V-2 Rocket

The V-2 rocket, developed by Nazi Germany under the technical direction of engineer Wernher von Braun and first operationally launched against London and Antwerp in September 1944, was the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile and the first man-made object to reach outer space during its test flights. Powered by a liquid-fueled rocket engine and capable of reaching an altitude of roughly eighty kilometers before descending on its target at supersonic speed, the V-2 struck without any warning sound, since it traveled faster than the sound of its own approach, a psychological terror weapon Nazi Germany deployed against Allied cities in the war's final months after conventional bombing campaigns had failed to break Allied resistance. Production relied extensively on forced and slave labor at the underground Mittelwerk facility, where the death toll among laborers building the weapon is estimated to have exceeded the number of people killed by the missile's combat use. After the war, captured V-2 technology and personnel, including von Braun himself, were taken by both the United States and the Soviet Union, directly seeding the postwar development of both nations' ballistic missile and space rocket programs.