British archaeologists stumbled upon the wreckage of the V-2 (short for Vergeltungswaffe-2 – “weapon of retaliation”) – the world’s first ballistic missile, which the Wehrmacht adopted shortly before the fall of the Third Reich. The fragments were found in the end of 2021 near the town of Platt in Kent during the excavation of a huge crater.
British tabloid Daily Express calls the shell Adolf Hitler’s “superweapon”. A team of archaeologists led by brothers Colin and Sean Welch managed to “identify” the combustion chamber, which must contain a mixture of liquid oxygen and alcohol. According to the position of the wreckage, experts concluded that the rocket entered the ground at an angle of about 70 degrees.
According to preliminary estimates, the rocket was launched from the Netherlands (during the war, the territory was called Holland) in February 1945. It took her several minutes to get to the United Kingdom – the speed reached about 5300 kilometers per hour. In fact, “V-2” was the first hypersonic missile in history (modern counterparts fly at a speed of about 6200 kilometers per hour).
The full recovery process could take about 18 months, British journalists write. Experts hope that they will be able to decipher the secret codes on the individual components of the rocket. This will help you find the factory where the rocket or parts of it were made. It is now known that some of the V-2 parts were produced in Czechoslovakia and Austria.
Adolf Hitler used his “superweapon” mainly for bombing Britain. In total, during the Second World War, the Nazis fired 3,225 of these missiles. In England alone, about nine thousand people died from their blows.
