Speaker 1: Pushkin. If you are a loyal Pushkin Plus subscriber, thank
Speaker 1: you so much. We're really grateful for your support for
Speaker 1: the show, which helps us give you the storytelling, the acting,
Speaker 1: the research and the sound design we strive for on
Speaker 1: cautionary tales. And we hope you're gripped by the two
Speaker 1: part story of the Tenerief Air disaster we recently released
Speaker 1: on the Pushkin Plus feed. Now, if you are not
Speaker 1: a Pushkin Plus subscriber, not to worry. We know it's
Speaker 1: not for everyone, and we still love you, and as
Speaker 1: a token of that affection, we're releasing our epic trilogy
Speaker 1: about the V two Rocket, previously only available on Pushkin Plus.
Speaker 1: I first started working on this story back in the
Speaker 1: spring of twenty twenty two. It was a real labor
Speaker 1: of love, initially sparked by curiosity about a strange statistic
Speaker 1: my producer Ryan Dealey had told me, and then just
Speaker 1: going deeper and deeper, and eventually darker and darker too.
Speaker 1: There is tragedy, there is moral complexity, brilliance, courage, pure evil,
Speaker 1: and of course there's rocket ships and the dream of
Speaker 1: traveling into space. Enjoy. By late November nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: there was no doubt that the Allies were winning the
Speaker 1: Second World War, and London was far from the front line. Still,
Speaker 1: Londoners had to make sacrifices. To pick a trivial example,
Speaker 1: it was awfully difficult to get hold of a new saucepan.
Speaker 1: So when a young woman called Betty heard rumors that
Speaker 1: a branch of Woolworth's in Southeast London had a new
Speaker 1: consignment of kitchen ware, she didn't hesitate.
Speaker 2: I was a very young bride of a couple of years,
Speaker 2: with my first baby of about two months, so I
Speaker 2: promptly thanked my informer, dressed my baby daughter in her
Speaker 2: outdoor clothing, put on my coat and hat, and set
Speaker 2: off for a hopeful purchase.
Speaker 1: Betty had to travel across the city to reach the store.
Speaker 1: It was Saturday, the twenty ninth of November, and she
Speaker 1: arrived in Southeast London just before half past twelve.
Speaker 2: The road was very steep at this point, and I
Speaker 2: walked up the road on the right hand side with
Speaker 2: my bag in the right hand and my baby on
Speaker 2: the left arm. At that point there came a sudden,
Speaker 2: airless quiet which seemed to stop one's breath. Then an
Speaker 2: almighty sound so tremendous that it seemed to blot out
Speaker 2: my mind completely.
Speaker 1: She was knocked senseless and sideways.
Speaker 2: When I came to seconds later, I found myself over
Speaker 2: the road into the wall. After a second or two,
Speaker 2: I was released and slid to the ground.
Speaker 1: She had no idea what had happened. She looked at
Speaker 1: her baby.
Speaker 2: Her bonnet was twisted grotesquely and hung around her neck.
Speaker 2: Her hair was blown back tightly, as if she had none.
Speaker 2: She was staring at space, not comprehending.
Speaker 1: Betty's clothes were a mess, buttons and ribbons everywhere, but
Speaker 1: she wasn't hurt, and neither was her daughter. A horse
Speaker 1: and cart careened down the street, the driver's legs waving
Speaker 1: in the air.
Speaker 2: I was laughing hysterically.
Speaker 1: She picked up her daughter, got to her feet, and
Speaker 1: continued her journey around the corner. A man stopped her.
Speaker 1: Where were you, weddyed love alworths for a saucepan. He
Speaker 1: gently touched her shoulder and turned her around. Not today,
Speaker 1: my love, go home and try tomorrow. And so Betty, perplexed,
Speaker 1: went home with her baby, and she never had to
Speaker 1: see the sight of the explosion. The jagged skeleton bricks
Speaker 1: and timber that used to be the Woolworth storm, the
Speaker 1: scraps of clothing and wedding rings that were all the
Speaker 1: remains of the women who had been queuing up for saucepans.
