Germany develops the V-2 at Peenemunde
The world's first ballistic missile is built with forced labor and later brings its engineers to America
Quick facts
- Location
- Peenemunde, Germany
- First successful launch
- 3 October 1942
- Length / weight
- 46 feet / 29,000 lbs
- Key figure
- Wernher von Braun
What happened
After 1937, Wernher von Braun and a German army rocket team worked at a secret research station at Peenemunde on the Baltic coast, developing the A-4 missile, later known as the V-2. On 3 October 1942, the fourth test vehicle became the first A-4 to fly successfully, reaching an altitude of about 60 miles and a range of 125 miles. Hitler ordered mass production that November. Production later moved to the underground Mittelwerk factory, where roughly 20,000 prisoners from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp built the missiles under brutal conditions; about half of the camp's deaths are attributed to the V-2 program. The V-2 was first used operationally against targets in Western Europe, including London, Paris, and Antwerp, starting in September 1944. It was a 46-foot liquid-propellant missile weighing 29,000 pounds, the first long-range ballistic missile in history.
Why it matters
At the war's end von Braun and roughly 125 of his team surrendered to American forces rather than the Soviets and were brought to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip. Installed at Fort Bliss, Texas, they became the technical core of the US Army's rocket program and later NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, giving the country the engineering base it would use to build the rockets of the Space Race.
How we know
The National Air and Space Museum holds the Peenemunde document collection, including signed reports and correspondence from von Braun and General Walter Dornberger; its V-2 missile object record documents the production history and forced-labor conditions at Mittelwerk in detail.
Sources
- Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (collection object record). V-2 Missile · Primary source (author-declared)airandspace.si.edu · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- NASA. Wernher von Braun · Reputable sourcenasa.gov · The domain "nasa.gov" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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