Rocket U-boat
The projects, which were undertaken at Peenemünde Army Research Center, aimed to develop submarine-launched rockets, flying bombs and missiles.
During Operation Sandy, a German V-2 rocket seized by the US Army was launched from the upper deck of the aircraft carrier USS Midway (CV-41) on September 6, 1947.
The British Area Bombing Directive issued on February 14, 1942, focused on undermining "the morale of the enemy civil population and in particular the industrial workers".
The RAF was aware of using a high proportion of incendiaries during bombing raids was effective because cities such as Coventry had been subject to such attacks by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz.
[20] During World War II, several projects were undertaken by the German Navy at Peenemünde Army Research Center to develop submarine-launched rockets, flying bombs and missiles.
[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][excessive citations] These projects never reached combat readiness before the war ended and the German Navy did not use submarine-launched rockets or missiles.
[29] Tubular metal launch frames (Schwere Wurfgerät 41 (sWG 41)) carrying six 30 cm Wurfkörper 42 rockets were mounted on the submarine's upper deck with a 45° firing angle.
[36] The first recorded attack on land-based targets using sea-based rockets was carried out by the US submarine USS Barb (SS-220) on June 22, 1944, against the Japanese town Shari.
[42][43] In 1943, interest in the concept of sea-launched missiles was revived with the advent of the V-1 flying bomb; proposals were made to mount a V-1 and steam-operated launcher on a U-boat to strike targets at a much greater range than the 150 mi (240 km) that was possible from land-based sites.
[21] In September 1944, the Allies received intelligence reports suggesting Germany's Kriegsmarine was planning to use submarine-launched V-1s to attack cities on the east coast of the United States.
[36] In Autumn 1943, Deutsche Arbeitsfront director Bodo Lafferentz proposed to Dornberger the idea of a towable, watertight container that could hold a V-2 rocket.
[45][46][47] The project of sea-beased V-2 rockets was code-named "Apparat F"[21]' and the development of towable containers was commonly referred to by the codename Prüfstand XII from late 1944.
[50] A report of the Peenemünde research center dated January 19, 1945, summarized the objectives of Prüfstand XII: This project opens up the possibility of attacking, with the Apparat F, off enemy coasts (for example, northern England or eastern America), very distant but strategically important targets that are currently out of range.
[21]Important rocket scientists such as Klaus Riedel, Hans Hüter, Bernhard Tessman and Georg von Tiesenhausen were assigned to the project.
[57] Although its design never reached the prototype stage, the Peenemünde engineers considered using the A-8 version of the V-2 rocket; this was a "stretched" variant that had a longer radius of action, and used nitric acid oxidizer and kerosene propellants pressurized with nitrogen if the losses of hydrogen peroxide could not be kept under 1% per day as planned.
[21][58] The evacuation of Peenemünde in February 1945 and the fall of Stettin to the Red Army in April 1945 brought an end to these developments, and there are no records these designs were tested with a rocket launch before Germany's final collapse.
[45] The project may have continued with the assistance of German scientists, and led to the development of GOLEM-1, a liquid-fueled rocket based on the V-2 and designed to be launched from a submarine-towed capsule.
[citation needed] According to Michael J. Neufeld, although generously described as a forerunner of the ballistic missile submarines, the idea of launching V2-rockets from canisters towed across the Atlantic Ocean by U-boats embodied the mood of desperation of Nazi Germany at the end of World War II, concluding; "it is hard to see how a few [V-2 rocket attacks on New York] would have done anything but make Americans more determined to take revenge on German cities".
[51] Rumors of missile-armed submarines operating from Bergen with New York as the target – including one from Denmark and one from Sweden passed on by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force – emerged at the end of 1944.
[60][61] The British Admiralty discounted these reports and assessed while V-1s could be potentially mounted on Type IX submarines, the Germans were unlikely to devote scarce resources to such a project.
[62] In May 1945, the American press reported an attempted attack on New York on November 7, 1944 – the day of the presidential election – using a "jet-propelled or rocket-propelled weapon" launched from submarines.
[63] On November 29, 1944, German spies William Colepaugh and Erich Gimpel were landed in Maine by the Type IXC/40 U-boat U-1230 to gather intelligence on U.S. military and technology facilities.
[66][67][68][69] In January 1945, German Minister of Armaments and War Production Albert Speer made a propaganda broadcast in which he said V-1s and V-2s "would fall on New York by February 1, 1945", increasing the U.S. Government's concern over the threat of attack.
[70] In response to this threat, the U.S. Navy conducted Operation Teardrop between April and May 1945 to sink German U-boats detected heading for the Eastern Seaboard, which were believed to be armed with V-1s or V-2s.
[73] Kapitänleutnant Fritz Steinhoff, who had commanded U-511 during her rocket trials and was captured at sea when he surrendered U-873, was subjected to an abusive interrogation at Portsmouth[which?]
[79][80][81] The underwater-to-surface GOLEM-1, which was developed with the assistance of German scientists, is believed to have been a nuclear-capable, liquid-fueled (oxygen and alcohol), radio-inertial-guided rocket designed to be launched from a capsule towed by a submarine.
Following this initial success, the R-11FM was further developed and the first underwater launch of a modified R-11FM rocket using solid instead of liquid fuel took place on December 26, 1956, from an immersed platform at a depth of 30 m (98 ft).
[91] During Operation Sandy, for the first time, a German V-2 rocket seized in Germany by the U.S. Army at the end of the war was launched from a ship at sea, several hundred miles south of Bermuda.
[93] Codenamed "loon", a naval version of the Republic-Ford JB-2, a reversed-engineered copy of the German V-1 flying bomb was successfully launched off Point Mugu, California.
