MHT Blog

Welcome to the MHT Blog Site and our Posts try to not be dusty topics or blah military history but things we find interesting and hope you will too! Below is our MHT Blog Archive for additional topics. We will have more from the sites we visit now that MHT is back on the road. Thanks for checking us out – The Editor

CLICK TO SEE THE 2024 & 2025 TOURS

SEE the update to the Blog 03/21/2022 - For Want of a Horse, the MiG-29s Were Lost?

Rockets & Missiles from WWII to NASA

Topsail Island’s Operation Bumblebee, Pin-Ups, V-1s, U-Boats, Imperial Japanese Jets, V-2s, Operation Paperclip & NASA!

I went to Topsail Island, North Carolina for summer vacation & had to visit the local brewery The Salty Turtle.

Not surprisingly being so close to Camp Lejeune it was founded by two retired Marines & had a classic brew in honor of the 2nd Marine Division named Betio Blonde Ale to honor the Division’s most famous WWII battle on the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. It incorporates the 2nd Marine Division insignia’s Southern Cross & the shape of Betio island.

I noted another beer was named Talos Operation Bumblebee Barleywine so I looked it up & it was named after the Bendix RIM-8 Talos (originally designated SAM-N-6) a long-range naval surface-to-air missile (SAM), among the earliest SAMs to protect United States Navy (USN) ships. A solid rocket booster provided thrust for launch & a Bendix ramjet powered its flight to the target. Talos was the end product of Operation Bumblebee, the Navy's 16-year SAM missile development program to defend USN ships against guided anti-ship missiles like Henschel Hs 293 (a WWII German radio-guided glide bomb with rocket aided became the first operational anti-shipping missile, damaging or sinking at least 25 ships), Fritz X (a German guided anti-ship glide bomb, the world's first precision guided weapon & the first to sink a ship in combat), & Japanese kamikaze aircraft (like the deadliest, the German V-1 inspired piloted cruise missile OKA.)

The Talos saw action in Vietnam, fired from two USN cruisers with the nuclear-powered USS Long Beach shot down a Vietnamese MiG-21 at a range of about 65 miles. This was the first downing of a hostile aircraft by a SAM fired from a ship & a second MiG was downed flying through the debris. In September 1968, Long Beach scored another MiG destroyed at a range of 61 miles. In 1972, USS Chicago's (a converted WWII cruiser) Talos battery scored a long-range kill of a MiG. The Talos missile also had surface-to-surface (SSM) capabilities with the RGM-8H Talos-ARM a dedicated anti-radar homing missile for use against shore-based radar stations. The cruisier USS Oklahoma City, fired the first successful combat SSM mission in US Navy history destroying a North Vietnamese SAM radar site.

The second part of the Salty Turtle Talos Operation Bumblebee Barleywine was “Operation Bumblebee” which was the USN’s secret guided missile testing program that operated on Topsail Island from 1946-1948. On a rainy day at the beach, we went to the original missile assembly building of Operation Bumblebee has been converted into the Missiles & More Museum on Topsail. Exhibits include model & original missiles from the project, a full size Talos guided missile is located outside at the building’s front. Heavy shipping losses due to Japanese Imperial Army & Navy kamikaze attacks on the massive fleet supporting the long & bloody Battle of Okinawa provided the Navy with incentive for missile development. Initial tests began at Island Beach, New Jersey, & then Fort Miles, Delaware before settling at Camp Davis, the Army’s WWII anti-aircraft training center was consigned for use by the Navy & became the permanent Op Bumblebee testing & launch facility in March 1947. Op Bumblebee structures, included a control tower, launch platform & eight rigid observation towers built along the beach front. The latter, placed at precise latitude & longitude positions, were anchored firmly by deeply pilings & were constructed with reinforced concrete to eliminate even the slightest structural movement. Concrete block walls enclosed the three levels of each tower to protect the sensitive photo theodolite cameras & precise timing instruments. This history is far from confined to just the museum, as six of the eight towers used to track the test fired missile telemetry towers still stand across the island. The #4 Tower has been converted to a beach-front home available for vacation rentals, no Talos tracking but a Jacuzzi Tub!

