Submarines and their Weapons - Aircraft of World War II

discussion stage. There was also talk of modifying the
second-stage A9 missile to carry a pilot, who would
have been ejected once he had locked the missile on a
course for its target (presumably he would have been
recovered by a submarine), but that idea can be dismissed
as a flight of fancy.
THE 'RHEINBOTE' ROCKET
The FZG 76 and the A4 were the only guided surfaceto-surface
missiles employed by either side during
World War IT, but the A4 was by no means the only
war rocket. Most of the combatant nations employed
much simpler devices - unguided and with solid-fuel
'motors' - as adjuncts to their artillery or as assault
weapons, but once again, only Germany went one
stage further, and produced a long-range unguided
ballistic missile, the Rh.Z.61/9 'Rheinbote' ('Rhine
Messenger'), developed by a company better known
for its artillery pieces and its share in the development
of the superlative MG 42 general-purpose machine
gun, Rheinmetall-Borsig. Where the A4 was complex
and expensive, 'Rheinbote' was simple. It was a finstabilised
four-stage solid-fuel rocket, each of the first
SURFACE-TO-SURFACE MISSILES
three stages igniting the next as it burned out and fell
away, with no guidance system, but relying on simple
alignment of the launch rail with the target. The
launch rail could be mounted on either a high-angle
8.8cm anti-aircraft gun mount or on a modified
'Meillerwagen', and the complete missile was almost
11.5m (37.5ft) long with a maximum body diameter
(in the first stage) of 535mm (21.1in) and a maximum
fin span of 1.49m (58.5in). It weighed a total of
1715kg (37751b), almost a third of which was propellant.
It had a maximum range of 220km (140 miles)
when fired at an elevation of 65 degrees, the final
stage, with its 40kg (881b) warhead, attaining a speed
of Mach 5.5 (almost 6000km/h; 3730mph) and climbing
to a maximum altitude of 78km (48.5 miles). Over
200 of these missiles were fired at Antwerp in
November 1944.
Below: An A4 rocket is paraded through London's
Trafalgar Square in late September 1945. The rocket was
reportedly captured in France, and was later set up as if
for launch next to Nelson's Column. Greater London was
on the receiving end of more than 500 V2s in 1944-45.
83