The poster promoting the Fritz Lang movie "Frau im Mond" from 1929.
Fifth draft, thanks to Jan Waernberg and Tracy Dungan for support during the writing of this essay. This is the preliminary English translation.
The V-2 rockets developed by Germany during second World War were mostly a strategic fiasco. The 3200 missiles eventually fired at the allies killed some 5000 people. That figure totally disappears in the horror statistics of World War two. Roughly twice as many people died during rocket production in the concentration camp Dora.1
The rockets were produced on production lines in the underground factory Mittelwerk were camp labour died from starvation, overwork, and exhaustion, poor hygiene and diseases, then cremated in the cramtorium of the rocket camp. The pretorian2 nazi organization SS (ShutzStaffel) supplied people as raw material -- the suply of new prisoners was coldly calculated to match the death toll of the inmates. The administration was just as insane and mechanical as at the corporate concentration camps of IG Farben in Auschwitz-Birkenau where synthetic rubber and oil was produced by people, worn out and treated like flesh machines.3
The history of the German rocket program is indeed no cute story. I was first fascinated by the beautiful, cigar-shaped A-4 rocket which Heinrich Himmler 1944 renamed V-2 (Vergeltungswaffe 2) when I read the postmodern classic Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Gravity's Rainbow is the parable described by the rocket from takeoff to impact. Page up and page down, liutenant Tyrone Slothrop flees through Europe, hunting rocket no 00000 and its mysterious Schwarzgerät, a secret invention the allies haven't been able to locate among the captured rockets.4
Numerous rockets were confiscated by Russian, American and English troops for research. Even the scientists were confiscated, and the techical head of the rocket program, Dr. Wernher von Braun, surrendered to the allies and was later to become chief engineer of the Saturn 5-rocket which brought man to the moon. The three "big" were later to develop their own V2-clones and perform launch tests under names such as Operation Backfire (Great Britain), Paperclip (USA) and Osoaviachim (USSR).5
Sometime in the future, people will talk about the fallen empire of USA being the first to bring a man to the moon. They will talk about the fallen empire "The Soviet Union" and how it succeed in bringing a satellite into orbit and bringing a person into space. Perhaps they will even talk about the fallen empire of the Third Reich and how they succeed in bringing a rocket into space. Walter Dornberger wrote: "We have invaded space with our rocket and for the first time -- mark this well -- have used space as a bridge between two points on the earth; we have proved rocket propulsion practicable for space travel. (...) This third day of October, 1942, is the first of a new era of transportation, that of space travel...6 I have personally never heard anyone mention this great technological breakthrough performed by the nazis. We all know the winners write history and decides what is important. We learn the importance of bringing the first satellite into space, and it was for sure important to be first on the moon, but first in space? Apparently nobody benefits from telling the truth about that.7
One of the great ironies of the technology-race of the second World War was the different approaches of the axis and the allies concerning new technology. Germany wanted to win the war backed up by its heavy mechanical industry, its mines and its chemical industry. The rocket program was started because of military interest in the rocket societies, particulary the Berlin-based Verein für Raumschiffahrt (Society for Space Travel) from which several engineers were recruited, among these Walter Dornberger, Leo Zanssen and the well-known von Braun. The rocket societies and the entire movement around them was growing in the surge of futurism brought about by the Fritz Lang movies Frau im Mond8 and Metropolis.
The poster promoting the Fritz Lang movie "Frau im Mond" from 1929.
Why is the first and second World War so fascinating? I honestly don't know for sure. One reason may be that the entire culture was mobilized in the war, on both sides. For example, USA utilized Navajo-indians as "encryption devices" -- no living human outside the tribe understood the Navajo-language,9 so the japaneese had no chance of decrypting their radio transmissions. The Germans encrypted their messages by machines like the Enigma or Lorenz. However, the math genius and computer scientist Alan Turing, and the former chemistry engineer Bill Tutte were breaking the German ciphers utilizing crude computers.10 The Germans understood something was going on, as the British clearly knew in advance the location of German submarines. However, the quality of the encryption machines was never doubted -- instead the British were believed to utlize prophets and fortune-tellers to localize the submarines, so as a countermeasure German astrologists and mystics were mobilized. Based on pendulum movements over maps entire submarie brigades were sent on war missions. So sometimes the "culture mobilization" lead to immediate failures.11 The experiments were outrageous: sound guns, electric weaponry, wind weaponry, freezer weaponry... everything was tested. The rocket program is perhaps best understood as such a "culture mobilization" beginning with the takeover of the rocket societies.