Museum visitors learn that when the Navy took over Topsail Island in 1947 it was uninhabited. Over the next 18 months over 200 rockets were launched by the program, dubbed "Operation Bumblebee" because of seemingly impossible aerodynamic challenges similar to those experienced by a bumblebee in flight, got closer and closer to reaching its goal. It was the proving ground for some of the first U.S. missile efforts testing the principles of the controlled ramjet engine. A ramjet-powered anti-aircraft missile was proposed to destroy aircraft launching the German guided bombs & Japanese human kamikaze weapons while they remained beyond the range of shipboard anti-aircraft artillery. The U.S. Navy, in association with the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore Maryland, launched a program in 1945 to put the ramjet theories to the test by assembling, firing, tracking, & evaluating the performance of high-speed, extended-range ramjet missiles from a remote base of operations. The purpose of the mission was to make the ramjet engine successful as a booster for anti-aircraft missiles by bringing it up to supersonic speeds, developing thrust, and measuring its performance in the field with technical instrumentation. The future Three -T SAMs (Talos, Terrier & Tartar) were born on Topsail. By 1951 the capabilities of the Navy’s anti-missile defense had outgrown the 26-mile stretch of their Topsail home. The operation was moved to the expansive & desolate Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, in the Mojave Desert California & then later to White Sands Missile Range in Alamogordo, New Mexico. technological evolution of American military weaponry because the Topsail Island facility was the incubator for the U.S. missile program, where the ramjet engine the basis of supersonic jet aircraft was proven viable. The Topsail Island facility was a predecessor of Cape Canaveral (Kennedy.)

The point of Op Bumblebee was to catch the U.S. Military up in ramjet technology that Nazi Germany harnessed during WWII as the V-1 flying bomb ("Vergeltungswaffe 1" - Vengeance Weapon 1) the first combat effective cruise missile. Its official Reich Aviation Ministry designation was Fieseler Fi 103 & was known to the Allies as the buzz bomb or doodlebug & deployed for the terror bombing of London in 1944.

WWII had seen an explosion of Patriotic Pin-Up girls riding all manner of bombs or torpedoes as aircraft nose art or for bomber squadron logos & patches. I had never seen a Pin-Up on girl on a V-1 rocket but leave it to the Canadians to break that barrier with no inhibitions.

Affiliated Equipment Inc. (AE) is a Canadian high-quality camera, lighting & film accessories. AE was getting two new gear trucks & the plan was to give them their own unique identity. An extensive search began to track down an artist that would realize their vision. In the end, AE found that artist in Fiona Stephenson from Barnsley, United Kingdom. Fiona, a comic artist, came across a book of the Gil Elvgren the most important Pin Up Artist at a San Diego comic convention. She fell in love with Pin Up Art & copied Elvgren’s painting, ‘Quick Change’, featuring a girl changing her car’s tire, as a tribute. Soon she created her own originals with her most unusual commissions coming from AE to paint pin-up girls (& Guys) on the sides of their eight-truck fleet. Above is the first of her two AE paintings with Pin Up girls riding rockets (notice the resemblance of the two blondes) for the sides of their new vehicles. Below demonstrates there are further representations.

The V-1 was developed at Peenemünde Army Research Center in 1939 by the German Luftwaffe (Air Force) at the beginning of WWII & codenamed "Cherry Stone" & (FZG-76) during development. Due to its limited range, the thousands of V-1 missiles launched against England were fired from launch ramps constructed along the French (Pas-de-Calais) & Dutch coasts or later launched from under modified He 111 aircraft.

The Wehrmacht’s 65th Army Corps’ Flak Regiments, commanded by General der Artillerie Erich Heinemann, was responsible for the ground launching using the steam catapults to help the ramjets surpass their stall speed. Mass production of the V-1 (FZG-76) did not commence until the spring of 1944, & both Flak Regiments 155(W) & 255(W) were not equipped until late May 1944. Operation Eisbär, the V-1 cruise missile blitz of London, commenced on 12 June 1944 triggered by the successful June 6th D-Day landings at Normandy. The four launch battalions had been supplied with missiles, Walter catapults, fuel, & other associated equipment but due to the range limitations could only operate from the Pas-de-Calais area, amounting to only 72 available ramp launchers. None of the nine missiles launched on the 12th reached England, while only four reach English soil on the 13th. The next attempt to unleash the retribution strikes started on the night of 15/16 June, when 144 missiles reached England, of which 73 struck London, 53 struck Portsmouth & Southampton while 18 failed to reach their English targets.

At peak, more than one hundred V-1s a day were fired at the large cities of southeast Britain. Over 9,521 were fired but the daily liftoffs decreased in numbers as the launcher sites were overrun by advancing British, Canadian & US forces. After the last V-1 French sites in range of Britain were overrun, the German Command directed V-1 attacks on the port of Antwerp & other targets in Belgium. A further 2,448 V-1s were ground launched until the last ramp launch site in the Low Countries was overrun on 29 March 1945. The Luftwaffe took over for the airborne launching using their modified He 111 H-22 to fire another 1,176 over the North Sea towards English cities.

Damage to London & other English cities was so widespread Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower ordered air attacks on the V-1 sites as a priority. LtGen Omar Bradley’s 1st Army advancing in Operation Cobra forced a retreat from the French coastal launch sites in August, with the last battalion pulling back on 29 August 1944. The V-1 had a length of 26 ft. 3 in., a wingspan of 18ft. 9 in, a range of 205 miles, weighed 4,960-lb with an 1,874-lb. warhead.

