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07/09/2004: "Weapons: Detour to space"
The first V-2 rocket to hit London landed in Chiswick 60 years ago. It took just five minutes to travel there from its launch site in the Netherlands. At 6.44pm, the tonne of high explosives it carried detonated in the centre of the road, gouging a crater 10m (30ft) across and 2.5m (8ft) deep. The blast killed three people, injured 22 and demolished six houses. In all, over 1,300 V-2s were fired at England, killing 2,724 people.
The role of amateur space flight enthusiasts in the development of the V2 was crucial. The amateur group Raketenflugplatz Berlin had been experimenting with liquid-fuel rockets. A (failed) demonstration impressed the Army, which recruited one of its young engineers, Wernher von Braun, a 20-year-old space flight enthusiast.
"Von Braun always saw this as a detour; he'd rather have been building space vehicles. But he also said this was the only way we were going to get the money. "He hoped that the weapons investment would lead to a technological investment that would then make possible space flight," says Michael Neufeld, curator of World War 2 history at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, US.
Von Braun later defended his decision: "In 1932, the idea of another war was absurd - there was no reason for moral scruples over the use to which our researches might be put in the future." The following year, the National Socialist Party seized power. Von Braun's detour would see him become technical director of a programme to produce a guided missile for use against Allied targets during WW2.
After the war and surrender of von Braun and his associates, the technology pioneered during the war would eventually realise dreams of space flight. The V-2 was the forerunner of the booster rockets that would allow humans to escape the shackles of gravity. But it was also the precursor of all modern guided missiles. As such, rocketry was not to escape the shadow of military exploitation.
(From BBC News Online)
