speaker 1: and we'll ask why so many governments are so fond
[34:59] Speaker 1: of projects that are grand, expensive and finished far too late.
[35:09] Speaker 1: An excellent guide to the V two program is Murray
[35:12] Speaker 1: Barber's book V two The A four Rocket From Paynamunda
[35:17] Speaker 1: to Redstone. For a full list of our sources, see
[35:21] Speaker 1: the show notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is
[35:27] Speaker 1: written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced
[35:30] Speaker 1: by Alice Fines with support from Edith Uslow. The sound
[35:34] Speaker 1: design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise.
[35:39] Speaker 1: Julia Barton edited the scripts. It features the voice talents
[35:43] Speaker 1: of Ben Crowe, Melanie Gushridge, Jemma Saunders and rufus Wright.
[35:48] Speaker 1: The show wouldn't have been possible without the work of
[35:50] Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne, let Al Millard, John Schnarz,
[35:56] Speaker 1: Carlie mcgliori and Eric Sandler. Cautionary Tales is a production
[36:01] Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. It was recorded in Wardall Studios in
[36:05] Speaker 1: London by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please
[36:08] Speaker 1: remember to share, rate and review go on you know
[36:11] Speaker 1: it helps us and if you want to hear the
[36:14] Speaker 1: show ad free, sign up for Pushkin Plus on the
[36:17] Speaker 1: show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm,
[36:21] Speaker 1: slash plus

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.