Piercing the Fog - Air Force Historical Studies Office

The European Theater of Operations
strikes against handling and storage areas, but it suggested that “strategic attacks
on the basic industries producing components” appeared more effective than
attacks on the launch Later that month, a combined operations planning
committee suggested that even extensive attacks of these sites were neither
efficient nor effective and could not prevent the enemy from launching at least
thirty missiles a day from as yet unidentified locations. This committee
reiterated that supply depots in France and Belgium and factories in Germany
were better targets.”’
During the last week in July the joint CROSSBOW committee concluded,
“The attack by large formations [against launch sites] was wasteful and unlikely
to bring about any marked reduction in the enemy’s scale of atta~k.””~ Seeking
to limit operations against launch sites to harassing attacks primarily by tactical
forces, the committee recommended as first priority a series of supply depots,
followed by two special fuel dumps linked to the V-1 supply system, and then
five assumed factories in Germany and eastern Fran~e.’’~ As it turned out, the
question of control over CROSSBOW operations and intelligence became largely
a dead issue within six weeks after the new committee was formed. The ground
advance into northern France and the Low Countries in August and September
forced the Germans to withdraw their remaining V-Is. Eighth Air Force flew
its last CROSSBOW mission on August 30, 1944.’58
Although Allied attention had focused primarily on the flying bomb in the
spring and summer of 1944, the V-2 rocket remained ominously in the
shadows. The V-2 had been discovered first, but accurate information remained
scarce. Alerted by Polish underground sources of German flight testing at
Blizna, the Allies flew the first reconnaissance mission over that target in April
1944.15’ Reports from the Poles, some ULTRA decrypts of an infrequently
broken German Army code, and POW interrogations finally gave the Allies by
June 1944 a fairly accurate picture of the characteristics, performance, and
development of the V-2.’” When the first V-2 rocket hit England on September
8, 1944, however, the Germans had developed, as the director of the V-2
program later admitted, the capability to fire the weapon from “a bit of planking
on a forest track, or the overgrown track itself.”I6’ An attempt to ferret out
launching positions and attack them from the air, especially with bombers, was
obviously futile.
Although Eighth and Ninth Air Force bombers were directed against
several V-2-related targets, including production centers and liquid oxygen
plants in Germany and France, their impact was negligible.I6’ Despite the
enormous effort that had gone into comprehending the V-2, intelligence had
provided only a limited guidance to its operations, and air attacks had only
limited impact on the enemy’s program. That the V-2 had so little effect on the
war turned out to be the result of German technical problems, the inherent
limitations of the weapon itself, and the advance of the Allied ground armies.
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