Five Brothers and a War

V-1 and V-2 Program

During the V-weapon onslaught, over a period of 175 days and nights, the German launching crews fired more than 4,000 V-1s and more than 1,700 V-2s at greater Antwerpen. Of those, 106 V-1s and 107 V-2s hit the heart of the city. During that period, more than 3,700 civilians were killed and some 6,000 injured in the province of Antwerpen. Only about 30 percent of the V-2s launched against Antwerpen reached the city. The rockets that were off-target kept falling all around the Antwerpen area and often very far away from the port area. Several factors come into play for the modest number of V-2s Antwerpen suffered each day, but the main reasons were the German bottleneck in their alcohol and liquid oxygen supply and the enormous dispersion of the still imperfect weapon.

Impacts in greater Antwerpen

V-1

V-2

October 1944 November 1944 December 1944 January 1945 February 1945

27 64

58

126 130 155

110 117 224

59 42

March 1945

86

TOTAL

628

570

There were many failures of V-2 rockets, including launches from Den Haag. Or course, anytime they failed before they got to the North Sea, they crashed back onto the city. Usually, though not always, they landed in the exclusion zone. The monthly count of V-2 launches and failures (8.4%) in the area of Den Haag from September 8, 1944 until March 27, 1945 is as follows:

MONTH/YEAR

LAUNCHES

FAILURES

nazi germany

September 1944

24

2

October 1944

83

5

November 1944

143

15

December 1944

113

17

January 1945

229

15

February 1945

230

14

March 1945

217

19

TOTAL

1,039

87

Five Brothers and a War

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