London, December 1944.
It is late 1944, and War rages across Europe. Rommel’s elite Afrika Korps has been defeated, and the Western Allies are advancing fast up the boot of Italy. The twin military defeats at Stalingrad and Kursk have collapsed the German line in Russia, and the Red Army is advancing across Poland. Just 3 months prior, the largest ever amphibious invasion the world has ever seen, D-Day, has Americans, Brits, and Canadians storm the beaches of Nazi-occupied Normandy. The liberation of Europe has begun.
The people of Britain have endured much. But now, thanks to the heroic victory of the RAF in the Battle of Britain back in 1940, the skies of this green and pleasant land are no longer darkened by the hated wings of the Luftwaffe. The Führer is boxed in; each day brings news of fresh disasters, and the Nazi Empire is falling apart in his hands. All he has left now is Vergeltung – Vengeance.
Vengeance is a missile. It lifts off from a hidden base deep in the forests of northern France. It flies, propelled by liquid oxygen and ethanol, in a great parabolic arc, ascending until, with a boom, it breaks the sound barrier. As it begins its descent, it travels at speeds exceeding 3,580 mph (5,760 km/h), guided by gyroscopes and an early analogue computer to its target.
Travelling faster than the speed of sound, it delivers its payload of 1,700 lbs (1000kg) of ordinance in total silence, anywhere in a 5-10km radius. This is the A-4 missile, better known as the Vergeltungswaffe-2 (or Vengeance-weapon), the V-2. Designed by engineering prodigy Wernher von Braun, it is the first-ever man-made object to enter outer space.
The weapon is intended to terrorise. Its inaccuracy and silence add a layer of fear that not even the whine of a descending Stuka dive bomber could reproduce. No detection system the British have can give any advanced warning, and no defence system can knock it out of the sky. You can’t see it coming. You feel the explosion before you hear it. One moment, your house, your life, your family are there, the next they’re not.
But, in the gleaming marble halls of Washington and behind the high walls of the Kremlin, the soon-to-be victors of the greatest war in human history begin to salivate. The Americans, terrified of communism spreading after the fall of the Third Reich, see the incorporation of Nazi technology as a vital way of gaining an edge over their ideological rivals, hanging destruction over the Soviets’ heads, and keeping Europe free from the totalitarian Red Menace.
The Soviets have seen their country wrecked: 30 million of their people have been killed by the Nazi war machine, and, on the horizon, a conflict looms with the USA – the greatest world power in history, which is moments from developing the atom bomb. Joseph Stalin, the USSR’s brutal dictator, sees missile technology as a way of levelling the playing field, defending his country from another invasion, and proving once and for all the superiority of Soviet communism over the corrupt capitalist democracies of the West.
Both sides give the order – the looting of Nazi technology, machinery, blueprints, and most of all, personnel related to the development of the V-2 is of top priority. American GIs enter Nazi Germany via Belgium, and the Red Army marches into Pomerania. Ready, set, go – the Space Race has begun.