Speaker 1: Just a few minutes ahead of her. She didn't have
Speaker 1: to gaze at the number fifty three bus that had
Speaker 1: stopped outside the store, filled with motionless passengers, covered in dust,
Speaker 1: apparently unharmed, but all killed instantly, All killed instantly by
Speaker 1: a weapon that couldn't be seen and could not be stopped,
Speaker 1: a weapon called the V two. I'm Tim Harford, and
Speaker 1: you're listening to cautionary tales. One hundred and sixty eight
Speaker 1: people were killed by the V two strike on Woolworth's.
Speaker 1: Many more were seriously injured. Eleven people were simply recorded
Speaker 1: as missing. We presumed that they were inside the Woolworths
Speaker 1: store when the V two hit, and that they were vaporized,
Speaker 1: leaving no trace at all, but will never know. This
Speaker 1: is the story of the V two, the dreaded rocket
Speaker 1: powered bomb that the Nazis began to use in the
Speaker 1: last few months of the Second World War. It traveled
Speaker 1: faster than the speed of sound. You couldn't hear it coming.
Speaker 1: One moment you're queuing up to buy a saucepan. The
Speaker 1: next moment, well, there is no next moment. I want
Speaker 1: to explore how this terrible weapon came into existence, why
Speaker 1: so many of the people it hurt weren't the people
Speaker 1: you might expect, and the lessons we can learn even today.
Speaker 1: Later we'll try to understand the weapon from the perspective
Speaker 1: of the Germans and the Americans, but let's start with
Speaker 1: the British and wind back a little further in time.
Speaker 1: Britain had been at war with Nazi Germany since nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine. London and many other British towns and cities
Speaker 1: had been relentlessly bombed in late nineteen forty and early
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one, but by nineteen forty two the focus
Speaker 1: of the war had moved elsewhere. Round about Christmas in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty two, a British intelligence officer named R. V.
Speaker 1: Jones received a worrying message. Jones had risen to a
Speaker 1: lofty position in the British Intelligence Service at the age
Speaker 1: of just thirty one, and he didn't like what he read.
Speaker 1: The message was from an informant in Germany. Who had
Speaker 1: managed to overhear a conversation between two senior Nazi engineers about.
Speaker 3: A new German weapon. Weapon is a rocket containing five
Speaker 3: tons explosive with a maximum range of two hundred kilometers.
Speaker 1: Two weeks later, another message.
Speaker 3: The Germans have constructed a new factory at Penamunda where
Speaker 3: new weapons are manufactured. The new weapon is in the
Speaker 3: form of a rocket which has been seen fired from
Speaker 3: the testing ground.
Speaker 1: Other similar reports dribbled in over the following three months.
Speaker 1: Sitting in London, R V. Jones was intrigued, but the
Speaker 1: reports were little more than rumors, and the weapons seemed fantastical.
Speaker 1: Jones asked for details on the movements of the German
Speaker 1: units with the most expert radar operators. He was sure
Speaker 1: that if a rocket was being tested at Pinamunda, which
Speaker 1: is on the north coast of Germany between Denmark and Poland,
Speaker 1: then those radar units would be delay lloyd to the area.
Speaker 1: Sure enough, that's where they were. He commissioned high level
Speaker 1: aerial photographs of Painnamunda, and after exhaustive study, found what
Speaker 1: looked like it might be a rocket about thirty five
Speaker 1: feet long. These clues convinced R. V. Jones that the
Speaker 1: reports of a rocket weapon had to be taken seriously,
Speaker 1: but he was making a lonely argument. Most of the
Speaker 1: rest of the British establishment was skeptical. In June nineteen
Speaker 1: forty three, R. V. Jones was summoned to a meeting
Speaker 1: of Prime Minister Winston Churchill's war Cabinet along with several
Speaker 1: other experts. Churchill wanted to resolve once and for all
Speaker 1: the argument about the existence or non existence of a
Speaker 1: secret German rocket program. On one side, there was R. V. Jones,
Speaker 1: convinced that the rocket existed based on the clues from
Speaker 1: the telegrams and the aerial photographs and the movements of
Speaker 1: German radar teams. On the other the skeptics, led by
Speaker 1: Churchill's senior advisor, Frederick Linderman. The debate was spirited. Frederick
Speaker 1: Linderman pointed out that Britain had rocket scientists too, and
Speaker 1: those scientists believed that the rocket shaped object in the
Speaker 1: aerial photograph wasn't big enough to deliver anything like the
Speaker 1: range being rumored. The Germans would have had to have
Speaker 1: delivered a technological miracle to make a rocket that small
Speaker 1: fly that far, and that was surely out of the question.
