The failure of the Luftwaffe in its attacks against Britain and the rising crescendo of RAF bomber attacks against Germany convinced Hitler in 1943 to substitute exotic new “Vengeance” weapons (Vertgeltungswaffen) to retaliate against London. The short range of these early missiles inevitably meant that they would be launched from near the British coast and so within the striking range of Allied bombers. There was considerable controversy how to base the missiles to make them the most survivable. Many Wehrmacht commanders favored mobile missile bases, but Hitler preferred heavy bunkers patterned after the impregnable U-boat bunkers. Besides the V-1 and V-2 missiles, other novel weapons were added to the arsenal, including the V-3 Tausenfüßler (millipede), a unique multi-stage artillery weapon capable of reaching London from the French coast. Critical British intelligence successes led to the discovery of the missile program months before they were ready for combat, and a pre-emptive air campaign was launched against the Crossbow sites located in France in the autumn and winter of 1943. This derailed the original German scheme to start the attacks in December 1943 and forced the adoption of new basing modes for the V-weapons. Although the new sites proved to be less vulnerable to air attack than the initial heavy Crossbow sites (Crossbow was the codename for the British intelligence committee responsible for uncovering German V-weapon programs), they were also considerably less efficient and the V-weapons failed to have any major impact on the course of the war. In spite of their feeble results, the V-weapons were the ancestors of the Cold War’s awesome nuclear missiles and their launch sites served as a guide for later missile launch complexes. The lessons of the first missile campaign were not forgotten, and the V-2 served as inspiration to the infamous Scud missile so prominent in wars of the Middle East in the last two decades of the 20th century.
The Wehrmacht remained torn between mobile and fixed basing for its new secret weapons. The artillery branch, which controlled the V-2 ballistic missile, favored mobile basing using simple pad launchers like those seen here at Test Stand X at Peenemünde during training exercises for the experimental Batterie 444 in 1944. (MHI)