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  • Post-War Testing and Development

    Germany's technologically advanced V-weapons foreshadowed weapons to come. Modern cruise missiles, nuclear ballistic missiles and space boosters were developed in part from V-weapon experience.During World War II, German technicians were well ahead of the Allies in making advanced rockets and flying

  • Slave Labor Built V-Weapons

    Germany did not have enough skilled labor to produce as many V-weapons as quickly as it wanted. Therefore, the Nazis used skilled prisoners as forced labor to build V-1s and V-2s. Most of this work was done in a huge underground complex known as the Mittelwerk, which the Nazis set up after Allied

  • Flying Bomb and Rocket Development

    The V-1 and V-2 were developed at Peenemunde, on the island of Usedom on Germany's Baltic Sea coast. The Luftwaffe and German army shared this research site, which was ideally suited to secret rocket and flying bomb testing because it was isolated, flat, and had plenty of room for flight testing

  • German V-Weapons: Desperate Measures

    "I am informed by the Fuhrer for the first time that the big rocket bomb weighs 14 tons. This, of course, is a devastating murder weapon. I suspect that when the first projectiles plunge down into London, the English public will panic."- Josef Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister"The employment of

  • Northern Italy in 1945: The Noose Tightens

    By 1945, Allied bombing efforts began concentrating on cutting German transportation and supply lines in northern Italy to slow retreating Germans and to assist the Allied armies slowly advancing against the Germans. The number of antiaircraft guns (flak) defending these areas pointed to the

  • AAF Aerial Supremacy

    With suitable bomber targets becoming increasingly scarce, the AAF instituted a program in February for its fighters to cover Germany at low level, strafing targets of opportunity. Because of a shortage of pilots and fuel, the Luftwaffe usually held its own fighters on the ground except for

  • Cadet Issue Dress Coat

    Cadet issue dress coat which the donor had made into an Eisenhower-style jacket. He began pilot training with the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941, but returned to the U.S. and volunteered for glider pilot school. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant and earned the service pilot wings. He was

  • Glider Pilot Casualties

    Glider pilots suffered heavy combat losses as did the pilots of tow planes and the airborne troops which the gliders carried. They were towed in flimsy, noisy, unarmed, fabric-covered gliders at about 130 mph at the end of a 300-foot, 1-inch nylon rope in air made turbulent by the tow planes. They

  • Glider Pilots in Combat

    During the March 1945 airborne crossing of Germany's Rhine River, about 40 pilots from the 435th Troop Carrier Group defended a crossroad against several hundred infantrymen and two tanks in what was called "The Battle of Burp Gun Corner." Glider pilots had the reputation of being cocky and tough

  • Glider Pilot Training

    Training time varied but consisted of daylight flying in light aircraft practicing unpowered gliding and "dead stick" landings; day and night flying in training gliders, unpowered light aircraft or sailplanes; advanced training in CG-4A combat gliders; and finally tactical training. Most graduates