Speaker 1: Even if the rocket did exist and could fly, linderman continued,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be able to hit targets with any accuracy.
Speaker 1: And even if the Germans could build some kind of
Speaker 1: bomb on a rocket ship, why on earth would they
Speaker 1: do that. Lindermann reminded the group that Germany had to
Speaker 1: marshal its scarce resources carefully. It desperately needed material for
Speaker 1: tanks and planes. It seemed quite absurd that they would
Speaker 1: waste time and money on a costly and impractical program
Speaker 1: to put bombs on rockets. Pouring vast amounts of resources
Speaker 1: into making rocket bombs made no strategic sense. It defied
Speaker 1: all economic logic. Linderman was hugely influential. He was also
Speaker 1: the person who'd originally recommended R. V. Jones to Churchill,
Speaker 1: but now he vigorously disagreed with his young protege. He
Speaker 1: thought that Jones must have been mistaken when examining the
Speaker 1: aerial photographs, that Jones had seen a plywood decoy, not
Speaker 1: a real rocket. Linderman had heard different rumors, he told
Speaker 1: Churchill and the others. He had heard that the Germans
Speaker 1: were working on some kind of pilotless plane instead. That
Speaker 1: sounded more believable, although it still didn't make much sense.
Speaker 1: The most sensible thing that the Germans could folks, was
Speaker 1: making more of their proven weapons of war fighter planes,
Speaker 1: bombers and tanks. The idea of a vast secret program
Speaker 1: to develop a rocket bomb that surely couldn't work. The
Speaker 1: whole thing was clearly a hoax, said Linderman. But young R. V.
Speaker 1: Jones was well able to defend his view that the
Speaker 1: rocket was real. His aerial photographs proved that Painna Munder
Speaker 1: was a huge site full of complex equipment and facilities.
Speaker 1: Whatever was happening there was plainly important. If the Germans
Speaker 1: were attempting to pull off a hoax, it was a
Speaker 1: hoax calculated to prompt an attack on Painamunda. What would
Speaker 1: they gain from that? Churchill was delighted with a young
Speaker 1: man standing up for himself. He teased Linderman, hear that
Speaker 1: that's a weighty point against you. Remember it was you
Speaker 1: who introduced him to me. After a vigorous argument, R. V.
Speaker 1: Jones convinced the Prime Minister that the Germans had no
Speaker 1: reason to create a self destructive hoax. The rocket must
Speaker 1: be real. The meeting concluded with Churchill's order bomb paya
Speaker 1: munda inter rubble. Cautionary tales will return after the break.
Speaker 1: Here's what the British didn't know as Churchill listened to
Speaker 1: the Experts debate in nineteen forty three. They didn't know
Speaker 1: that a senior member of the German Army had been
Speaker 1: obsessed with the idea of a rocket bomb for a
Speaker 1: quarter of a century. His name was Captain Dr Valter Doornberger,
Speaker 1: later to be Major jen Rule Dr Valter Dornberger. In
Speaker 1: the First World War, drn Berger had been an officer
Speaker 1: with the Paris Gun, a huge piece of German artillery.
Speaker 1: The Paris Gun could fire two hundred and thirty pound
Speaker 1: shells a range of eighty miles. They took three minutes
Speaker 1: to sail through the air in a vast parabolic arc
Speaker 1: until eventually arriving at their destination, which was, of course Paris.
