→ martin caidin was a fan of airtraffic. he wrote hundreds of articles for magazines and a few non-fiction books like the one above. he is remembered mostly for his science fiction books, one of which led to the movie → the six million dollar man. below is a brief section of his book where he comments on germany’s warfare.

caidin knows a lot about the missile program of the nazis. he writes that the → V1 rocket flew (mostly to england) at a pretty much constant speed of 360 mph = 580 km/h. this was slightly faster than the british spitfire planes in 1943. in 1944 the situation changed. allied fighter planes were faster and could follow and shoot down german V1 rockets.

the situation changed when the first → V2 reached london in the evening of september 8, 1944. the V2 flew much higher than ordinary fighter planes, and with its maximum speed of 3400 mph = 5400 km/h it was impossible to catch. the “V” in V1 and V2 stood for Vergeltungswaffe (vengeance weapon). this term was used by the propaganda ministery in hitler’s govenment. the technical name for the V2 was A4 = Aggregat 4. luckily the war was almost over when the → SS member → wernher von braun and others layed out plans for cruise missiles with even longer range. the A10 was supposed to carry an atomic bomb from germany to new york city in early 1946. it was never built. von braun happily joined the US space program.

The V1 and V2 rockets killed 9,000 civilians and military personnel, mainly in the UK. the production facilities in peenemünde, poland and france relied on forced laborers (“Zwangsarbeiter”), many of them from concentration camps (KZ). 12,000 of them died under the harsh conditions of building the rockets. martin caidin does not mention them; probably historians in 1954 did not know about this misery.