R.V. Jones, chief scientific adviser to the RAF during the War, who predicted to within a week the beginning of the V1 onslaught (among other accomplishments), said after the War that the chief question concerning V-Waffen among intelligence officials after War was not “How did they do it?”, but rather, “Why?”.
The question in the United States in the 1950’s was “Can the AEC (Atomic Energy Commission) make ballistic missiles practical?” Without small atomic warheads, ballistic missiles are not practical weapons.
Very true. And on a similar note people used to freak out about the enormous Soviet rockets. Our bigger is better mentality made us forget that they HAD to build big ones because they had no small deliverable nuke.
Takes a big rocket to deliver an early 50s nuke.
Why, indeed? No strategic value to it, and has been pointed out on this thread, let's say it didn't do much to dissuade the allies from firebombing Dresden, etc. just to inflict civilian casualties.
Could we just go for the simple answer that the Nazis were evil f***s, terrorists who just wanted to kill people just because? Would it be instructive to our situation?
“Without small atomic warheads, ballistic missiles are not practical weapons.”
The Nazis were working on nuclear weapons. IIRC their initial estimate of warhead size would have been within the limits of the V-2/A4 payload (1000kg). They also had the standard arsenal of chemical and biological weapons.
And who’s to say that if the Allied bombing campaign hadn’t been successful that we wouldn’t have resorted to missiles with HE warheads?
Even Ernst Stavro Blofeld knew this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qraA12BrzVo (the relevant quote is at 0:39)