The Third Reich failed in recognizing the uniqueness of their rocket developments. Apart from exterminating all rocket societies (those not engaged in government rocketry had to be destroyed, this was the ways of nazi Germany)12 the program was pressed for results in unshakable conviction that the Americans were already working on an just as advanced rocket program.13 The Americans were however mostly rushing their nuclear program Manhattan in Los Alamos, while the Japaneese were wildly developing biological weaponry at the infamous Unit 731. All three countries were convinced that all the others were already doing exactly what they did, and that they were lagging behind. All three were wrong. The allies knew the Germans were experts in chemical warfare; they had invented the nerve gases Tabun and Sarin, but the Germans didn't know about their uniqueness, and thus didn't dare use nerve gases in the war, afraid that the nerve gas production capability of the allies would surpass their own, and they would commit a tactical mistake by introducing them.14
And so the Third Reich developed a ballistic missile, V-2, which was largely strategically useless without the technology posessed by the others. A ballistic missile like V-2 was simply too expensive compared to a conventional bomb, and the rocket program devoured resources that could have been used in much better ways (from a German perspective). The real value of a ballistic missile would not come about until you equipped it with a nuclear- or chemical warhead. The conventional TNT warheads were no strategic advantage.
The strength of the V-2 rocket was its psychological effects. The rocket would fall and hit its target at a speed of 3600 kilometers an hour. This meant, of course, that when you heard the scream of the falling missile cutting through the air, you knew you were a survivor; the victims never heard the missile. The repetitive "retaliation cries" were supposed to terrify the population even though the actual impacts didn't kill that many. V-2 was thus a refined terror weapon, aimed at the civilian population.
This psychological warfare was partly successful with the predecessor V-1, an autopiloted airplane which would come buzzing in over London and hit arbitrarily, with lousy precision. The guided missile was actually supposed to dive at its target at maximum motor thrust, but a construction error would cause the motor to cut off when diving, and the sudden silence was a signal to the Londoners to rapidly take shelter. The V-1 missile caused George Orwell to write the following notice in Tribune, June 30th 1944:
I notice that apart from the widespread complaint that the German pilotless planes "seem so unnatural" (a bomb dropped by a live airman is quite natural, apparently), some journalists are denouncing them as barbarous, inhumane and "an indiscriminate attack on civilians."
After what we have been doing to the Germans over the past two years, this seems a bit thick, but it is the normal human response to every new weapon. Poison gas, the machine-gun, the submarine, gunpowder, and even the crossbow were similarly denounced in their day. Every weapon seems unfair until you have adopted it yourself. But I would not deny that the pilotless plane, flying bomb, or whatever its correct name may be, is an exceptionally unpleasant thing, because, unlike most other projectiles, it gives you time to think. What is your first reaction when you hear that droning, zooming noise? Inevitably it is a hope that the noise won't stop. You want to hear the bomb pass safely overhead and die away into the distance before the engine cuts out. In other words, you are hoping it will fall on somebody else. So also when you dodge a shell or an ordinary bomb -- but in that case you have only about five seconds to take cover and no time to speculate on the bottomless selfishness of the human being.
The British main defence against the V-1 missile was to dispatch thousands of barrage balloons forming a semicircle around London, causing the missiles to crash into the balloons or their mooring cables. Another method was to intercept it with aircraft, and by flying immediately below the missile cause it to destabilize and crash from turbulence. Shooting down the missiles was not possible, as the explosion would also take down the attacking aircraft.15
The V-1 was certainly a "spin-off" project from V-2 (the autopilot used theory and mechanics developed for V-2) so you could call this a success of the rocket program. But when the V-2 eventually started falling over London early September 1944, the population was already used to the V-1, and the rockets would cause no further demoralizing effects, even if it was certainly much more horrifying than the V-1.
Today, almost everybody knows about the V-2 rocket. Everybody knows the German rocket science was invaluable to the Americans and the Russians. Not so many people know what it meant for Sweden. On November 15th 1943 the remains of a German V-1 missile were found at Utlängan in Karlskrona. Shortly thereafter, another missile was found in Nybro, close to Ystad. In May 1944 a relatively well-preserved missile crashed close to Brösarp in Skåne, and about a month later, yet another one close to Karlskrona.16 These missiles were studied with great interest by the Defence Aeronautical Experimental Institute (FFA) and the Torpedo Agency of the naval forces.17
The Swedish military reconstruction of the V-1.
