On October the 3rd, first successful shooting of V2 in Peenemünde. Hitler had cut the credits for already 2 years, not believing in this technology.
With this success, he wants to use V2 as a revolutionary weapon and give lot of money to make up for lost time and require to protect them in big Bunker, being fascinated by Bunker he was saw when he was a corporal during the first world war.
The engineers ask the Führer if they can continue mobile launches researches; he accepts but maintains the requirement of big Bunker to protect this weapon. In 1942, 7 hours were needed to install a V2 ready to be unsticked.
The Bunker of Eperlecques is bombarded during its construction on 27th August 1943 and the mobile launches researches evolved at the point that all the vehicles are built in small series. It needs about one hour to prepare a V2 on a mobile shooting range.
German understood that they did not need a Bunker for the launching of V2 rockets, but they needed factories for liquid oxygen production, essential combustive for the V2.
Germans hesitate to build again a Bunker 3km away, but they opt to end only the factory of liquid oxygen and decide to realize 3 big concrete paving stones, a little bigger than a ground of tennis, on the plateau of the Eperlecques forest, in order to install the mobil launched pad for V2.
At the other extremity of this forest massif there is a V1 banister. The forest of Eperlecques is the first place selected to receive a banister of V1 a base of V2 and 3 shooting ranges for the mobile launches of V2, the only place having grouped weapons self propelled, a way of by-passing the treaty of Versailles which not plan that a weapon could be autonomous.
V1, small plane bomb without pilot is the first use of the pulsoréacteur in a industrial way.
V2, first rocket bomb without cosmonaut, overtaking 4 times the speed of sound. This rocket will open the air of the conquest of space!
To answer favorably the demands of the Führer, the launching part site, that must be built in Eperlecques, will be delocalized in the storage site of V2, in Helfaut: the construction of a gigantic concrete dome will reach the summit of the gypsum quarry, no foundation is necessary for it, being convinced that it will be the mobile launches which will be used for the launching of V2 rockets.
It will be necessary to wait that Hitler admitts that the mobile launch is the best solution. From July 1944, the majority of V2 will be pulled from the main avenue in the Hague in Holland.
More than 3 170 V2 will be pulled, against 22 384 V1 of which we consider that approximately 59 % reached the aimed zones.
At the end of the war, the allied experts inspect laboratories and workshops of development of the manufacturers, or the centres of experiment of the army, and are bewildered by what they discover in Germany: incredible projects the allies are going to appropriate.
The Americans seize 250 V2 rockets. The British obtain 75 V2. The Soviet citizens will have the rest and the unfinished projects of German.
The Soviet citizens are thus going to run the production of the Nordhausen factory in 1945. One year later, 30 rockets will be assembled there.
Afterward, they are going to delocalize the factory in the USSR with all the German experts and their family who are necessary for them. 6 000 to 7 000 persons will be deported. On the contrary, the Americans only bring with them the experts alone in pressing departures.
Whereas the Americans grant the citizenship to German (ex: Von Braun was naturalized in April 1955), the Soviet citizens hide them and send them back afterward.
The Americans are going to offer key posts to German for the "Apollo" project which will send men to walk on the moon. In the Russian side, Korolev works on the plans of a rocket and in August 1949 the USSR blows up its first atom bomb. The ancient projects discovered by the Allies at the end of the war, as well as the knowledges of German serve today to go to Space.
