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Operation Backfire was a military scientific operation during and after the Second World War that was performed mainly by British staff. [1] The operation was designed to completely evaluate the entire V-2 rocket assembly, interrogate German personnel specialized in all phases of it, and then to test and launch missiles across the North Sea.
With the end of the war, the Allies scrambled to acquire German technology. Several operations were set by the British, including the Fedden Mission and Operation Surgeon. With the consent of U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the operation was orchestrated by Major Robert Staver of the Rocket Section of the Research and Development branch of the Ordnance Office, which had been tasked in directing the effort to find and interrogate the German rocket specialists who had built the V-2. Since 30 April 1945, Major Staver had been in the Nordhausen area searching the smaller laboratories for V-2 technicians. Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) Junior Commander Joan Bernard also played a role in this operation. [2] [3]
For this operation, three or possibly four V-2 rockets were launched during October 1945 from a launch pad at 53°50′50″N8°35′32″E / 53.84722°N 8.59222°E north-east of Arensch near Cuxhaven within the British Occupation zone in Germany in order to demonstrate the weapon to Allied personnel.
The Americans had already taken away most of the V2 rocket technology from the German underground Mittelwerk factory at the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp near Nordhausen. Before the Soviets took control of that area, the British were given the opportunity to gather material. They were able to assemble parts sufficient to build eight V2 rockets. Some parts were still missing and there was a search throughout Germany. Some 400 railway cars and 70 Lancaster flights were used to bring some 250,000 parts and 60 specialized vehicles to Cuxhaven, the most elusive parts being electrical batteries to operate the guidance gyros. The US supplied some tail assemblies from those that they had taken. Many of the rockets and the hydrogen peroxide fuel used in the operation were provided by T-Force, a secretive British Army unit that had, in spring and summer 1945, searched for German military technology and scientists. [4]
The handling and launch procedures were unknown, so German personnel were ordered to perform these, which for the most part they did willingly. [5] The launches were filmed and because the personnel wore their original uniforms and the rockets were painted as in their original livery, this footage (often used for documentaries) has been mistaken for footage of wartime German launches.[ citation needed ]
| Date | Time | Maximum height | Length of flight | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 October 1945 | 14:41 | 69.4 kilometres (43.1 mi) | 249.4 kilometres (155.0 mi) | |
| 4 October 1945 | 14:16 | 17.4 kilometres (10.8 mi) | 24 kilometres (15 mi) | Engine failure shortly after launch. |
| 15 October 1945 | 15:06 | 64 kilometres (40 mi) | 233 kilometres (145 mi) | Some sources indicate the launch took place on 14 October. |
According to the Report on Operation Backfire, there were three Cuxhaven launches. Backfire Rocket One was prepared for launch on 1 October 1945, but did not function. Backfire Rocket Two was prepared for launch on 2 October 1945 and was launched without difficulty. The second Cuxhaven launch took place on 4 October 1945 with Backfire Rocket One. A third and final rocket was launched for representatives of the press and Allies on 15 October 1945 under the name Operation Clitterhouse. [6] According to one site, there was a fourth launch on 17 October 1945 that reached an altitude of about 80 kilometres (50 mi). [7]
For these launches, the British recruited German personnel, even those transferred from US custody and due to be returned, to assist with this missile programme.
The technical aspects of the operation were detailed in a five-volume report. [8]
At the site of the former launchpad there is a trough and some remnants of shelters.
The Peenemünde Army Research Center was founded in 1937 as one of five military proving grounds under the German Army Weapons Office (Heereswaffenamt). Several German guided missiles and rockets of World War II were developed by the HVP, including the V-2 rocket. The works were attacked by the British in Operation Crossbow from August 1943, before falling to the Soviets in May 1945.
The V-2, with the technical name Aggregat 4 (A-4), was the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed during the Second World War in Nazi Germany as a "vengeance weapon" and assigned to attack Allied cities as retaliation for the Allied bombings of German cities. The V-2 rocket also became the first artificial object to travel into space by crossing the Kármán line with the vertical launch of MW 18014 on 20 June 1944.
Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from the former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment after the end of World War II in Europe, between 1945 and 1959. Conducted by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), it was largely carried out by special agents of the U.S. Army's Counterintelligence Corps (CIC). Many of these personnel were former members and some were former leaders of the Nazi Party.
Major-General Dr. Walter Robert Dornberger was a German Army artillery officer whose career spanned World War I and World War II. He was a leader of Nazi Germany's V-2 rocket programme and other projects at the Peenemünde Army Research Centre. After the war, the US Nazi scientist recruitment programme Operation Paperclip saw him move to the US, largely avoiding punishment for involvement in war crimes, to work for some decades in high positions in aerospace, including for Bell Aircraft and Boeing.
Mittelbau-Dora was a Nazi concentration camp located near Nordhausen in Thuringia, Germany. It was established in late summer 1943 as a subcamp of Buchenwald concentration camp, supplying slave labour from many Eastern countries occupied by Germany, for extending the nearby tunnels in the Kohnstein and for manufacturing the V-2 rocket and the V-1 flying bomb. In the summer of 1944, Mittelbau became an independent concentration camp with numerous subcamps of its own. In 1945, most of the surviving inmates were sent on death marches or crammed in trains of box-cars by the SS. On 11 April 1945, US troops freed the remaining prisoners.