At the end of May we shared our knowledge of the V-1 with the allies, as British intelligence agents were allowed to examine the Brösarp missile and one of the missiles found in 1943. The result of the analysis was delivered to the British Air Ministry June 8th, all too late: June 13th the V-1 campaign against London begun, long before any countermeasures could be devloped.18 What happened after this, and exactly how the missiles were handled is not certain, but we know a number of deatils which explains what happened. The book Robot 50 år (Missile 50 years) published by SAAB in 1997 says:
The German missiles inspired new ways of thinking within all three branches of defence. The Naval Forces viewed aerial torpedoes as a variant of underwater torpedoes, the Army viewed them as an alternative artillery and the Air Defence saw them as an unmanned aircraft with several possible tasks.
The Naval Forces rapidly introduced the bad habit of designating rockets and pilotless airplanes as "aerial torpedoes", as this was their view on the matter. Further:
The development of Swedish [missile-] systems started quickly after finding the German aerial torpedoes in 1943. The first experimental missiles (aerial torpedoes) RB310 and RB311 were technically copies of the German V-1 missile. (...) The main part of the industrial work on RB310 and RB311 was conducted by SAAB (The Swedish Aeroplanes Incorporated), who would already early 1948 found a separate office for aerial torpedoes.
So this was what happened with the German missiles. We picked them apart, learned their inner workings, and built copies. The only apparent difference between V-1 and RB310 was that SAAB had succeed in building the "pulsejet engine", a kind of budget rocket engine which only operated in horizontal position, into the body of the airplane, instead of mounting it separately as a pipe on top of the body, as on the V-1. It was commander count Johan Gabriel Oxenstierna, who, acting as chief engineer at the Naval Administrative Torpedo Agency started the "aerial torpedo project". According to Bengt Sylvan, one of the pioneers, the commander delivered the guiding device from one of the four V-1 missiles to Torsten Faxén at the Department of Armament Technology in Linköping. They then proceeded to develop their own "clone" of the guiding device.19
RB310 and 311 were manufactured in some 50 pieces at SAAB. After this, serial production was transfered to the Central Air Workshop in Arboga. During the 1950ies RB315, RB316 adn RB304 were developed. 1954 the Department of Missile Systems at SAAB was founded, which was finally in 1983 reorganized to form "SAAB Missiles". Nowadays the company is part of SAAB Dynamics.20 To claim that all modern Swedish missiles are descendants of the V-1 would be no exaggeration.
The idea underlying the V-1 robots were indeed nothing new. Several military scientists had already put forward ideas involving autopiloted airplane bombs, but the Germans were the ones to succeed in developing and mass produce them in practice. Then something truly unique took place.
In the middle of the forest, at gräsdals gård in Knivingaryd, close to Bäckebo north of Nybro in Småland, on June 13th 1944 (the same day the Germans fired the V-1 missile at London for the first time) at about 15.00 hours, test rocket A-4 number 4089 from Peenemünde exploded at a hight of 1500 meters.21
A German soldier operates what is likely the worlds first joystick.
As part of the Wasserfall-project, a rocket aimed at shooting down enemy aircraft, the Germans were experimenting with radio controlled missiles steered from the ground using joysticks. In this way, the rocket could be targetted at enemy aircraft from the ground. The flight worked well for half a minute, then the joystick operator lost contact with the missile, and the rocket was never seen again by the Germans. According to British intelligence, the soldier that had been given the task of controlling the rocket had never seen a rocket before, and in his excitement over the magnificent rocket take-off he lost control of the vehicle for a moment.22 Georg Erlandsson tells us how the farmer Robert Gustavsson and his son Ivar experienced the explosion in Bäckebo Sockenkrönika from 1994:
The explosion blocked his ears and the horses sank down on their knees. The moments ago so clear sky was darkened and glittering metal fragments started raining down.
Ivar's horse ran away to a mound of stones. Some trees broke off, and bits of coal fell down close to the dwelling-house, where his wife Alma and their daughters Gulli and Vera were located. A piece of fence was on fire. Somebody called police officer Gösta Östergren, who had his office in Bäckebo, as well as the Home Guard John Andersson. The county police comissioner and county bailiff in Kalmar were also informed.
