Germany’s Army Weapons Department began organizing liquid-fueled rocket work at Kummersdorf-West, building a test stand and recruiting a small team led by Walter Dornberger and Wernher von Braun. This created the technical and military base that later supported the larger A-4 (V-2) program.
Two small A-2 rockets were launched successfully from the North Sea island of Borkum. These tests helped the team learn basic guidance, stability, and engine-handling skills needed for larger, longer-range rockets.
Germany’s Reich Air Ministry purchased the northern peninsula of Usedom Island, laying groundwork for a major military research area at Peenemünde. The move supported plans to expand rocket and weapons testing beyond the crowded Kummersdorf facility.
The German Army formally founded the Peenemünde Army Research Center as a military proving ground. This site became the main location for developing and testing the A-4 rocket, later known as the V-2.
Construction of Test Stand VII created a large facility for static-firing (ground-testing) powerful rocket engines. This infrastructure made it possible to test A-4/V-2 engines and systems more safely and consistently before flight attempts.
After earlier failures, Peenemünde achieved its first successful A-4 flight test. The successful launch proved the basic design could work and accelerated decisions to push the rocket from an experimental program toward a wartime weapon.
On the night of 17–18 August 1943, the Royal Air Force attacked Peenemünde to disrupt German rocket development and production. The raid damaged facilities and contributed to German decisions to shift more work to hardened or underground locations.
After the Peenemünde raid and growing Allied air pressure, German authorities moved major parts of V-2 manufacture toward underground tunnels at Kohnstein, run through Mittelwerk GmbH. The shift relied heavily on concentration-camp labor under brutal conditions, linking rocket production directly to mass exploitation and high death rates.
A V-2 test launch reached an altitude far above 100 km, crossing what is now commonly used as the boundary of space (the Kármán line). Although the V-2 was built as a weapon, this flight showed that the technology could also reach space and foreshadowed postwar rocketry.
V-2 operations began as German forces attempted to use the rocket as a terror and retaliation weapon against cities. A successful strike hit Paris near Porte d’Italie, demonstrating the transition from testing to battlefield use despite the weapon’s cost and limited accuracy.
Later the same day, a V-2 struck Chiswick in west London, killing and injuring civilians with no warning sound before impact. British officials initially tried to conceal the cause of the explosions, but the attacks soon became widely recognized as rocket strikes.
As Allied forces advanced, German V-2 launch areas shifted and concentrated, especially from occupied parts of the Netherlands. Launch rates increased during early 1945, but the campaign did not change the war’s outcome and continued to impose heavy civilian casualties and destruction.
The last V-2 attacks on Great Britain occurred near the end of March 1945. By this stage, Germany’s ability to continue launches was collapsing due to battlefield losses, supply breakdowns, and advancing Allied forces.
Soviet forces captured the Peenemünde area as Nazi Germany collapsed, and the research site fell out of German control. With Peenemünde taken and production sites overrun, the V-2 program’s wartime chapter ended, while its people and hardware became targets for postwar U.S. and Soviet programs.
German V-2 (A-4) Development and Wartime Launches (1936–1945)