On 13 June 1944, the first V-1 struck in London next to the railway bridge on Grove Road, marked by one of the many English Heritage blue plaques. Eight civilians were killed in that blast. A conventional ramp take-off site could theoretically launch about 15 V-1s per day, but this firing rate was difficult to achieve on a consistent basis due to the deteriorating logistic conditions in Nazi Germany.

Overall, only about 25% of the V-1s hit their designated target areas, the majority being lost because of a combination of defensive measures, mechanical unreliability or guidance errors. With the capture or destruction of the French launch facilities, the V-1s turned their focus to strike strategic targets in Belgium, primarily the port of Antwerp.

In late 1943, the Germans Luftwaffe had experimented with "manned missiles," in which pilots would point their aircraft at a ground target & then bail out. Experiments along this line were performed with both a conventional Focke-Wulf FW-190 & the new pulse jet-powered Messerschmitt Me-328 fighters, but proved unsuccessful. In May 1944, Sturmbannfuehrer Otto Skorzeny, the brilliant but ruthless Waffen SS commando leader, was tasked to revive the program using the proven V-1. So, the Reichenberg IV, a manned version of the V-1, was engineered & intended to be carried to the vicinity of its high priority target beneath an He 111 bomber in a similar method of the airborne launch of the pilotless Fi 103 against the British Isles. In theory, the pilot was intended to jettison the cockpit canopy and bail out after aiming his cruise missile at the target, but it was calculated that his chance of survival was little better than 1% one in a hundred. Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments & War Production, convinced Hitler to discontinue construction because suicide missions were not part of the Teutonic warrior ethos.

The Japanese took the Reichenberg IV to reality with the Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka (OKA "Cherry Blossom") a V-1 copy, rocket-powered human-guided kamikaze attack-aircraft first deployed by Imperial Japan sinking three USN ships & severely damaging three more off Okinawa in 1945. Although extremely fast, the Ohka had a very short range, so it had to be carried into action by a much larger bomber, which proved vulnerable to carrier Combat Air Patrol fighters. The capture of six new Japanese OKA Bombs in caves near Kadena Airfield came as a complete surprise to U.S. intelligence. These special attack aircraft had only arrived from Japan a few weeks before the invasion, were assembled & ready for launch until USN fighters destroyed their mother aircraft on the airstrip. The Kamikaze Special Attack Corps derived their name from a typhoon that destroyed a Mongolian invasion fleet in 1280. The Kamikaze attacks shocked the world primarily because of their certain death-self destruction aspects. It was hard for the Western mind to accept this idea - a man determined to die without the slimmest chance of survival. I’ll contrast the courage of USN Torpedo Squadron 8 sailors at the Battle of Midway versus the craven self-annihilation of the Special Attack Units.

Japanese military attachés in Germany had become aware of their Axis partners advances in rocketry.
The Japanese & Germans came to an agreement over the rocket powered ME 163 Komet where the Germans would provide a complete aircraft & blueprints plus three HWK 509A engines & blueprints. The Germans tried to send three separate times (2 Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) submarines & a Kriegsmarine U-boat) but all three were sunk in transit sending two Comet aircraft to the bottom. One sub reached Singapore & an IJN officer wisely flew ahead with an instruction manuals & technical info on the ME 163, ME 262 & HWK 509A engine as the sub was sank transiting to mainland Japan. This allowed the Japanese Navy & Army to attempt to reverse engineer the ME 163 airframe & the jet engine to produce the Mitsubishi J8M (IJN)/Ki-200 (Imperial Japanese Army) Shusui “Swinging Sword.” It was being developed for the defense of Japan to attack B-29s. The one test flight ended in engine failure & a fiery wreak killing the test pilot. The Nakajima Kikka "orange blossom" (that bore a resemblance to the ME262 & used a copy of the BMW 003) was Japan's first turbojet-powered aircraft. It was developed late in WWII & the single prototype flew only once in August 1945.

Despite the V-1's limitations, the US Military was very interested in having a cruise missile capability. In comparison to the bumbling American efforts in radio-controlled flying bombs the German V-1 looked pretty good, & in July 1944 captured V-1 components were shipped to Wright-Patterson Field in Ohio for evaluation. Within three weeks, the USAAF had the JB (Jet Bomb)-1/2 "Thunderbug" & the USN had the KGW-1"Loon" that seemed to be exact replicas of the V-1. These led to the advance development of our important cruise missile fleet of the AGM-86 ALCM & the crucial BGM-109 Tomahawk in the Global War on Terror.

Viona also used a V-2 & you can see it on one of AE’s trucks.

The V-2 ('Vengeance Weapon 2'), with the technical name Aggregat 4 (A4), was the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile. The missile, powered by a liquid-propellant rocket engine, was developed to attack Allied cities in retaliation for the massive Allied bombing destruction of German cities. The military use of long-range rockets began when the research of Dr. Wernher von Braun came to the attention of the German Army.