At first, the Swedish military didn't understand what had happened, but soon it was realized that some kind of missile had exploded at about 1500 meters height above Gräsdals gård. The travelled distance from Peenemünde was 350 kilometers, and the aim was probably for the missile to hit ground in Bornholm, occupied by the Germans.23 Peenemünde, Bornholm and Bäckebo is on a straight line. The range of 350 kilometers, far up in Småland, was something exceptional and tells us that this was for certain a modified test rocket.24 The middle section was made of wood in order not to augment the radio transmissions to and from the transmitters on board.25 Probably it was manufactured in the concentration camp Dora-Mittelbau and originally painted in camouflage colours,26 however there is reason to believe that for this experiment, the rocket was repainted in the characteristic black and white pattern which was used to ease observation of the rocket spinning around its own vertical axis. Most likely the fuel tank had exploded,27 whereby the weak warhead broke off and created a smallish crater with a diameter of 6 meters, and the main burner and the radio equipment dropped to the ground almost intact.28 Presumably the warhead charge was supposed to destroy the equipment if the rocket went astray, and thus this failed because of the explosion in the fuel tank.29
Too late the military realized what had happened and ordered the newspapers not to write about the rocket airburst.30 It was of course too late: the Germans already knew what had happened. The officials also ordered the local population in Gräsdal and its surroundings to immedeately return all items that had been picked up on the spot as souvenirs or "useful"-items. This was partly successful, but large parts of the rocket still remains in the district.31 The collected parts were brought to F12 (Air Regiment 12) in Kalmar and from there to the Defence Aeronautical Experimental Institute at Bromma airport in Stockholm.32
The most probable look of the "Bäckebo bomb", photo from
Peenemünde.
The task of examining the remains of the "aerial torpedo" was given to Henry Kjellson, an experienced aerial wreckage expert, otherwise mostly known for constructing the airplane Tummelisa and for having written some books on ancient technology in the spirit of Erich von Däniken. Among other things he wrote a book called Seven Nights On Top Of the Cheops Pyramid, where he describes his relation to the pyramids, and in the book Technology In Prehistoric Times he joins in on the Atlantis-theory for explaining the link between the two sun-worshipping cultures in Egypt and South America. Apart from this he interprets the prophecies of Hesekiel in Old Testament as if the prophet saw a vehicle, part airplane, part helicopter. His conclusion from numerous unconnected pieces of induction evidence is that an advanced civilization populated Earh in the past, and was destroyed by an asteroid collision or similar about 4000 BC. His books in this genre is read mostly by fanatic ufologists worldwide.
As coinvestigators he appointed two persons: the professor of the mechanics of materials at KTH (The Royal Institute of Technology) Gunnar Boestad, and the head of the mechanics of materials department at the Defence Aeronautical Experimental Institute, Sten Luthander. June 4th the reconstruction of the rocket begun, and July 21st, just two weeks later, the three had written one piece each for the Report Concerning the Bäckebo bomb which was sent out to several military decision-makers.33
For the German part, the story ends here. The head of rocket developments, Walter Dornberger, was to report to Hitler for a reprimand because of the event. He was worried of what might happen there, as he heard Hitler was in exceptionally bad mood at the moment. When he arrived at Hitler's highquarters however, the führer had calmed down, and now said "it was quite a good thing for the Swedes to realize that we could bombard their country from Germany". Dornberger also assured that the odd radio equipment inside the rocket would make the allies quite confused.34
Earlier this war, Sweden was mostly known as a close German collaborator. This was a characteristic of the coalition government under prime minister Per-Albin Hansson, known as "realist politics". The financial moguls Marcus and Jacob Wallenberg acted as diplomats for Sweden while at the same time carrying out their personal business. Jacob dealt with the German trade treaties and had arranged for iron ore to be exported to the German war industry.35 The following was also concerned "realist politics": 2 140 000 German soldiers were permitted to go to the Russian war front in Norway through Sweden,36 communists and other dissidents were sent so camps in northern Sweden, hundreds of nazi-critical newspapers were censored, the nazi defector Hermann Rausching's The Voice of Destruction was withdrawn and censored three times,37 and an absolute low-water mark came when the government censored Karl Gerhard's variety Gullregn because a satirical song called The Infamous Horse of Troja was performed.38 For surveillance of the "enemy within", the security police was expanded from 20 to 1000 employees.39 The minister of foreign affairs, Christian Günther wanted to ban the communist party to avoid German dictates on the matter.
