Charles River Editors - Operation Crossbow: The History of the Allied Bombing Missions against Nazi Germany’s V-2 Rocket Program during World War II

For the first two years of that war, it seemed that nothing could stop Germany, which occupied most of Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France by the summer of 1940. Within 18 months, Germany also effectively controlled Greece, Romania, Yugoslavia, and parts of North Africa. Only Britain remained in the fight, and Nazi Germany controlled virtually all of mainland Europe. Then, in June 1941, Hitler sent his forces to invade the Soviet Union. Most people expected this campaign to lead to a speedy defeat of the Communist regime, but that was not what happened. Instead, Germany found itself in a prolonged war, which cost millions of casualties. In December of 1941, Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, and as an ally of Japan, Hitler also declared war on America.

Suddenly, Germany found itself facing the combined military might and industrial capacity of America, Russia, and the British Empire simultaneously. It gradually became cleareven to the megalomaniacal Hitlerthat Germany could not hope to win a conventional war against these enemies. If Germany were to have any hope of victory, it would need new and more effective weapons developed by German scientists.

As the military situation continued to worsen during 1942, German propaganda began increasingly referring to Wunderwaffen (Miracle Weapons), potent and terrifying new secret weapons created with the latest technology to be used to defeat the superior numbers of troops and weapons facing the Wehrmacht on the battlefield. The Propaganda Ministry gave the impression that the use of these new weapons was just around the corner, but the truth was rather different. Some of these new weapons were, indeed, close to completion, but as advanced as the rocket program and various aircraft like the Messerschmitt Me262 jet fighter/bomber were, what Germany needed was something so different and so potent that it would force the Allies to sue for peace.

This led to some projects that sounded as if they were drawn from the realms of science-fiction. The Sonnengewehr (Sun Gun) was a plan to build a giant orbiting mirror made from metallic sodium, which could focus a heat-ray capable of destroying a city on the surface of the Earth. This was precisely the type of weapon that Hitler wanted, and research was vigorously pursued. However, German scientists interviewed after the war admitted that it might have taken up to 50 years to bring such a weapon to operational status. That simply was not soon enough for the Nazis.

By the end of 1942, Germany had endured a huge defeat at Stalingrad, and the Red Army had started an advance that would continue until it had reached Berlin in May 1945. American and Allied troops had landed in North Africa and were rapidly occupying territory formerly held by troops of Germanys ally, the Vichy French regime. British and American strategic bombers pounded German cities and industrial targets by day and night. German U-Boat attacks in the North Atlantic, which had come close to starving Britain in 1941, were being repulsed by new technology and larger numbers of British and American warships and aircraft.

What Hitler wanted was a new, strategic weapon, something that could be used to directly attack cities in Britain and beyond in the hope that devastating attacks on civilian centers would force the Allies to seek an end to the war on terms favorable to Germany. Germany had virtually no strategic bombers. The development of the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, had focused on short-range bombers used to support ground troops or conduct bombing attacks within mainland Europe. There was simply no German equivalent to the heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). For example, the four-engine Lancaster, one of the main RAF bombers in service in 1942, could carry a bomb load of up to 10,000 kg. In comparison, the twin-engine Heinkel He111, the most numerous Luftwaffe bomber in 1942, carried just 2,000 kg of bombs within its small bomb bay. If Hitler was going to bomb the Allies to the negotiating table, he could not rely on the Luftwaffe bombers.