Speaker 1: That was a glorious memory for an artillery officer, shelling
Speaker 1: the enemy from eighty miles away, the joy of waging
Speaker 1: war from well out of range. But the First World
Speaker 1: War ended in German defeat and humiliation. Among other things,
Speaker 1: the Treaty of Versailles banned the German Army from using
Speaker 1: artillery like the Paris Gun. The treaty didn't ban rockets,
Speaker 1: though why would it. Rocket Ships were the stuff of hobbyists,
Speaker 1: day dreams, and science fiction. In the nineteen twenties, Germans
Speaker 1: were positively giddy about rocket ship stories. They flocked to
Speaker 1: the movie theaters to see a new film by Fritz
Speaker 1: Lang and Theovon Harbu, the husband and wife creators of Metropolis.
Speaker 1: The film was called frau Immonde The Woman in the Moon. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: pioneers such as Hermann Obett and Max Vallier were beginning
Speaker 1: to experiment with small scale rocket engines and publishing books
Speaker 1: about the far off promise of space travel. To Captain Drnberger,
Speaker 1: these rockets meant more than stories about space. They presented
Speaker 1: an opportunity. If the German Army couldn't build long range
Speaker 1: artillery anymore, why not try to put a bomb on
Speaker 1: a rocket With hindsight, the attraction of rockets as a
Speaker 1: military technology is obvious. Today we call them ballistic missiles.
Speaker 1: They fly high and far and fast. Even with twenty
Speaker 1: first century technology, it's hard to intercept them, and you
Speaker 1: get very little warning that they're coming. With nineteen thirties technology,
Speaker 1: defence would be hopeless. A rocket could fly at several
Speaker 1: times the speed of sound, almost a mile per second.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't see it, you wouldn't hear it, and you
Speaker 1: certainly couldn't stop it. But the question was could they
Speaker 1: build it? Rockets were complex, temperamental, dangerous things. Rocket pioneer
Speaker 1: Herman Obet lost an eye in nineteen twenty nine, and
Speaker 1: he was merely trying to produce special effects for the
Speaker 1: Frau Immonde movie his little model rocket exploded. Max Valier,
Speaker 1: realizing that space was still beyond his grasp, was building
Speaker 1: and driving rocket powered cars, reaching a record breaking speed
Speaker 1: of one hundred and fifty five miles per hour. But
Speaker 1: he was killed in nineteen thirty when one of the
Speaker 1: rocket engines blew up on the test bench, sending shrapnel
Speaker 1: through his chest. If you can lose an eye making
Speaker 1: a model rocket for a movie, or die in your
Speaker 1: own workshop, what were the risks of building reliable missile
Speaker 1: weapons at scale and volume so great that they could
Speaker 1: replace artillery. Nevertheless, in nineteen thirty two, Valter Dornberger secured
Speaker 1: some funding from his military superiors, recruited his first rocket scientists,
Speaker 1: and began the long quest to build the deadly rocket
Speaker 1: weapon that would eventually be called the V two. The
Speaker 1: top British scientists in nineteen forty three thought that rocket
Speaker 1: weapons were a pipe dream. But here's something else they
Speaker 1: didn't know. For more than a decade, the German government
Speaker 1: had been throwing money at Valter Dornberger's team of scientists
Speaker 1: to try to crack the rocket problem. The British would
Speaker 1: not have been surprised to learn that Dornberger's team had
Speaker 1: produced failed launch after failed launch, year after year. They
Speaker 1: would have been astonished to learn that despite all the failures,
Speaker 1: the Nazis were still giving Dornberger more and more resources
Speaker 1: to keep on trying. The young British intelligence officer R. V.
Speaker 1: Jones had been right to conclude that something important was
Speaker 1: happening at Payinamunda, but even he couldn't have guessed how important.
Speaker 1: Dornberger had built a vast facility, costing five hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty million Reichsmarks the equivalent of billions of dollars today.
Speaker 1: There were research facilities and a testing site, a large
Speaker 1: oval embankment big enough to contain four football pitches, with
Speaker 1: forty yard thick earthworks designed to corral missiles. They toppled
Speaker 1: over and blasted off horizontally. There were facilities to build
Speaker 1: ballistic missiles in large quantities once they had one that worked.