However, the German fortunes of war had been declining during 1943 after the battle of Stalingrad and the invasion of Normandy, the D-Day June 6th 1944. So in this phase of the war, Sweden was closer tied to the allies than to Germany. British agents were thus allowed to examine the remains of the rocket. After a request from British scientific intelligence on behalf of R.V. Jones to bring the wreckage to Britain, Günther approved. The civil servant of the department of foreign affairs, Sven Grafström writes:
I didn't think Günther would approve this, but he did without hesitation. Whatever you say -- he is beginning to realize where the fortunes of war are heading and slowly begins to apply his often officially declared thesis that in politics, you have to take into account the powers that be. This thesis has certainly during the first years of the war been eagerly applied to benefit Germany, but now it really looks like he has decided that "der Endsieger" was to recieve it's share.40
The rocket wreckage was then put in twelve boxes and their contents were recorded by Sten Luthander. The boxes were transported to Bromma airport, and then flown with an American C-47 Dakota to Scotland, and flown from there to London by Bernt Balchen.41 This was how Operation Big Ben started, a British project aimed at pieceing together a V2-rocket from wreckage from different parts of Europe in order to get a complete image of the looks and workings of the rocket.42 According to Sten Wahlström this lead to that:
(...) the scientist R.V. Jones att the British air command could create his own image of the rocket and make a sketch of it's looks. It also confirmed the conclusions he had drawn earlier during 1943 based on agent reports and aerial photographs. The rocket was no more the figment of the brain that lord Cherwell, the scientific advisor of Churhill, had hithereto believed it to be.
The British intelligence reconstruction of the V-2 rocket, the technical
details inside the rocket has been reconstructed almost exclusively from the
Bäckebo-rocket. 43
However it turned out that the radio equipment aboard the V-2 rocket would have exactly the confusing effect that the Germans had hoped it would have. The RAF created the 233rd squadron in 1944 to jam the radio transmissions, and their first mission was to patrol the Dutch coast to try to intercept the radio transmissions,44 and negotiations were started with the Swedish government in order to carry out radio surveillance targeted at Peenemünde from southern Sweden. August 22-23rd the British minister of affairs in Stockholm recieved clear instructions to:
... approach the Swedish Government immediately with all the force at your command, reporting the result by most immediate telegram.45
The under secretary of state for foreign affairs, Vilhelm Assarson, approved the operation after consulting Günther. During October/November a surveillance team of four English soldiers under the command of liutenant W.H. Allen was installed in Ottenby at southernmost Öland, the long island you find close to Sweden in the Baltic. The soldiers were accomodated in the boarding-house in Näsby, and radio surveillance equipment suited for the guiding system of the Wasserfall missile was installed in a small cabin.46 This is probably the first flagrant breach of Swedish neutrality during second world war, as we suddenly allowed outright military activity on Swedish territory. Maybe this was also the reason to why the Swedish military ranks were told the British were to install and test radar equpiment -- an obvious lie.
The radio surveillance was of no use against the real V-2:s, of which 80% were entirely mechanical and most definately not radio controlled.47 The first days of September the Germans started firing V-2:s in anger. No real defence against the screaming retaliation rocket existed, and still does not exist today. The American "Patriot"-missile used for taking down enemy missiles is actually mostly worthless and may even cause more damage in populated areas -- the missiles do come down after all. As the United States tried to create a robot defence for shooting down the missiles from space, the so-called "Star Wars" or SDI (Strategic Defence Initiative), the Soviets were finally loosing the cold war of arms racing, even if no fully functional SDI-system was ever completed.
However the radio surveillance station installed in Ottenby, approved by the Swedish government, kept intercepting rocket guidance systems until Peenemünde was occupied by German troops the first days of February 1945.
The surveillance cabin in Ottenby, as it looks today. (Photo: Tommy
Karlberg)
The German rocket program is still fascinating. The extraordinary speed at which innovations took place which would take decades for the superpowers to copy, experiments aimed at air defence (Wasserfall), tests of firing V-2:s off submarines to reach American cities, etcetera. Most innovations were too late for any serial production during World War 2. Instead the rocket was to become a part of the arms race insanity during the cold war.