It was decided that the rocket research center should move from the outskirts of Berlin to Peenemünde, a small fishing village on the northernmost point of the Baltic Sea Island of Usedom. The site was personally selected by von Braun, as the strategic location appeared ideal as a military testing ground. The strip of coast on which the village lay made it possible to follow the flight path of test rockets for up to 180 miles. After a series of prototypes were tested at Peenemunde Army Research Center culminating in the A4, which went to war as the V-2.

Hitler declared on 29 August 1944 to begin the “wonder weapon” V-2 attacks as soon as possible & two groups (North – Battalion (Bn) 485 & South – Battery 444) were organized with A4s, launchers, transportation units & supply support. The offensive began on 6 September 1944 when two rockets aimed at Paris misfired on liftoff (which the Allies had liberated less than two weeks earlier.)

On 8 September, Battery 444 near Sterpigny, Belgium launched two rockets at Paris, with one exploding in route but the second impacted in "Charentonneau" à Maisons-Alfort, in south-east of Paris with 6 killed & 36 wounded making it the first use of a ballistic missile in combat.

Two more launches by the 485th Bn, just outside The Hague, followed against London with one landing at Staveley Road, Chiswick, killing 63-year-old Mrs. Ada Harrison, three-year-old Rosemary Clarke, & Sapper Bernard Browning on leave from the Royal Engineers, with seven seriously injured & the other hitting Epping, Essex with no casualties.

Beginning in September 1944, 3,172 V-2s were launched by the Wehrmacht against Allied population centers, first London & Paris followed later by Antwerp & Liège. V-2 attacks resulted in the deaths of an estimated 9,000 civilians & military personnel, while a further 12,000 slave laborers & concentration camp prisoners died as a result of their forced participation in these weapons production. Unlike the relatively slow & very noisy V-1, the V-2 rockets travelled at supersonic speeds, impacted without audible warning, & proved indefensible.

Just after noon on September 17, 1944, 12 Spitfires of No. 229 Squadron RAF were scanning a stretch of the Dutch coast looking for evidence of rocket activity. While patrolling at 12,000 feet over North Holland, they witnessed a V-2 rising in the distance at terrific speed. The rocket impacted several minutes later in southern London. The Spitfires were too far away to discern the exact location from which the rocket had been fired. They could only report the general location, which was near the coast, near The Hague. The V-2 troops had to abandon that area two days later when the Allies kicked off Operation “Market Garden” (documented in the great book & movie “The Bridge Too Far”)

The SS-Werfer-Batterie 500 joined the V-2 command in October 1944. The soldiers who were part of the special SS-Abteilung that had special training with the Waffen SS before starting their technical training. The Battery of 8 officers & 400 men was commanded by SS-General Dr. Hans Kammler who was a civilian engineer with a high officer rank in the SS. The Batt SS 500 had over 100 vehicles & supplied with the best gear available. They mainly targeted Antwerp but on 17 March 1945, Hitler himself ordered the tactical use of the V-2 to drop the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen that the US Army had captured over the Rhine to invade Germany. 11 were fired but not a single rocket hit its target but the closest was about 500 - 800 yards. A number of houses in the bridge’s immediate vicinity were destroyed. After 10 days of artillery & air attacks on the bridge it fell into the Rhine on the 17th & Hitler & his propaganda machine gave the V-2s credit.

Above the results at Wanstead Park Road & Endsleigh Gardens in Cranbrook, Ilford, on 8 March 1945. This V-2 destroyed eight houses outright, sixteen had to be demolished, 33 houses were rendered uninhabitable, & 116 were “very seriously damaged.”

The final V-2 fired on London was later in March on the 27th when a V-2 from the 485th Bn landed in Whitechapel destroying 2 city blocks with 134 dead & 49 seriously injured. The next day was the final combat launch as the German defenses fell apart.

Teams from the Allied forces raced to seize major German manufacturing facilities, procure the Germans' missile technology, & capture the V-2s' launching sites. Von Braun & more than 130 core V-2 scientists, technicians & engineering personnel surrendered to the Americans. As part of “Operation Paperclip,” many of the original V-2 research & development team were relocated & transferred with their work to the Redstone Arsenal.

They assimilated into NASA's space program, where they worked on missile technology first at Fort Bliss, Texas before transferring to Huntsville, Alabama. Von Braun became the director of the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in 1960. US intelligence had captured enough V-2 hardware to build approximately 80 of the missiles. Many were fired at White Sands Proving Grounds, New Mexico & a V-2 was the first missile fired at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The V-2 became the beginning of our Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile Program & the little brother of the NASA Space Program that created the giant Saturn V to send USA to the Moon. Below: Von Braun