Speaker 1: The site housed the largest industrial factory building Europe had
Speaker 1: yet seen, and beyond that, Germany's most modern housing estate,
Speaker 1: providing stylish accommodation for three thousand people, the families of
Speaker 1: the scientists and engineers. There were schools, shops, sports and
Speaker 1: leisure facilities, a beach resort, and well tended paths meandering
Speaker 1: through the nearby forest. Since there wasn't room on the
Speaker 1: site for everyone who would work at Pain and Mundo,
Speaker 1: there were purpose built railway lines to bring in workers.
Speaker 1: The docks were enlarged to allow for the flow of
Speaker 1: raw materials and food. There was a liquid oxygen plant
Speaker 1: and a thirty megawatt coal fired power station that's enough
Speaker 1: to power a small city, all intended to mass produce
Speaker 1: a technology that the British experts thought was impossible. At
Speaker 1: least that was what Walter Dornberger had intended, but not
Speaker 1: everyone in Nazi Germany was convinced that Dornberger would be
Speaker 1: able to deliver on his rocket bomb ambitions. So another
Speaker 1: part of the German War machine began to advance a
Speaker 1: parallel plan. Like Dornberger's rockets, it promised a far greater range, payload,
Speaker 1: and accuracy than even the largest artillery. Like the rockets,
Speaker 1: it was intended to bring German firepower to bear far
Speaker 1: behind enemy lines, but unlike the rockets, it was to
Speaker 1: be cheap, simple, and ruthlessly practical. This parallel weapon became
Speaker 1: known as the V one. The V stood for Vegeltung
Speaker 1: or vengeance Valtera. Dornberger managed to get this rival technology
Speaker 1: moved to Painamunda, where the cutting edge facilities would be
Speaker 1: devoted to producing both the v V one and the
Speaker 1: V two. Remember when Churchill's senior advisor, Frederick Linderman said
Speaker 1: he'd heard another rumor that the Germans were working on
Speaker 1: a pilotless plane. That rumor was right two. The pilotless
Speaker 1: plane was the V one. The idea was straightforward. Make
Speaker 1: a bomb in the shape of a plane, give it
Speaker 1: a primitive jet engine so that it flies quickly pointed
Speaker 1: in the right direction, and use a gyroscope to keep
Speaker 1: it on course. The V one looks oddly modern, like
Speaker 1: a contemporary predator drone or a torpedo with wings. It
Speaker 1: became known as the buzz bomb or the doodlebug because
Speaker 1: of the loud, vibrating sound it produced. These vibrations were
Speaker 1: a side effect to the jet engine's cheap design, and
Speaker 1: were so violent that the V one would sometimes shake
Speaker 1: itself into scrap by the end of the flight. That
Speaker 1: didn't matter. The whole point of the V one was
Speaker 1: that it was a flying bomb designed to drop out
Speaker 1: of the sky over London. If it was falling apart
Speaker 1: by the time it reached its target, who cared. The
Speaker 1: contrast between the two weapons was striking. While the V
Speaker 1: two was fueled with a volatile mix of alcohol and
Speaker 1: liquid oxygen, the V one ran on simple gasoline. The
Speaker 1: V two could reach nearly three thousand, six hundred miles
Speaker 1: per hour and climb an astonishing fifty five miles high,
Speaker 1: which is most of the way of space. The V
Speaker 1: one flew at just four hundred miles per hour at
Speaker 1: a height of about half a mile. In principle, the
Speaker 1: V two seemed like the superior weapon. It was untrackable
Speaker 1: and unstoppable. You could fire it from mobile sites and
Speaker 1: change them every day. The V one, in contrast, would
Speaker 1: be trackable on radar. If the British could shoot it
Speaker 1: down with anti aircraft guns, it would have to be
Speaker 1: catapulted from a fixed ramp. The British could find those
Speaker 1: ramps and destroy them. But when Frederick Linderman told Churchill
Speaker 1: that the pilotless plane was a more logical aim for
Speaker 1: the Germans than the rocket, he was right because the
Speaker 1: V one was so much easier to design and build.
