Britain and Ballistic Missile Defence, 1942-2002

‘The Other End of a Trajectory’: Operation Backfire and the German Origins of Britain’s Ballistic Missile Programme

“…As such, a clearer picture of German work on long-range rockets (and later also on flying bombs) began to emerge. 19 From this point on, British investigations into German rocketry expanded and accelerated considerably. On 11 April 1943, the Chiefs of Staff received a report from the Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Archibald Nye, which gave a summary of existing intelligence on the long-range rocket threat.…”

“…When compared with the impact of conventional bombing during the Blitz, which claimed the lives of over 51,000 Britons, and with the preceding and simultaneous V-1 attacks, which killed 6,184 people, these statistics seem somewhat less impressive. 25 In terms of morale, the effect is harder to judge -some responded to this new threat with little more than disinterest, confident that it would soon be eradicated by the advancing Allied armies, while others found the prospect of an explosive arriving without warning (as it travelled faster than the speed of sound) truly terrifying. 26 The Allied leadership were not unduly worried that this new weapon would turn the tide of war against them but, taken with the contemporaneous failure of Operation Market Garden and other German technological advances, such as jet aircraft and…”