Germany's Unstoppable Hidden Secret Weapons

On the morning of September 8, 1944, Germany introduced a new

secret

weapon into its already deadly Second World War. It came out of nowhere and caused a huge explosion in Paris. There was nothing to compare it to. The weapon was part of Germany's Wunderwaffe, its miracle

weapons

program, created in a last-ditch effort to tip the balance of the war in favor of the Third Reich. The V2 rocket, dubbed Retribution Weapon 2, was the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile. No defensive system of the time could do anything to counter the weapon, and the V2s rarely failed to hit their targets.

They were extremely fast, powerful and precise. The Allied forces, desperate to find an effective way to counter the sheer effectiveness of the V2, realized that there was only one way to prevent further destruction. The solution was to destroy the

secret

German military bases where they were gathered. The goal of Operation Crossbow was simple. Find the enemy bases where the V2s were located and blow them up. But things were not going to be so easy. The Allies soon realized that there were not two, nor four, nor ten research centers, but more than fifty spread throughout Europe.

A race against time was launched to destroy them all before the bombs could disrupt American supply lines in France. All seemed lost for the Allies until an innovative method created by British intelligence seemed to offer hope. Cutting-edge 3D photography would reveal where the V2 launch sites were

hidden

... Weapons of Revenge World War II began in 1939, when the Third Reich and the Soviet Union attacked Poland and divided the country into two blocs. One became part of Germany and the other of the USSR. After months of tension, Belgium, France and the British Empire declared war on Germany over the occupation of other countries in northern Europe.

After the surprising and effective Blitzkrieg campaigns, Germany took over most of Europe, except for the neutral and allied nations. All was well for the German Heer until 1943. Following the initial success of Operation Barbarossa, the Soviets, supported by the Americans and British, began to counterattack. At the same time, American and British bombers slowly but steadily increased their bombing raids on German cities such as Hamburg, Lübeck, and Dresden. These bombings did not distinguish between military and civilian targets, causing serious and permanent damage to historic buildings, as well as tragic civilian casualties. All structures, both military and non-military, were crushed in Operation Gomorrah, making appropriate reference to the biblical Old Testament city destroyed by fire and brimstone.

Al Murray', in his new show 'Why does everyone hate the English?' quoted a Royal Air Force Bomber Command who once said (QUOTE): 'The Government, for excellent reasons, have preferred the world to think that we still have some scruples and attack only what humanitarians are pleased to call targets. military. I can assure you, gentlemen, that we do not tolerate any scruples. The Führer, Adolf Hitler, angered by the destruction that Allied bombers were causing in German cities, demanded that the Allies pay for what they had done. Wanting revenge, Hitler immediately ordered the production of a secret wonder weapon that had been in development since the beginning of the conflict.

It was the Vergeltungswaffen, or Retribution Weapon 2, the V2 rocket. As its name implies, the weapon would avenge civilian casualties and damage caused to German cities by Allied bombing raids. The V-2 rockets were an evolution of the V1, one of the first cruise missiles. However, the V2 was larger, faster and more powerful than its predecessor. The rocket was 14 meters high and was equipped with a 907 kg amatol warhead at the tip. Its size gave it a range of 320 km with a maximum speed of 5760 km/h. This rocket was fast, very fast. Its speed and range made it practically impossible to intercept it.

Allied attempts to jam the V-2's guidance system were futile because the warhead did not use radio guidance. Instead, the V2 rocket was guided by gyroscopes and an analog computer that continually monitored its heading to adjust accordingly. The V2 was intended to be launched from complexes similar to modern missile silos. But Allied bombing raids and infantry advances on the ground forced the military to rely on continuously moving mobile launch platforms to avoid being attacked by enemy aircraft. More than 5,500 V-2 rockets were built between 1943 and 1945, and nearly 100 were launched each day since the first impact on Paris in November 1944.

The rockets wreak havoc on Allied cities. Between 5,000 and 9,000 military personnel and civilians lost their lives and 30,000 were injured from the damage caused by the V2s. Operation Crossbow During the first months of 1943, Allied bombing raids increased rapidly in Germany. In May, members of the High Command had already envisioned the possibilities of launching an amphibious assault on the northern and southern coasts of France to begin the liberation of Europe. During these days, while conducting aerial surveillance of enemy activity, Allied reconnaissance aircraft identified the construction of several German facilities in northern France. At the same time, other secret facilities were discovered in Germany and the Scandinavian countries.