Speaker 1: By nineteen forty three, Drnberger's V two rocket bomb had
Speaker 1: been more than a decade in the making and still
Speaker 1: wasn't working. The V one went from a vague concept
Speaker 1: to a successful test flight in just eighteen months, and
Speaker 1: for the price of a single V two rocket, Nazi
Speaker 1: Germany could build and launch maybe twenty five V one's,
Speaker 1: And since they carried a similar payload a similar distance
Speaker 1: with similar accuracy, why wouldn't they Why Indeed, the experts
Speaker 1: in Churchill's war room didn't yet know all these details.
Speaker 1: Of course, all they knew were rumors of pilotless planes
Speaker 1: and rocket bombs. For Frederick Line, the conclusion was obvious.
Speaker 1: The rocket bomb made no sense, so it must be
Speaker 1: a hoax. No, said R. V. Jones. It might make
Speaker 1: no sense, but they really are doing it. In August
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three, Britain's Royal Air Force put Churchill's order
Speaker 1: into action. Six hundred planes took off and headed to
Speaker 1: Paina Munda. Cautionary tales will return after the break. Late
Speaker 1: in the evening on the seventeenth of August nineteen forty three,
Speaker 1: the air raid sirens at Pina Munda began to sound.
Speaker 1: Felt Drnberger was not overly concerned. British bombers often assembled
Speaker 1: the sea near Painamunda before flying directly south to strike
Speaker 1: at Berlin. Painamunder itself maintained a strict blackout, but General
Speaker 1: Dornberger noticed with unease how clearly the full moon picked
Speaker 1: out the dark houses against the silver lawns. He prepared
Speaker 1: for bed and soon fell asleep. He was jolted awake
Speaker 1: not long after midnight by the thunderous sound of anti
Speaker 1: aircraft guns and then of exploding bombs. Dornberger leaped out
Speaker 1: of bed to pull on his trousers and boots, to
Speaker 1: discover that only his bedroom slippers were close at hand.
Speaker 1: His house was shaking, broken glass everywhere, the heavy oak
Speaker 1: door blown out and angled on the steps leading to
Speaker 1: his garden. He stood for a moment snug in his
Speaker 1: slippers as he gazed out over the smoke and the
Speaker 1: fiery glow of six hundred British planes embarking on a
Speaker 1: full a scale attempt to obliterate Paya Munda's rocket factories
Speaker 1: and to wipe out its scientific staff. Dawn Berger hurried
Speaker 1: to the bomb shelter. The British thought they had succeeded
Speaker 1: from the air. The damage seemed so devastating that they
Speaker 1: even called off a planned follow up strike, But they
Speaker 1: hadn't realized how huge a complex Painnamunda was. They'd missed
Speaker 1: many of its key facilities entirely, or damaged them only superficially,
Speaker 1: including the launchpad, a supersonic wind tunnel, and the rocket
Speaker 1: factory itself. They'd destroyed most of the homes of the
Speaker 1: top engineers and their families, but like Valda Dornberger, most
Speaker 1: of these senior people had made it safely to the
Speaker 1: bomb shelters in time. The bombing ray did kill hundreds
Speaker 1: of people, but those people weren't the top scientists the
Speaker 1: British had been hoping to target. Instead, they were construction
Speaker 1: workers from Eastern Europe, penned behind barbed wire in a
Speaker 1: camp two miles away from the main facilities. To the
Speaker 1: Nazi regime, these workers were disposable and replaceable. The Nazis
Speaker 1: now recognized, though, that Painamunda was vulnerable. They moved the
Speaker 1: manufacturing operation to a different site underground. The British thought
Speaker 1: they'd destroyed the missile program. In fact, they'd just delayed
Speaker 1: its progress, and by only a few months at most.
