Did they try to keep them secret? It seems obvious that people would be anxious for news.
Actually, as I understand the story, they were selectively reported—at least on radio. Strikes far to the north of London were played ups, while those in Central and South London were downplayed. The Germans would adjust their aim based on the reports they heard on the BBC, so that soon the bulk of strikes were in the Kent countryside.
They tried to keep the V-2 secret at first, but nobody really believed the story that so many gas mains were spontaneously exploding.
Well, there were air raid sirens. People could hear the V-1s buzz bombs. The time to worry was when they stopped buzzing. The V-2s, being supersonic, gave no warning. I suppose they could have been tracked by radar. From what I’ve read about the V-2s recently, more people died in the building and testing of them than Britons from being exploded by them. Of course, most of the people who died building them were the slave laborers who were starved while working to death.
They had to be careful with newspaper and radio news reports as the Germans used them as intelligence sources for BDS (battle damage assessment).
V2s arrived with no warning, although there may have been a brief hypersonic shock wave near the arrival site. After the explosion the rocket could be heard, travelling backwards into the sky as the soundwaves arrived.
Here’s a paragraph about ‘flying gas mains’, showing that the public didn’t believe the official stories after the first few incidents;
A V2 rocket landed on the bus station at the end of my road; more than ten years before I was born, but my brother remembers it - our dog ran away and didn’t come back for days.
I had read about the “flying gas mains” too. Apparently at first the government tried to tell the public the explosions were gas mains, but people were not stupid, they quickly dubbed them “flying gas mains”. Especially as the V2’s were a follow-up to V1’s, so people knew the concept of German flying bombs.
I believe it was George Orwell who describes taking lawn chairs up to Hampstead Heath to the north overlooking London(?) and sitting there in the afternoon watching the V1’s come in over London, until the motor cut out and they drop onto the city followed by an explosion. I don’t think there was much secrecy about them.
Yes, V1s were pretty obvious – loud and flying low and subsonic you could engage for interception if you had the right plane or AA in the right place. V2s were the ones that came out of nowhere. And as was mentioned, news reports were filtered so as to control what intelligence Germany could gather.
I can’t say about the press, but what I understand is that the Germans learned about the accuracy of their V1s and V2s from their extensive network of “spies”, every one of whom was in fact a double agent actually working for the British. The Germans adjusted their shooting based on what they thought were reliable reporters, and eventually they were steered into less dangerous courses.
They cracked down on reports of where they had fallen to deny the Germans information that would allow them to adjust the range.
No chance of today’s media agreeing to do that.
In the Daily Telegraph recently they reprinted a piece from seventy years ago, as they do every day now, from a press conference by Duncan Sandys on 7th Sept 1944, saying, “except for a few last shots, the battle of London is over”. The next day the rockets arrived.
IMO, there is an excellent chance today’s media would do that. Ok, I can’t speak for the British media, but American media is ridiculously gung-ho and uber-patriotic and biased in favor of the US. Maybe they wouldn’t deliberately publish lies (though I have my doubts about that), but at the very least they would not publish pretty much whatever they were asked not to publish. And even they would understand that providing targeting information to the people firing missiles at you is a bad idea.
For those few that wouldn’t go along, I would see prison as a quick next step.
Not completely. V2s could be detected by British radar after lift-off, but IIRC this only gave about 2 minutes warning which was of little use.
Sorry I can’t give a cite and more details but I am away from my books at present.
Well, I am a big believer in the power AND responsibility of the press to keep the government honest (i.e., I consider publishing the Pentagon Papers a patriotic duty). However, if your reports are being used to calibrate weapons, I don’t think it is dereliction of duty to obfuscate.
“I realize my column yesterday led directly to the death of 100 children, but what would you have me do, omit the location of the previous bomb for the sake of a few tots?”
Now, the fact that an enemy was using a weapon to some effect or another, I agree the public has a right to know.
The British also have the Official Secrets Act.
What about the press that stood on the shore and lighted up the seals coming ashore? Been a few years IIRC.
I just happen to not have a very high opinion of the press.
That was rather shitty of them. I’m glad those guys were not around at D-Day.
Interestingly, Israel did the exact same thing in regards to not letting the press report where Iraqi Scuds landed during the first Gulf War. And the Scud is quite literally nothing more than a slightly improved V-2 (you can trace its lineage directly from WWII German scientists, to Russian ones, eventually being sold to and tinkered by modern Iranian & Iraqi ones).
I can’t imagine the V-1s being kept much of a secret from the British people, being they were visible (and distinctly audible) aircraft. They were obviously suicide or pilotless. And crashed, unexploded duds would have quickly shown they were pilotless. Plus German, English-spoken propaganda broadcasts openly boasted of them being pilot-less ‘wonder weapons’. The V-2s however were definitely kept hidden from the British people, and rightfully so IMO. There was no defense against them, and they came at the end of the war (the first landed a month after D-Day), so preventing panic was a legitimate and practical (not political) goal.
And the V-2s were an incredible waste of German resources. Their total cost was on a scale with the American Manhattan Project. The same money could have bought Germany, if not an atom bomb, but an entire wing of medium range bombers or an entire division or two of medium battle tanks. In the end about 6,000 V-2s were launched and caused, coincidentally, only about 6,000 allied casualties. Or about one death per missile, an incredibly inefficient ratio. The Iraqis fared no better with the Scud practically, but in a time when politics mattered much more…
I am surprised that after D Day, the Nazis did not use V2s to deliver a biological agent.
In the Star Trek episode The City on the Edge of Forever, they won with nuclear weapons on V2s.
More specifically, 27 of whom were the same guy, Juan Pujol.
For his “bravery” in being in London while the bombs were dropping, Hitler awarded him the Iron Cross, 2nd Class. And for bullshitting Hitler so thoroughly, he was awarded an MBE by King George VI.
Garbo! I love that guy!
ETA: Seriously, somebody has to make a movie of his life. Guillermo Del Toro could do a wonderful job of it.
I’m sure there are many reasons, but not the least of which is that Hitler himself had been exposed to poison gas in the trenches of WWI and knew its horror. As such he was very much against introducing its use in the battlefield (on the Jews, of course, he had no problem). Plus he was reasonably sure the allies would use it if and only if they used it first. Japan felt the same way, plus their country’s weather & geography could have made allied gas attacks extremely effective.
And nobody really had reliable biological warheads during WWII. The Japanese had Unit 731, but it showed that biological weapons were difficult to use effectively. This is still mostly true today (thank god)…
I was under the impression that Hitler didn’t give a damn about anyone undergoing horror, unless it was Adolph.