So already in 1944 the scope of mans destructive power was surfacing to those witnessing the "Bäckebo bomb" -- Henry Kjellson writes in his report that the rocket looks expensive and that:
Such an expensive aerial torpedo, the manufacturing cost of which surely exceeds 250.000 SKR, must bring a considerable blast power. Using normal explosives the approximated weight of 1000 kg is far too small and should be 2000 or 3000 kg, but if a more powerful explosive than known should exist, a weight of 1000 kg may be acceptable. In Swedish papers there has been reports about an explosive, the power of which should be 60 vs 2,5 for common explosives, which could destroy all buildings and life in a circle with a radius of 5 km.48
And in Kalmar läns tidning, the editor writes:
Maybe bombs of this kind will not make much noise in this war. It can be over, before the rocket bomb is completed. But the existence of such devices allows us to anticipate, what will happen in the next world war. Despite the enormous development of destructive weapons, we seem to have only just started. A view of the future such that a country, that wants revenge, may in a few short lapses of time devastate an entire country with rocket bombs or something like it, is apparently something to take into account.49
And thus began the fear that my generation knows as the fear of the cold war.
1Neufeld pg 237, 264.
2The term "pretorian organization" comes from the Roman empire, and adresses troops directly commanded by the emperor, in this case Adolf Hitler.
3Borkin pg 153ff, IG Farben also performed surface inspection of the rockets, see Bode & Kaiser pg 100.
4Pynchon.
5Bode & Kaiser pg 136, 139, 146.
6Dornberger pg 25, Neufeld pg 164
7The Germans were also first in trying out manned rocket flight. This first flight was conducted in a "Natter" rocket constructed by Erich Bachem, and took place on February 28th 1945. The pilot, Lothar Siebert, died in the test. Three successful manned flights were conducted later.
8The first rocket launched October 3rd 1942 mentioned earlier had a Frau im Mond-logotype painted on its side.
9Moglen.
10Tony Sale, http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/ verified 2000-10-19.
11Nazis, the Occult Conspiracy, documentary by Malcolm McDowell
12Neufeld sid 29ff.
13Neufeld pg 130.
14Borkin pg 170-174.
15The Illustrated London News, pg 315
16Lundberg & Lundkvist
17The exact dates November 18th and 30th 1943, and May 11th 1944. Two more V-1:s were to crash in Sweden on September 7th and November 1st 1944, Widfeldt & Wegman pg 181-82.
18King & Kutta pg 184.
19König & Cervin-Ellqvist.
20Wolff
21Kjellson, sid 1, 6, King & Kutta, sid 225.
22Neufeld pg 237, King & Kutta pg 225-226, Jones pg 431. There are some dubious information saying the real reason for the airburst was that the Germans wanted to test the reach of the missile. This i probably not true, as that could easily be done over Poland. Also note that King & Kutta has for some reason confused Bäckebo for Malmö.
23Kjellson pg 6.
24Neufeld pg 281-282.
25Kjellson pg 2.
26Educated guess by Tracy Dungan, refering to Huzel: Peenemünde to Canaveral, which states that all rockets at this time were manufactured in Mittelbau. No facts tell us the missile was repainted black and white, but as the experiment was aimed at testing aerial movement it is plausible that the rocket was repainted.
27This was common, see Neufeld pg 220-24, 230.
28Kjellson appendix 5.
29This is my own hypthesis, but other reasons for a weak warhead are hard to think of.
30The order to the papers could not have been given any earlier than 1944-06-17, the day of the last report in the local newspaper, Kalmar läns tidning. The 15th there were even photographs of the rocket engine in Kalmar läns tidning.
31Erlandsson
32Kjellson pg 1. Some oral stories tells that a motor hearse was used for some of the transports, in order not to arise attention. There are also stories about German "spies" around Bäckebo. None of this is founded in hard facts.
33Wahlström pg 21-22.
34Dornberger pg 228-229.
35Boëthius 1998, pg 106.
36Boëthius 1991, 1999 pg 60.
37Rausching pg 273ff.
38Walleij
39Boëthius 1991.
40Leifland pg 135, see also Jones pg 431.
41Wahlström pg 21, a long-lived rumour tells that Sweden was given radar equipment in exchange for the rocket. However, later findings tell us this was not the case, as "The customs duty for the radar stations was paid already June 7th, and the V2 rocket crashed in Bäckebo June 13th." (from Göran Johansson's The Ghost Rockets 1946, part 4.) The real article of exchange should have been British pilots, that had crashed in Sweden. (Widfeldt & Wegmann pg 181-82.)
42King & Kutta pg 226.
43Jones, pg 454.
44Sykes
45Leifland pg 144.
46The British in question were W.H. Allen, J.F. Mead, E.C. Gardner and D.T. Burgess. Leifland pg 148.
47A few missiles used radio-"beams" for taregetting.
48Kjellson
49Kalmar läns tidning 1944-06-16, sid 3