Questions regarding V2 rockets

Thanks for clicking!

I'm a senior in high school and I'm pretty into military history. So, I'm doing my math internal assessment (Just think of it as a project ) on the V2 rocket's accuracy on hitting London.

So, a bit of specifics; my plan is to take it's CEP (circular area probable- where 50% of shots land) and show how it's accuracy changed over time with different innovations/ modifications/ etc. At this point, I don't think I will account for varying distances or launch sites or weather conditions- strictly tested probabilities. The idea is to see the probability of hitting downtown 1944-1945 London in xxx month.

I came across a few complications when trying to research this. Firstly, British intelligence forces fed the Germans wrong information regarding the V2's accuracy. The Germans then adjusted their launch sites to overshoot by 10-20 miles. And then, secondly, I can find how many V2s hit London and the test accuracy and the number produced per month, but I can't find the number fired on London per month.

So, in short, what I'm asking for is two bits of information;

Does anybody know at which point the Germans started to fire 10-20 miles off? If I have a time estimate for this (I,e, roughly 3 months after they began firing according to this source), then this complication would be just fine for my paper. But I need to have some sort of source giving me a time frame.

And, does anybody know where I can find a timetable on the number of V2s that hit London over xxx month/year? This is important because otherwise I am just dividing the number of V2s that hit London by the number of months of operation use, although even Wikipedia shows that production capabilities varied drastically; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2_rocket.

I thank anybody that bothers to read this and I thank you even more if you give me an answer or two! The sooner the better because I'm working on a short time schedule myself.

Thanks again!

 

Some of the info you want may be here:
http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/v2.htm
I saw some lists of launches but didn't see the time scale.
The map here maybe useful as well:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2750353/Interactive-map-reveals-hundreds-sites-Hitler-s-V2-rockets-killed-thousands-British-civilians-final-months-WW2.html
This page has some info on the time lines of the attacks
http://flyingbombsandrockets.com/Timeline.html
This page also has an interactive map:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140905-the-nazis-space-age-rocket
The time line on this one may be exactly what you are looking for if it is complete enough
http://www.v2rocket.com/start/deployment/timeline.html

 

Thank you!

The last link you provided helped. I think I can go off of that for some sort of launch timeline.

Do you or anyone else have anything about when the Germans started to readjust their trajectories 10-20 miles away from Britain because of false information?

 

Quite the assessment. Good luck.

 

Try
Basil Collier - The Battle of the V-Weapons 1944-1945 (1964) and his "Hidden Weapons: Allied Secret or Undercover Services in World War II (1982)

 

Thanks for the advice and good wishes guys! I'll look into those books too

 

I second that..

 

Harry Hinsley's British Intelligence in the Second World War Volume 2 and Horst Boog's Germany and the Second World War Volume VII.should be your starting points.

 

Sure! I am supposed to submit a rough draft outlining how my research intends to be done tonight, and then I will have perhaps a few weeks before submitting the final draft. Once I've sent that off, I'd be happy to share it with you guys hahaha. I'll make a promise to not forget.

 

I haven't commented because I had nothing to add, but I was interested enough to do some google searches (ground you've already covered I'm sure) and found a couple of maps showing V2 strikes. They must all be drawn from the same sources because they all largely ignore countryside hits (misses) and just show the ones in and around London, and around Yarmouth which was also targeted - probably because of proximity to the launch sites?

If you could find the source for that map (they all seem to use the same source) you could probably get the info. Somebody took a lot of time to draw that up and they must have the dates and also the countryside hits which were left off the map released to the media.

Anyway, you're onto an interesting corner of WW2 history here and I wish you luck and hope you get to the bottom of this question.

 

Yes, I know of the maps you are talking about. I believe it's from the same people from a link that lwd posted; http://www.v2rocket.com/start/deployment/timeline.html. You had a correct hunch; the guys that put this together have just about everything we can know 70 years on and it's where I've been able to get the majority of the data about V-2 strikes from.

On a side note, I've actually had to limit the number of V-2 impacts I record in my data- I'm using 140 right now and it takes ages to enter that all into mathematics equations. Too much info? hahaha. I'm going to try and go back to record all the others I passed up for the final draft.

 

Not sure where you are located but the museum at WSMR (SE New Mexico) has a nice display of a V-2 with a fair amount of info. They might have some data as well if you contact them.

 

I actually live in Saudi Arabia at the moment. My father works Health Safety Environmental for oil companies so I'll be here for another 8 months until I graduate.