Some Allied officers feared that the Germans were manufacturing chemical or biological

weapons

. Others believed it was a strategy to distract the Allies from the bombing raids. Through Polish intelligence, the British Secret Intelligence Service received valuable reports that Germany was working on a secret rocket in Peenemünde, where a facility was located. Wishing to stop any weapons development that might favor the Germans, the Defense Committee of the War Cabinet decided to take action. During a meeting in June, Churchill said (QUOTE): "Peenemünde is... beyond the range of our radio navigation beams and... we must bomb by moonlight, although the German night fighters will be nearby and it is too far to send ours.

However, we must attack it on the largest possible scale." The result was Operation Hydra, launched on August 17, 1943. The objective of this Royal Air Force Bomber Command mission was to dismantle the German scientific research center at Peenemünde. To maximize the accuracy and damage of the bombing raids, the British decided it would be best to attack during the full moon at 8,000 feet. This was intended to reduce casualties and meet secondary objectives, such as destroying the quarters where the facility's scientists and engineers lived. During the nights of 17 and 18 August, British 83 Squadron, a force of 500 bombers under the command of Captain John Searby, bombed the area.

They lost 215 aircrew and 40 bomber planes. The Luftwaffe lost 12 night fighters and more than 170 civilians, including scientists and engineers, although no permanent damage was done to the facilities. To prevent further attacks on Peenemünde, the Germans painted signs of bomb damage on the facilities to fool Allied reconnaissance aircraft. Scientist Siegfried Winter would write (QUOTE): "We... climbed onto rooftops... and painted black and white lines to simulate charred beams." The bombing was considered a success because it forced the German military to rely on mobile, rather than static, launch sites for the V2 rockets. Operation Hydra became the first in a series of bombing raids that Allied Command would eventually rename Operation Crossbow, intended to destroy any secret military V2 rocket launch facilities. 3D Reconnaissance Missions In November 1943, British reconnaissance aircraft discovered the first of 96 sites for the V-1 and V-2 rockets.

The Allies tracked these launch sites using photographs taken with a stereoscope that showed the enemy landscape in 3D. The images allowed British photographic interpreters to measure height and other data to identify

hidden

structures and launch sites across Europe. The technique was decisive in stopping the attack of the effective V2 rockets. To generate the 3D effect, the images had to be captured in sequences that overlapped each other by 60 percent so that they could stand upright when viewed through the stereoscope. Pilots from the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit, aboard British Spitfires, took millions of photographs to recreate highly detailed maps.

The Spitfires of this unit were unarmed, as they had five chambers that left no space for any type of weapons. Flying at 9,000 m, they couldn't afford to carry extra weight. Jimmy Taylor, 88-year-old reconnaissance pilot and sole survivor of the unit, told the BBC (QUOTE): "We had no weapons or bullets, so I didn't kill anyone. Physically, there's nothing left of the air." fights, nothing remains of the bombing, but the photographs are still with us and still useful." From the last months of 1943 until the surrender of Germany in May 1945, British and American bombers carried out bombing missions in most of the 96 launch sites to disrupt the launch of the V2 rockets.

If it were not for the effectiveness of 3D images, the first ballistic missile would have claimed more than 9,000 lives. Allan Williams, curator of the National Aerial Photography Collection. , in a report on the operation, told the BBC (QUOTE): "Without this photographic intelligence, the Germans could have launched potentially devastating attacks on Britain before D-Day that could easily have changed the outcome of the war." legacy of the V2 Although the V2 rocket was an effective weapon with no real opposition since it was first used, like many other wonder weapons, it arrived too late in the war to make a difference in Germany's favor.

However, the V-2 left a lasting legacy. Combined with the introduction of nuclear weapons, it demonstrated that the most important weapons of the future would be ballistic missiles. And the V2 rocket was the first of its kind. After the war ended, the Soviets and Allies attempted to gather as much information as possible from the V-2 program. The first Soviet and American ballistic missiles of the Cold War were copies of the V-2. German scientists of the V-2 program, including its leader, Wernher von Braun, helped develop other weapons for the United States and the USSR at the height of the Cold War.

In Braun's case, he was directly involved in the American space program, helping NASA land on the moon in 1969.