Hitler's deadly V2 rockets being test launched

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The team, from Research Resource Archaeology, were excavating nearby a huge 14 feet deep and 38 feet wide crater. Brothers Colin and Sean Welch, who run the project, were overseeing the digging of a 31-foot hole nearby when the remains of a V2 rocket were uncovered. The part of the weapon included a combustion chamber that would have contained a liquid oxygen and alcohol mixture.

The team have previously worked at five other V2 sites but this one was said to be unique.

Colin told Kent Online: “The rockets would enter the Earth at an angle, in this case a trajectory of about 70 degrees.

“We usually expect to find the most remains at the side of the crater furthest from the entry point, but when we dug there this time there was nothing.”

A bed of ragstone is said to have kept the rocket closer to the impact point.

This concoction would have sent the rocket speeding to the ground at 3,300 mile per hour.

Sean added: “Their rockets were travelling so fast. If they hit you would never have known anything about it.”

Thousands of V2 rockets were launched by Nazi Germany during World War 2, causing an estimate 9,000 deaths in the UK alone.

The one discovered last week is said to have launched from Holland and took just minutes to reach England on Valentine’s Day 1944.

It will now be cleaned and restored in a meticulous process that could take up to 18 months.

Experts hope to be able to uncover secret source codes that were often stamped on rocket components.

After the war it was discovered that these codes can link rocket items back to the factory they were made.

Some V2 rocket parts are now known to have been made in Czechoslovakia and a single factory in Austria.

Each rocket is said to have needed 30 tonnes of potatoes to make the alcohol necessary for one launch.

This production was happening at a time of extreme food shortages for the Germans and strikes continued even when they started to lose the war.

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Hitler’s “superweapons” weapons included the V1 and the V2 Vergeltungswaffen, or retaliatory weapons.

These were a particular set of long-range artillery weapons designed for strategic bombing during World War 2.

After the invasion of Europe by the Allies, these weapons were also employed against targets on the mainland of Europe, mainly France and Belgium.

Strategic bombing with V-weapons killed approximately 18,000 people, mostly civilians.

The cities of London, Antwerp and Liege were the main targets.

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