Hitler’s Terror Weapons: The Price of Vengeance. Richard Overy

rockets) had already been expended on the British, mostly on London, without significant military effect. Had not Hitler promised, when Berlin was first raided, that he would ‘in one night drop 150, 230 or 400,000 kilograms?’ It has been seen in chapter one, that it was estimated by British scientists that 1250 tons of bombs per square mile were necessary to achieve a 50 per cent devastation. London’s 700 square miles, by this calculation, would need 875,000 rockets; to achieve 80% destruction would need 2900 tons per square mile, or 2,030,000 rockets. This would be, of course, if the aiming error were exactly as planned by Dornberger, ie 2 to 3 mils. (If a destruction of 80% of an area is thought excessive, this was just the fate eventually suffered by the 300 square miles of the Ruhr, as will be seen later). German mathematicians were presumably equally capable of making this calculation. Yet when Dornberger’s memorandum arrived in April 1942, with its call for 5000 rockets, i.e. 5000 tons of explosive, to be launched each year against ‘southern England’, there seems to have been no outburst from the Fuehrer, who was supposed to carry weapon specifications in his head (to the great discomfort of his generals). At Dornberger’s rate of fire, London would have been 80% destroyed by the twenty fourth century of the Christian era, presuming that rebuilding work were to cease for the interval. Could Hitler, whose whole mindset in war pivoted around morale,