As
much chaos and grief as Adolph Hitler gave Europe, his aspirations were
much, much worse. Luckily, not all those plans turn out the way he
wanted. Some were never implemented, for god reason. And others, like
the V-weapons program, did not live up to the specifications.
It’s hard to read about the V-weapons program without
picturing an Aryan version of Wile E. Coyote engineering the whole thing
behind the scenes. Especially when rockets routinely failed for such
hilarious reasons as “too steep,” “fell on airport” and “steam generator
misbehaved.” According to one disgruntled engineer whose V-2 exploded
only three seconds after ignition, “We just blew a million marks in
order to guess what could have been reported accurately by an instrument
probably worth the price of a small motorcycle.”
Of the nearly 6,000 V-2 rockets constructed, only 3,170 were actually
launched. Of the 1,403 lobbed at England, nearly 300 somehow missed.
And we mean they missed England, a 50,000-square-mile target. The V-2s
aimed at London fared no better, with only 517 hits out of 1,359
attempts. It seems like you could consistently do better with huge,
cartoonish catapults.
The plans that were abandoned were even more ridiculous. Read about them all at
Cracked.
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