La Coupole, also known as the Coupole d'Helfaut-Wizernes and originally codenamed Bauvorhaben 21 or Schotterwerk Nordwest, is a Second World War bunker complex in the Pas-de-Calais department of northern France, about 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from Saint-Omer, and some 14.4 kilometers south-southeast from the less developed Blockhaus d'Eperlecques V-2 launch installation in the same area. It was built by the forces of Nazi Germany between 1943 and 1944 to serve as a launch base for V-2 rockets directed against London and southern England and is the earliest known precursor to modern underground missile silos still in existence.
Between 1933 and 1964 numerous rocket experiments were carried out in the area of Cuxhaven, Germany.
V-weapons, known in original German as Vergeltungswaffen, were a particular set of long-range artillery weapons designed for strategic bombing during World War II, particularly strategic bombing and/or aerial bombing of cities. They were the V-1, a pulsejet-powered cruise missile; the V-2, a liquid-fueled ballistic missile ; and the V-3 cannon. Germany intended to use all of these weapons in a military campaign against Britain, though only the V-1 and V-2 were so used in a campaign conducted 1944–45. After the invasion of western Europe by the Allies, these weapons were also employed against targets on the mainland of Europe, mainly in France and Belgium. Strategic bombing with V-weapons killed approximately 18,000 people, mostly civilians. The cities of London, Antwerp and Liège were the main targets.
The Rocket U-boat was a series of military projects undertaken by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The projects, which were undertaken at Peenemünde Army Research Center, aimed to develop submarine-launched rockets, flying bombs and missiles. The German Navy did not use submarine-launched rockets or missiles from U-boats against targets at sea or ashore. These projects never reached combat readiness before the war ended.
Helmut Gröttrup was a German engineer, rocket scientist and inventor of the smart card. During World War II, he worked in the German V-2 rocket program under Wernher von Braun. From 1946 to 1950 he headed a group of 170 German scientists who were forced to work for the Soviet rocketry program under Sergei Korolev. After returning to West Germany in December 1953, he developed data processing systems, contributed to early commercial applications of computer science and coined the German term "Informatik". In 1967 Gröttrup invented the smart card as a "forgery-proof key" for secure identification and access control or storage of a secure key, also including inductive coupling for near-field communication (NFC). From 1970 he headed a start-up division of Giesecke+Devrient for the development of banknote processing systems and machine-readable security features.
Mittelwerk was a German World War II factory built underground in the Kohnstein to avoid Allied bombing. It used slave labor from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp to produce V-2 ballistic missiles, V-1 flying bombs, and other weapons.
In Germany, military test rockets were launched in Peenemünde and Cuxhaven, and larger non-military rockets were launched in Hespenbusch, Cuxhaven and Zingst. In World War II, A4-rockets were also launched as weapons from several western areas of Germany. Several launchpads were also constructed for the Bachem Ba 349, developed in 1944/45.
Kurt Heinrich Debus was a German-American rocket engineer and NASA director. Born in Germany, he was a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS) during World War II, where he served as a V-weapons flight test director. Following the war, he was brought to the United States via Operation Paperclip, and directed the design, development, construction and operation of NASA's Saturn launch facilities. He became the first director of NASA's Launch Operations Center, and, under him, NASA conducted 150 launches of military missiles and space vehicles, including 13 launches of the Saturn V rocket as part of the Apollo Moon landing program.
Operation Osoaviakhim was a secret Soviet operation under which more than 2,500 former Nazi German specialists from companies and institutions relevant to military and economic policy in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany (SBZ) and Berlin, as well as around 4,000 more family members, totalling more than 6,000 people, were transported from former Nazi Germany as war reparations in the Soviet Union. It took place in the early morning hours of October 22, 1946 when MVD and Soviet Army units under the direction of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD), headed by Ivan Serov.
Military intelligence on the V-1 and V-2 weapons developed by the Germans for attacks on the United Kingdom during the Second World War was important to countering them. Intelligence came from a number of sources and the Anglo-American intelligence agencies used it to assess the threat of the German V-weapons.
V-2 rocket facilities were military installations associated with Nazi Germany's V-2 SRBM ballistic missile, including bunkers and small launch pads which were never operationally used.
The Blizna V-2 missile launch site was the site of a World War II German V-2 missile firing range. Today there is a small museum located in the Park Historyczny Blizna in Blizna, Poland. After the RAF strategic bombing of the V-2 rocket launch site in Peenemünde, Germany, in August 1943, some of the test and launch facilities were relocated to Blizna in November 1943. The first of 139 V-2 launches was carried out from the Blizna launch site on 5 November 1943.
During World War II, Nazi Germany developed rocket technology that was more advanced than that of the Allies and a race commenced between the Soviet Union and the United States to capture and exploit the technology. Soviet rocket specialist were sent to Germany in 1945 to obtain V-2 rockets and worked with German specialists in Germany and later in the Soviet Union to understand and replicate the rocket technology. The involvement of German scientists and engineers was an essential catalyst to early Soviet efforts. In 1945 and 1946 the use of German expertise was invaluable in reducing the time needed to master the intricacies of the V-2 rocket, establishing production of the R-1 rocket and enable a base for further developments. However, after 1947 the Soviets made very little use of German specialists and their influence on the future Soviet space program was marginal.
Karl-Heinz Bringer was a German aerospace engineer, and rocket propulsion specialist who later became a French citizen. Bringer worked on Nazi Germany's rocket development program at Peenemünde during World War II. After the war, he moved to France, where he worked on sounding rocket Véronique and later on Europe's Ariane rocket program.
