![]() The ceremony took place at 18:35 hours, the exact time of the launch. On September 8, 2004, sixty years after the fateful first launch of the V-2, Mayor Van den Muijsenberg of Wassenaar unveiled a small monument in memory of this event. Traveling at Mach four, faster than its own sound, it fell on its victims without any warning.įirst photo of Earth taken from space ever from a camera on V-2 #13, launched Octo(Credits: White Sands Missile Range/Applied Physics Laboratory) This rocket was lethal because it could not be stopped or intercepted once in flight. It produced a crater 20 meters wide and 8 meters deep on impact, ejecting more than 3,000 tons of material into the air. When launched, the V-2 had a 65 second burst from its engine that put the rocket in a parabolic arc reaching up to 95 kilometers of altitude before it entered into a ballistic descent, traveling faster than the speed of sound. The area of Wassenaar was not safe anymore, and on Sunday September 10, the Dutch government ordered the evacuation of the surroundings. The tubes used for transferring the liquid for the rocket were covered in frost, suggesting that they were using liquid oxygen. The neighbors saw large trucks with about 16 wheels transporting material, and a crew of German soldiers completely covered with asbestos helmets and overalls. ![]() The trees nearby were severely damaged up to one meter high, and the grass around that area was gone. At the launch sites there were burn marks and melted sections of the roads, but in the center of each burned site there was an unburned box-shaped area, suggesting that there was a supporting tool used there. People from Wassenaar still remember the thunder of the rocket engines and some of them claim that the launches made cracks on the walls of their houses. One of the rockets hit Chiswick in west London, killing three people and injuring 17 more the second one hit Epping, 27 km north of London, without casualties. There were two simultaneous rocket launches from Wassenaar, one on the crossroads of the streets Lijsterlaan, Konijnenlaan, and Koekoekslaan, and the other one from the crossroads of the streets Lijsterlaan and Schouwweg. The first V-2 was launched on September 8th 1944, from Wassenaar and it was directed to London. Memorial plaque for the first V-2 rocket launched from Wassenaar (Credits: Carmen Felix). Besides visual cover, the trees protected the rockets from the wind during lift off, improving their stability. Wassenaar was the perfect place for the purpose thanks to the vicinity of the North Sea and the trees that covered the area. The Germans were looking for a place that could facilitate the supply and preparation of the V-2 rockets with good road and rail infrastructure and potential areas of camouflage for protection. ![]() This is where the town of Wassenaar enters the V-2 story. After this first successful test, they carefully selected a strategic location in The Netherlands for their first operational launch. On Octothe Germans had their first successful V-2 test firing from Peenemünde. The Germans started to work on the development of the V-2 in the mid-1930s, at the Peenemünde Army Research Facility, in a village with a seaport north east of Germany. Location of Wassenaar in the Netherlands from which the V-2 rocket was launched (Credits: Google Maps).įueled by alcohol and liquid oxygen, the V-2 was developed by the Germans under the leadership of Wernher von Braun, the “Father of Rocket Science” who later led the development of American missile and rocket technology.
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