This Day In History

26 July: First V-2 Rocket hits Great Britain

You would hear the sound of the explosion before you heard the sound of the missle. A terrifying fact, when you consider that over 1,400 of these 13 tonne 'vengeance' rockets were launched at Great Britain, with more than 500 striking London. The V2 travelled faster than the speed of sound at 3,000 miles per hour. There was no warning and survivors would only hear the approach and sonic booms after the blast.

It took well over half a year for the Allied forces to stop the attacks. Some 9,000 Londoners lost their lives during this time. South and East London were the most affected, with Woolwich, Ilford, Barking, Greenwich and West Ham each receiving over 20 hits.

Some did make it into the central areas, however. V-2 explosions devastated Selfridges, Speakers' Corner and Holborn. That isolated Caffe Nero near the mural on Tottenham Court Road stands on the still-undeveloped site of a blast that killed nine. 110 more people were slaughtered at Farringdon when a rocket hit a packed market building on 8 March 1945. The worst death toll of all came on 25 November 1944, when 168 people lost their lives after a direct hit on Woolworths in New Cross.

The rockets themselves were developed by German scientists at the beginning of the Second World War in Nazi Germany, and was the world's first long-range combat-ballistic missile and first human artifact to achieve sub-orbital spaceflight. It was the progenitor of all modern rockets, including those used by the United States and Soviet Union space programs. The missle itself could be launched from practically anywhere, the system was so mobile and small that not one Meillerwagen (the transport trailer and launching platform) was caught in action by Allied aircraft.

It was a combination of Allied bombing and the loss of launch and production sites following the D-Day invasions that eventually saw the V-2 put out of action for the Nazis. As terrifying as the V-2 was for civillians, and depsite the tremendous number of rockets launched, it actually had very little impact on the course of the war. In terms of the Nazi campaign, it was too little too late.