These were the “weapons of retaliation,” known as the V-1 and V-2 buzz bombs. The V-1 was the world’s first cruise missile, and the V-2 was the first ballistic missile. Another rocket that never quite made it to full production was the world’s first intercontinental ballistic missile, dubbed “Projekt Amerika.”
The Nazis created these rockets without the benefit of computers, semiconductors, electronics, advanced metallurgy, or refined high-octane fuels. They didn’t even have crude oil, but had to develop a gasification process to extract oil from coal.
The Nazis even put into production the first jet-powered fighters. They were fully operational but had limited use because they never had enough high-quality jet fuel.
The Americans and Russians rushed to capture Peenemunde, the rocket labs where all this technology was developed, at the end of the war.
Roughly half the Nazi rocket scientists went to Russia. They built the rocket and space capsule that put the first man in orbit.
The rest of the Pennemunde scientists were captured by the Americans. After the Russians put a man in orbit, the German scientists at NASA put Americans in orbit and Americans on the moon.
Virtually every aerospace engineering program at every important university in the world was run by German scientists, practically until the present time.
Operation Paperclip
The Americans actually took more than the scientists. They took everything – lab equipment, manufacturing equipment, entire labs – loaded everything on railroad cars and transported everything to White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico (now called White Sands Missile Range).
Four years later a “flying saucer” crash-landed at Roswell, New Mexico, about five miles from the border of the top-secret White Sands military reservation.
What’re five miles in the vast New Mexico desert/wasteland? An eternity.