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On October 3, 1942, a German A-4 rocket completed its first successful flight at Peenemünde. It was the missile later made infamous as the V-2: a major milestone in rocket engineering, developed and ultimately used as a weapon at an immense human cost.
What happened at Peenemünde on October 3, 1942?
The German Army’s A-4 test vehicle flew successfully after two failed launch attempts earlier in 1942. The National Air and Space Museum identifies the vehicle as A-4, V4, or the fourth test vehicle; it notes that the first vehicle had been destroyed in a ground test before launch. The German Federal Archives also dates the successful flight to October 3, 1942.
The National Air and Space Museum reports that this flight reached 60 miles in altitude, traveled 125 miles, lasted 296 seconds, and reached a top speed of 3,300 mph. It says the rocket came within 2.5 miles of its target. The German Aerospace Center (DLR) gives the peak altitude as approximately 100 kilometers. These are differently rounded figures from separate institutional accounts, so they should not be treated as more precise measurements than their sources claim.
Why was it called the A-4, not the V-2?
A-4 was the designation used for the rocket during its development and at the 1942 test. “V-2” is the name by which it became widely known later. The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum says the Nazi Propaganda Ministry publicly announced the V-2 designation in November 1944, two months after the weapon’s first deployment.
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The distinction matters: the October 3 flight was a test in the A-4 program, not the debut of a name already used publicly. The museum describes the V-2 as the world’s first large-scale liquid-propellant rocket vehicle and the first modern long-range ballistic missile.
How did the test relate to the later V-2 weapon?
The A-4 was developed as a weapon, not as a peaceful spaceflight project. Beginning in September 1944, rockets were launched at targets in Belgium, southern England, and northern France. DLR estimates that around 3,200 A-4/V-2 rockets were launched at those targets between September 8, 1944, and March 27, 1945, claiming about 5,000 lives.
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Later accounts have presented the October 1942 flight as a beginning of the Space Age because of its altitude and the technology it demonstrated. That legacy should not eclipse the rocket’s intended military role or its use against civilians and cities. A successful test flight was a technical milestone; it was not the start of a civilian space program.
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Enslaved concentration-camp labor was used in the A-4 program. NASA describes how production later moved to the underground Mittelwerk facility near Nordhausen, where prisoners from the attached Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp were forced to work. The National Air and Space Museum also records the use of enslaved labor and addresses program leaders’ responsibility for decisions to exploit it.
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The museum’s account of restoring its V-2 warns against letting the test-flight imagery obscure that history: “The black-and-white test scheme, modeled after the first successful flight vehicle, still obscured its history as a terror weapon produced by slave labor.”
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How should the flight’s performance figures be understood?
Numbers published for the October 3 test are not interchangeable with general specifications for the later weapon. The National Air and Space Museum’s figures above describe that flight. NASA’s biography of Wernher von Braun gives approximate general V-2 specifications of 46 feet in length, 29,000 pounds in weight, speeds above 3,500 mph, and a 2,200-pound warhead. Those specifications describe the missile generally, not measurements of the October 3, 1942 flight.
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- National Air and Space Museum: V-2 Missile collection record
- National Air and Space Museum: Restoring the Museum’s V-2 Missile
- NASA: Wernher von Braun
- German Federal Archives: Development and use of the V-2 in the Second World War
- German Aerospace Center: History of space research in Germany
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