Speaker 1: In June nineteen forty four, ten months after the bombing
Speaker 1: of Pinamunda and just days after the D Day landings
Speaker 1: in Normandy, the first V one bombs started to rain
Speaker 1: down on London. The crude, vibrating gasoline powered doodlebugs had
Speaker 1: beaten the crazily complex V two to the punch. But then,
Speaker 1: on the eighth of September, the first V two rocket
Speaker 1: hit London. The British experts had thought it would take
Speaker 1: a technological miracle to make a rocket bomb that could
Speaker 1: launch from Germany and hit targets in England. The Germans,
Speaker 1: it seemed, had made that miracle happen, although the target
Speaker 1: surely wasn't what they'd aimed at. The rocket landed in
Speaker 1: the suburb of Chiswick in West London. It did kill
Speaker 1: a soldier, but only because he happened to be in
Speaker 1: Chiswick on leave. The other victims were a sixty three
Speaker 1: year old woman, Ada Harrison and a three year old girl,
Speaker 1: Rosemary Clark. The V two was an unstoppable weapon. It
Speaker 1: was launched from mobile platforms, flew faster than sound, and
Speaker 1: was therefore silent, although some survivors reported their ears popping
Speaker 1: a moment before impact as the pressure wave hit. Surely,
Speaker 1: an unstoppable weapon must win any war, perhaps if you
Speaker 1: can aim it accurately. The V two was wildly unpredictable.
Speaker 1: The Nazis wanted to hit the port in Antwerp, northern Belgium,
Speaker 1: which the Allies were using to reinforce and resupply their
Speaker 1: advance on the Western Front. They launched over sixteen hundred
Speaker 1: V two rockets at Antwerp's docks. More than ninety percent
Speaker 1: landed somewhere else. On the sixteenth of December nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: nearly six hundred moviegoers in Antwerp were killed when a
Speaker 1: V two hit a local cinema. That strike came just
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks after a V two hit the
Speaker 1: Woolworths department store in southeast London. Ten days Later the
Speaker 1: day after Christmas, London suffered another blow when a rocket
Speaker 1: struck a pub in Islington called the Prince of Wales.
Speaker 1: It was packed with people celebrating the U S engagement
Speaker 1: of local girl Emily Neighbor, and the explosion was strong
Speaker 1: enough to knock down fifteen houses. Seven children from the
Speaker 1: house across the street died, killed by the shock of
Speaker 1: the blast alone. They had no outward sign of injury.
Speaker 1: In total, at least seventy three people died all This
Speaker 1: was typical of the V two program. The missiles were
Speaker 1: too wayward to have much military value, but every now
Speaker 1: and then a missile would strike a crowded place and
Speaker 1: dozens or even hundreds of people would die without ever
Speaker 1: knowing what had hit them. Remember that the V stood
Speaker 1: for vengeance. That's about right. The rocket bombs had been
Speaker 1: intended to terrify Germany's enemies, but they achieved nothing but
Speaker 1: petty revenge for Germany's mounting wartime losses. Civilians were more
Speaker 1: unnerved than terrified. Faced with the V two, there was
Speaker 1: nothing to do but shrug and hope, and the Allied
Speaker 1: strategists weren't terrified either. They were baffled. They couldn't understand
Speaker 1: why the Germans had squandered so much effort and expense
Speaker 1: developing a missile that achieved so little. Freeman Dyson, the
Speaker 1: great physicist, worked for British Bomber Command during the war.
Speaker 1: He later mused, those of.
Speaker 3: US who were seriously engaged in the war were very
Speaker 3: grateful for the V two program. We knew that each
Speaker 3: V two cost as much to produce as a high
Speaker 3: performance fighter airplane. We knew that German forces on the
Speaker 3: fighting fronts were in desperate need of airplanes, and that
Speaker 3: the V two rockets were doing US no military damage.
Speaker 3: From our point of view, the V two program was
Speaker 3: almost as good as if Hitler had adopted a policy
Speaker 3: of unilateral disarmament.
