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Creator of the first ballistic missile—the V-2 rocket—Germany might also collaborate with missile designers in Sweden or Italy to perfect another weapons platform.—Kevin Holden Platt, Forbes.com, 30 June 2025 While modest in size next to Europe's Ariane launcher family, Isar's Spectrum is the largest German rocket since the V-2, the World War II weapon of terror launched by Nazi Germany against targets in Great Britain, Belgium, and other places.—Ars Technica, 23 Mar. 2025 Alternative options have always existed—imperial Germany used Zeppelin airships in World War I to subdue the city of London, and Nazi Germany developed V-1 cruise missiles and V-2 ballistic missiles in World War II.—Raphael S. Cohen, Foreign Affairs, 18 Feb. 2025 In contrast, Soviet engineers developed a rocket more closely based on the V-2, opting for a simple satellite that would merely broadcast its presence.—Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, 3 Jan. 2025 The scene in Oppenheimer in which Borden recalls being in a plane, watching German V-2 rockets fly overhead toward England, is so crucial for your character, who became obsessed with the strategic implications of such weapons for U.S. security.—Isaac Feldberg, Vulture, 19 Apr. 2024 This work with von Braun and the German Army was not the only effort that connected Alwin Walther with slave labor, like that from German concentration camps exploited in the V-2 rocket factories.—IEEE Spectrum, 9 Feb. 2021 Many of them had been forced to work as slaves on the V-2 projects.—John Wenz, Discover Magazine, 24 July 2018
Word History
Etymology
German, abbreviation for Vergeltungswaffe 2, literally, reprisal weapon 2
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