The V2 rocket

Witness History

BBC

Society & Culture, Personal Journals, History

4.5 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2021

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

Using eyewitness accounts from the BBC archives, we hear how the Nazis developed the world's first modern ballistic missile that killed thousands during World War Two. The Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun was the principal architect of this revolutionary secret weapon. After the war he was recruited to work for the United States to develop its own missile programme and famously built the NASA rockets which put men on the Moon.

Photo: The launch of a captured German V2 rocket at the US military test site at White Sands, Nevada in 1946 (PhotoQuest/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. Hello and welcome to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Alex
0:39.5	Last with more first-hand accounts of events that shaped our world.
0:44.0	And today, using eyewitness accounts from the BBC Archive, we look back at the world's first
0:49.2	modern ballistic missile, the V2 rocket, developed in Nazi Germany, which killed thousands of people during the Second World War. Walking down Wallach Road just coming home from being a work Saturday morning and there was a mighty crash bangollop things flying everywhere big cloud of black smoke
1:17.2	dust when I turn the corner what with all the smoke and everything all I saw was this big crater with the bus in it and water gashing.
1:27.0	In 1944 and 45 towards the end of the Second World War a revolutionary deadly weapon rained down on London.
1:35.5	It was the world's first modern ballistic missile fired by German forces hundreds of miles
1:41.0	away in Nazi-occupied Europe. Once launched it was unstoppable. In just a few minutes
1:46.6	it would rocket to the edge of space before hurtling to the ground at more than 3,000 miles an hour striking without warning and detonating its one-ton explosive
1:56.8	warhead. It was called the V2. It would change the modern world and it would kill thousands.
2:03.2	You didn't have a chance to go down the shield because there was no warning given because
2:06.8	they didn't know when they were coming, they were so fast.
2:09.0	People were running up and down, have you seen my mother?
2:12.1	Have you seen this? Everyone was, have you seen my mother? Have you seen this?
2:12.8	Everyone was... Have you seen?
	...

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