Speaker 1: Germany's rocket program had started in nineteen thirty two, when
Speaker 1: Valter Dornberger had first started to recruit rock scientists. It
Speaker 1: ran for twelve years before the rockets achieved their first
Speaker 1: fatal attack, the one that killed three year old Rosemary Clark,
Speaker 1: and just seven months later it was all over, as
Speaker 1: the last V two strike killed thirty four year old
Speaker 1: Ivy Miller Champ of Orpington, Kent. She was the last
Speaker 1: civilian casualty of the war on British soil. The V
Speaker 1: two terror had lasted less than a year. Neither Rosemary
Speaker 1: Clark nor Ivy Miller Champ would know it, but the
Speaker 1: V two program was a disaster for Germany. It's generally
Speaker 1: reckoned to have placed a similar burden on Germany's economy
Speaker 1: to that placed by the atomic weapon program the Manhattan
Speaker 1: Project on Americas. And for what. In the end, the
Speaker 1: V twos killed about five thousand innocent people, mostly in
Speaker 1: Antwerp and London. It was terrifying, but those are tax
Speaker 1: had almost no military effect, and both sides demonstrated over
Speaker 1: and over again that dropping conventional bombs from planes was
Speaker 1: a much simpler and cheaper way to kill civilians. Add
Speaker 1: up the total explosive power of all the V twos
Speaker 1: ever fired, and you'd get to about the same scale
Speaker 1: as one single large bombing raid from Britain's Royal Air Force.
Speaker 1: As the Allies pushed back the German front line, the
Speaker 1: V twos could no longer reach big cities. The Nazis
Speaker 1: fired them at whatever targets remained in range, such as
Speaker 1: the English market town of Ipswich. But Ipswich is a
Speaker 1: small town in fertile farming country. The expensive sophisticated V twos,
Speaker 1: each one costing as much as a fighter plane, ranged
Speaker 1: down randomly on fields of turnips and sugar Beete forty five.
Speaker 1: That was the legacy of the German rocket program. An
Speaker 1: astonishing technological triumph, but a baffling strategic mistake, a vast
Speaker 1: budget squandered. If you spend billions but end up mostly
Speaker 1: killing housewives shopping for saucepans in Woolworth's, you're not only
Speaker 1: committing a war crime, you're also going to lose the war.
Speaker 1: The British intelligence chief R. V. Jones had struggled to
Speaker 1: convince his colleagues that the Nazis were trying to build
Speaker 1: a rocket powered bomb. He struggled because his colleagues rightly
Speaker 1: pointed out that the idea made no sense in the
Speaker 1: middle of a war. The Nazi regime would have been
Speaker 1: far better served by manufacturing more of the things they
Speaker 1: knew were effective, tanks and airplanes. All that leaves us
Speaker 1: with a question. If it was obvious to the British
Speaker 1: that the idea of a rocket bomb made no sense,
Speaker 1: why wasn't it obvious to Nazi Germany? Writing decades later, R. V.
Speaker 1: Jones mused, when we try to understand the policy behind
Speaker 1: the rocket, we are forced to abandon rationality and instead
Speaker 1: to enter a fantasy where romance has replaced economy.
Speaker 3: Why then, have they made the rocket? The answer is simple,
Speaker 3: no weapon yet produced has comparable romantic appeal.
Speaker 1: That's part of the answer, but there's more to it
Speaker 1: than that. Cautionary Tales will be back next time with
Speaker 1: part two of the story, in which we'll meet the
Speaker 1: brilliant charismatic man who Valter Dornberger recruited as his chief scientist,
Speaker 1: and we'll ask why so many governments are so fond
Speaker 1: of projects that are grand, expensive and finished far too late.
Speaker 1: An excellent guide to the V two program is Murray
Speaker 1: Barber's book V two The A four Rocket From Paynamunda
Speaker 1: to Redstone. For a full list of our sources, see
Speaker 1: the show notes at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is
Speaker 1: written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced
Speaker 1: by Alice Fines with support from Edith Uslow. The sound
Speaker 1: design and original music is the work of Pascal Wise.
Speaker 1: Julia Barton edited the scripts. It features the voice talents
Speaker 1: of Ben Crowe, Melanie Gushridge, Jemma Saunders and rufus Wright.
Speaker 1: The show wouldn't have been possible without the work of
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, Ryan Dilly, Greta Cohne, let Al Millard, John Schnarz,
Speaker 1: Carlie mcgliori and Eric Sandler. Cautionary Tales is a production
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. It was recorded in Wardall Studios in
Speaker 1: London by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please
Speaker 1: remember to share, rate and review go on you know
Speaker 1: it helps us and if you want to hear the
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Speaker 1: show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm,
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