No Secret, No Weapon

In the rolling Hessian hills, 40 miles southwest of Kassel, tankmen of the U.S. 3rd Armored Division (First Army) ran into a furious battle last week. Germans leveled antiaircraft guns, fought for the little town of Bromskirchen as if it were Berchtesgaden itself. Finally the Americans silenced the guns and learned why that pin point on the map had been so important to the Germans : aboard flatcars on a railroad siding were a dozen new V-2 rockets. They were taken intact.

Allied ordnance experts sped to Bromskirchen, probed V-2's innards, gave a superficial description which confirmed the facts already gleaned from exploded V-2s: it is 45 feet long (minus its explosive head), six to seven feet in diameter at the middle, tapered at head and tail; it has a four-foot compartment filled with radio dials and gadgets by which its flight is directed. The methodical Germans had carefully packed a twelve-page manual of instructions with each giant rocket.

No longer a secret, V-2 was also no longer a weapon. Canadian troops had effectively cut off launching sites in The Netherlands from their supplies. England marked its eleventh straight day free of V-bombs, heard cheering tidings from the Ministry of Home Security : the V-2 campaign as Britons had known it was definitely ended; the Germans had been driven out of effective range. There were official toll figures: 8,436 persons killed, 25,101 injured by V-bombs since the attacks began on June 15. But Britons kept their fingers crossed; the enemy might still use aircraft to bring V-1 buzz-bombs again into range of England.

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