It made the biggest impression of any “wonder weapon.” Launched off steam catapults in northeastern France, dozens of V-1s soon began penetrating British airspace day and night, causing a mass exodus of children and families from London. Days after its debut against London on June 13, Goebbels finally hit upon a propaganda name he liked: V-1 for Vergeltungswaffe Eins (Vengeance Weapon One). Photo taken just after the engine had been changed.īetween the combat appearance of the two fighters, the Luftwaffe also began launching its Fieseler Fi 103 “flying bomb”-what we would now call a cruise missile. In any case, the Me 262’s jet engines, being brand-new technology, had to be overhauled every few flight hours, or they would catastrophically fail.Ī Messerschmitt Me 262A-1a of Jagdgeschwader 7 at Perleberg on April 15,1945. But it was also vulnerable to being attacked on landing. The Me 262 was more effective because it had more conventional flying characteristics and a speed advantage over piston-engine opponents. National Air and Space Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution This Me 163 may be about to be shot down, as it is seen in the gun camera of an American fighter. fighter pilots soon learned to intercept them during the glide phase or lurk about the landing fields to shoot them down, which was feasible because of growing Allied air superiority.
The Me 163 flew so fast that it was challenging to carry out a gunnery run on an American bomber and it exhausted its propellants in five minutes, at which point the pilot would glide back to base. In late July, the first Me 262 turbojet aircraft were deployed as well. The Me 163 rocket interceptor first entered combat in May, zooming through bomber formations at high speed. In spring 1944, USAAF concern peaked regarding the imminent appearance of German reaction-propelled fighters. In late 1943 and early 1944, the construction of missile launch and storage sites in northern France led the Allies to divert strategic bombers to try to put the sites out of operation. Carried out in August, it was designed to kill the rocket engineers and disrupt the project, but was only a partial success. When British intelligence detected that program in spring 1943, Churchill ordered a special air raid on the Peenemünde rocket center on the Baltic. Hitler himself made vague threats of coming superweapons in 1939, perhaps thinking of the Army’s ultra-secret rocket project that would yield the V-2. It led directly to the U.S.-British-Canadian atomic bomb project, after German physicists first detected nuclear fission in Berlin at the end of 1938. As a result, the new fighters and missiles allegedly came “too late” to change the course of the war.įear of Germany’s advanced technology had been a constant since the 1930s. After the war, the feeling in the West that we had experienced a close call was reinforced by the memoirs of German ex-generals, who blamed Hitler for holding these weapons up. From the Nazi side, Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels stoked fear with claims, beginning in 1943, of coming Wunderwaffen (wonder or miracle weapons) that would turn the tide and exact Vergeltung (vengeance or revenge) for the indiscriminate Allied bombing of German cities. Dwight Eisenhower and Prime Minister Winston Churchill had discussed those very scenarios. If the Nazis had begun firing V-1 cruise missiles and V-2 rockets at Britain earlier, could they have disrupted the D-Day invasion preparations or caused mass panic, derailing the British war economy? Key Allied leaders like Gen. Army Air Forces (USAAF) leadership certainly were concerned. National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. Messerschmitt Me 163 B-1a on display at the Steven F. If they had fielded the Messerschmitt Me 163 and Me 262 fighters sooner, could they have greatly impeded the daylight strategic bomber offensive? The Germans introduced the world’s first operational rocket fighter, jet fighter, cruise missile, and ballistic missile, all between the spring and fall of 1944. On the face of it, that assertion makes a lot of sense. It is one of the most beloved and entrenched stories, especially in the English-speaking world, about the V-2 and other advanced weapons the Third Reich deployed at the end of that war. Last fall, as I was standing next to the V-2, the German World War II ballistic missile on display in our Space Race gallery, I heard a man tell his companion how lucky we were that the Nazis had not had it sooner, or they might have won the war.
(Credit: National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Insitution) The V-1 (Vergeltungswaffe Eins, or Vengeance Weapon One), was the world's first operational cruise missile.
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