Abstract
Two revolutionary weapons emerged in the latter part of the Second World War — the long-range rocket and the jet-propelled aircraft. The arrival of the first was entirely due to the Germans while the second was developed in parallel secretly by both the British and the Germans. Neither the long-range rocket nor the jet fighter influenced the outcome of the war, but both were to change radically the face of warfare while their peaceful applications led, on the one hand, to the exploration of space and, on the other, to the transformation of air transport.
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Notes
Joseph Needham, The Guns of Khaijéng- fu; China’s Development of Man’s First Chemical Explosive, Creighton Lecture, University of London, November 1979.
R. Amman et al., The Technological Level of Soviet Industry, Yale University Press, London, 1987, p. 78.
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M. M. Postan et al., Design and Development of Weapons, London, 1963, p. 122.
W. Baumbach, The Broken Swastika, New York, 1992.
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© 2000 Guy Hartcup
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Hartcup, G. (2000). Premature Weapons: the Rocket and the Jet. In: The Effect of Science on the Second World War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230596177_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230596177_9
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